The question we must ask now is: ‘Will the presence of a woman in combat negatively affect an infantry unit?’ This is the only question that matters in this debate.

“You cannot allow any of your people to avoid the brutal facts. If they start living in a dream world, it’s going to be bad.” — Gen. “Mad Dog” Mattis

Last week the House passed a defense authorization bill that did not include a provision requiring women to sign up for the Selective Service, even though the Obama administration has made women eligible for all combat positions. The Supreme Court has said that the previous military exemption of women from combat roles was the only reason women could be excused from signing up for the draft.

Things are quickly moving in a crazy direction. We need to get serious and ask ourselves: is there anything wrong with allowing women into combat, or requiring them to sign up for the draft? If so, we need to get these decisions rescinded.

If we detract from the strength and potency of our armed forces to be “fair and balanced” in some ideological sense, while willfully ignoring physical reality and science, we are knowingly putting our nation in danger. The question we must ask now is: “Will the presence of a woman in combat negatively affect an infantry unit?” This is the only question that matters in this debate. Making it about anything other than this detracts from the standards that keep the military competent and strong.

Feelings Don’t Matter. Military Effectiveness Does

Some people may find the language in that sentence objectionable and sexist, but because it directly deals with the effectiveness of our military (and therefore our nation’s security) it has to be asked. Bloodthirsty warriors out to slaughter you and your kids are not going care about your feelings. They are only going to care if they can kill you.

If women have higher injury rates than males; are less effective combatants; or their presence might distract male soldiers from being as effective as they would be in an all-male environment; or a woman being injured and killed in combat has a more dramatic effect on soldiers’ morale, then putting women into combat is a bad idea. Simply put, implementing bad ideas into military policies will ruin the effectiveness of that military. It could get more people hurt and killed, and jeopardize the nation’s safety. People who knowingly implement bad policies that put people’s lives at risk and our nation’s security in jeopardy should be held accountable.

Many efforts to talk about such gritty details have been swept over by feminist sentiments and politically correct sub-language. The PC agenda as made it possible for us to “sanely and rationally” allow women into combat roles by downplaying or outright ignoring aspects central to the issue regarding the effectiveness and moral underpinnings of mixed-sex infantry units.

Many people who would oppose these moves have difficulties voicing their views or thoughts about the subject, because it’s not possible to do so without receiving hellish backlash from media outlets or political pressure. This orchestrated effort of political correctness is so influential now that even grown professionals have a hard time relaying facts to the public, because offending someone can cost your career. This is being done even at the potential cost of Americans’ lives, and it is no longer sufficient to stand idly by and let it happen.

The military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once said that “Principles and rules are intended to provide a thinking man with a frame of reference.” It has long been tradition that women never enter combat because having women slaughtered is a sure way to endanger the entire society, since low ratios of women inhibit the creation of the next generation more than low ratios of men. Also, putting women on the battlefield changes the psychology of every male soldier for the worse, period.

I have sought hard to provide a solid foundation and set of references for people who have a good sense of reason, but don’t have the time or resources to fight the tide of an Internet culture that easily replicates ignorance. Some of the sources here deal directly with the horrors of war and bloodshed, and may not be pleasant for everyone to read. However, if this concerns you, I implore you to share this with everyone you know.

Newsflash: Male and Female Bodies Are Different

The first thing that needs to be addressed on this issue is the most obvious one: the most basic, irrevocable, and fundamental fact of the matter is that men and women are not the same. This is what people in the scientific community call “sexual dimorphism.” Men and women are different in their neurology, psychology, and biology. Since we are talking about violence and combat, we will focus most of our time on biology.

The differences between the sexes affect all kinds of major and minor components about our bodies. Men have stronger bones than women, as well as stronger tendons and ligaments. Males have more muscle fibers, and because of this have greater muscle mass. Men have about 40 percent more muscle mass than women. Things like calorie intake also affects the sexes differently: men tend to convert extra calories into muscle and energy reserves. Females tend to convert them into fat deposits.

Men also have higher levels of testosterone that allow a greater capacity for hypertrophy (muscle growth). While testosterone exists in both men and women, most men produce 6-8 mg of testosterone daily, while women might produce 0.5 mg at the same rate. Because of this, high-T females are nowhere near the testosterone level of even low-T males. Your average female’s T range is from 8-60 ng/dL, while adult males range from 240-950 ng/dL.

Men are bathed in testosterone from the womb. Exposure to higher amounts of testosterone over a lifetime is why men are the way they are (the same can be said for women and estrogen). Higher testosterone levels in men makes them more aggressive. Higher testosterone also allows men to endure greater amounts of, and recover faster from, physically strenuous activities. They can do all of this at much higher rates than women can.

Each sex was specifically designed to accentuate the crowning points of their respective hormones. Too much of the wrong hormones can hurt men and women. For example, high estrogen in men can cause cancer, and high levels of testosterone in women can lead to complications that involve infertility.

Because of their weaker bone structures, women are more prone to injury then men are. Many women in sports and other physical activities experience injury rates at levels that have been described as “epidemic” by some medical experts. Young women are more vulnerable to these injuries, many of which often lead to osteoporosis, even shortly after proper recovery:

The higher the level of [athletic] competition, the more [women] are at risk. One in 10 women playing college sports will suffer an ACL injury… Women in their twenties are being described as ‘crippled’, even after successful ACL surgery… We are telling girls to ‘bend it like Beckham’ but their bodies are not built like Beckham’s… The implications may not be politically correct. But they are a reality.

Sex differences are real. So real that people would complain about making sports unisex, because it would be unfair to the women. Parents complain when their little girls go up against transgender opponents, because trans-women have had (or still have) testicles throughout most of their life, which gives them a greater advantage in tests of physical performance.

Women who physically exert themselves too much over extended periods of time will be subject to muscular atrophy and other biological complications. This is why we should not throw them into activities their bodies were not made to accommodate. Even if you had a female miraculously pass a male Marine physical fitness test, or complete a special school in the military, this would be a temporary, even eccentric victory.

If extreme physical activity is sustained for long periods of time, a woman’s body will eventually deteriorate in ways in which the bodies of her male companions would not. This alone, even ignoring injury rates and other physical shortcomings of women, would put a mixed-sex military unit at a severe disadvantage in the battlefield, risking the lives of everyone involved, as well as possibly compromising mission objectives.

The physical characteristics of men and women are so distinct that every local, national, international, or Olympic sport I can name separates men and women into different categories for the sake of fairness in competition and even concerns over personal safety for the female participants.

For some reason, the logic we apply that separates men and women for fun and games does not apply to conversations about actual military combat, where physical intensity is a constant factor, injury and death rates are dramatically higher, lives are at risk, missions are at stake, and ultimately the nation’s security is at jeopardy. All of this begs the question; if low-grade danger zones like sports arenas have not deemed women capable of competing well against male opponents, why have we decided to allow them into combat zones, which are drastically more hazardous and complex? If you don’t expect a woman to be allowed to receive tackles from a 200-pound man on an open field, there is little reason to place women on an infantry squad.

Women Are Not Capable Fighters Against Men

“War is an act of violence pushed to its utmost bounds.” — Carl von Clausewitz

War is a male-dominated domain. Everyone up to this point in history has understood why: If the fighting were left in the hands of women, this country’s spaces for freedom and the pursuit of happiness we hold so dear would not exist. That’s because women cannot physically compete against men en masse.

If women receive fair treatment in public or civil life, it is because strong men have provided safe arenas so society can grant this to them.

The world is deadly and cruel. Ideas of fairness and equality are social constructs that are upheld solely by the might of men. If women receive fair treatment in public or civil life, it is because strong men have provided safe arenas so society can grant this to them. Gender equality is not a concept that exists outside of industrialized societies because biological realities constantly reinforce the physical inequality of men and women.

The most effective female-on-male violence you see is in the movies, where a single 110-pound female can take out a crew of men who weigh 215 pounds each. The vast majority of women (if not literally every woman you know) will boast that they can do everything a man can do—until it involves fists. Women retreat from this domain, falling back on some moral code that says, while woman are “equal” in the highest ideological way, they are not physically equal to men. From here many will infer that it is a man’s moral imperative not to strike women, ever, because it would be sadistic, evil, and “unfair.”

Why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to send such a band of individuals into combat is beyond reason. If our moral tendencies dictate that women should be universally exempt from violence in the civil world for biological reasons, what grounds do we have for sending females out to fight overseas?

Yes, historians have shown that there are instances and parts of the world where women may have had the opportunity to be trained to fight in warfare alongside men. Yet women have never excelled at fighting and warfare compared to men.

If our moral tendencies dictate that women should be universally exempt from violence for biological reasons, what grounds do we have for sending females out to fight overseas?

Up until now, we have been able to recognize that men and women are different. We are so different that we have different playing fields for sports. We are so different we we deploy different etiquette when interacting with the opposite sex. We are so different that the U.S. military has had to make gendered PT tests to include women in their ranks. This is a sexist notion, but it’s the only way the military could make things “fair” so women could get in—by making it easier for them. Women know this is the truth, which is why they have never complained about men not expecting them to be physically equal.

Women don’t go to war with each other the way men do, and they never will. Women who have learned how to fight are few, and have always received training and assistance from men. In contrast, men are not losing sleep out of the fear that armies of women threaten their livelihoods. In historical cases when men call women to arms, it is usually out of extreme desperation. Such societies are on the brink of extinction at the hands of an overwhelmingly powerful military force, and literally all hands are needed to preserve their way of life: Men, women, and children. In the past, more often than not a society would send little boys off to die at war before they would send women. This is because even grown women are not as physically reliable as adolescent males.

In reaction to women being selected for the draft and combat, roaring complaints can be heard among women in general and even feminists, who have spoken out about how outrageous this new playing field is for women:

I am a feminist, and I do not support including women in selective service. When you are not included in something that no one wants to do — in this case, going off to war — it’s not discrimination; it’s a privilege. Some say women should give up that privilege in the name of equality between men and women. But here’s the thing about equality: Men and women are not equal. That’s right — I’m a feminist, I am a mother of two girls, and I am saying that men and women are not equal. In the event of a draft, sending women off to war does not present an equal opportunity to women by nature of the fact that women are physically different from men.

There are anomalous handfuls of females who, with sufficient training in hand-to-hand combat, can handle themselves in and around their weight class, or effectively fend off larger assailants who do not know how to actually fight. However, these women do not compare to the strength of men who have larger muscle mass and more training. Also, there are probably biological markers for why these woman have such a physical capacity in the first place, which most women lack.

When institutions move to include women in male spaces, it usually involves talk, followed by action of softening the standards to “better fit” and “accommodate” women, and possibly attempts to avoid a lawsuit. It should be clear to everyone why lowering standards always comes up when discussing integrating women into combat units: even people who claim to believe that men and women are physically equal know for a fact that they are not.

These actions include, but are not limited to, “sensitivity training” to help protect women from behavior and language that males exchange on a regular basis, and lowering physical requirements. This could make it harder for men to do their jobs, putting them in dangerous situations that would be less likely to occur if they were in a band of all males, rather than a sex-mixed unit.

What Happens When Women Enter Combat Roles

“History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.” – Walter Bagehot

In the conversation of gender integration, many point to the long-held standard of universal conscription in Israel, yet Israel’s experience actually recommends against sex-mixed units:

For example, it is a common misperception that Israel allows women in combat units. In fact, women have been barred from combat in Israel since 1950, when a review of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War showed how harmful their presence could be. The study revealed that men tried to protect and assist women rather than continue their attack. As a result, they not only put their own lives in greater danger, but also jeopardized the survival of the entire unit. The study further revealed that unit morale was damaged when men saw women killed and maimed on the battlefield… Few serious armies use women in combat roles. Israel, which drafts most of its young women and uses them in all kinds of military work, has learned from experience to take them out of combat zones. Tests show that few women have the upper-body strength required for combat tasks… There are now and always will be idiots who say the Pentagon should put women in any combat unit they wish to serve. Most of these people will speak with the ignorance of never having had to experience the horror of combat, as well as the luxury of never having to worry about engaging in armed conflict themselves.

Israeli Defense Force experiments have also found injuries among women at higher rates than males. Many of these injuries are debilitating and lifelong. While the IDF has also allowed women in combat roles in more recent years, it has not been without severe criticism, and many have admitted that female combat roles within the military have been extremely exaggerated.

The U.S. Army expected few women to sign up for combat, and few have. This should suggest the move to open combat positions to women was an administrative political decision that did not come from within the military itself.

Warfare is a lot more complex than most people realize, and a survey might reveal that the average American’s knowledge of the essentials of warfare only goes as deep as bullets, explosions, and maybe a couple of fighter jets. The reality of warfare is a lot more complicated, and involves many more cerebral components. While strength, bravery, and proficiency in urban combat are essential to fighting (and may even be all you need to survive a spontaneous scuffle), larger war efforts without psychological operations, well-fed supply lines, and sufficient intelligence can render the most brutal military force completely useless.

It’s easy for people who aren’t involved in war to forget (or not even know) how a technology or a war policy—even a minor one—can change the entire playing field.

It’s easy for people who aren’t involved in war to forget (or not even know) how a technology or a war policy—even a minor one—can change the entire playing field. Small changes in the dial can bring radically different outcomes. If mixed-sex combat units were not as effective as all-male units, they could weaken the military’s position enough to cause a substantial problem for our nation’s security.

Here is an anecdote to illustrate what I mean: In 2014, a veteran named Omar Gonzalez jumped a fence and rushed the White House. He had a weapon, and made it all the way across the green lawn and into the White House. He was first confronted in the White House by a lone guard, whom he overpowered with ease. He ran through the White House and was not apprehended until he got to the East Room.

Many of the news reports failed to mention that the guard Gonzalez overpowered was a female member of the Secret Service, and that the people who apprehended Gonzalez were males. While the president’s life may have been put in jeopardy by putting a female guard between him and a knife-wielding wild man (a guard the Secret Service had deemed physically fit enough to defend the president), other issues were addressed instead, such as “added layers” of security to the lawn of the White House.

Many news reports failed to mention that the guard Gonzalez overpowered was a female member of the Secret Service, and that the people who apprehended Gonzalez were males.

We have enough information to say the government is currently making decisions based on political correctness and feminist policies, rather than mission effectiveness and scientific data. Recently, the U.S. Marines began officially removing the word “man” from 19 job titles. Despite disagreements within the Armed forces and studies suggesting this was a bad move, in January 2016 Defense Secretary Ash Carter opened all military occupations up to women, without exception. In sequence with this, the US Senate recently passed a defense bill that would require all women of age to register for the draft.

While this has been hailed as an overdue move towards “total equality,” one might predict that when there is need to reinstate the draft it will disproportionately affect males. That’s because, while some women would be eager to join, on the whole society does not see women as having an obligation to physically defend the country. In civil society, women already get punished less for the same crime as men, so the same may very well apply to punishments for draft dodgers. It has already been noted in military studies that women have used their sex to occasionally escape responsibility.

Opening combat to women is historically contrary to what we have done before. In 1992, The Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces concluded:

Military units must be able to function effectively over protracted periods of time against an equally determined enemy. A military unit at maximum combat effectiveness is a military unit least likely to suffer casualties. Winning a war is often only a matter of inches, and unnecessary distraction or any dilution of that combat effectiveness puts the mission and lives in jeopardy. Risking the lives of a military unit in combat to provide career opportunities or accommodate the personal desires or interests of an individual, or group of individuals, is more than bad military judgment. It is morally wrong.

This may sound like the most rational thing you’ve read in a while coming from the government, and that’s because it probably was. But the discussion has now been reframed into shoehorning the military’s structure into those of the civil society it is supposed to protect, despite all the gathered scientific data to the contrary. Where once it was a dishonorable and grossly reprehensible act to even slap a woman, now we are now lining up our daughters with the option, even possible force, to cross overseas to be kidnapped, beaten, raped, and killed by jihadis.

Some have said that if you don’t support women being trained for or put in combat roles, “Obviously, you are not comfortable with who you are. You feel intimidated. You should question why you feel that way.” This may be a feeling some men have, but the masculinity of a handful of dudes is not what’s truly at stake. The problem is that we are systematically exchanging scientific data, mission efficiency, and time-honored moral code for feminist whims. That’s extremely dangerous, no matter how you try to sell it.

Where once it was a reprehensible act to even slap a woman, now we are now lining up our daughters to cross overseas to be beaten, raped, and killed by jihadis.

For the men and women reading this, I want you to ask yourselves: Even if you unearth a few “Xena the warrior princesses,” is it worth reshaping our nation’s national defense policies for a few unusual women? Do they represent the capabilities of most or even many women?

Knowing male psychology and how they react to females in danger, do you really think they won’t go out of their way to “protect and assist women rather than continue their [mission]… not only put[ting] their own lives in greater danger, but also jeopardized the survival of the entire unit… [while] unit morale [becomes] damaged when men [see] women killed and maimed on the battlefield”? If a woman becomes pregnant on the field and has to go on leave, what is going to happen to the unit’s strength?

These are all very real issues that come up in the field. Ignoring people’s sex and acting like it isn’t going to play a role in the field is stupid.

Recall the Marine Corps Study

Coinciding with all previous research and scientific findings, in military training also women fail at incredibly higher rates at physically demanding tasks. In 2015, the Marine Corps concluded a yearlong study of how de-sexing units would affect combat readiness. They found: “all-male units were faster, more lethal and able to evacuate casualties in less time… All-male squads, the study found, performed better than mixed gender units across the board. The males were more accurate hitting targets, faster at climbing over obstacles, better at avoiding injuries.” Similar studies within our military, and even from other countries, reinforce these findings.

Irrationally, government officials in the Obama administration have opted to ignore all available scientific data to forward their own politically correct agenda. This suggests they didn’t care what the science said to begin with. It means they are willing to degrade the quality of the military’s effectiveness to artificially advance women who can’t compete by the same standards, and by doing this they are knowingly putting our soldiers at greater risk for injury and death. For this, their actions are condemnable before God and all the men of their country.

While some nitpick the all-male versus mixed-sex units study, no one has suggested studying how effective all-male units would be against all-female units. Not only are there simply not enough women capable and willing to fill such roles, but nobody thinks all-female units could be as effective as all-male units. It should stand to reason that because we know women are weaker then men on a biological level, that it should be obvious that integrating women into all-male units would tactically weaken those units. When you take these plain truths and put them together, the Marine Corps findings aren’t all that surprising.

Sgt. Maj. Justin D. Lehew, who was a part of this Marine Corps study, lashed back at critics who claimed “better women could have been picked,” and that the evaluators’ mindsets were “biased” against women from the start:

We selected our best women for this test unit, selected our most mature female leaders as well. The men (me included) were the most progressive and open minded that you could get… The best women in The GCEITF as a group in regard to infantry operations were equal or below in most all cases to the lowest 5 percent of men as a group in this test study. They are slower on all accounts in almost every technical and tactical aspect and physically weaker in every aspect across the range of military operations… Listen up folks. Your senior leadership of this country does not want to see America overwhelmingly succeed on the battlefield, it wants to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to pursue whatever they want regardless of the outcome on national security…There is nothing gender biased about this, it is what it is. You will never see a female Quarterback in the NFL, there will never be a female center on any NHL team and you will never see a female batting in the number 4 spot for the New York Yankees. It is what it is.

To Close the Case

To help conclude, I will share the writings of Capt Katie Patrino, a woman who has served two combat deployments as an engineer in the Marines. She has talked openly and about her experiences and written an essay entitled “Get Over It! We Are Not All Created Equal”

Who is driving this agenda? I am not personally hearing female Marines, enlisted or officer, pounding on the doors of Congress claiming that their inability to serve in the infantry violates their right to equality. Shockingly, this isn’t even a congressional agenda. This issue is being pushed by several groups, one of which is a small committee of civilians…it’s very surprising to see that none of the committee members are on active duty or have any recent combat or relevant operational experience relating to the issue they are attempting to change…. By the fifth month into the deployment, I had muscle atrophy in my thighs that was causing me to constantly trip and my legs to buckle with the slightest grade change. My agility during firefights and mobility on and off vehicles and perimeter walls was seriously hindering my response time and overall capability. It was evident that stress and muscular deterioration was affecting everyone regardless of gender; however, the rate of my deterioration was noticeably faster than that of male Marines and further compounded by gender-specific medical conditions. At the end of the 7-month deployment, and the construction of 18 PBs later, I had lost 17 pounds and was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (which personally resulted in infertility, but is not a genetic trend in my family), which was brought on by the chemical and physical changes endured during deployment… Marines who can run first-class physical fitness tests and who have superior MOS proficiency are separated from the Service if they do not meet the Marine Corps’ height and weight standards. Further, tall Marines are restricted from flying specific platforms, and color blind Marines are faced with similar restrictions. We recognize differences in mental capabilities of Marines when we administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and use the results to eliminate/open specific fields. These standards are designed to ensure safety, quality, and the opportunity to be placed in a field in which one can sustain and succeed.

We know men and women are physically different. We know that politically correct daydreams are not going to change that. We know that women are at a disadvantage in combat with males. We know their biology is not made for long-term physically strenuous endeavors. We know that all-female units are less effective than all-male units. We know that mixed units are less effective than all-male units.

Policy changes that contradict research and common sense are offensive to our intelligence, and our nation’s best interests. Knowing all this, it is our duty as citizens to pressure the men and women who work for us to stick to the strictest standards possible, and let them know that we should not allow added risk to the lives of those at arms, nor have our nation’s security weakened, for the scandalous sake of political correctness.

This article is a condensed version of a longer draft you can find online here.