I went to work this morning. It was my first day, so I had to wait for my boss to meet me in the lobby. While I was waiting I picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal and started reading. The article on drivers picking up passengers to beat the tolls on the way to New York City captured my interest, but when I opened up the paper to read the remainder of the article I saw this. And I nearly screamed in anger.
The opinion piece, which I didn’t get to read until I got home, smacks of misogyny and lacks any real logic. The man who wrote it basically says women shouldn’t be allowed in Army Ranger school because they’re women. Seriously.
Kilcullen claims that because one of the major reasons given for opening up more combat and leadership positions to women is to foster military career growth for women, women wouldn’t be selfless enough to be Rangers.
It is this culture of excellence and selflessness that attracts young men to the Ranger brotherhood. The Ranger ethos is designed to be deadly serious yet self-deprecating, focused entirely on teamwork and mission accomplishment. Rangers put the mission first, their unit and fellow soldiers next, and themselves last. The selfishness so rampant elsewhere in our society has never existed in the Ranger brotherhood.
Considering the rigors of Army Ranger training, I can’t imagine why Kilcullen thinks self-interested women would be attracted to the Ranger program. The way I see, opening up the Rangers to women would simply allow those women that are equally attracted to a culture of excellence and selflessness as the young men to join the program.
Women in the military may be asking for more opportunities for career growth, but they’re also asking to be allowed to sacrifice everything for their country if they so choose. They’re asking for the glass ceiling established by rules (not just by culture as in most situations in the U.S. today) be removed.
Kilcullen says,
And that is the secret of the brotherhood’s success. Some call it “unit cohesiveness” but what they are really describing is a transition from self-interest to selfless service. The notion of allowing women into Ranger School because denying them the experience would harm their careers makes Ranger graduates cringe. Such politically correct thinking is the ultimate expression of the “me” culture, and it jeopardizes core Ranger ideals.
Because, you know, women are never selfless. They don’t give up careers to raise children or do the laundry even after a 40-hour work week, caring for the kids, making dinners, and cleaning the house because no one else is going to do it. They don’t leave abusive husbands for the sake of their children. Not that fathers can’t do this, too. It’s just that most of the most self-less people I know are women, not men. Most of the do-anything-to-achieve-a-goal people I know are also women.
As for the physical requirements of the program, no one mentioned relaxing those requirements. Women are capable of meeting physical requirements; sometimes they have to work at it harder than men. That doesn’t mean we’re not worthy, and it doesn’t mean we’ll quit.
The amount of rage coursing through my body from reading Kilcullen’s opinion is hard to describe. I could hardly type straight. This morning, after reading the headline and first paragraph, I almost panicked that in a few brief moments I would have to appear normal and pleasant. That’s how angry I was. That’s how angry I am. I don’t think I wrote this as well as I could, but I need to get it out there. I need for other people to see it. I hope people share this post or post about it themselves. Excuse me while I go scream.
amandatheatheist 
Apparently that man has never met a woman before. Because I mean, we don’t make sacrifices daily in order to support the needs of others like our family members, pets, friends, co-workers…
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I hate to burst your bubble but women will go to Ranger School in Jan. 2013. I am stationed at FT Benning right now and went and earned my Ranger Tab in 2008. 10 to 12 female Ranger trainees hand selected from USMA will attend. Big Army is already forcing changes down Ranger Training Brigade’s throat right now. The standards will slacken due to the Pentagon pushing for “feel good” numbers. The attitude within the Ranger rank and file is that what used to be considered a accomplishment of a lifetime and admittance to a brotherhood of arms is on life support. Many say they won’t wear the tab anymore once the standards drop, others they will just say “they went when it was hard to get”. It is without a doubt that we are losing the combat effectiveness our Army has built in blood and sweat. Even if the standards don’t change (the main argument against allowing females) slots overall that could have gone to deserving males will be lost in the pursuit of political correctness decreasing the amount of Rangers serving currently in the Army’s ranks. The military was never set up to serve every individual person’s hopes and dreams, the purpose is the defense of the nation, period. By design selecting the best and creating the most productive atmosphere in which they will serve, train, kill, and possibly die is what has been and is required in order to do so. We are in in this business on a volunteer basis, you cannot force the public workforce’s guidelines into the military equation and expect the exact same results. You can scream all you want about it, we live in two different worlds and it just so happens the battlefield is where political correctness and equal opportunity are not measured by the enemy of this country. They are not principles of warfare, nor does one take it easy on the other side during firefights b/c they give their people better opportunities. You ladies seem like an educated bunch, if equal opportunity is the argument here I say we start with the PT Test. FYSA males and females are graded on two separate scales. I will use the push up event as the most telling scale. Males 17-21 years old in order to pass are required to perform 42 correct reps a female 19. In order to receive the maximum amount of points males must do 72 reps females 42.
You’re kind of an asshole, huh?
Wow, typical response when you cannot refute the argument – just hurl insults. You can scream all you want (typical response for a woman), but please stay the hell out of the Rangers, ma’am.
You are clearly a misogynist, so I didn’t feel the need to go beyond commenting on the fact that you are clearly an asshole, which is essentially a synonym. You don’t seem to know what equal opportunity means, and I will never understand all the men in the world that want to prevent women from being able to move up through the ranks of any organization, military or otherwise and have the chance to die for their country – if not in equal numbers than in equal proportion.
When you say (as I’m assuming the earlier comment was yours despite being under a different name), “could have gone to deserving males,” your perspective becomes clear: you want the privilege of males to be maintained. This comment would indicate that you are not interested in what is best for the country, or the military, or the defense of the country, rather that you want your privilege as a male to be maintained. Come off your pedestal of pretended nobility.
I never actually screamed. I said it made me so mad that I wanted to scream. If you think screaming is somehow a more typical response of women than of men, I would suggest you try going out and actually talking to some women. I do wish we’d stop letting misogynists into the armed forces.
Women are not held to the same physical standard as men in the military. If they changed the rules and forced women to achieve the same standards as males there would be very few women left in the military. Most women in the service don’t want to be rangers and special forces and forcing them to meet the tougher male standard is not fair, as it would likely end most of their careers.