08-20-2015, 09:53 PM
I'm happy for these women and I'm happy this was done in the right way. As the women themselves stated, lowering the standards for them only serves to endanger others and stigmatize women graduates. The military made this exact mistake when they opened combat piloting to women. I'm sure I told this story on the old board; when I was in ROTC I, and around six friends, had been given pilot a slot. During FSP (flight screening program) we were all brought in and told that, due to budget cuts, all pilot slots would go to academy cadets for the foreseeable future. All of us were re-designated, I got SP (yeah!). As you can imagine the competition for pilot slots was huge. Just about anything washed you out from consideration, the biggest factor was uncorrected eyesight. If you didn't have natural 20/20 vision or better you had zero chance of getting a pilot slot.
When they opened up combat pilot slots to females the news (CNN iirc) interviewed the first woman to be qualified for the F-16. She was wearing ***** glasses! I wanted to vomit, it's honestly the only time I've been upset that much by something that didn't happen directly to me. This extreme relaxing of standards to push women into these position caused an enormous amount of resentment, it was a veritable shit storm. So, I guess what I'm trying to say in my long winded way is that I'm glad the DoD learned from that complete pig-effing mistake.
When they opened up combat pilot slots to females the news (CNN iirc) interviewed the first woman to be qualified for the F-16. She was wearing ***** glasses! I wanted to vomit, it's honestly the only time I've been upset that much by something that didn't happen directly to me. This extreme relaxing of standards to push women into these position caused an enormous amount of resentment, it was a veritable shit storm. So, I guess what I'm trying to say in my long winded way is that I'm glad the DoD learned from that complete pig-effing mistake.
