By January 2016, all branches of the military need to allow women to serve in combat. Like, active combat with guys and shooting da bad guys and everything. Kapok kapow! Boom Boom type combat. The media of course thinks this idea is simply the cat's pajamas.

The Marine Corps themselves? Not so much. They conducted a study and, as shocking as this sounds, all male-units were more effective and produced LESS CASUALTIES than mixed gender units.

Some findings...

All-male 0311 (rifleman) infantry squads had better accuracy compared to gender-integrated squads. There was a notable difference between genders for every individual weapons system (i.e. M4, M27, and M203) within the 0311 squads, except for the probability of hit & near miss with the M4.

All-male infantry crew-served weapons teams engaged targets quicker and registered more hits on target as compared to gender-integrated infantry crew-served weapons teams, with the exception of M2 accuracy.

All-male squads, teams and crews and gender-integrated squads, teams, and crews had a noticeable difference in their performance of the basic combat tasks of negotiating obstacles and evacuating casualties. For example, when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top. During casualty evacuation assessments, there were notable differences in execution times between all-male and gender-integrated groups, except in the case where teams conducted a casualty evacuation as a one-Marine fireman’s carry of another (in which case it was most often a male Marine who “evacuated” the casualty)

That's what we call "statistically significant" folks. Even moreso because this was not even directly comparing men vs women. It was comparing all male squads vs integrated squads on performance based tasks. Meaning that the "integrated" squads were still comprised of men in addition to women. No doubt a pure gender-vs-gender study would yield an even wider performance gap. Because sexism.

Call me old fashioned, but Marines as well as our other Armed Forces have a difficult, dangerous enough job without being burdened by the current SJW political cause du jour. The military isn't a social, liberal petri dish where leftists can cook up their perfect social justice recipes. The military exists to protect America's interests, period.

Maybe the military should value diversity over competency?

As far as active combat, as a general rule, men do that better. A lot better. I want "better" out there on the front lines. Something to note that isn't specifically addressed in this study; men also feel more compelled to protect women and are more likely to risk their own safety (as well as the safety of other men in their squads) in order to save a woman's life. I talked about that with a former Marine sergeant on the #LwC Show this week. She was the first to admit it, and openly address it as a serious problem in our armed forces.

Finally, on a personal note: I think it's sad when a great society like the United States of America sends ill-equipped women to the front lines to die... and they do so in the name of "progress."