“You’re 6’4”, 240-pound Marine, and you’re injured, and you need a Marine next to you to carry you back to safety, and the Marine next to you is a 5’4" woman who weighs 115 pounds,“
No problem.
in before “well most women can’t do that” because NEWS FLASH most men can’t either, that’s why it’s a highly specialized career that requires a lot of devoted training
One of my former coworkers was a very slim girl only a tad taller than me, and she was training to be a fireman, and she could lift the biggest dude on my crew like this who was around 6’5 and super bulky.One time she picked him up and ran around the crew room with him for about 5 minutes before letting him down.
Even though I haven’t exercised in over a year—if you count DDR—and I’m incredibly petite (5’0”, 100 lbs), I can carry most guys. If they’re under 200 lbs, I can run with them on my back for 5 blocks, but I can walk for a mile. Once they’re about 250, I can only walk about a block or two before my spine feels like it’s about to break. If I were in a survival situation and their life depended on it, I could go on much further, until my legs gave out.
It’s why I hate the bullshit that women are inherently weak. Nah, man. Nah.
Tangentially related to the blog’s theme, but I see the "women are too weak to handle the normal armor” comment come up often enough that it made it into the Female Armor Rhetoric Bingo.
So yeah, for the record: women are not significantly weaker than men. Especially if we talk about people with lots of training in terms of fighting and/or saving lives. Especially especially if we consider that there are techniques and moves, like this one, specifically designed for smaller people to handle some heavy weight.
And that’s all said while we ignore that most armors are not as heavy as common myth lets us believe!
~Ozzie