SJW: Marines’ test unit was flawed
The Stars & Stripes reports that the social justice warriors are still taking potshots at the Marines’ test unit which actually provided research on the feasibility of mixing males and females into combat arms units. Of course, they say that the Marines weren’t selective enough when they chose the participants in the test;
Two researchers — Ellen Haring, a retired Army colonel and senior fellow at Women in International Security in Washington, and Megan MacKenzie, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney in Australia — are vocal advocates for the full integration of women into combat roles. They say the executive summary failed to convey shortcomings and caveats in the full study they obtained.
“From a research perspective, there’s almost nothing you could reliably draw from this research,” said MacKenzie, who has published two books about women in combat, most recently “Beyond the Band of Brothers: The U.S. Military and the Myth that Women Can’t Fight.”
“The volunteer selection was poor. The physical screening was poor. The consistency and number of people they put in each of the groups was very varied,” she said.
Selection and screening are at fault. If I remember correctly, they took volunteers, you know much like recruiters do when they slot people at the time of their enlistment. The people who volunteered certainly thought that they could do the job, you know, like recruits. Maybe if Haring and Mackenzie could just force more women to volunteer, that would be make a better study. You know, volun-told to do it.
The study’s central flaw, MacKenzie and Haring say, is that it failed to establish occupation-relevant standards for Marine combat positions.
“The fact that the Marines chose to do a $36 million study that didn’t establish any standards is, I think, interesting in itself,” MacKenzie said. “We still don’t have combat-specific standards in the Marines. Once you’re in the Marines, the only qualification you need to be in an infantry [military occupational specialty] is to be a man.”
Yeah, well, being a man doesn’t automatically make you a combat arms soldier. We read about men failing the courses all of the time. So, you know, there are standards, standards that some men can’t meet.
The study also ignored the accomplishments of certain women “who were just amazing physically,” MacKenzie said.
“In fact, there was one woman who outperformed men consistently, just an outlier throughout the whole study,” she said. “There were quite a few women above the 50th percentile. There were all these indicators that there were physically superior women who performed well; it’s just that the Marines focused on how the women performed as a group.”
I have never denied, nor has anyone I’ve read on the subject denied, that there are some women who can meet the standards – check out the three women who graduated Ranger School this past summer. 3 of them out of twenty – all volunteers, all prepared for the course. That’s fifteen percent of the women who volunteered were successful. Does that really justify the expense and the scarce training funds just to have the appearance of females in massive media campaigns? Just so the Social Justice Warriors can have a job?
I don’t see Mackenzie or Haring showing the girls how it’s done. All I see them doing is heckling from the sidelines doing their best to see more body bags in the next war.
Category: Marine Corps
The results weren’t what the PC SJW’s wanted, thus the study is suddenly worthless, just like real facts and data are worthless to screeching gun-grabbing Nazi clones when they bawl. What’s next are they gonna demand a test platoon with a quota of LGBT’s as well?
Platoon of lgbt?
Hey we ready have Air Force basic training.
Just kidding 🙂
Create a standard, really means lower the existing standards.
Oh, and yes faster is sometimes a very critical factor in living or dying in Combat Arms.
Some magazine (Glamour I think) just picked Bruce Jenner as it’s Woman of the Year. Somewhere else it was announced that the top US female executive was transgender.
I think the PC police need to worry more about the fact that it apparently takes a man to be a successful woman. That’s what they’re pushing for and that’s what they’re getting…
“The study’s central flaw, MacKenzie and Haring say, is that it failed to establish occupation-relevant standards for Marine combat positions.”
I’m pretty sure the occupation-relevant standards for combat Marines and all combat personnel is as simple as “kill people and break things”. Anything short of that is a failed mission. They can color it any way they want and twist the numbers until they get the answers they want but in the end the purpose and mission of combat is to do those two things as efficiently as possible with as few losses of our troops as possible. Start muddying the waters with social programs and more missions will fail and more troops will die. Sounds foolish but to me it seems these advocates for the Amazon Warriors will not be happy until the death rate among females in combat meets or exceeds that of males. Of course in that scenario, more males will die needlessly as well. When will the preservation of combat lives take precedence? When will “Combat Troop Lives Matter”, first and foremost?
Ok, so anyone who can kill people and break things should be allowed in the Infantry? You don’t want to have any objective entry standards?
Bottom line, if the Marines set standards, and a woman can meet them, should she be allowed in the infantry?
Post study, the Marine Corps established standards for the infantry. “COL” Haring complained that they weren’t standards but rather a set of tasks. My reply/response on another forum discussing the standards was this:
Infantry combat isn’t about standards, it is about the task. And the task is “locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver and repel enemy assaults by fire and close combat.” That is the only standard that matters. Combat is not Ranger School nor is it an EIB test. There is no re-test, there is no alternate event. The enemy is not grading you with a stop watch to see how far or how fast you can go. And you have the rest of your life to accomplish the task.
You forgot one, Stacy0311: failure has extremely harsh consequences, to both yourself and the others in your unit.
Hell, even this non-Infantry guy knows that.
“…the task is “locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver and repel enemy assaults by fire and close combat.”
In other words, combat is the ultimate pass-fail test.
Haring again? She needs to be recalled to duty and sent to the Ranger course till she passes… heh, heh, heh.
I have a great deal of difficulty taking Haring seriously, since she doesn’t even know what the Army considers valor. According to Haring (emphasis):
http://taskandpurpose.com/that-valor-isnt-yours-to-defend/
However, according to the Army (AR 600-8-22 [RAR, 24 June 2013], Glossary):
No, Haring. Valor is the heroic act itself. Above, you’re confusing valor with the after-the-fact recognition of valor by others – typically done via presentation of a personal decoration. Your “definition” is not even close to being correct.
Many acts of valor go unnoticed during the chaotic craziness of combat. That doesn’t mean they didn’t happen – only that formal recognition wasn’t forthcoming afterwards. Sometimes it’s because the person who witnessed the act didn’t make it.
If Haring’s that confused about a simple to comprehend distinction like that, why should I give credence to a damn thing she has to say about anything?
Maybe she was thinking “valet”.
Perhaps. Or maybe she just has her head firmly inserted.
….the rectal defilade position I gather?
The Signal Corps refers to it as “Stuck in anal-cranial loopback”.
The re-definition of Valor is intentional.
If “Valor” is the recognition of the act, not an attribute of the act, then it is not “fair” to recognize some over others, nor to say we will recognize “combat” Valor versus something else, like “Valor” for enduring discrimination, patriarchy, micro-aggressions, etc, which some might want to “recognize” using a word like “Valor” because then people not in “combat” can be equally and fairly recognized for/with “Valor”.
You can bet your boots that masculine behavior will no longer be considered “Valorous” as she defines it. And likewise, a whole bunch of moonbattery will suddenly be medal-worthy. All in the name of “equality” of course.
Reduction in military effectiveness is the intended result of many who are on that bandwagon. Sort of a cultural AIDS. When we stop having an effective military, why bother having one at all?
For those of us that have been honored with the designation, to some degree, of Valor, it remains important whether we wish to acknowledge it or not.
Whew……tough to write.
Strange, but I don’t see Haring or MacKenzie running off to combat infantry training schools. It’s so consistent how those who have the least to lose shout the loudest about something like this.
Another pair of “do as I say, not as I do” leaders.
No credibility.
If you change ‘leaders’ (they are not) for ‘bleaters’ (which they are), I will agree 110%.
Ellen Haring is one of the women who sued the Army because they didn’t think enough women were getting killed in combat. She did so, as PH2 points out, knowing full well she wouldn’t be exposing herself to any danger.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/military/story/2012-05-25/women-combat-army/55210748/1
I agree with the pinhead that the basic qualification for combat arms is to be a man. And that applies whether one is male or female.
What do we know about this outfit “Col” Haring works for? Is it she and two of her girlfriends in somebodys living room with a folding table and a telephone?
I also love how whenever the MSM or their print components need an opinion, they turn to some perfesser at an obscure university. Say an animal husbandry dean at the university of Montana, at Butte.
This one’s international, even better, in Australia.
Upshot: gotta dig pretty deep to find a loon with your idiotic ideas.
Must be a loon rolodec available
Sometimes it’s a matter of having a Loon-O-Tron Rolodex and rounding up the usual loons; sometimes it’s a matter of the loons sending out a blizzard of press releases to anybody who might be willing to listen.
It seems to me that the real interesting thing going on here isn’t that Haring and MacKenzie are trotting out a predictable girls-rule boys-drool response to the Marine Corps study, it’s that they received a copy of the study before it was made available for public release. Where did they get it when neither is apparently a government employee directly involved in putting the study together?
Where did they get it? The same place the rest of us did: a press release that summarized the whole thing.
Didn’t the USMC give a date or time when the study results would be publicly available?
All Haring is doing is running her mouth, period.
Quoted from the S&S story, Ex:
“They (Haring and MacKenzie) say the executive summary failed to convey shortcomings and caveats in the full study they obtained.”
Yes, and I can write up a brief essay in which I can claim that I personally interviewed Einstein or some other person, long after he died.
If they actually got their hands on a ‘full study’ before it was released, they paid someone to get it for them. It is more likely, IMHO, that they simply used the words ‘full study’ as trigger words, even though they may not have the ‘full study’.
You know as well as I do that people claim they had access to documents that were released to the public later, and their claims turned out to be complete fabrications.
I simply have my doubts about their statement that they had the actual study. And as noted, MacKenzie has no actual connection to the military and she’s Australian, too, so how would she have any access to it at all?
I think it’s fair to point out that neither of these ‘researchers’ cites or refers to their source of information. All they say is ‘full study’.
Per this Sept. 2015 MilTimes article ‘That (Center for Naval Analyses) CNA study has yet to be released publicly.’
http://forums.militarytimes.com/showthread.php/9381-The-SECNAV-criticizes-Marines-infantry-study-on-women
I think my doubts about Haring and MacKenzie justified.
Occam’s Razor, ma’am. A more simple explanation, at least it seems to me, is that Haring and MacKenzie were given leaked copies of the full study in order to push an agenda.
That’s entirely possible, Perry. I would not put it behind anyone who has an agenda to do something like that.
You mean, someone like Ray Mabus? Or, more likely, one of his minions.
Minions? Mabus has Minions?
I’ll give you Minions!!!!!
https://youtu.be/7AFUch5JZaQ
Just to be accurate that would be Montana Tech at Butte. U of M is in Missoula.
What I find funny is that these “researchers” want to take an already biased study and introduce a further bias and say it would be better. Using volunteers rather than random female Marines introduced a big bias in the study and these “researchers” suggest that the study would be better if better candidates had been selected. I’ll take self licking ice cream cones for 2000 Alex. FFS.
“In fact, there was one woman who outperformed men consistently, just an outlier throughout the whole study,” she said.
One woman that outperformed the whole group. That’s very impressive, no sarcasm intended. But one “outlier” does not equate with success for all female participants.
“There were quite a few women above the 50th percentile. There were all these indicators that there were physically superior women who performed well; it’s just that the Marines focused on how the women performed as a group.”
There’s the point of the entire exercise, summed up in her own quote. Marines live, train, fight, win, and die as a group. There is a reason that it’s called the MARINE CORPS, not THE MARINE. Silly twat.
A – I do wish people like Haring would shush up with their opinions until the real results of these things are released to the public.
B – These so-called SJWs have no idea what it was really like to put up with being told ‘you can’t do that because you’re a girl’. I do. I said ‘Bullshit’ and did it anyway (whatever it was). The only GUYS who didn’t like it were Fuckin’ Ass Gays who didn’t like wimminz.
Oh, if that pisses off some gay guy, well, tough bananas. REAL MEN take it in stride.
And gay guys take it inside. Just saying.
Luv you, too, Manchu.
Lol. Hope you laughed.
So the SJWs want me to take them seriously? Let’s use their own logic against them.
You know how only women can have opinions on women’s issues? I say use the same logic here – this is a USMC issue, so only Marines can have an opinion on it. Hey, SJW…you ever earned the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor? If not, shut up and support whatever the USMC decides.
Out of respect to the USMC, I’ll just go along with whatever they decide. So should you, if you’re not a Marine. As the radical feminists like putting it: ‘Stay In Your Lane’.
What these moon-bats fail to realize is that IF they ever get what they want, which is full integration of women into combat arms the number of women in the Military is going to drastically DROP.
Once this “study” is over and “equality” is reached females will be just as likely as males to be assigned to combat MOSs.
How many females will being joining the Army with hopes of being in the medical, communications, culinary or aviation fields then be told, guess what, no openings, you are going to Fort Benning.
Lots of smaller, smarter females who would make superb mechanics are going to be physically broken and discharged. If 70% of the hard-charging volunteers are failing whats going to happen to the average or below average GI Jane who gets “voluntold” to go to combat arms?
Old Dog, I believe it’s been pointed out before that requiring women to register with Selective Service may be next. That is probably the last thing these bimbos have thought about, and will most likely happen.
I would certainly favor reinstating the draft and including women in that requirement. You’re right: the number of female volunteers will drop substantially when they have to go where they are needed instead of where they want to go.
I agree. We are seeing it now. My daughter is getting ready to deploy to the sandbox for the second time. She volunteered so other woman could stay home with their families. Either your a soldier and go where they send you or you are not. Big Army is turning into a daycare center
That’s funny. I thought all Marines were supposed to be prepared for combat at all times.
Study didn’t say what they wanted it to say so it’s obviously the fault of the test and not selected special snowflakes specifically to pass it. Next time we will design the test around the woman so they can pass it not have the woman live up to the same test as the men in an effort to be fare. Affirmative Action Marines. I’m sure ISIS will be fare to them on the battlefield and show them better treatment because they are woman.
Pretty much any Lance Corporal in the USMC has more honor and integrity in their big toe than Ms. Haring and Ms. MacKenzie will ever have. SJW hacks and useful idiots.
” there was one woman who outperformed men consistently”. Go to a 10K or a marathon, The first women to cross the finish line will be behind 1/3 of the men. The military still has to take hills, and if some can’t keep up, both men and women will die.
Let’s assume that the Marines establish valid, realistic, and relevant standards that everyone agrees fairly encompass everything that an Infantry Marine must be able to do in the battlefield.
Should a woman that meets those standards be allowed to serve as an Infantry Marine?
I ask because if you research everything the Marines have been doing you will find that over 200 women have completed the SOI Infantry course to the same standard as their male counteracts- these were some of the women that participated in the study.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story/military/careers/marine-corps/2015/04/11/sisters-make-it-through-marine-infantry-training/25403629/
In other words, they met the current standard that men meet to serve as Infantry Marines. Why can’t they serve in that job?
Because the average women graduating from SOI had a third class PFT. Average female SOI graduate was a 170 vs the male SOI graduate of 250. So about 90 percent of the women graduating the course would automatically be on remedial PT when they would be received in the fleet.
I don’t doubt that there are some exceptional outliers who could hack it in the infantry. Well, at least until their bodies gave out. However, judging by that the yield is far less than the 200 women or so who graduated SOI. You may get about 10 percent of that to finish their infantry contract.
The point is that SOI is not going to weed out the non hacking women. Its not a selection course. Its a baseline MOS meat factory. A meat factory where 1 percent of the men fail vs 70 percent of the women failing.
So, just getting through SOI doesn’t really mean anything.
So, SOI is not a valid MOS qualifying course, which is a problem but a different problem. Still, it is currently the only tool the Marines use to award 0300 MOSs.
By what you say above there are about 10% of men that pass SOI fail in the fleet. Should the women who passed it be allowed to serve as Infantry Marines alongside them?
The problem with your question Reddevil is that is isn’t complete. Should women be allowed to serve if they pass the basics. The answer on the surface is yes.
Should woman be allowed to serve if they pass, knowing that they will likely be passed over for promotion as they will consistently pass but underperform?
If women are allowed to serve and consistently underperform and are not promoted in the same percentages as their male counterparts. Will that be fair?
And finally I have a question for you. Why do female Marines currently have a lower standard to be basic Marines?
Depends on how you want to look at it. Lets say 10 percent of those ladies. So about 20 women more or less will be able to have some sort of infantry career. The other 170 will gradually have to be replaced, removed and be a general burden.
I extrapolate that number based around the performance of the infantry women in GTIF. About 90 percent of those women(who graduated from SOI)had injuries serving in infantry platoons during a workup cycle(not even deployment). I believe 2 of them were able to avoid injury. But then the question is how long will that continue for those 2? What is there performance compared to their male peers?
The question inevitably becomes is the juice worth the squeeze? From my perspective the overhead is dramatically more to yield far less. That far less also doesn’t even seem to be a top percentile performer.
If your stance is principle or ideological based, then what I just wrote doesn’t really matter. You do it any ways even if incredibly inefficient. If its practical, then I think the answer is quite evident.
Bear in mind, I’m also concentrating specifically infantry. I’m not talking about women’s perceived performance in other combat jobs.
I also want to say the whole idea that you are actually yielding a significant amount of women from the other 50 percent of the populations(a nice SJW platitude)for infantry jobs is laughably stupid.
I think thats probably my biggest problem with this. The dishonesty and unrealistic expectations. Those unrealistic expectations are why this thing is going to be a mess. Its not so much the principle of women serving in combat in of itself. Its the bean counters and gender quotas(whether official or unofficial)that make this whole thing hard to stomach. Like it or not, that stuff will come one way or another.
I don’t know that anyone has any quota or expectation in mind other than giving qualified women the same opportunity to serve as similarly qualified men. Again, the basic question: if a woman can meet the same standard as a man, should she have the chance to serve in the same job, and to succeed or fail on her own merits?
The vast majority of enlisted personnel only do one term- most of them by choice, some of them not (either due to injury, failure to meet standards, failure to be selected for continuation, etc). Many men that choose to,serve in the infantry do it knowing that they will only do one term of service but wanting that term to be as an Infantry Marine or Soldier. Should a qualified woman have the same opportunity?
“I don’t know that anyone has any quota or expectation in mind other than giving qualified women the same opportunity to serve as similarly qualified men”
They already do in the military. They have quotas and diversity metrics in place. They recently forced branched women at West point for Field Artillery. Why? They had to meet certain metrics. In fact, that has the trend for quite a while in jobs like police officers or Firefighters. I don’t suspect this will be any different.
Perhaps the military will be able to apply that metric for combat arms in general. So, there won’t be as much pressure for infantry or special ops. But, rest assured, it will be there.
I’m curious what your take on the whole “juice vs squeeze” angle. You also didn’t answer 1st SGT’s question.
I concede that your point applies to officers but not enlisted.
However, the Army has force branched officers of both genders for years- we just don’t think of it that way because there is a preference sheet and most people get something in their top 10.
However, every year some top performing cadet gets Their bottom choice and some low performers get infantry against their will- just ask the Infantry proponent office- every year after the branching list comes out they are flooded with phone calls from male officers that want nothing to do with the infantry. Unlike the Marines, the Army is unwilling to officially give one branch primacy over the others except for raw numbers.
As far as juice and squeeze, I think that there will be very few women both willing and able to even try, and those women will probably be exceptional in every sense. As you know, people that volunteer for military service are exceptional to begin with, and those that choose the combat arms tend to be even more so contrary to popular belief. With that in mind, I think that the Army will have no problem accommodating them. We must train tens of thousand 11Bs a year, and if a few hundred are women it will not be a major drain on resources.
I don’t know that I am qualified to answer for the Marines, but I do know that there was a controversy over this issue when they relieved the woman in charge of Recruit training for women. The Corps claimed that it was due to a toxic command environment, she claimed it was because she was trying to raise standards for women.
The Marines have a different issue; they probably train about 1/3d of what the Army trains and they don’t do OSUT, so I am not sure how difficult it will be for them to accommodate.
I disagree with you that most of the women trying out for this will mostly be exceptional. Thats not how this is going to work. Your going to get the full spectrum of women going for the infantry(even if that amount is extremely small).
Judging from the marine corps training pipeline, the ones that will graduate will not be all that exceptional(compared to their male counterparts).
So maybe you can train 300 female 11B’s within a year(pushing them through AIT). But you won’t retain about 80-90 percent of them within a year(judging by the GETIF train up cycle).
The truly exceptional women are going to be a tiny subset of the women volunteering for combat arms. The idea that the army is only going to get exceptional female D1 athlete is hilariously delusional.
Unless of course the Army believes they can shuffle them into various S-Shops, armory, and HQ positions.
As far as that female training officer situation. She got shit canned because her own female DI and recruits turned on her. She basically got reprimanded over some rape prevention stuff. That stuff came to light over SHARP officials following guidelines from DACOWITZ. The media then tried to turn it into “she got fired because she was trying to raise standards.”
She got fired because of the nonsense PC police nonsense. The same people she then tried to appeal too.
Reddevil, the questions you’re asking make it clear you are starting from a flawed premise. The military is not a government works program or a social service. It is a tool designed to kill people and break their stuff. Being a member is not an entitlement, and fairness should have no part in determining who joins or in what capacity they serve.
The question shouldn’t be “can women do the job?” but “will allowing women to do the job make the service more effective?”. And I think the answer to that one should be clear.
To further illustrate the point. In terms of Ranger school, the army had to whittle from about 400 female volunteers through pre ranger and pre-screening so they could find 20 women to even start the course. They then moved that down to three. One of which was a reservist that went back to active duty just to do Ranger school.
So, now we then move to women branching infantry. Now, Ranger school is no longer a school for personal discovery or promotion points. Now, it becomes pretty much a base line for women to be infantry officers. Do you think most women branching infantry are going to be able to pass ranger school? Judging by those numbers above.
What happens if/when decide to force branch women into infantry units(just like they did with field artillery)?
I disagree. People enlist for different reasons- why would women volunteer for a grueling job that they are not likely to be good at?
Not sure that ranger school was ever a school for personal discovery or promotion points; the Army has consistently said it was to create ranger qualified Soldiers that would improve the overall force. That said, women will succeed or fail on their own merits, as it should be. If Ranger school is the baseline for an Infantry LT, then IN LTs that want to be successful will do their best to earn a tab. Those that don’t won’t do so well. By the way, the number one cause of female and male ranger school failures is the push-up event during RAP week
Not all officers get their first choice or even a top choice, and those that don’t are still obligated to do their best in the branch they get. There are currently male officers that are forced into the infantry.
“why would women volunteer for a grueling job that they are not likely to be good at?”
The same women who volunteered for GETIF and didn’t measure up. The same women who were able to graduate from SOI and still have a third class PFT. The 70 percent of the women who volunteered for SOI but failed probably felt they would be good at it as well. Plenty of people are delusional or naive.