Tuesday, January 29, 2008

If a man had been there...

Why are we letting women do this?

5 comments:

Robert said...

Letting women do what, exactly? Be police officers? She fought with the guy for seven minutes; I think that's heroic, not an expression of some sinister feminist takeover. Male police officers are killed in the line of duty too. Perhaps the lesson is that backup should be more readily available or that police should travel in pairs. But that would require more police officers, which means higher taxes ....

Connor Hamilton said...

No, no, you misunderstood me. You're also not making the distinction between the fact that the woman fought heroically for seven minutes and the fact that she was allowed into the police force at all. The former is certainly a good thing, although I think it's sad too. The latter may not be a feminist 'takeover,' but it is certainly an expression of the folly of feminism, and if something brutally unfair to women is sinister, then it's that too.

Even with double the current law-enforcement taxes, I would guess that technological restrictions and human error would make faster back-up an uncertain prospect. I think the problem is with letting women do this at all. No one allows women into the NFL, because they know that the physical differences would make the contest absurd. In the police force, it's not possible to always get someone who is "the strongest" in every situation, but just about any man who wasn't elderly or excessively obese could have held his own much better than that woman. A huge percentage of criminals are male, a lot are desperate and aggressive, and many are big and powerful. I don't think that excluding women from front-line police duty, like excluding them from front-line military duty, is at all unfair to them. What I do think is unfair is to ignore the obvious physical differences and push them into situations where they are hopelessly outmatched.

Back2Nature said...

Indeed, I think women should seriously think about their rightful rights. One of them is the right to be a "stay at home mom." It is not about asking them to stay at home. It is about them, as women themselves, to feel and recognize that they do not need to work as good as man in virtually all job types to be considered on pal with man.

Robert said...

I think what I really take issue with is language like "allow." It makes it sound as though there is some male council that gets to arbitrate what women do or don't do, and that this mysterious body is somehow to blame for not looking out for the good of women. But in reality, there is no such council; "men" or "society" do not have the right to tell one-half of the human race what its proper functions are and are not.

As far as I understand it, bodies like the police force or the NFL have certain standards which have to be met before someone can be a member. If there isn't a single woman who can meet the qualifications, then obviously none will participate. But if they can (I'm assuming this particular woman passed the requirements to be a police officer) then no male authority figure has any right to tell her, "sorry, honey, you qualified, but your application has been thrown out because you aren't a man." It's both illegal and completely unfair.

Robert said...

I suppose the alternative, for the police force, would be to institute some kind of hand-to-hand combat trial every couple of years and fire everybody who failed it, including men. However, as I understand it, police officers are armed with guns, nightsticks, and other implements so that the liklihood of a hand-to-hand showdown is minimized.