Edit: Many of the below things are the exact same as what soezgg said up above due to the fact I had chores and clicked the Reply button a good 15 min after I wrote the following...
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Originally Posted by Ogre
Soezgg is the first person to argue why women should not be allowed in the draft. It seems that most everybody who has posted has supported women in the draft.
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No, he argued that women should not serve in the infantry due to natural, physical differences (generally).
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Originally Posted by LauraN
I may be wrong, so let me present the question to you, since you would know better than me: don't you need to pass a physical exam and meet certain physical requirements before serving? If this is true, generalizations are irrelevant.
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You're definitely correct, Laura. But as Steve and I discussed on one of his trips back to Ithaca, the physics fitness tests (PT test for short) for men and women in the army are absolutely different in their standards of performance. Both tests require the person to do the same things, but the standards for females are set much lower than for men. Is this sexist or rather, is this based on general physical capability difference between a male and female (thus supporting soezgg's argument about carrying a wounded soldier for 5 km)? I googled the below site, which gives you information about the two tests. For the male test, I'd be fine for pushups/situps but I would have to run a lot more to get in shape for the 2-mile run. However, I could do the female test right now if you asked me to.
http://155.217.58.58/cgi-bin/atdl.dll/fm/21-20/Ch14.htm
Regarding my thoughts on the initial thread subject - I would fully support drafting both men and women. It is not fair to exclude one group when both are legally guranteed the same rights. As Mike argued, if you have the same rights, you have to be subjected to the same service. Nonetheless, as already mentioned, physical deficiencies may prevent infantry service - but that does not prevent working in other ways in the army. There are cooks (first non-combat position that came to mind - don't accuse me of being sexist), office workers, etc. But when I think about having women in infantry, I'm unsure. Even if the PT test standards were the same for both groups, I would have to think long and hard about including women in the fight.