Women in Combat - Bad Idea

Every so often we hear about someone beating up or even killing their spouse. And when we do, it’s almost always the man who’s the abuser and the woman who’s the victim. It almost never happens the other way ‘round - with the woman as the abuser. Maybe men are more prone to violence than women. Maybe they possess more of a killer instinct. Maybe they lose control more easily. Whatever the case, one thing is indisputable – men are generally bigger, stronger and faster than women and can, in almost all cases, dominate them physically.

That’s why the sexes are separated in sports. There isn’t a unisex Master’s golf tournament or Wimbledon tennis championship. Females don’t box against Mike Tyson. They don’t even Curl against men (for some silly reason, I find that particularly amusing). Most notably, they don’t compete against males in the Olympics. Why? Because they can’t, that’s why. Women cannot compete physically against men. They are weaker and slower. Their centre of gravity is lower. They are more easily injured.

Every time the fabulous Canadian Women’s hockey team wins a tournament, the press is awash with stories bemoaning the fact that Canadians don’t seem to be interested in Women’s hockey. Never do they mention that watching women play hockey is like watching a bunch of talented 14 year old boys play. The level of physicality in lady's hockey is almost laughable. They are less agile and less aggressive than men. In fact, I'd bet that the Canadian National women's team would have a hard time beating any run-of-the-mill senior men’s team from any small town in Canada. The reason people don’t watch women’s hockey is because it’s not anywhere near the same caliber as men’s hockey. The best men players are the best in the world. The best women’s players are, well, pretty good for a bunch of girls playing a boys game.

Everyone knows that women cannot compete against men in any sport measured by speed or strength. If they could, they’d be doing it already.

So why, in God’s name, do we send them into combat to fight against men? Have we lost our politically correct minds?

War is not a game. The winner doesn’t get a trophy and the loser doesn’t get a second place ribbon and honorable mention. The winner gets ownership of the land and control of the people on it. The loser gets to crawl home, if (s)he’s lucky. If (s)he’s not lucky, (s)he is crippled, mutilated, brutalized, tortured, enslaved, or maybe killed. The welfare and future of entire nations rest in the hands of the people fighting their wars.

Don’t roll your eyes at me. Maybe all you’re used to are bully wars where your nation slaps a smaller, weaker nation around, launches missiles from afar and eventually saunters home when the war threatens to affect political careers. Maybe you’ve never experienced the fear and dread that comes with the prospect of having your nation overrun by foreigners and your very way of life destroyed. (And I’m not talking about Canada’s immigration system, either, although I could be.)

Arguments can and have been made on many levels supporting the exclusion of females from combat roles. The sexual tension that arises when testosterone driven alpha males are confined with women in small areas on submarines or other sea-faring craft has caused many problems in the US navy. Each year, a large percentage of females take pregnancy leave from such assignments. Pregnant women make poor soldiers.

And then there’s the innate reflexive instinct that real men have to protect women. Men in uniform are not pencil pushing metrosexual boys who cringe pitifully when swatted with a swath of employment equity pamphlets. Regardless of what they are told to think, many of them will still revert to a protective stance when women are in danger. And that puts everyone in the battle at risk.

In the end, the real reason females should not be in combat roles is that they are not physically capable of defeating men in hand to hand combat. Only in the movies can a 140lb woman beat up a man.

And if you think I’m a sexist idiot, I’ll make a deal with you. Best two out of three. You choose ten female names blindly at random from a list of Canadian soldiers serving in battle in Afghanistan and I’ll choose ten names blindly from a list of Iranian soldiers. We’ll seal them, unarmed in a gymnasium and open the door only after everyone on one side or the other has been killed. In the second round, we’ll remove the bodies of the Canadian women, replace the hurt Iranians with fresh soldiers, pit them against another ten randomly chosen Canadian women soldiers and arm them all with knives. Winner gets the other’s country.

Someday, we may have to rely on our soldiers to defend our freedom and our very way of life on a physical battlefield. Or, maybe someday we’ll need them to quell a violent internal uprising of an entrenched and militant Canadian ethnic tribe. You may trust women to do this. Me, I’m thinking of buying a Koran and getting a head start on what will be the inevitable outcome of such folly.

Skinless Criminals.......Yuck!

When I buy a chicken breast, I buy it with the skin on. And I cook it ‘till it’s golden brown. Yum. Sure, I know it’s full of grease and fat, but for me the skin is the best part. I never buy the skinless cuts – you know, the ones that resemble the criminals and violent offenders described in our media. Skinless and colorless. Yuck.

It seems that not a day can go by without some miscreant trying to abduct someone, assault someone or kill someone. Today, I read a short article in one of our newspapers entitled “Attempted abduction in east end” The article told of a 14 year old girl, and a man who apparently tried to pull her into his car. The article described the man as:

“in his 30s to 40s, with a heavy build, very short hair and a possible broken nose.”

See? Skinless! No skin whatsoever. The least the paper could have done was let us know that we should be on the lookout for a guy coated in a bloody slime with tendons, sinew and muscle hanging out all over his body. That certainly would help in identifying him. There can’t be too many guys walking around looking like that. And yet the media thought it appropriate to hide that important fact from us. Why?

OK, so I’m being a smart-ass. We all know that there are no skinless people walking the streets. Brainless, maybe. Heartless, probably. Gutless, definitely. But not skinless. We’ve all got skin and our skin’s got a tone. Some of us are real dark, some of us are real light, some of us are somewhere in between. Some of us, like the “black community” actually define who we are by our skin tone.

And then there’s this wee thing called ethnicity. Thanks to our cultimulcheral Canadian dogma, many of us identify ourselves by our ethnicity. But, never doubt it, to be an ‘ethnic’ means to have certain skin qualities. Skin color and ethnicity are virtually one and the same for most people. Believe me, there isn’t a single black person in Canada identifying him/herself as a ‘Chinese-Canadian’ on the census. I am so sure of this, in fact, that I’m offering a free dinner of jerk bok-choi and chicken-fried corn pone to anyone who can prove me wrong.

So, if ethnicity and skin color form such an integral part of who a person is, wouldn’t it be reasonable to refer to these important physical characteristics when describing someone?

If you were stopped on the street and asked to describe Oprah Winfrey by someone who never saw her before (Ok, ok, that’s a stretch I know - but work with me here, I’m trying to make a point), what sort of a description would you give? Would you say that she’s a slightly heavy woman, well dressed, with heavy make-up and relatively long dark hair? Or would you do what anyone with half a brain would do and mention that she’s black. Of course, you’d have to do it in an off-hand manner, sort of like in passing, so as not to appear that you’ve noticed. You know, something like this: “Well, lets see, she’s kind of big boned. She’s very well dressed and wears a lot of make up. She’s got dark hair. And .....oh, what else?.....Let’s see....oh yeah.....she’s sort of....well.....black. Not that it matters of course” Then grin sheepishly and casually saunter away like you never mentioned it.

Wouldn’t it be silly to act that way? And yet, daily, the media bombards us with a litany of woefully inadequate descriptions of skinless, colorless perpetrators. And then we are asked to keep our eyes open and call crimestoppers if we happen to spot one of these hideous, skinless aberrations.

Being afraid to mention someone’s skin color or ethnicity when describing them belays, at best, a neurotic predisposition toward political correctness. At worst, however, it can be a cynical manipulative ploy to purposely prevent someone from discovering the truth. Like when our media sources describe wanted perpetrators. With them it’s all about manipulation. A deliberate omission of a crucial fact for the sole purpose of preventing us from encountering certain simple truths.

They see themselves as the guardians of our perfect, cultimulcheral, socialist utopia. They refuse to report a criminal’s color or ethnicity to ensure that certain groups, the ones that would otherwise be the subject of a disproportionate amount of negative coverage, are not identified as such. They seek to protect us from our own thoughts - thoughts that might rise up if we are told the truth. So they withhold the truth in the hopes that their thoughts will supplant our own.

Such noble intentions. Such a righteous purpose. Such an abandonment of their journalistic principles. Such a condescending pack of lies.

Yes lies. The omission of an important truth can be as much a lie as a lie itself. And what have these lies accomplished? Speaking for myself, they have accomplished the exact opposite of what was intended. When I read or hear the description of a perpetrator in the media and the color or ethnicity of the perp is conspicuous omitted, I figure right away that the criminal isn’t white. After all, since when did the media care about protecting white people from discrimination and stereotyping? Yep. Skinless = non-white.

Second, haven't the brainiacs in the media considered that describing a person's color or ethnicity is crucial in helping people identify the person being described? They are, after all, the most defining physical characteristics of all, next to gender. In omitting such important details from a description, the media is giving the perpetrator a big advantage and hindering anyone who might otherwise have noticed him. They are also doing a tremendous disservice to the victim and endangering any potential future victims. Oh well, what’s a few more victims anyway? Our media messiahs have bigger priorities. Like, controlling our minds so we don't think negative thoughts about any particular group of people.

Thankfully, most of us are cognizant, rational human beings with the capability to observe our world and the capacity to extract truth from it based on our personal experience.

Regardless of what the media hides from us, if we maintain this ability and trust our gut-instinct, we will be OK in the end.