Wouldn’t you know it? Defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s grilling by the Senate Armed Services Committee about his opposition to women in combat would have to come the very week that Los Angeles’ all-female leadership team was performing so masterfully at subduing wildfires. The way things are going, the fires should be out by Memorial Day.

Between the gals who just let about a third of L.A. go up in smoke and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the 5-foot-tall “combat veteran,” Hegseth had his work cut out for him. (Adding to his difficulty, women didn’t want Pete to solve this problem for them, they just wanted him to listen.)

As Ernst could have explained to Hegseth, it’s one thing to acknowledge the blinding fact that females don’t stand a chance against males in tennis, soccer, running, throwing, swimming, discus throwing, pole vaulting, etc. But that has NOTHING to do with women’s abilities when it comes to trivial things like policing, fire-fighting and waging war. (To prove it, Ernst wears Army fatigue high heels!)

More than 100 women athletes — including Martina Navratilova, one of the greatest tennis players of all time — submitted a brief to the Supreme Court last year that cited study after study after study establishing beyond cavil that human males have significantly more muscle mass, strength, spacial awareness and protection from stress fractures compared to women. (Among other things.)

E.g.:

— “On average women have 50% to 60% of men’s upper arm muscle … 65% to 75% of men’s thigh muscle … 50% to 60% of men’s upper limb strength and 60% to 80% of men’s leg strength,” the brief noted.

— “The athletic advantages conferred by men’s larger and stronger bones includes ‘greater leverage for muscular limb power exerted in jumping, throwing, or other explosive power activities’ and greater male protection from stress fractures.”

— “[O]n average men are 7% to 8% taller with longer, denser, and stronger bones.”

— “There is a clear sex difference in both muscle mass and strength even adjusting for sex differences in height and weight.”

— “The gender gap has not evolved since 1983.”

If that doesn’t convince them, we’re forcing the court to watch a video of the FC Dallas under-15 boys squad beating the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team in 2017.

This is to say nothing of the mental and psychological differences between the sexes, detailed in Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate.” Illustrating the male propensity for violence, Pinker cites the case of a surgeon and anesthesiologist who came to blows in the operating room, while the patient lay on the table waiting for her gall bladder to be removed.

But you must erase all of that from your memory when the subject is parachuting into enemy territory to clear terrorist cells; engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a 300-pound psycho in a public housing crack den; or lugging 75 pounds of gear to a raging fire, then carrying a full-grown man out of a burning building.

Reality must not be allowed to intrude on feminist fantasies about girl cops, girl firemen and girl soldiers.

“Stonewall” Ernst, for example, is a combat veteran for bravely driving trucks back and forth from Kuwait to Iraq for three or four months, during the 2003 hostilities, without ever having to parallel park. She never encountered resistance, much less an enemy combatant, except one day when some Iraqi boys laid down on the road in front of her vehicle. Thanks to Ernst’s quick reflexes and steely resolve, she vanquished the rapscallions by proceeding to drive slowly, forcing the guys to roll out of her way.

Based on Ernst’s combat medal for that feat of derring-do, I’m submitting the names of the male park rangers who crashed through a climate activist protest at Burning Man last year for the following awards: Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star and Purple Heart. Also military pensions, early boarding on all commercial flights and a lifetime of people saying, “Thank you for your service.”

Someone said — I can’t find the quote and neither can Grok — that the final aim of the totalitarian is to force people to humiliate themselves by affirming as true what they know to be false.

Anyone passingly familiar with Lia Thomas, Imane Khelif, Riley Gaines, Martina Navratilova or dozens of other athletes, but who nonetheless claims to support women in the military, on police forces or in fire departments, has been fully subjugated. He’s lying and knows he’s lying.

If this lunacy prevails, Pete may have to invoke the nuclear option and announce that he’s a lesbian.

COPYRIGHT 2025 ANN COULTER