I know some pretty tough women out there that could compete with any man physically.
No, you don't. You may know some women who are competitive with the small same of men you have met in your life, but no woman on the planet could compete with the top 1% of men.
I've been surrounded by amateur and professional athletes for most of my life (despite the fact that I am a mediocre athlete, at best), and I can tell you that men who are in peak physical condition (those at the top 1% of the bell curve) are almost super-human in their capabilities. They are veritable freaks of nature. Without serious steroids/hormones during her developmental years, a woman can have neither the bone density nor muscle density to be even close to competitive. And these are just athletes, not trained killing machines in the US's special forces.
So, sorry to burst your bubble, but if women can't manage to crack into even the least physical of men's professional sports (how many WNBA players could make it in the NBA? Not even Brittney Griner... and she's mostly man to being with), there's no way they can hold their own in combat...
I don't think women belong in combat. There are plenty of ways they can assist our military but combat is not one of them.
Its easy to think that, if you’ve never see them compete. I knew a girl with a blackbelt in Kyokoshin Karate, and heavily-muscled thighs that made many men look birdlegged. She walked the typical walk for these types of women. She spent years training in grappling, and yet fighting her was always like fighting a child, and it was never going to get any better.
But see her off the mat, and she looked impressive. Its just that real physical prowess is tough to acquire with a female body. Not enough testosterone, not enough neurological coordination or power, not enough mass (more important than you would believe), not enough enjoyment of the rough and tumble, during the rough and tumble, and their joints seem to work weird, hyper-extending at the wrong times, and always being too loose. They just aren’t designed for that stuff.
This silly meme survives today, and even grows, because we have gone so long without real danger. If resources snap, and suddenly every alley has a cowardly predator-man looking for an easy score by attacking a woman, you will see this crap evaporate pretty quick. GI Jane is fun to think about for the boobs who like it, when reality is far enough off you don’t have to think about what would really happen, or worse yet, recall the helplessnes of that near-death-experience last week at the hand of some skinny tweaker.
Mark my words, if we ever send chicks into combat, as anything more than token support, a lot of good men are going to die who never should have begun to be in danger. This will get good men killed, if we allow these idiots their way.
“I know some pretty tough women out there that could compete with any man physically.”
No, you don’t. You know rare women that can compete with an average man.
Take a look at some of the world weight lifting records - high-school boys on their school weight lifting teams have been known to routinely crack the women’s WORLD records.
Example:
Women’s world record bench press - 480 pounds.
Men’s world record bench press - 1,102 pounds (beat out the last record holder at 1,075).
Compare with high-school weight lifters. Headlines: “High School Senior Can Bench Press 700 Pounds Like Its No Big Deal!” and “High School Senior Braden Smith Benches 515 Pounds for 3 Reps”
Men and women are different, and are not interchangeable. It is a logical fallacy to assume a woman can do anything a man can, and it’s also a fallacy to assume a man can do anything a woman can - the tails of the bell curves just do not meet.
“I know some pretty tough women out there that could compete with any man physically.”
No you don’t, not even the ones taking male hormones. They’re are even muscular differences between men and women.