The U.S. Army recently instituted a new and controversial physical fitness test to evaluate combat readiness for soldiers.  Why is it controversial?  Because eighty-four percent of the women who take the test fail it.

Many of those who complain about the imbalance offer varied excuses for the disparity in men's and women's test scores, but many of those excuses actually hurt the radical feminist case, which states that "anything men can do, women can do (perhaps better)."

For example, at one website, a feminist complains about the Army test being unfair to women.  The feminist says, "[T]he real killer for women is the 'leg tuck' portion of the ACFT, in which you assume a pull-up position and bring your hips and knees up to your elbows and back down as many times as possible in two minutes. That's asking an awful lot for a woman who has given birth in the last few months[.]"

Indeed, the feminist is correct.  It is unfair.  I do not dispute that.  Only women get pregnant.  What could be more unfair than that?  Well, how about asking a soldier in combat to bet his life on a female soldier "who has given birth in the last few months"?  Should his widow and orphaned offspring sacrifice their loved one just to prove that "anything men can do, women can do (better)"?

Army physical fitness tests are supposed to be "gender-neutral."  By "neutral," the Left means biased in favor of the myth of physical equality.  Here is the question that must be asked: what physical fitness test that measures combat readiness could possibly be designed in a way that men would fail in large numbers and that women could pass in large numbers?  Anyone?

If no one can devise such a test (no one can), and if women continue to fail in disproportionate numbers, then how can one continue to deny the obvious: men (with exceptions) are more physically fit for Army combat duties than are women (with exceptions)?  Despite the obviousness, leftist ideologues will continue to parse words to insist that "women can do anything..." blah, blah.

The leftist pipe dream is that, in the near future, fifty percent of all occupations will be filled by women.  This can, they insist, be achieved by overcoming sexual bigotry in society.  Infantry units will go to the battlefield, men and women commingled, living together under austere conditions and therefore without privacy.  That lack of personal privacy will not result in sexual predation, or if it does occur, it will be equally common by both men and women.  Fantasy.

More fantasy: If women are captured by the enemy, the enemy will be respectful of their rights and not rape them.

The problem of placing women into physically demanding, dangerous occupations is also present in civilian police forces and fire departments.  Rare is the female police officer who can, unassisted by men, chase down, then wrestle to the ground and subdue, a fleeing, resisting male felon.  She is much more likely than men to give up the chase or suffer injury or death in the failed attempt.  Even more rare, perhaps, is the female firefighter who can, weighed down by equipment, rapidly ascend a ladder, put an unconscious adult over her shoulder, and safely descend.

There are exceptions.  All of us have seen the obviously physically unfit male police officer who, when televised, is huffing and puffing, unable to climb over even a waist-high fence.  He should not be allowed to displace from the force any more qualified male candidates for his job.  Public safety demands it.

As for the rare female who can perform at a high rate of physical achievement, comparable to that of high achieving men, there are still a few reasons to exclude her, which are, admittedly, unfair to her.  What accommodations must be made to compensate her when she gets pregnant?  Are those accommodations fair to the men who must do her job for her (and be placed at additional risk) when she is unable?  Finally, there is the esoteric question: what happens to a society in which the mutual but asymmetric rules of courtesy no longer apply (for example, the antiquated notion of men holding doors for women)?

Leftists insist that we accept their dubious claims concerning "settled science" on climate change.  They say it is caused by humans, therefore we must surrender our rights to unaccountable bureaucrats, as if that would somehow remedy the weather. 

At the same time, the Left adamantly refuses to accept the settled science that men and women are different — and moreover, that they are different in ways that justify what they call discrimination but what, in fact, are necessary policies that would improve relations between the sexes and benefit both.

The issue is sufficiently complicated (for example, what about so-called transgenders?) that there is always one more deflection leftists can use to muddy the waters.  And they will.  It is their only defense of an absurd and dangerous ideology.