I saw this over the weekend, and I have already waxed poetic enough on this previously (please review if you are not familiar).  The nugget is:

Santangelo said there came a point when she could not persuade her body to perform. “It wasn’t a matter of will, but of pure physical strength,” she wrote. “My mind wanted more, but my muscles quivered in failure after multiple attempts. I began to shiver as I got cold. I was told I could not continue.”

Physical strength to be in the Infantry.  You don’t say?  Some of you may remember that Ms. Santangelo published an Op-Ed recently about her experiences.  She is now on her way to the Afghanistan, and she will be headed to flight training in August I believe, after something like two months overseas.  My husband says that isn’t time enough to get unpacked, let alone do anything of real value.

My continued resistance to this extended jaunt around Mentally Defective Park that our government wants to take, along with my continued railing against the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act (also known as the “Put every small and large business out of business because of the trial lawyers Act”) is just going to be more of the slow dripping that is building up to be a medium sized tsunami that gets me further excommunicated from the feminist sisterhood for asking this simple question for the world filled with feminists who have little to no understanding of how the real world works.  So here goes.

How much “equality” do you ladies want?

I think the question is fair, because this is the discussion we need to be having—not the one involving how awesome it would be to be able to make a million dollars a year for our work, but still have all the time we wanted for our kids.  Or, how we aren’t being allowed to maximize our career potential because we aren’t allowed into a career field that involves physical toughness.  There are many feminist women out there demanding some sort of “equality.”  So, I want to know; how much?  If you want to be a Special Forces soldier, do you also want to sign up for Selective Service?  If you want “equal pay for equal work” are you willing to leave your kids at home or in day care for 16 hours a day when you work a double shift of overtime at work or travel frequently for your multi-national corporation job and leave them behind?  If you take the good of the US Army allowing your daughter to try out for Special Forces, then are you willing to accept that she gets to mosey on down to fill out her Selective Service registration when she graduates from high school, just like every other woman’s son?

The price of equality is that we women, regardless of our political persuasion, don’t get to pick and choose which good things we would like to be “equal” in, and forgo the hardships and inconveniences of the things we don’t want to be “equal” in.  Because that would be (are you listening, feminists?) unequal.   You don’t get to tell the man that “I can open my own door, thank you very much!” and then bitch about how he never sends you flowers “just because.”  In this vein, you can’t be allowed to have the opportunity to be a Special Forces Medic or Navy SEAL, yet not have the same obligation to sign up for Selective Service (for the ignorant among us, this is “The Draft”).

In order to be equal, the standards for anything also need to be the same.  If we women want more opportunities, for example, to be firefighters, and the standard is that a firefighter has to be able to climb a 35 foot ladder carrying a 50 pound hose bundle while wearing 50 pounds of clothing, breathing apparatus and helmet; then that is what you need to do to get the job.  If you can’t do it, you don’t get to bitch about how “unequal” it is and that the fire department should make it easier for you to get a job.  You get yourself to the gym and make yourself stronger, and you do what needs to be done, or you don’t.  Those fires aren’t going to cut you a break and be easier to put out because you can only carry a 25 pound hose bundle.  You will also have to make choices on how you want to spend your time trying to be a better firefighter (time in the gym versus time with your family, for example).

I think the problem is that many of these women who are so very interested in how “equal” everything has to be have a complex about equality, and it looks a whole lot like Marty McFly being called “chicken.”

The feminists have sold millions of women on the false narrative of being able to “have it all” when that is not true at all.  Women can’t “have it all,” and truly, men can’t either.  My husband sometimes works 16 hour days, and does two or three of them in a row to pay for our needs.  Other men around the world are working to earn a living and then, after working all day, being scout masters or sports coaches and doing all of the work that goes into that every day, only to have to get up the next morning and head out to earn a living.  On weekends, they have to be the person who gets up early, makes sure the car is loaded and gets the family off to the weekend game or scouting event.

In the deranged mind of the average feminist, this constitutes “having it all” but in my mind, I think about how many of these men would probably rather spend more time with their children then have to give the efforts they give to make poverty less of an option for their families.  I know my husband would love to spend more time with his family, but he has to make choices, and those choices involve the same amount of hours in the day as every woman on the planet.  He chooses (thankfully, but begrudgingly for sure) to go out and make a living to support us; and for that, he probably makes more money than a woman who chooses to not work as much to spend more time with her family, leave the workforce to have a child, or leave the workforce to be a stay at home mom.

So the myth of “having it all” is just that.  And so is the myth of “being equal.”  How ironic that the feminists, who want to be respected and acknowledged for their own individuality and talents, want every woman to be paid and treated the same.

It would nice if the sisterhood of smart that the leftist feminists think they are would actually think about this the next time they look at their lot in life and said “you know, women not being allowed to be Army Rangers and Navy SEALs is just not right.”  Then maybe they should ask me if I want to be included in their cavalry charge up the hill to take down the patriarchy that oppresses them out of the opportunity to be cold, hungry and miserable while fighting terrorists, instead of dragging me up there while just assuming that this is something that I would want to do, and want every other woman to do as well.  And maybe, right before they set out to rally the troops in a fashion reminiscent of Henny Penny, they could take the time to examine the iron law of Unintended Consequences regarding what  “equality” means to women and how it would affect ALL women.

I would rather have strapping young men fight my wars for me, put out my fires, catch my bad guys, and build my bridges so that I don’t and other women don’t have to.  Once we march down this road of “equality,” there will be much more expected from the sisterhood than I suspect they are willing to give up.

And I rather like having my doors opened for me, thank you very much, feminists….