Neutered: Radical Feminism Hits the Military
Men and women are different, plain and simple. No matter how society tries to obscure our differences, we can’t change the fact that we are different.
It’s time for America to embrace rather than challenge this obvious truth. The Pentagon does not, which is why they announced last month that women could now serve in active combat.
But can you blame the Pentagon? Society is trying to propel the fallacy that men and women are one in the same, only to be distinguished by their reproductive organs. You can observe this fanatic attempt to blur gender-distinguishing qualities in everything: from award shows, where Hollywood is now trying to ban gender-based awards; to literature, where books like The Dangerous Book for Boys are deemed sexist for suggesting a certain realm of facts are more pivotal for one gender; all the way to our military.
But as feminists push their radical agenda on all realms of society, they neglect to take into account the differences between our genders. In an article called “Get Over It! We Are Not All Created Equal,” Captain Katie Petronio writes:
As a combat-experienced Marine officer, and a female, I am here to tell you that we are not all created equal, and attempting to place females in the infantry will not improve the Marine Corps as the Nation’s force-in-readiness or improve our national security.
Petronio recognizes something that feminists do not — men are more equipped for the physical exertion that combat entails. I hate to state the obvious, but men have larger muscle mass and greater lung capacity. They have stronger bones, tendons, and ligaments. They are taller and bigger on average. And they’re better at sports that demand powerful bursts of energy.
When male Olympians line up to run the 1500, there’s a reason that there are no women beside them; the male gold medalist ran the 1500 in 3 minutes, 34 seconds, while the female gold medalist had a time of 4 minutes, 10 seconds. Women simply cannot compete at the level of men because men are stronger and faster.
Petronio reported that in Officer Candidate School (OCS) in 2011, women had an attrition rate of 40 percent, compared to the male rate of 16 percent. In cases like this where females cannot keep up with males, the inevitable lowering of standards quickly follows. We’ve already seen this happen in our military academies. The Candidate Fitness Assessment (CFA) for the United States Military, Air Force, Naval, and Merchant Marine academies mandates that men demonstrate their ability to do pull-ups. Women, however, are welcome to merely hang on the bar as “an alternative measure of muscular strength and endurance for women who are unable to execute one correct cadence pull-up.” Only three months ago did the Marine Corps change this requirement; they still mandate more capacity for the men. We would be naïve to think the same lowering of standards will not happen in our combat forces.
Says Fort Bliss Staff Sergeant Kevin Denis:
If I’m going to get evacuated and someone’s going to pull me out of a combat situation where I’m injured and something’s going down, I don’t want to be left there by someone who can’t pick me up and move me.
If women were no different than men for military service, then why:
1. Are they permitted different grooming standards, such as having longer hair, makeup, and earrings?
2. Have different height/weight standards?
3. In all services they have different physical fitness standards?
4. Can get out of the service if pregnant, but males cannot if their spouse is pregnant?
5. Why do women need equal opportunity/sexual harassment protection if they are truly equal?
It seems that all but the most “Butch” feminists want their cake and eat it, too.
Great questions, Doug
So dig,
If women were no different than men for military service, then why:
1. Are they permitted different grooming standards, such as having longer hair, makeup, and earrings?
All the services have different standards for men alone, this had nothing to do with equality.
2. Have different height/weight standards?
All the services have different standards for men alone, this had nothing to do with equality.
3. In all services they have different physical fitness standards?
All the services have different standards for men alone, this had nothing to do with equality.
4. Can get out of the service if pregnant, but males cannot if their spouse is pregnant?
If your spouse is pregnant, you can still only be pregnant if you are female,this had nothing to do with equality.
5. Why do women need equal opportunity/sexual harassment protection if they are truly equal?
Equal opportunity applies to everyone not just women and has nothing to do with equality.
It seems that all but the most “Butch” feminists want their cake and eat it, too.
Everyone can eat cake.
Remember, in the Navy a recruit has to swim in the Air force all they have to do is find their feet.
Feminism now is selling the idea that it is all about relationships and that education, through a holistic 3 new Rs push, can be used to restructure society. They are calling it a Caring Economics and Riane Eisler, Desmond Tutu, Gloria Steinem, Jane Goodall, and Deepak Chopra are all pushing this. They insist we can use education to transform “the psychological and social relations in all spheres of life.” http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/rigor-relevance-and-relationships-the-new-3rs-to-get-to-a-caring-economics/
There is a stated intention to remake all our social institutions and that includes the military. Education is merely the vehicle because virtually everyone passes through for much of their waking day during the years their mind, values, and personalities are most malleable.
I don’t just read excerpts of these “How we plan to social engineer a different future” books. I usually read cover to cover to make sure I can accurately describe intentions and means. To a stunning degree we are dealing with people who have spent their adult lives living at taxpayer or foundation expense or both. They really have no idea what makes the world work off campus or outside of conferences. They naively or conveniently believe we can social engineer different kinds of people where war will be unnecessary.
One of the social and emotional programs being used on elementary schoolchildren, all of them not ones with problems, is actually called PATHS to PAX. Paths to Peace. It’s part of the mental health first-aid push post-Newtown even though it was in use before that as a values and personality positive psychology curriculum. PATHS stands for Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies. It’s more than 20 years of being piloted in urban school districts. Pity the children so used for research.
These fools think they can create the future they envision. Combat was just one of the final obstacles.
I was in the Army back when we WACs were trained separately from the men in basic training,when everyone in the military recognized that the sexes ARE different and that women simply are physically incapable of matching men for speed and sheer strength. So they pushed us women,physically, HARD,and we got faster and stronger,but the men were pushed hard,too, and they remained much stronger and faster than we were.
I predict that this integration of women into combat will lead to a DECLINE in military readiness,but I think that the radical Leftist feminists WANT that. I suppose that for THEM, our having the most powerful, but overwhelmingly MALE, armed forces on earth has been sickening for them to contemplate. So more women will have combat jobs (by happy coincidence, the lesbians and male homosexuals were legalized a few weeks ago),and now we will have all these happy people getting on SWIMMINGLY in the front lines. Tragically, yer average woman and homosexual is unlikely to have any prior experience with handling a gun or other military hardware. We will wind up with the most “diverse” military ever to get CREAMED in battle, and there will be multitudes of little children crying because their MOTHERS died in battle.
I may be wrong, but I doubt it.
Too bad so many radical feminists’ mothers DIDN’T choose abortion.
Worse, I can envision the following: we do fully integrate the military, double standards and all. All problems that crop up do to this will be glossed over and minimized.
And then, as is inevitable in history, we will again find ourselves in combat. And we will have our asses handed to us on a platter.
Which is when the search for scapegoats will begin. It will never be that perhaps integration as such is a really foolish idea; no. We will hear about “poor training,” or a “failure to fully integrate,” and even, “the fault of the military leaders.” It will never be otherwise. Heads will roll as Officers are sacked for having been handed a truly impossible task and predictably failed to make it work.
After all, this is already how it’s played. We’ve seen it in the “Climate Change” debates, haven’t we? Counter-opinions are dismissed as the commentator is “working for big oil,” or is “a Right-Wing anti-science type.” Endless excuses, no real analysis.
This will not go well for us.
You’re right about that.
How will the left respond when a female combatant is captured and get beheaded on video?
There is a sniper tactic of wounding a soldier then using him as bait to shoot other soldiers trying to rescue them. Suppose this happens to a female soldier? Not only will the men have that natural impulse to save her, but there will likely be video of the event. Imagine the effect that would have. Then would come the accusations that the male soldiers didn’t rush right in or try harder and faster. In the mean time, the other soldiers get shot up, pulled into other ambushes, etc. Lastly, suppose the troops leave her. Maybe they just can’t get her or maybe it is indeed cowardice, either way, it won’t fly well in the military hierarchy or the press.
Here’s a simple idea that can put an end to this lunacy. I read where it will be an option for women to join a combat unit. But it’s not an option for men. Let’s just make it truly equal and take away that option for women – treat them the same as the men. That simple change will have a far reaching effect on women in the military.
Make them have to sign up for selective service when they turn 18, as well. That ought to shut them up!
Absolutely. Since some feminist elitist faction has decided the readiness of the armed forces must be compromised to make a poorly conceived point … Selective Service enrollment for both sexes must be mandatory.
The wise learn from the mistakes of others, but the fool is determined to learn from her own mistakes.
I recall a much hyped throughbred horse race between a male and a female. The filly so damaged herself trying to keep up that she was put in a horse trailer, right on the track, and put down. Food for thought.
I can think of an even better many years ago which if memory serves was on Wide World of Sports when feminists were just really rearing their nasty heads back in the 70s.
They put a world champion, high degree black belt female in the ring to spar with a brown-belt male in one of the martial arts. There was a substantial weight difference, the male being somewhat larger.
After the female danced around a minute and threw some really pretty kicks, the man blasted the woman, literally bouncing her of the mat. They carried her out on a stretcher and the party was over, pretty much hushed up and to the best of my knowledge, never attempted again.
I’ve tried looking for that on YouTube as example for the misandrists of what awaits and can’t find it.
Kayla Harrison was the first American to win an Olympic Gold Medal in Judo. From what I’ve heard, she totally dominated her division, 78 kg. That said, I think she’d be among the first to admit that she’d probably be outclassed by the male champions of the 73 kg. division (Mansur Isaev, Russia), the 66 kg. division (Lasha Shavolatuashvili, Georgia), and even of the 60 kg. division (Arsen Galystan, Russia).
I remember an interview of tennis superstar Martina Navrotilova, back in her heyday. She was head-and-shoulders better than the rest of the women’s tennis circuit. She was asked about her training partner, a male pro ranked 90-something on the men’s tour. The journalist asked her if he ever made a good showing against her. She replied, matter-of-factly, that he beats her consistently.
In the mid-90′s when in the AF I was fortunate to attend ‘Survival School’. The destination’s were Pensacola, Florida for water survival courses and Spokane, Washington. The Cascade Mountains practicing evasive actions/ POW tactics.
When in the Cascades our group had a great deal of snow, accompanying the already deep snow pack. In 1 instance, with 1 MRE to last each of us on a 3 + day trek while carrying our gear, we eventually needed to capture squirrels, rabbits and foxes for subsidence.
The 3 females in our group, 2 of whom were officers were behind me the entire trek. Whereas they were asking, pleading, begging, crying etc., for us to carry their pack for them for they were ‘tired’. Thankfully NO ONE carried their gear.
Our group had to set up camp, rest early, often for these 2 officers. We’d been exposed to the elements 20+ hours than scheduled for this example of ‘equality’.
I feel for the Army, USMC personnel who now endure ‘Sensitivity Training’ (whereas MORE of this ‘training’ will be created – pushed) in the M E and other hotspots. What a sickening nanny state were further becoming.
God help ‘em.
My experiences in the Army match yours. Shame those OERs never left brigade– not that the poltical class would care.
“What a sickening nanny state were further becoming.”
Think of the future of drafting and sending young mothers to war. A country that morally perverse isn’t going to be around long.
If you were at Pensie for that, you were at Camp James E. Rudder.
Old times…
Hi Allston, thank you for your service.
With Army not having a weather unit I was TDY with Army folk a great deal.
I believe it was Camp Rudder.. ~ 20 years ago. Wow, time flies.
I also went to Hurlburt Field for ‘Combat Lightning’ – TWICE!
Good times.
~ Cheers
I may be the only PJM regular rooting for these political correctness run amock types to put those “combat women” right up there on the front line in the heat of the battle. Matter of fact, let Dear Leader Obama give the go ahead since these gals love him so.
I’ve grown weary of the abject stupidity and have decided these gender neutral types, misandrists by another name, are irrational, unreasonable and unteachable.
Let them learn the hard way. When we discover they’ve been raped and tortured before being butchered, I will hold no special sympathy.
It just won’t be my wife or daughters doing the fighting. Fortunately, my women believe the suggestion just as stupid as I do, but then they like men.
The problem with your suggestion is that it’s likely to get a lot of men killed, not just women.
The problem is not my suggestion. The problem is the people implementing this stupidity. Point the fingers at the right people like Dear Leader Obama for the probable deaths of the men because I’m adamantly opposed to the entire idea of women in combat period.
Then simply send an entire female fighting force if my suggestion troubles you. On second thought, I like this idea better.
How many soldiers are already being killed by forcing our military to train people that hate us?
I would have already told Hamid Karzai the next marine that is shot by one of your flunkies in training, you’re going to be standing with those who are going to pay with Afghan blood and the retribution will be both numerous and brutal.
I like the idea of a female only regiment. Rush Limbaugh suggested years ago. Make sure all the women have their monthly cycles spread across the month which would make the enemy run and hide. I don’t remember exactly what he called this, but you have to admit it has it’s advantages.
Just gay men.
Larry J — It’s not just likely … it is certain. That’s the tragedy.
Who is pushing it?
Cloward-Pliven stategy to move the country toward chaos with an unready and incompetent military, of course.
The day then arrives where the hoi polloi clamor for ANYONE to take command just to stop the chaos.
You thought Hitler was bad? Wait for the American Pol Pot to take over.
UNuseful idiots!!!
I think it is also to pack the military with Party Loyalists by driving the opposition out via the social engineering. As in most of the Third World today, the military doesn’t really exist to fight wars but to repress the citizens who dare question Dear Leader. it won’t matter if the military gets worn down that it couldn’t fight a real enemy so long as it is full of loyalists who will mow down protesters with a remote controlled gun on top of their armored vehicle like it was a video game or shoot missiles into houses and churches from an orbiting drone. That and looking pretty while marching in parades is all that will be needed.
Our combat military men are exactly that. Real MEN. Where are the real men among the political class? Imagine a Mitch McConnell or a John Boehner stepping to the microphone and looking straight at the TV camera and saying in a firm tone “I think that this notion of putting females into frontline combat roles is the stupidest idea I have ever experienced”. Then go on to tell the first
metrosexual male or female “journalist” that questions that remark to volunteer herself or his/her daughter for combat. But then, the McConnells and Boehners quit being real men a long time ago. So that will never happen.
Think of this, those of you out there in fly-over country, it is your off-spring whose lives are being messed with via this insane social engineering. Not the sons and daughters of the elites in the media or politics. They are much too busy building their careers and social status to ever stoop so low as to serve in the military. One more shining example that we are simply a part of the collective to be worked, milked, screwed with, regulated, and experimented upon in the minds of our “betters“.
If the North had been delusionally politically correct, and the South not, we would’ve lost the Civil War. The Left is a suicide cult and it continues to march itself, and America, over a cliff.
What next – women in the NFL? Well, the can smooth that one over by having quotas for all the teams, in order to spread the diversity of failure out more evenly – like jam over moldy bread. But at some point you have to eat and digest that bread.
Meanwhile let’s work to get those prison populations evened out. Women must be getting away with tons of crime according to those who smell anachronisms in our culture. They’re smelling mold all right, the mold gathering about the corpse of a once bright and successful culture. Enjoy the sandwich.
It is my understanding that in Israel women serve in combat units and are also pilots. I don’t think it’s matter of radical feminism for them.
I’m not advocating women in combat, just pointing out that it’s not a new idea that is just occurring here in the U.S.
Israel is, and always was, fighting for survival. When the Wehrmacht pushed up on Moscow, Stalingrad and Leningrad the soviets did enlist women in their ranks, but sparingly few. Spring of 45′ in Berlin the Germans had boys as young as 12 in the ranks. My point is that a nation fighting for survival, as in losing means liquidation, will issue a weapon into any hands that are willing to carry them. Extraordinary circumstances would require that.
A country of 300 million who cannot find enough men to pull weight in the military and serve is beyond pathetic.
Martin van Creveld, the Israeli military historian, has been pretty scathing about the history of women in combat. From what I understand, they haven’t been in front line service in Israel for over fifty years; I saw plenty of female soldiers when I was in Israel, but how many do you see on TV when Israel is actually fighting?
Captain Katie Petronio, USMC, is cited as being against women in combat. I agree with her position, by the way. Then we have retired USAF Colonel, Martha McSally, who is all for it. McSally gives every indication of being a radical feminist. Sitting in the cockpit of her A-10, McSally never was subjected to the rigors of ground combat. Yet she advocates it.
Wasn’t she the one who was courts martialed and booted out for adultery?
Ms. McSally doesn’t appear to be anything but legit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_McSally
Nahhh…. you are thinking of Kelly Flinn, USAF, B-52 pilot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Flinn_incident
This thing stunk to high heaven. Flinn should have been given a dishonorable discharge and sent to Leavenworth for multiple violation of the UCMJ… but was saved from that by daa daa DAAAAAA…. a woman. And, of course, the liberal media.
Back during the hey-days of SAC, you had to be at least a Maj. to be an A/C on a B-52 combat crew. And you could be taken off that combat crew if the wing CO judged your home life or personal life to be less than ideal. How times have changed. And not for the better.
They didn’t nickname it the “Chair Force” for nothin’
The plane is effectively an equalizer; women who make fine fighter pilots do suffer the same kind of physical and mental strain as they would on the ground. Of the two of them, I’m more willing to take the word of the one who’s been on the ground and suffered the consequences of it.
Ladies! Welcome to the Infantry! We know you’ve experienced combat as pilots, military police, truck drivers and many other non-combat arms soldiers have been subject to enemy fire. What you have not done is live and fight in the field for sustained periods of time humping a combat load of 75 pounds or more including ruck sack, ammunition, water, food, weapon, helmet, body armor day in and day out for weeks at a time. There are no showers, no privacy, no clean clothes, only dirt, sweat, and the constant threat of close combat with a brutal, unforgiving enemy. Infantry combat is not like a video game – as Prince Harry said describing his war in the cock-pit of an AH-64 attack helicopter. It’s not like serving as a gunner on VIP vehicle or flying a high performance jet aircraft. Your home is in the field, living with what you can carry on your back in the heat, cold, mud, dust, snow, and rain. Take a look at videos of Marine and Army Infantry in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. While you are at it watch The Vietnam War in HD. Pay attention to the grunts. Sustained Infantry combat operations are very tough physically and mentally. Many men can’t hack it and virtually all women are not physically capable of combat service in the Infantry. There is a reason why there are no female players in the NFL and women do not complete against men in the Olympics. For the few that meet the same standards required of men, congratulations. However, if standards are lowered, the butcher’s bill will inevitably come due in Infantry combat. Be careful what you wish for.
The standard combat load in Afghanistan is 117 lbs., rising to 185 at times.
There are many different roles in “combat” situations. I was MOS 2831, microwave radio repairman in the Marine Corps. Doesn’t sound like a job where you would be shot at but I was still given basic infantry and marksmanship training before I went to my specialty school. In Vietnam, tech were just as likely to be sent out to front line outfits to set up comm. for the grunts as the operators. It was also not unusual for us to be grabbed for patrol duty along with the grunts. We didn’t have as much actual grunt training as the real grunts but most of us had more experience in country and could handle ourselves in a pinch.
My point is, a woman could have handled my job as well as I could. She would be preforming a vital job while freeing up a man to go get himself shot at. There are many jobs like mine where those doing them are not required to be as strong or fast as the frontline troops but are still vitally important and risky. Train a woman to her best physical condition, give her the basics of infantry training and teach her how to work a firearm so she wouldn’t be completely lost if push comes to shove then let her fill the jobs needed to keep a fighting force going. Open up the jobs that are dangerous but not as deadly. Let the men handle the grunt work but let the women do all they can too. I think that’s all they are asking for. Sorta like the women run the households but the men kill the spiders!
Someone mentioned earlier about being a WASP and I congratulate her. What if the flight of bombers coming into Hawaii on Dec. 7th, 1941 had been flown by WASPs? That was their job back then. Would it have made any difference? Women make great pilots, whether it’s fixed wing or rotary. Let them fly combat missions. Sure, there’s a chance they would be shot down but there is always a chance a rear area could be attacked. Many doctors and nurses wound up as prisoners in WWII. Agreed, I probably wouldn’t want a woman humping through the bush beside me but I wouldn’t mind one flying cover overhead or even aiming and firing the cannon that is hitting the enemy ahead of me.
Excellent piece. God help America. The weakening of the rising generations continue.
The Pentagon is an institution. Institutions are for transforming. So transform the Pentagon. As with so much else in the world of transformational politics there will be collateral damage. Although collateral damage is looking more and more intentional as the years go by. The Pentagon is the Grand Prize for the left — disproportionately religious, disciplined, informed, meritocratic for the most part (think of all those company commanders in Iraq who were replaced for not performing). Things the left hates. Their institutions are increasingly corrupt, dysfunctional, affirmative action-debilitated. Worst case scenario, the late great City of Detroit. Someone above said let them learn the hard way. That’s the problem: they’re not the ones who learn or have to live the hard way that results from pie-in-the-sky policies. The Pentagon will merely be eviscerated like our schools and colleges. The left never learns any way in any fashion. They float above the disasters while the rest of us pick our way through the debris field. The president is exhibit no. one. He’ll never be held to account as in his post-presidential years he collects seven figure fees and book advances for his mindless prattle about fairness.
I was once a Platoon Commander and had a mixed platoon, mostly infantrymen but a few communicators, some of whom were female. Was just the way it was, so I tried to treat everybody the same (of course I knew that some of the men were actively assisting the women, for various reasons, otherwise much of what needed to be done wouldn’t get accomplished; a different story). I was deployed in a situation which required me to have the platoon prepare fortified positions with extensive camouflage as well as sound and noise discipline. One night, I had one of the females out on an OP (Observation Post), as every night I maintained 2 OPs for security. Along about 3 in the morning, I was jarred awake by the not-so-distant sound of yapping and barking coyotes. My sound-powered phone then rang (quietly) and it was the female on the OP. She was all panicky, stating she had a bunch of animals, possibly wild dogs or maybe wolves, sniffing all around her position and it was scaring her, but she was shining her flashlight at them and they were staying away (the eye relfections were apparently also real scary to her). I told her to calm down as none of them had yet attacked her and that I would send out an immeidate relief. I then asked her, as gently as possible, if it was her time of the moon and had it just commenced? There was a notable pause before she answered, very stiffly, that it might be but why was that important. I replied that it was the likely reason the coyotes were besieging her OP.
She was duly replaced and escorted back into the lines. Later in the day I had to detail a vehicle and several personnel to evacuate her from the field so she could shower, wash her clothes and take car of her feminine issues. She was absent until the following day, which was fortunate for me and the platoon, as that very night our position was probed by bad guys who heavily outgunned us. It was only our camouflage and discipline which allowed us to escape without casualties, likely a few fatalities at least. I have always wondered what would have happened had the coyote incident occurred on the following night, which would have tactical compromised my position.
I can envision several tactical situations in which this unavoidable feminine event can get troops killed in the field. My question to the female equality advocates is how to overcome that issue, to which I either get no answer, they just get angry and assualt without logic but much invective, or the discussion turns towards drug regimes or radical hysterectomies and the like (weird and scary).
Lots more stories but this one is good enough.
Please, any feminist trolls out there, please tell me how I can overcome this basic gender-specific “inequality” between men and women? How can I legislate this into equality?
Semper Fidelis,
Webfoot Warrior
Oh, good grief…. I know back during the VN war the US was using ‘people sniffer’ devices (which were dropped along the Ho Chi Minh trail) which were used to detect the presence of human urine and … well, other scents. I can see it now, our enemy developing menstrual sniffer devices and computing the ratio of male combat personnel to female combat personnel. Somebody tell me, do I cry or just laugh myself silly.
Numerous good, solid, and acutely insightful points here and I’d like to add my thoughts about the specifically military issues. But first, I would share this story and the thoughts about it: As many may know, in Boston on Saturday night last, an out-of-state bus-driver ran a bus with almost 40 high-school students and chaperones into a well-marked low (10 or 11 foot) clearance overpass-bridge, critically injuring at least one and creating a mass-casualty parkway incident that tied the city up in knots.
As it turns out, that bridge is slated for refurbishing in the 2014 fiscal year. Today there is a view-halloo to get the bridge ‘raised’. Claims are that it is utterly foolish to expect drivers to notice so old-fashioned a thing (I’d call it a ‘reality’) as a low-clearance bridge. Sensitive souls point out the number of college students and out-of-area truck drivers who mash up the tops of their moving vehicles – (as if they were victimized by the bridge or the State). A State legislator – apparently a quadriplegic – tosses in that when he’s out driving in his large specially-equipped van (it’s over 10 feet high?) he frequently finds himself in the so-very-difficult situation of having to back-up and back-off a roadway thus encumbered.
The point is raised by the engineers that it won’t simply work if you raise the bridge. You will then also have to raise the approaches to the bridge from the roadways at both ends. This seems not to have occurred to the sensitive and victim-friendly mavens of Correctness and – I think – to them it smacks of ‘thinking too much’ or not being ‘creative’ and ‘transgressively fresh’ in their thinking.
My point: the PC ‘terraforming’ school of thought (to the extent it can be called ‘thought’) is and always has been doubly out of touch with reality. First, it presumes that there is no such thing as an objective and free-standing ‘real’ reality; there is only ‘socially-constructed’ ‘reality’ comprised of assorted perceptions and thus all you have to do to ‘change reality’ is to ‘change perceptions’. (Thus too, ominously, politics is no longer a matter of addressing realities effectively, but merely of manipulating perceptions successfully.)
Second, this school bears all the hallmarks of the era in which it first gained purchase in this country (not by the compelling force of its conceptual coherence and accuracy, but merely by the political gains envisioned by the Beltway pols who indentured the Beltway to it). That is to say, the blithe, callow, smug and almost witless presumptions that ‘America’ could do it all because it had the power and the money to make ‘reality’ do whatever it wanted done. (Think of LBJ and the Titanic Texan’s insistence that successfully pursuing both Vietnam and the Great Society were doable-do’s because we had the money and the brains. As Eisenhower might have responded: Yah.)
Thus nowadays we can a) change ‘reality’ because b) we have the money and the brains and so c) if anybody has any doubts or points out any larger consequences and difficulties then d) those doubters and hesitators are merely ‘back-lashing’ and nothing more.
We have had almost half-a-century of this claptrap now. Vietnam ended badly; the Great Society clearly failed and at costs still not fully appreciated; and – when radical-feminism came along after LBJ’s tenure – their introduction of the philosophical stylings of Marx and Lenin as channeled through Gramsci and the Eurocommunists and ‘small-‘c’-communism’, which was all necessary to create the ‘philosophical’ justification for the extended and profound ‘creative deconstruction’ of American culture and its core principles that was itself necessary to achieve in order to make ‘space’ for their dampdreams and visions … then the whole whacky and frakky thing just kicked into an overdrive that has only served to propel us over a cliff with just enough speed to make it seem – for a while longer yet – that we are flying, freeeeeee like a big glorious bird.
Yah.
To make the best of it, the military should require the females to have twice the rifle practice the males receive. The extra time would be in slow-fire at 10 meters indoors with accurate spring-air .177 rifles. It is cheaper and keeps wear off the M16s and the equipment difference is not important as it is to train the eye and the finger. No military (except the 1909-August 1914 British) gives troops enough range time to be able to shoot well enough to measure up to the accuracy of their rifles. While females will come short in physical demands, that can be countered by ability to hit things.
Again, if common sense hadn’t been thrown out the window, this conversation wouldn’t even be taking place. Oh are we in the West way over due for a reality check.
In my previous comment above, I mentioned the ‘social constructionist’ way of thinking: that there is no reality and there are no realities; rather there are only ‘perceptions’ – and so all you need to do is to ‘change perceptions’ and you’ve changed reality (a-n-d as an added benny, you have changed it without any ill consequences).
At this p0int, female performance in the military is highly fraught if for no other reason than it is impossible to accurately determine the quality of that performance in the first place. Because for decades now ‘facts’ have been officially presumed to be merely ‘perceptions’ that could be ‘changed’ by whatever necessary jiggling of reports (official and media) with the government’s heavy thumb on the standards of assessment and its gimlet eye over the shoulder of those of its employees ordered to make the assessments.
Some may recall that in the Gulf War naval practice was ordered that records were not to be kept as to the number of sudden pregnancies that arose as it became clear that naval units would be heading to a war-zone. Nor were commanding officers allowed to apply for replacements (which would provide indirect evidence of losses due to pregnancies and perhaps prompt speculation as to how and why such pregnancies were suddenly incurred). All of which consequences, by amazing coincidence, are currently operative in efforts to deal-with ‘sex assaults’: allegants may be transferred out of units without adverse notations on their records (creating serious problems of combat efficiency and morale for unit commanders); the increasingly broadly-defined instances of ‘abuse’ are to be presumed credible or else it will ‘reflect’ poorly upon the unit-commander; and – up until the Constitutional consequences of its legislative chicanery were exposed – Congress had even reversed for military law the utterly fundamental American legal principle of ‘presumption of innocence’ in sexual-assault cases.
In addition to points raised in comments on this article, the logistical complications and requirements necessary to support females in the field are a subject yet to receive much attention. And some may recall a few years ago a ‘New York Times’ photo of a burly black male US soldier getting ready to receive a pedicure in a military salon whose client-chairs were largely occupied by military females (perhaps justified as a means of ‘stress reduction’ or some such) – raising if nothing else command concerns about the lethal consequences of how non-European males contemplating possible engagement with US troops might interpret this vivid photo as proof-positive that US troops were not as formidable as the Pentagon might prefer the perception of them to be.
In much of the lead-up to all this twenty and more years ago, losses in US ‘military operational efficiency’ were considered by radical-feminism (and especially its Sapphic supporters inside the military and in government bureaucracy and political employment) to be ‘acceptable’; the number of 20 or 30 percent reduction was thrown around with that what-difference-does-it-make callowness that is still clearly with us. After all, the monster Soviet military had now ‘gone away’ and computers and all sorts of whizz-bang technology would now ‘equalize’ the tasks of a military increasingly seen as primarily an arena for ‘altering national perceptions’ and providing status and employment opportunities for ‘women’ (especially vital nowadays as the economy has – by sad coincidence – collapsed and job opportunities for glitzy, high-paying non-physical jobs have greatly diminished … unless the government steps in to take up the slack and fulfill such expectations among an entire generation that has now grown up and been ‘educated’ without any awareness of these complications or perhaps without much awareness of the concepts of complications and consequences in the first place).
If nothing else – and I believe at least one other commenter here has suggested it – there should be gender-separate units. This will at a single stroke almost completely eliminate the stunning distractions consequent upon the military sexual-assault brouhaha. And it will offer an opportunity to gauge more accurately and clearly the level of capabilities and competencies that can reasonably be expected of females in the combat setting.
Such a proposal seems to be utterly off-the-table in most official and media discourse about this general topic (and one would do well to wonder why that is so). But I can’t see how the military can remain (or regain some level of) operational-effectiveness unless something is done. That this will require coming to grips with ‘reality’ instead of simply trying to do the play-dough thing with ‘perceptions’ is not going to be good news for a Beltway that is now so fundamentally averse to ‘reality’, but there it is.
Well’ as long as the enemy takes into account the reduced standards in the name of equality we should be ok
Well, all I can say is that it fits perfectly into the Antonio Gramsci’s approach to conquer by destroying the prevailing culture.
@publion and Webfoot: I retired as a Navy Master Chief ET in ’75, just ’bout the time all this silliness was beginning. I worked mainly above the main deck and could get off a sinking ship (assuming that the superstructure hadn’t been blown to bits with me in it). My son, who was a nuclear-power ET in the cruiser Long Beach, worked about four decks down. A recurring though of his was, suppose I get wounded, and the ship is going down, what female of the opposite shape is going to be able to hoist me up four steep ladders to the main deck? ‘Course, neither of us dwelt on this — it’s the OTHER guy’s ship that’ll sink. (yepper…)
I can’t imagine the fun of being a leading chief with 100 or so ETs on a bird-farm and a major job is keeping the girls and boys apart.
Another small thunk. Why would a woman WANT to go get shot at when the role has been masculine for centuries?
Just askin’…
Most don’t. They just want the promotion. This is all being pushed by politicians trying to court a vote from a certain demographic. It’s like listening to the abortion argument. Many women will regurgitate the common line that THEY would never have an abortion, but they support a woman’s right to have one. It’s the same thing. THEY would never want to go into combat, but they want women to fill those roles out of some misplaced sense of female solidarity. The kind of disturbing, hyper-emotional group think I watch every time I see some Susan G. Koman commercial.
Responding to ‘Panda’: I recall reading a ‘Navy Times’ puff-piece in which the reporter ‘proactively’ asked a pert young Valley-Girl type ‘sailor’ how she would get an unconscious male sailor out of a below-decks compartment in a compromised vessel – because there were questions among Navy personnel about whether a female would have the physical strength to lift such a (vital) load. Her pert and perky response was (I’m working from memory here): “It’s true I couldn’t lift him but I sure would think up with a way to get him out!” The idea here – back in that gut-wrenching era of PC dreck – being that females could ‘think’ more than males, and – but of course – the NEW MODEL MODERN NAVY needed ‘thinkers’ because it “wasn’t your father’s or grandfather’s Navy”, i.e. sweaty, smokey, dirty, hands-on, cussy, drinky, and basically driven by that testosterone that makes males both dumb and violent.
I cannot imagine what it must have felt like for a senior NCO to watch the remarkable instrument that was the Navy (or whichever other Service) simply pulled-apart by its own government: being responsible for training newbies and also being concerned not only for their competence but for their future possibilities, and realizing that the ‘platform’ you are trying to help them master is being pulled apart by the government they are trying to serve such that it will become increasingly dangerous to them as overall competence levels decline – and the Service-government spins that very decline itself as ‘progress’.
I doubt you, Panda would need to see this, but I could recommend readers look up the 2010 Balisle Report (named after the retired VADM who was asked to conduct and compile it): he recounts many of the Navy’s problems (the number of ships failing Insurvs doubling every five years, the decreased level of competence at all levels and ranks) without actually connecting all of these awful declines to the imposition of reduced-standards, double-standards, double-talk spinning and dishonestly ‘optimistic’ official and media reports, and all the other elements and consequences of the PC dreck demanded by radical-feminists and such.
As we speak, yet another afloat CO has run yet another vessel onto the rocks of a well-charted channel (a minesweeper off the approaches to Subic; a few years ago it was a Tico off the approaches to Pearl itself) and the ship is quietly going to be declared a total loss. And who can forget the female Tico CO who – against all advice from her bridge team – ordered high speed in a shallow channel, buried the screws and damaged the shafts, and … on and on. These are not wartime under-pressure or unavoidable casualties; nor – as either SecDef or SecNav burbled at a recent USNA address, was it ‘just a thang’ and even Nimitz when he was an ensign ‘ran aground’: these ships are not simply bumping and bruising themselves, they are being wrecked – and in peacetime, and often in theoretically familiar channels, by CO’s of what is supposed to be a far better Navy than Nimitz ever knew.
As to your final question, Panda: you have come across the great Correct Theory Problem: depending on the situation ‘women’ are either a) very different from men and must be given priority in taking-over because they are so much more relational and thinky and not adversarial (and yet, somehow, ‘men’ won World War 2, in an alliance-situation that must have required an awful lot of ability to work together and get the right things done rightly)or b) ‘women’ can do everything men can do because there is no difference at all between them.
You can find yourself in the type of situation high-ranking cadres found with Stalin: depending on the situation one of possible answers was what he wanted to hear and the other answer would get you sent to Siberia or shot. Yet if you survived today, then tomorrow’s situation could require the exactly opposite ‘answer’. It was and is like a shell-game using ideas rather than beans. But the house will always win and the little guys will always lose.
Im still waiting for the Feminists to get around to equalizing in the Sanitation Industry, septic, sewer, and garbage.
Until then, there rhetoric is exposed as dishonest.
Fall OUT ladies! To slow, get back inside! Now, fall out! What’s wrong with you pukes? Is your pussy hurting today! Are you eye F@@@ing ME! Get down, and give me 25! What, you can’t even do one push up! You make me sick! What are you, a GIRL!?
Sgt. Leatherneck has been sent back to compassion training to learn the New Age is not about getting ready for war, and women can not be yelled at. He died there when his head exploded.
Sorry but we got our A##’s handed to us in Vietnam and the average height/weight of an adult male is 5’4 and 140 lbs.
First, we didn’t get our asses handed to us in Vietnam. You demonstrate colossal ignorance in your very short post. I do not believe the average height/weight of an average male is 5’4 140 lbs. That’s ludicrous. Even were I to allow that to pass, it is still not the average height weight for the military and it is damn sure not the average height weight for the infantry. At 6’0 and 165 lbs in Boot Camp I was average in height and slightly below average in weight. By the time I had complete my tour in the Infantry I was 10 lbs of muscle heavier, and I could squat 300 lbs. 99% of the women in the military don’t come anywhere near men in height, weight, or build.
I guess Wikipedia is beyond your pay grade. Please check it out and get back to me soldier. And we clearly lost in Vietman, open a book.
What an idiot. A$$es lost wasn’t because of height/build, but of political spinelessness and ineptitude. It could be said that we won the battles, but lost the war.
BTW, anyone relying on Wikipedia as a sole source of info is sadly lacking in the resources department.
He mutt, where you there? Can you give us a first-hand analysis?
Useful idiot.
5’4″, 140 pounds is the average height/weight for the moderb Vietnamese male. The average American height is 5’10″ From Wikipedia.
So far the only military women I see talking about women in combat are pilots.
Ever since the Second World War the American military has suffered increasingly from civilian micromanagement. HR McMaster’s Dereliction of Duty argues that this was the major factor in LBJ’s pathetic handling of Vietnam.
We are in desperate need of military reform: we need standardization. Air Force guys lacking skill and discipline? Put them through the same basic as the Army. Women want equal rights in the military? Make them adhere to the same standards as the men. Furthermore, demand that all American women register for the draft. Uniforms not working out? Give the military the final say-so in regard to their uniforms, don’t shove them down their throats. (And can we get rid of that Army beret and AF dress uniform? Our airmen look like their wearing business suits and our soldiers look like Frenchmen.)
So it has come to this. The feminazi are feeding on their own. Or maybe feeding their own into the meat grinder. Doesn’t matter which, the outcome will be the same. What is most unfortunate is that these brain-washed women will think they can be all they can be and even be better, or at least as good, as their male counterparts. There is no special lite weight M-4s for women. No lite weight body armor for women and the enemy bullets don’t stop and say ‘pardon me, ma’am.’ When the SHTF and reality sets in it will be too late for common sense to save the day. People will die, be maimed and otherwise scarred for life all in the name of some political correctness run amuck.
http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/showthread.php?22068-Numbers-Game-Is-DoD-Hiding-Pregnancy-Statistics
There is a way to address this problem…
Sgt Rock Hammer: OK YOU BREEDERS ON YOUR FEET AND HIT THE PARADE FIELD NOW!
HERE IS YOUR DAILY ‘PILL’. YOU WILL PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH. YOU WILL TAKE A DRINK OF WATER. YOU WILL SWALLOW THAT PILL. I WANT TO SEE YOUR ADAMS APPLE BO… I’M GONNA CHECK YOUR MOUTH AND I BETTER NOT SEE A PILL THERE OR WITHIN SPITTING DISTANCE OF WHERE YOU ARE STANDING!
Like that will happen. Even though it should. You sign on the dotted line and Uncle Sam has the right to do with your body what he wants to do with your body.
Well, I guess this is a done deal. Only need to work out the details now. Like, are all the MREs going to have tampons included, or will there be special MREs for women only? IMHO, I would like to see tampons put in all MREs. Being mostly sterile, they could also be used as a pressure bandage to help stop bleeding. Might as well be as practical as we can about this.
This is not about “butch” feminism in my opinion.
They call those of in the military, young, children, sons, daughters, etc…when advocating anti-war (actually anti-defense) positions. And they have not been getting traction.
I may be cynical, but I think they want dead females on the battlefield so they can restore the 1960s.
But then I see what they are using the Newtown shootings for…and then my cynicism isn’t a problem.
Adding just a bit here.
‘Juliet’ has commented that the only women she has seen talking about women-in-combat are pilots. It’s a thought-provoking observation. ‘Pilot’ would, if you think about it, be a verrrry useful position for the overall radical-feminist cause and also for that hugely-influential (who knows how large it actually is?) Sapphic Demographic. ‘Pilot’ has status: pilots fly those amazing aircraft and ‘must be’ so very talented and special and extraordinary in so many ways – the wings, once pinned on, carry with them entire worlds of status and future possibilities; and it enjoys both the glamour of film and the sobering weight of all the history of military pilots stretching back to World War 1, through the bombers and fighters over Europe and the Pacific, and on into the jet age; unlike a ship commander, an incompetent pilot can wreck a plane and not necessarily cause a whole lot of other damage (that might raise questions); such ‘accidents’ can more or less easily be spun as attributable to something else besides the pilot (without also peeing-off the aircraft manufacturers) and the ‘perceptions’ can thus be managed.
Thus, all you have to do is to get some friendly congress-types to put some pressure on career and star-hungry military bosses to wield the heavy-thumb and gimlet-eye to make sure a few of females wind up getting passed and pinned with the aforesaid telegenic and ever so useful wings. And after a decade or so, if you manage training of the newbies intensely enough, they won’t even think to ‘perceive’ anything abnormal about any of it.
We recall a few years back the Army promoted its first female to 4-stars: a short dumpy critter (married, if memory serves, to an 0-5 male, possibly retired, who was ever so happy to be a General’s spouse and bake the cookies), she had been in ‘supply’ yet had somehow managed to get jump-creds. I tell you now it is not rational any longer to presume that she got her jump-quals done out of a moving aircraft at altitude. Indeed, it’s almost reasonable to imagine she was simply sent off on a pallet with the rest of the boxy supply cargo from a C-130. And as to how she got from supply NCO to 4 stars … well, if you’ve been wondering about what the plot of your next sci-fi novel should be …
‘Stargazer’ touches upon something interesting, I think: the radical feminists (including therein the Sapphic Demographic) have been using females generally (under the politically-charged rubric of ‘women’) like bank-robbers using hostages to pull off a heist: if you try to get US you’ll have to hit THEM … that sort of thing. Thus, demanding more ‘rights’ for women in the military (while simultaneously playing-up sexual-assault to make sure the males are perpetually off-balance and looking-bad) the radical feminists and Sapphics pursue their actual primary objectives: the former to destroy the world of ‘men’ (playing on a line from Lord of the Rings 2 here) and the latter to improve the overall career and promotion opportunities of the Sapphic Demographic.
As always, ‘military operational efficiency’ is not a priority. Nor, apparently, is the well-being of most females seduced into the military with the gut-wrenchingly cynical feministical promise that it will basically be a Microsoft corporate campus with a dress-code and that, being as it were Platinum Preferred Customers (whose ‘accounts’ are backed by the government itself), the females will simply go to the head of the line for all the goodies. Without all the little-people females feeding themselves into this thing, the much smaller core of radical-feministicals and Sapphics would become brutally obvious.
You may, if you wish, take a look on such sites as HuffPost and even McClatchy and get a sense of how many clearly younger commenters, fully supportive of women-in-combat and all the rest, really have no idea that there are any other issues at stake except ‘women’s (purported) rights’ in the military setting, and have utterly no idea what sustained combat or military life is and must necessarily be. (I get the impression from some comments that young females who have taken to virtual or internet war-gaming seem to feel that they really do grasp the realities of sustained combat and of military life.) Nor, clearly, do many have any idea what happens if a country – especially one with such rich pickings – loses usable and effective military operational capability. (Unless you want to imagine that all we need are nukes and the rest can be turned into a jobs-carnival for ‘women’ and the Sapphics – and I actually wonder if that isn’t the basic vision of some serious Beltway players in all of this.)