Army discovers that men and women are in fact different
Jeff LPH 3 sent this in to me the other day and I’m just now catching up on things. For back story here, the Army (for like seven years now) has been developing a one-size-fits-all annual PT test. The idea was that there’d be a single physical fitness standard every soldier, regardless of chromosomal configuration, would be held to. Now that they’re nearing implementation, they discover what toddlers instinctively know; boys and girls are different!
One bright idea, instead of having a normalized standard by gender like we’ve (allegedly) had for decades is to instead have gender-specific promotional boards. After all this time, effort, and money wasted we’ll just end up where we started.
Army officials are evaluating a version of the stalled Army Combat Fitness Test that would account for biological differences between men and women, according to Training and Doctrine Command.
The ACFT officially became the Army’s test of record in October, but Congress mandated a pause on further implementation pending an independent study to determine how it will impact deployed soldiers, recruiting and retention.
Changing elements of the test might also satisfy lawmakers who worried late last year about the disproportionately high failure rates among women. One proposal is that the ACFT could score soldiers on a servicewide percentile, separated by gender, Task and Purpose first reported Thursday.
TRADOC spokeswoman Lt. Col. Margaret Kageleiry said that so far the ACFT is remaining gender-neutral, but the Army “is looking at means to apply those scores based on gender to account for biological differences.”
“We are addressing these concerns in coordination with Army senior leaders, Congress, and with those it impacts the most, our American Soldiers,” Kageleiry added in an email.
Soldiers are currently expected to train for the ACFT, but scores won’t count against them until a much later date.
“On the current path, we believe it will be mid” fiscal 2022, Kageleiry said. Until then, the Army is working to collect data on different policy options, she added.
How exactly the Army plans to account for biological differences in the ACFT isn’t yet clear. Suggested changes — including adding a plank alternative to the hanging leg tuck — were leaked to an Army forum on Reddit in January.
One scoring system documented in slides obtained by Task and Purpose suggested placing soldiers into tiers by percentiles, rather than the points they receive on the test. All the events would remain the same, but soldiers’ scores would be ranked within their gender instead of putting men and women in the same category when competing at promotion boards.
“We know there is a physiological difference between men and women,” reads one slide. “The Army has to account for this and remove the competition between genders or Congress will never allow ACFT implementation.”
More at the source; Army Times
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Army, Big Army, Guest Link
No sh!t.
Briefing slide by CPT Obvious.
That briefing was presented to General Consensus.
Yeah.
A was briefed by General “GED” Ed.
Money quote:
“The Army has to account for this and remove the competition between genders or Congress will never allow ACFT implementation.”
In other words, Congress ordered the military to ignore reality, and pretend there is no difference.
Because the US Left is now fully insane, and believes that military-level control will finally make their Left-imagined nonsense real. Because if you just push hard enough, people morph into what you want them to be. Because they mean to apply the method outside the military.
So the Army will eventually find some (probably very goofy) “fitness” tests that show no effective difference between genders, thus having no meaningful basis of judging fitness. Thus women and men are finally “equal” (levelled) and women will do as well as men in any role. When it doesn’t actually work, “bad” people will be ostracized and punished for diverging from “proven” “fact”.
Our opponents are laughing, and not imitating our “progress” for some reason.
Maybe we could just do like the Air Force does and just hook you up to an EKG and have you raise your heart rate and sustain it for 20 minutes. They don’t actually compete against each other just against themselves…like in golf!
Note: I am not in the Air Force and have only had this system explained to me, but it sounds great!
That system went away 20 years ago though. However, when it did exist more failures occurred from long distance runners than from smokers, because the distance runners heart rates wouldn’t go up the correct percentage in the required test time. Had a buddy that smoked and ran marathons. He had to light one up before the bike test every time or he would fail the test.
I always heard that the best way to get a max score on that was to eat at the Burger King and smoke a cigarette before taking that test!
You can give everybody an equal opportunity. You cannot make everybody equal.
If they have the same test for men and women, what kind of test will there be for the other 98 genders?
Question: Does a transgender woman take the females PT test? How about the other way around?
You know, your comment just made me realize something. You never hear about a trans who was originally female participating in men’s sports.
He, i wonder why.
Should read: Gee, i wonder why.
Sheesh!
Actually, your first version is very funny, and spot on.
🙂
There are a few. The problem is they are taking testerone, which would disqualify a biological male. It simply isn’t fair, and would not be tolerated with any other ahtekete.
I would not be surprised to see a grassroots movement where male high school atheletes declare they identify as garner fluid and want to complete in both girls and boys events, depending on how they feel that day.
https://www.insidehook.com/article/sports/trans-athletes-win-boys-sports
Duh.
Have long said that a job, any job, has certain requirements to do that job. Passing an appropriate physical test to see if someone is fit for the military in general, just like so many other physically demanding jobs, is not unreasonable at all.
Boys and girls are not the same they decided? Ya gotta wonder how much that epiphany cost us.
Don’t get me started.
I wonder if they’ll adjust promotion scores “into tiers based on percentiles” to account for lower efforts of some groups?
In a similar vein, ol’ Poe is wondering if the military is going to adopt the policy of math being racist and if that might have any effect on operations?
Motarmen and artillerymen will have to adjust their formulas to account for gender choice/equity.
Also, for race. Cuz old fashioned math is racissss. Fortunately, this old soldier won’t be shooting in any defensive targets danger close with an FDC using that new non-rayciss math.
And can I choose the gender that I want to test for? Or do I have to drop my pants before testing to show what I am?
Apparently, gender has nothing to with whether you’re plumbed externally or internally.
“Sir, I identify as the oldest female age group today!”
Can I choose what gender I want to test with? Or do I have to drop my trousers first to show what I am?
With apologies to Ex-PH2 and OAM and the other fine ladies of TAH/VG, in advance.
Ahem……
“Titties”
(And don’t you guys *EVEN* get started with “moobs”)
That is all.
I am SO glad I’m retired.
“For my DD214 is my woobie, it doth warm and protect me.”
Here ya go! At Amazon for the amazingly low price of
$39.95 + $3.95 shipping
https://www.amazon.com/Medals-America-Woobie-Poncho-Blanket/dp/B07MQTN75K/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2ZRZBGJXUYA5W&dchild=1&keywords=dd-214+blanket&qid=1613510838&sprefix=dd-214%2Caps%2C241&sr=8-2
You’re welcome.
My son finished basic last month. He said the ACFT was a breeze once you got the hang of it and that the men typically dominated it, accounting for outliers of women in great shape and men who came in as couch potatoes. He was in average shape when he went through.
Here’s an idea–how about making the PT test pass/fail and using the physical fitness REQUIRED for combat the standard.
Pass and you are in, fail and you are out.
Nothing else matters.
AK bullets don’t have different speeds for different genders and MR. IhateAmericans doesn’t discriminate.
Would you retain the Army Physical Fitness Badge?
I can’t tell you how many Signal Soldiers with that badge couldn’t function in desert operations when all the 190 – 250 APFT scorers were going strong. Who cares how well you do on the test, get your ass in the field and show me what you can do when it matters.
yeah, talk about a meaningless thing.
The plan was to retain the APFT with gender normed scores as a measure of general fitness for OMLs, and make the ACFT pass fail for your MOS. Contrary to most reporting, the ACFT was designed based on exhaustive studies of physical performance requirements for different MOSs- they had panels of combat experienced senior NCOs and commanders from company to brigade level for every MOS identify the critical tasks. They had thousands of Soldiers perform the actual tasks while instrumented to measure heart rate, vO2 max, time, distance, etc., and compared their performance on the actual tasks to scores on ACFT tasks. There were bio-mechanical engineers, kinesiologists, physicians, exercise scientists, and even women’s rights scholars involved in the testing to keep everyone honest. Even the lowest, Gold standard, is based on what we now call Warrior Tasks- individual tasks required of every Soldier, regardless of MOS. Grey is generally the combat support jobs, and Most combat arms are Black category. The categories, by the way, are in lime with Department of Labor categories for physical labor. So, no kidding, if you can’t meet Gold standards, you probably can’t do many common Soldier tasks. If you can’t meet Grey standards, there is probably some very specific task-lifting an engine part, carrying an equipment case, changing a tire, holding up your end of some piece of equipment- that you can’t do. If you can’t meet Black, you won’t be able to ‘hump ‘Jo (carry 100 pound artillery projectiles), or load 5 fifty pound tank rounds in 30’seconds, or climb a 2 meter wall wearing body armor, or hold a 120mm mortar round from the time the section sergeant says ‘hang it’ until he says ‘fire’. You probably can’t lift a wounded troop in body armor out of a cupola or drag him/her to safety. The Army did this right- the science is there, the studies are there, the data is there, and even the lessons learned from combat are there. If we go back to simply using the APFT, we will suffer in combat readiness and we will have a huge spike… Read more »
I hope Congress forces the Army to dump the ACFT. What good is a test that requires a bunch of graders per lane, specialized equipment, and a single Company takes 2 hours to go through?
^^^^^ THIS RIGHT HERE. OK so I know I’m showing my age but when I started infantry OSUT at Fort Benning, we still had the old 5 event PT test that included things like the inverted crawl and the run, dodge and jump. They actually switched to the Pushups – Situps – 2 mile run APFT during my basic cycle (so that would have been at the beginning of FY 1981.) Here’s the thing about the APFT: Nobody ever said it was perfect, or that it accurately assessed all aspects of fitness. But the APFT was “good enough” for almost 40 years, and sometimes in life (in fact, I would say OFTEN in life), “good enough” is, well, Good Enough. But the best thing about the APFT was that it could be done almost anywhere, with minimal equipment and minimal personnel. Soldiers deployed to austere locations only needed to map out a 2 mile running course, as the situps and pushups could be done almost anywhere. It was also as close as possible to being an “objective” test as one could come up with. You either did the pushup right (upper arms break the horizontal plane of the back) or it doesn’t count. You either do the situp right (torso breaks the vertical plane of the body) or it doesn’t count. Easy to train graders, and minimal quibbling about whether the soldier did it right. As for the 2 mile run, your time was your time, period. Even a company sized unit could do a complete APFT in the matter of maybe 3 – 4 hours at most, certainly less than half of a duty day. Smaller units (squad sized) with competent graders could do a PT test during the regular 1 hour per day allotted by most commands for morning PT. It’s fine to say the ACFT does a better job of measuring overall fitness, and I’m sure it does. But it takes an entire duty day, and from what I’ve seen, some of the events can be very subjectively graded. And when promotions, schools and other favorable or… Read more »
anyone else remember the CHOT? You want a physical fitness test that actually relates to combat—carry some 25mm or 4deuce ammo around for the CHOT…
But, it got in the way of far more important things, like annual SAEDA or cyber awareness training…heh heh
You left out the horizontal ladder!!!!
Run-Stumble-and-Fall was fun.
I think I was at Harmony Church a year prior to you. For those who don’t know, Martinjmpr and I both were at D-2-1. He was there August to November of 1980, and I was there from June 1979 through May 1980.
I wasn’t in OSUT for 11 months!!! …. After graduation I was a “Drill Corporal” and “Additional Duty NCO” waiting for my OCS class to begin.
Good times, eh Martinjmpr???
Damn I didn’t realize you were also a Delta Dawg! Yep, right there off of Highway 27 (was it 27?)
Hey shoot me your email, I have some photos I want to send you. martinjmpr@yahoo.com
Yep – just off US27, between Columbus and Cusseta, GA. There, US27 runs coincident with US280. Going southward, US27 continues to Tallahassee and (eventually) Miami. US280 branches off to the east at Cusseta to Americus and eventually ends up IVO Savannah.
Hmmmm …. I remember the highway, but all I recall is that it was close to Sand Hill …. and they were slums compared to Harmony Church.
BTW … I was born at the old hospital at Benning and spent time there off and on as a kid since my dad was in the infantry.
email sent.
What was Elvis like when you were in together anyway?
(^___^)
To quote Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: “You FUNNY!”
The King was interred two years earlier at Graceland.
But I actively recall his songs and movies from the 1960s.
First – “chromosomal configuration”
I’m gonna steal that one. That will give the more intelligent lefties pause (at least for a second) before the double-think kicks in and they say that the decision to become the opposite sex also changes your chromosomes with magical progressive theory dust.
Second. To paraphrase Ben Shapiro, reality always gets a say.
Also, why don’t we forgo any pretense at merit (how good a leader, how strong, how skilled) and go with intersectionalism for promotions. That should eliminate all of this reality nonsense. That way we can promote the gay, transexual, minority, female (?), etc. people above all of those straight dumb white guys.
Fuze, you say that as if the number of boxes one can check aren’t already a factor. Some would say a deciding factor.
Who needs competence when you can have feelz.
Harry, we had the photo on our server. Changed to point to ours instead of your personal account. -Mason
That is one butt ugly fake woman.
I’ve taken about 82 APFTs since 1986 (yes, I counted them up). I’m ready for a change but I’m not sure ACFT is the right change. All I know is that as an old now-staff guy, I take PT seriously and I’ve moved out on making my ACFT score as high as possible when they actually make me take one for score. What I don’t see around post, and certainly not in the gym, is females training for the test, and especially not knee tucks which they fail in high numbers. It’s going to be ugly. Bring it!!!
And we pay TRADOC to do things like this. In American dollars. Astounding…
I am standing here beside myself!