First of all I'm not sexist but this is a real problem now and I know this probably won't apply to most of you being civilians, but as a grunt in the marines it kind of worries me. I'm all for equal rights but there's just some things women can't do. They can have supporting roles with us, but the amount of stress this job puts on our body and our minds isn't anything easy to deal with. I'm twenty and have the knees and joins of almost a 40 year old just because of what I do. They're planning on sending new female grunts to my batallion, third marines. There's just some gripes and somethings that they could help with. Now starting with the gripes, first of all like mentioned earlier womens bodies aren't the same as mens. They might not be able to carry the combat load or the heavy ass packs that we have to walk with for miles at a time. I know some strong women but they just don't come across as what men's bodies were made for. So ontop of that they would probably take things out of their pack to make it lighter thus making us less combat effective becasue of less gear. Another thing is hygene, men smell bad but incase you didn't notice women have something that is harder to clean with baby wipes than a man. Things can go bad, they have their happy time every month and if we're on a mission where we're out for a few weeks at a time and they happen to go on happy time that could be very bad for them. The last thing I'll hit on because this is already tl;dr and I fucking wrote the shit man. But they have different emotions, that could either hinder or help us. They could get us out of sticky situations by talking the way out or something good. Or they can just fuck up the mission because they couldn't pull the trigger when they needed to. The good that can come out of it, well of course what I just mentioned. And that's really all I can think about, I'd like you guys to add more ideas if you feel like it. And I'll give you my insight on it. But that's really it, it's a big thing right now and we have to do a survey about it here soon weither or not we want them. It won't matter anyway because we had surveys about rolling sleeves down and the whole don't ask don't tell policy not being abolished because it kept gays safe, that didn't work out and they didn't listen to us anyway. Oh well, I'm done with this, no need to keep typing just wasting energy.

I see where you're coming from and it sucks that it's actually true on some account, but I believe that many women actually can do it, its just the ones that aren't mentally tough that screw shit up for everyone, but there are men that do that as well. Soon enough you'll see how you'll feel about it, just don't let it ruin your experience.

Like Strife said, gender doesn't really matter. It's the person themselves. Plus a lot of the girls I know are tough.

I'm sure if their effectiveness were actually an issue, they wouldn't be allowed in the first place/they'd be given different roles.

However it's not.

Agreed with every one except you joe...sorry

Even though Joe is wrong, I see where he's coming from. He doesn't want the woman to get hurt. It's like throwing a girl into a burning building with a fire hose. She signed up for it but do you rally want to see something bad happen to her?

Women don't need to be protected. They can do it on their own.

I fully see where he's coming from, but the men being stronger/tougher thing doesn't really apply unless we go to the very peak of human strength. Men on average are stronger than women, and the strongest men are stronger than the strongest women. However women are fully capable of being as strong/tough as, or stronger/tougher than the average man- even those in the armed forces.

We don't need double standards. I don't wanna see the guys get hurt as much as I dont want to see the women.

I'd say in the military or whatever, your willpower and your drive is more integral than your actual strength and toughness.

Onis wrote:

We don't need double standards.

Sadly, we will always have them.

Regardless, if they couldn't handle it they wouldn't be signing up in the first place. Thank god there's no draft anymore, or else the problems you brought up would definitely be an issue.

Maybe they're chosen not because people acknowledge them, but because they're always striving for equal rights in everything and there was just no other way than to let them do it.