Can we talk?

Just as black people surely winced as the face of the bozo who thought shooting three people in a courtroom would help make his argument was shown all over the country, I winced when it was delicately made known that the deputy he overpowered to get the gun was a woman. A petite woman. And the usual suspects wagged fingers and moaned about "political correctness." Meaning, of course, that women cannot possibly, in any circumstances, be deputies that have to be able to deal with big bad dangerous men.

Not that I'm a fan of political correctness or anything, but I disagree with the diagnosis. I think it is a terminal case of intellectual and moral laziness. Nobody had the spine to say, "Deputies have to deal with big strong criminals who might not behave themselves, so they should be able to fight, oh, someone who weighs 250 lbs, 6' 4'' height, and able to bench at least 200 lbs." There are some little women who can do this, by the way. Size, gender, weight are only general guidelines. You can exclude someone who can actually do the job if you take the lazy way and just look it up on a chart, instead of finding out the truth. (There are some men who look big and strong, but can't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. Exclude them too, please.)

So yeah, if a woman can't perform the task, don't hire her. How dumb do you have to be? But the flip side is -- if she CAN do it, don't tell her to go home and learn to knit.