> DEI means lowering standards to accomodate minorities and discrimination against more qualified white males
Women are perfectly capable of working in firefighting, the military or police. I've personally seen a female police officer of barely 1.60m throw a drunk 2m Russian dude on a rampage in a bar fight onto the ground and tie him up alone, about a solid third of the volunteer force in my THW unit are women, a good friend of mine is a trained volunteer firefighter at about the same height as the police officer, and the IDF has women in active fighting roles since the 70s, and fully equal to males since 2000 - and look where the IDF is, they are without question the top dog in the MENA region, despite all the cries about women threatening the fighting capability.
"DEI" means opening up the gates for everyone on actual merit. For women, it can sometimes mean having to rely more on skill than on brute strength (as in my first example), but in the end it doesn't matter much.
I’m not sure you read this part of the comment you’re replying to:
> "Am I able to carry your husband out of a fire? He got himself in the wrong place"
You’re making points that women can be physically strong. Nobody is doubting this, the parent was providing evidence that these women themselves say they are not strong.
> Nobody is doubting this, the parent was providing evidence that these women themselves say they are not strong.
Yeah and that's where the last sentence with the skill I wrote comes into play. Instead of just "manhandling" said husband and carry him in the front of you, lift him on your back, and anyone too heavy for that will also be too heavy for most male firefighters (bodybuilders are rare, especially in volunteer corps most people will be of average strength and body stature). That's also one part of why firefighters always go in pairs (besides providing backup for personal safety) - you never know who and what you come across.
Besides: Carrying a person in front of oneself is a movie cliche about firefighters, it's extremely rare to see it in practice and banned outside of actual life-and-death emergencies because it's dangerous as fuck - trip over a hose or debris and suddenly you're falling with the full weight of you and your gear onto the already injured person, possibly injuring yourself in the process. Not nice.
The case of the two policewomen which ran away from a shooting and left their male colleagues to fend for themselves caused quite a stir in Germany. During the trial they said they were deadly afraid and didn’t see how many shooters there were and from where the shots were coming.
Got in their car and left.
I tried to find an equivalent male example, but every newspaper was writing about this particular case.
Thanks for the link. It looks like in your and the sibling poster’s link the police didn’t protect the public because of cowardice and/or incompetence.
In the case I link, the trial was about abandoning their fellow policemen in danger, not the public.
They probably view things differently when they themselves are affected.
Existence of some counterexamples does not upend the basic observation: that way, way fewer women are capable of carrying a 100 or even a 60 kg person out of a fire than men.
Which makes efforts to recruit as many women into firefighting as possible a sad ideological travesty, and people are perfectly right calling it out. There is a difference between emancipation and group delusion. There are meaningful physical differences between the sexes, and everyone knows that, even people who try to engage in sophistry when it comes to this topic.
BTW the IDF, which conscripts women out of necessity, tries to keep them away from the most dangerous combat roles, and employs them mostly in support roles. Your description is very misleading. The vast majority of the really dangerous stuff in IDF is still done by men, not least because of the risk of rape when falling into hands of enemies. IIRC only about 1 in 20 of the "enemy-facing" IDF soldiers like helicopter pilots are female.
> Existence of some counterexamples does not upend the basic observation: that way, way fewer women are capable of carrying a 100 or even a 60 kg person out of a fire than men.
My point is the need for this ability is next to zero because it is extremely dangerous, and yet women are judged by that on their inability to be a firefighter at all? That's bullshit, pardon my French.
> The vast majority of the really dangerous stuff in IDF is still done by men, not least because of the risk of rape when falling into hands of enemies.
A lot of the men that got taken hostage or got found dead on Oct 7 were raped as well. And yes, IDF tries to dissuade women from enemy-facing action, but if a woman decides she accepts this risk, she can go for any role she wants.
My point is the need for this ability is next to zero because it is extremely dangerous
That is an absolute non-sequitur. Yes, it is dangerous to carry a person out of a fire. But it is still an expected, though infrequent occurrence during duties of a firefighter. By deliberately striking this capability from list of demands, you are also deliberately restricting the total life-saving capabilities of the firefighting crew, all for checking some ideological boxes.
I am absolutely against this and I want firefighters in my city to be physically capable of doing such tasks. It may happen that my life or life of my loved ones is actually at stake, and such capability will make a difference.
On the other hand, I couldn't care less about diversity checkboxes. The idea that a firefighting corps is better for having more women is as weird to me as the idea that a firefighting corps is better for having more Taylor Swift fans.
> On the other hand, I couldn't care less about diversity checkboxes. The idea that a firefighting corps is better for having more women is as weird to me as the idea that a firefighting corps is better for having more Taylor Swift fans.
Fact is, volunteer corps are already struggling with obtaining and retaining volunteers. Excluding women excludes 50% of the potential force.
So, an overall unattractive activity, and for some reason, we need more women stuck there?
If volunteer firefighting is a people repellent now, the "repellent" part needs to change, unless the "everybody needs to be equally miserable" hairshirt version of equity applies.
Women are perfectly capable of working in firefighting, the military or police. I've personally seen a female police officer of barely 1.60m throw a drunk 2m Russian dude on a rampage in a bar fight onto the ground and tie him up alone, about a solid third of the volunteer force in my THW unit are women, a good friend of mine is a trained volunteer firefighter at about the same height as the police officer, and the IDF has women in active fighting roles since the 70s, and fully equal to males since 2000 - and look where the IDF is, they are without question the top dog in the MENA region, despite all the cries about women threatening the fighting capability.
"DEI" means opening up the gates for everyone on actual merit. For women, it can sometimes mean having to rely more on skill than on brute strength (as in my first example), but in the end it doesn't matter much.