Double Standards
Please hear my heart on this! I do not post this quote from this book to upset or offend. Afterall, you know I have come out of a strong feminist background. There are very complex reasons that have led me to embark on this study. One in particular (and most important) is my marriage to Steve. The early years of our marriage were quite difficult as we both sought out the position of leadership (or headship) in our marriage. We found out early on that it just was NOT going to work ... this idea called "egalitarianism." So, this is my personal journey ... seeking out God's original design and plan for women.
Some books I have read include - Rocking the Roles, What Our Mothers Never Told Us, Five Aspects of Woman, Rediscovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth. I have also read book by Mary Kassian, Lillian Barger, and Diane Passno of which the titles I don't remember off the top of my head. So O'Beirne's book is only part of an ongoing study.
I find myself thinking that as Christian women, we need to embrace God's perfect design of both us and our male counterparts. His design is perfect. If He intended that man be the provider and the protector ... we should rejoice and embrace that plan. Why fight against it and insist on running along side of them? We need to ask ourselves what it really means to operate in accord with God's original plan.
Here's more from Kate O'Beirne's "Women who make the world worse"
"I quickly learned that the demand for equal opportunity was a typically dishonest feminist ruse. Advocates for women in combat were really seeking special rights for women in uniform. They argued that women should be allowed in combat if they felt like it, although men are involuntarily assigned to combat duties. And feminists weren't demanding an equal right for women to compete to meet the services' physical standards. They were demanding a new separate physical standard for women because the great majority can't meet a male standard.
Definitive studies show that the top 5 percent of women perform at the male medium. The average twenty- to thirty-year-old woman has the aerobic capacity of a fifty-year-old man. There's a reason why fifty-year-old men in uniform are not expected to do what twenty-year-old men do. To mask these real differences between the sexes, with their real consequences in the real world of combat - under pressure to integrate the ranks - the services have modified their training.
Since it was integrated, in a typial example of how the military copes with the fact that women are weaker and slower than men, West Point has developed a formula of "equilavent effort" that has male cadets obliged to complete an obstacle course in 3:20 minutes, while female cadets are allowed 5:30. Men receive the same grade for doing seventy-two push-ups in two minutes as women do for performing forty-eight. Scores on fitness tests throughout the military are now similarly "gender-normed."
The physical qualifications for specific jobs have also had to be changed to accomodate the lesser physical strength of women. A 1985 Navy study found that large majorities of women were unable to perform any of the eight critical shipboard tasks that virtually all men could handle. To keep things shipshape on the gender front, the job of stretcher carrier in the Navy, once a two-man job (that 100 percent but only 12 percent of women could perform) was redefined as a four-person task.
Proponents of women in combat are tiresome in their dishonest insistence that women should only serve on the front lines "if they can meet all the physical requirements." Experience with integrating the service academies and the great majority of specialities has shown that women can't and don't meet the male standard. The force is slower and weaker as a result."
Some books I have read include - Rocking the Roles, What Our Mothers Never Told Us, Five Aspects of Woman, Rediscovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth. I have also read book by Mary Kassian, Lillian Barger, and Diane Passno of which the titles I don't remember off the top of my head. So O'Beirne's book is only part of an ongoing study.
I find myself thinking that as Christian women, we need to embrace God's perfect design of both us and our male counterparts. His design is perfect. If He intended that man be the provider and the protector ... we should rejoice and embrace that plan. Why fight against it and insist on running along side of them? We need to ask ourselves what it really means to operate in accord with God's original plan.
Here's more from Kate O'Beirne's "Women who make the world worse"
"I quickly learned that the demand for equal opportunity was a typically dishonest feminist ruse. Advocates for women in combat were really seeking special rights for women in uniform. They argued that women should be allowed in combat if they felt like it, although men are involuntarily assigned to combat duties. And feminists weren't demanding an equal right for women to compete to meet the services' physical standards. They were demanding a new separate physical standard for women because the great majority can't meet a male standard.
Definitive studies show that the top 5 percent of women perform at the male medium. The average twenty- to thirty-year-old woman has the aerobic capacity of a fifty-year-old man. There's a reason why fifty-year-old men in uniform are not expected to do what twenty-year-old men do. To mask these real differences between the sexes, with their real consequences in the real world of combat - under pressure to integrate the ranks - the services have modified their training.
Since it was integrated, in a typial example of how the military copes with the fact that women are weaker and slower than men, West Point has developed a formula of "equilavent effort" that has male cadets obliged to complete an obstacle course in 3:20 minutes, while female cadets are allowed 5:30. Men receive the same grade for doing seventy-two push-ups in two minutes as women do for performing forty-eight. Scores on fitness tests throughout the military are now similarly "gender-normed."
The physical qualifications for specific jobs have also had to be changed to accomodate the lesser physical strength of women. A 1985 Navy study found that large majorities of women were unable to perform any of the eight critical shipboard tasks that virtually all men could handle. To keep things shipshape on the gender front, the job of stretcher carrier in the Navy, once a two-man job (that 100 percent but only 12 percent of women could perform) was redefined as a four-person task.
Proponents of women in combat are tiresome in their dishonest insistence that women should only serve on the front lines "if they can meet all the physical requirements." Experience with integrating the service academies and the great majority of specialities has shown that women can't and don't meet the male standard. The force is slower and weaker as a result."
posted by Lisa Stucky at 11:03 PM
4 Comments:
Wow. Sounds like an eye-opening book. Where'd you find it?
I think I was at a bookstore - in a women's section. It's only about a year old. It was a pretty interesting read!
I'm interested also. This is something I have been thinking about a lot lately too. I think its something most women today have to deal with.
Erin, I so agree with you. Feminism is such a part of our culture and we have to deal with it day in and day out. It's not an easy thing for us women. And you are definately in the "line of fire", so to speak! Love you, girl!
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