The logical way to deal with these realities is to train the sexes separately, as the Marines still do. But to the rest of the PC Pentagon, this approach is now unthinkable. Even the Army, which tried gender-integrated training years ago and abandoned it as a failure, has brought it back to fend off its feminist tormentors. As a result, today s gender-integrated boot camp is a barely recognizable version of its former self. Physical demands have been dumbed-down to a point that males often find slow and unchallenging.
Competition is discouraged, lest anyone s self-esteem be damaged.
And despite official denials to the contrary, double standards abound. How female recruits feel about gender-integrated boot camp is not clear from Gutman s account. But one has to wonder how they benefit from being forced to train with males who, as a group, clearly have superior physical abilities. The possibility that their best interests are being sacrificed to satisfy the ideological whims of gender activists seems all too real, as does the likelihood that males are also denied optimal training. With less emphasis on physical conditioning, more time is spent on sensitivity sessions and, of course, the requisite harangues about sexual harassment.