You Wanna Live Forever?
Posted by Hazel Stone | Filed under Buttinskis
When I was in high school, I was actively recruited by the Army. I mean ACTIVELY. Captain Whatsisname was over at my parents house multiple times, grilled mercilessly by my father each time and yet still coming back. It was that test we took Junior year, I’m pretty sure my results exhibited a certain…flexible morality they found appealing.
You know, the way sharks find surfers appealing.
Anyway, this started me thinking hard about military service. It was a family tradition, going way back, the most recent being my Green Beret father, 101st Airborne, etc. etc. I finally decided Officer Country was vastly more appealing than gruntwork, and applied to my Congressman and the Naval Academy.
I wanted to be a pilot.
“Oh, but women can’t fly in combat.” I forget who told me that. No flying in combat? Then what, in the name of little green apples, was the bloody point? (I was young, I wanted to shoot things for my country.) Not only could women not fly in combat, but they couldn’t serve in combat period, in any branch, in any capacity. This was the late 80s, by the way.
Sod that for a bunch of bananas, I decided, and went off to college.
And, wouldn’t you know, women started flying in combat a few years later. And now they serve in many different capacities, though still relatively coddled.
PFC Monica Brown, all of 18 years old, showed exactly how much coddling she required in Afghanistan:
Four of those injured crawled or were thrown from the Humvee, while a fifth, Spec. Larry Spray, was caught inside by his boot and was on fire. Sgt. Zachary Tellier managed to pull him out.
Brown and a colleague then grabbed Spec. Stanson Smith, who was in shock and blinded by blood from his lacerated forehead, and dragged him by his body armor into a ditch about 15 yards away. Tellier helped Spray limp over.
No sooner were they in the ditch that insurgents began firing mortars. Brown threw her body over Smith, shielding him as more than a dozen rounds hit nearby. The ammunition inside the burning Humvee then started exploding, including 60mm mortars, 40mm grenade rounds and rifle ammunition. Again, Brown lay over the wounded.
And for that she received a Silver Star and orders to withdraw from the front lines:
“We weren’t supposed to take her out” on missions “but we had to because there was no other medic,” said Lt. Martin Robbins, a platoon leader with Charlie Troop, 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, whose men Brown saved.
Seems the little lady did just fine. But the resistance to women in combat continues:
President Bush has forcefully backed the Army’s restrictions, asserting in a January 2005 interview with the Washington Times that there should be “no women in combat.” Since her heroic actions, however, Brown was promoted to specialist and has been congratulated by Cheney in Afghanistan, praised in a meeting with Bush at a NATO summit in Romania, and offered a job on the White House staff.
Military officers in the field and independent experts have said it is both infeasible and contrary to the Army’s own warfighting doctrine to prevent women from serving in proximity to — or together with — all-male combat units in today’s war zones. They contend that if the goal of the policy is to protect women from capture or bodily harm, it cannot be done in the scramble of conflicts such as those in the Middle East.
Listen, we, as the ladees, certainly appreciate the male instinct to keep us safe. And do not kid yourselves, fellas, it is ALL instinct. But take a look around you…the human race is doing quite well, number-wise anyway, and that “protect the egg-source!” can be ratched down from eleven. If the fear is one of capture and rape, then we certainly possess the psychological skills to prepare female soldiers for that eventuality. But it seems more to me the issue is rooted in WWI sensibilities of, “our girlies are who we’re fighting for, lads, having them shot up next to us on the battlefield would reduce us to piles of quivering blancmange!”
Our military is the single most astonishingly efficient and technologically advanced fighting force on the planet. It’d be nice if the bureaucracy would catch up.
Tags: earn it
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May 2nd, 2008
I never got that attitude that women should not be allowed to volunteer to fight. As long as they understand that they will be expected to carry their share of the load, they should enjoy all the same rights, responsibilities, and duties of their male counterparts.
As for getting captured, women have to deal with the reality of getting kidnapped and abused by some sicko as a civilian. At least in the Army, she’ll probably be able to shoot some of the bastards first.
May 2nd, 2008
Meh, I have a problem with women being in combat. I have a problem with women being in the same op units as men. The Israelis’ proved quite well that men and women in combat don’t mix. And having served with women in my unit, I came to the conclusion, that men and women serving together is a bad idea all told. It’s not that you women are any less virtuous then us men. It’s just that when we get mixed, allot of group discipline gets relaxed as women know that men won’t hold them to the same standard, and men get pissed about it. You can’t fight biology.
May 3rd, 2008
Nor physiology. You can count on women in the Navy using their weaker frame (and monthly visit from Aunt Flo) to avoid working parties and long-term deployments.
Not saying that it was 100%, or even 50%. Nor even 20%.
But the sudden increase in pregnancies or complaints of “unidentifiable female complaints” (or, as it was occasionally referred to by the menfolk, “MPH” – My P*ssy Hurts) aboard the coed ships (tenders, etc.) just before a long-announced six-month PacFlt/P.G. cruise seemed to be a routine occurrence, with men pulled from other ships to fill their billets. (A good friend of mine – EW2 – was ordered to TAD to the tender Yosemite to cover for one such case.)
There is also the differing PFT (physical fitness test) standards for men and women. Fewer pushups, fewer situps, slower times for the 1-1/2 mile run. If women want to serve, and are physiologically incapable of doing the job, then let them. But don’t push into a physically-demanding job if you can’t actually do the freaking job.
OTOH, I strongly support women serving as pilots – their frames are smaller, brains are quicker, reactions are speedier, better eyesight and G-force resistance higher, pound-for-pound, than men.
Except for me, of course. *buffs nails on vest*
{/Mr. Morgan Fairchild}
May 3rd, 2008
I think the earlier reasons (excuses?) for a ban on female combat pilots was to do with the ejection seats. The early ejection seats were, to all intents and purposes, a steel seat on top of a 5lb bomb. Pull the handle, detonate the bomb and get sent flying. Even for men this caused back and hip injuries, and could make a driver unservicable for months.
This is where female physiology came into it – ejection would severely damage a woman with her hip physiology.
Later ejection seats have a much much smaller charge just to get them started, then a rocket kicks in, so the seat accelerates away rather than bangs away. A far lesser differential effect on women.
Mind you, apart from some of the very old aircraft, then by the 80s we are talking almost entirely of rocket-powered ejection seats, so I see no good reason for refusing combat roles to women by that time.
Qualifications for this comment? Enlisted in Royal Air Force at 15. Served an apprenticeship as an avionics technician. Every aircraft technician knows all about ejection seats … over the years they have killed more technicians than they have saved drivers.
In the RAF and the Royal Navy, we have different trade structures to those in the American forces. My trade meant that everything that used any electricity at all was my business – weapons aiming and controls, engines instrumentation and controls, cart, control surfaces and ditto for all of the instrumentation. And for some strange reason – we got oxygen as well.
We could run a flight line of eight cabs with one of my trade and six airframes/engines men (it was all men in my day).
May 3rd, 2008
Oh, I certainly agree that there are a great many women who are not fit to serve. Ted tells stories about those deliberately getting pregnant to avoid tours, etc. etc. ad nauseum.
By way of full disclosure, I am not a big fan of females in general. Most of them are vicious, back-biting cats, who think “honor” is a useless word mouthed whilst marrying some sucker for his money.
But the rest of us are bonafide ass-kickers, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in The Shit…like PFC Brown up there, who this post was actually about. *stare* But until the screening processes get better, those Barbiewhores will still be the norm in the service, and what all you guys think about when someone says “women in the military.”
And don’t whinge at me about different physical standards for women. We are smaller, lighter, have less muscle mass. Get over it. That might have been an actual issue in some military other than this modern one.
May 3rd, 2008
God, not this again.
Sorry, but you’re wrong. Why is it always women who have never been in combat and have no intention of going that are always the first ones to champion the whole idea?
May 3rd, 2008
I have to agree. There are still way too many jobs in the military where physical strength you admit to not having is IMPORTANT, especially the undesignated enlisted (in the Navy, I mean the Deck Division). The slot has been filled by a warm body, but that warm body is not capable of the physical demands of the job, requiring a male warm body to not only carry his own load, but the slack from the warm body who can’t cut it.
Refueling ops, where every spare body on board is busy either humping fuel lines into the fuel intakes or groceries off the pallets (From O3 on down), is another good example.
It is an issue even in this modern military, and will be until they develop anti-grav units.
Like I said, if there is a physical requirement for the job, both genders should be able to handle the job, or they shouldn’t waste the ink filling out the forms. There were some jobs I was not physically qualified for – pilot (shitty eyesight) and tank crew (at 6’4″, I was too big to fit into one) among them, but I didn’t have to have the military adjust their standards just to “integrate the service”.
The military is not a social laboratory. Its sole purpose is to kill people and break things as efficiently as humanly possible. If women can kill things better/faster/more efficiently than men, then more power to them, but if not, then they need to stay out of the way.
And that is my 1/50 of a dollar.
May 4th, 2008
WT – Have a care to not be insulting.
DW – Nobody said there weren’t jobs for which physical strength was NOT an issue. The specific complaint I get so very tired of is the one you yourself brought up:
And THAT is what my response was referring to, NOT the fact that certain PEOPLE (not just women) are not the physical type to accomplish Job A or Job B. As you yourself point out, you were not qualified to be a pilot or a tanker.
For those missing it, MY STAND is that everyone should be evaluated individually for the job, but all I’m hearing is “girls in the boy’s club is bad.” The original debate was women in COMBAT, not women fighting deck fires or anything else specifically requring heavy lifting. And “modern military” refers to the specialization that it has evolved to…there will always be a need for deck apes, OBVIOUSLY the average chick won’t fill that job…but so very many other jobs ARE quite within the scope of a female’s capabiilities, regardless of how she compared to a male in the PT test.
Xst on a monkey, I am SO VERY SORRY I never actually served and cannot speak from actual experience to your Club. I’ll go sit in the corner and STFU now.
May 4th, 2008
But Hazel, dear lady, that is my point. Those jobs where it can be argued that there isn’t a “need” for such a physical specimen – such as my own while I was still in (Operations Specialist, aka Radarman) – still got assigned to necessary jobs like fire-fighting or humping cargo or damage control, because that was the nature of the beast aboard a warship. Everybody worked hard and everybody had at least three jobs. While my primary job was one that could have been filled by a paraplegic as long as his eyes and ears and writing hand worked, the second and third jobs (Security Alert Team/SSDF and fire fighting/damage control) are not jobs that I would want my sister doing. Not because they are dirty and messy and dangerous (even though they ARE), but because she is not physically capable of the workload. (Neither am I anymore, but that’s another issue.) I cannot imagine that things are any better on the front lines of a shooting war.
The ones where there wasn’t such a workload – tenders, hospital ships and the like – women were already serving.
My main point is against the relaxations of standards, just to “let” women pass them. And you defend this, even though you admit that there are women who should not even be in the service, and that there are jobs that women are not capable of doing. Would you similarly grant women extra points or lower standards for college admissions or career advancement in civilian careers? (I don’t know about you, but I should resent someone telling me that I needed bonus points in order to pass a test. I passed or failed on my own skill and knowledge.)
I do not disparage women fighters. Pioneer women fought alongside their husbands, and frontier widows did what was needed. This has been true throughout history.
I applaud this woman soldier, because she didn’t sit on her hindmost parts and wait for the promotions and pay increases to roll in. She did the job, and I applaud her, because nothing I can do will bring her more honor.
But the exception only proves the rule. Just my opinion…
May 4th, 2008
INCORRECT. I have re-read everything I’ve said, and the only thing I think you can be referring to is this:
That refers to PHYSICAL FITNESS TEST standards, not JOB standards. I most certainly am NOT advocating relaxing anything, I am advocating a more intelligent application of those standards, that do NOT preclude females in line-of-fire jobs JUST because they’re GIRLS. It is the emotional kneejerk reaction “protect our sisters/mothers/girlfriends” that needs relaxing/excising, NOTHING ELSE.
You’re bringing your own ox to this altar for goring, and using your own experience to color what *I* am saying. If we’re going to continue to talk past each other we should call this matter tabled.
May 4th, 2008
My sincerest apologies if that is what you think I am doing, and I see that we basically agree that a military job should not be defined by gender, but by the capability to actually do the job(s) required.
As far as that goes, my own “ox” is the main reason I was only in for 10 years, rather than the full 20+. I had suffered several minor but cumulative injuries during my time on active duty, and they prevented me from passing that test as my condition deteriorated. I was still professionally qualified to do my main job (for example, you don’t have to have two good knees to monitor a radar screen or a radio circuit), but it was that need to handle the ancillary jobs that caused them to not allow me to re-enlist. (Full disclosure: I have to admit my life after the service would have been much easier if I had actually gotten a medical discharge, instead of just not being allowed to re-enlist as my contract expired, but that is irrelevant to this discussion. It also doesn’t change the fact that I do not blame the Navy for having – and properly enforcing – those minimum standards. It was a case of “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”.)
I am against similar relaxation of standards for ANYTHING based on gender/race/age/ethnic origin/religious belief, especially where those standards are not merely an arbitrary goal (like the one to become a contestant on Jeopardy), but have actual needs for those standards. College admissions, State occupational certifications, pay raises or promotions, military advancement, you name it. If they can’t cut it for whatever reason, they should find another way, or look for something else to do.
I’m done, and I hope you won’t ban me, ’cause I LIKE it here.
May 4th, 2008
Ted had exactly the same problem. The only entity I blame at this point is the VA for doing drug experimentation on him, and so many other vets. But that’s a WHOLE different post.
And dude, no one gets banned for merely disagreeing! Debate is the spice of life! The only time I get testy or start “yelling” is when I think I’m not being listened to or misconstrued. You’ll just have to forgive me that, I tend to have strong viewpoints.
May 4th, 2008
Yeah, don’t EVEN get me started on the VA horror stories. Like the time that I was accused of “drug use” because I was wearing my prescription sunglasses (I had left my “indoors” glasses in the car and I didn’t notice until I was called back for my appointment).
That notation is STILL part of my official medical record, despite the fact that it was a student PA (physician assistant – not even qualified to prescribe meds yet) doing the medical history.
May 4th, 2008
I am not sure, Hazel. You are one of the most clearly thinking women I “know”, but I think you are willing to sacrifice a lot of efficiency for the sake of fairness.
In some parallel universe, the military may be made up of mature, rational, emotionally stable men and women… and in that world I’d be totally on the same page with you. But in this one it’s made up of young men and women, with probably somewhat above-average testosterone levels, ambition, and tolerance for violence (in a good way – I am all for a bit MORE violence in this world). And holding men and women to the same job standards will inevitably end up in a pretty badly skewed male/female ratio in most units. Add these two factors together and picture all the ensuing complications for morale, interpersonal relations, and just plain logistics.
Do not get me wrong, you are so damn right to ask for reason and maturity, but you are no more gonna get them than the commies got their “new, socialist man” (“and woman” sometimes was added) who would be willing to work according to his abilities and get paid according to his needs. Human nature does not change (okay, maybe very, very little, over at least hundreds of years) on average, and anecdotal stories that prove it has are just that.
The military of “Starship Troopers” ought to be close to the ideal… but it was in a sci-fi movie.
May 4th, 2008
The movie had damned little to do with the book, fwiw, with its co-ed M.I.
If Heinlein were alive, I think he would have burned down the studio that produced that craptastic flick.
May 6th, 2008
Hazel: If Women are sent to the front lines who is going to Iron my shirts?
May 6th, 2008
Oh, still your Mom, I’m sure.
May 6th, 2008
And there goes Hazel, off the top rope, and… he’s down! Ooooh, Mean Gene, that’s gotta leave a mark!
May 8th, 2008
I heard something a bit different to the ‘general relaxation’ issue with the Israeli military. Basically there’s a psychology problem – if for example an all male tank crew gets hit by an RPG and it’s starts burning other male crews will take a ‘there but for the grace of god, let’s hope they make it out, let’s stick it to the enemy’ approach and keep making forward progress. If there are females in the crew they will try to stop and help, losing momentum and greatly increasing their own chances of being successfully attacked.
It seems that the sort of guys that sign up for military service are quite stuck on this world view and it’s really difficult (near impossible) to train it out of them. The end result is that mixed units increase the danger and risk of failure overall and that’s quite a problem. This isn’t theoretical but observed issues in real conflict. It’s less of an issue with fighter jocks obviously and various other roles but for frontline forces it is a major concern.
Example; if the amazing woman described above had been hit along with others, it’s a reasonable expectation from the comments ‘We weren’t supposed to take her out’ etc, that the greatest effort at the greatest risk would have been made to save her – irrespective of the general situation. That sort of subconcious decision making could have appalling consequences for the unit as a whole.
May 13th, 2008
Hazel -
Many combat jobs require plenty of strength. You can get around that with individual evaluations for each job, but in stressful military situations, and esp. in combat, you may have to exceed your job rating.
The standard infantryman carries quite a lot. The M16 isn’t the world’s heaviest weapon, but you also carry a lot of ammo, and supplies, and body armor.
In combat unexpected things happen, people have to be flexible they can’t reasonably expect to follow a very narrow job description and then when things go to hell tell their NCOs or officers “I don’t do that its not my job”. You next to the machine gunners, and the machine gunners go down, now maybe you have to carry a much heavier weapon, if the guy next to you gets hit, maybe you have to carry or drag him to safety. If you in a tank you have to deal with tread repairs (which can take a lot of strength). The artillery move around heavy shells. etc.
You could find some women who have the brawn for these jobs, but they would be a very small percentage. Would you accept standards that not only could not be passed by most women, but that a very strong majority of military women would not pass?
“Related to differences in strength and bone mass is the high rate of injuries, especially stress fractures, suffered by women in physical training. An extensive study of physical capacity by the British Ministry of Defence concluded that only about 0.1 percent of female recruits and 1 percent of trained female soldiers could satisfy the required physical standards for infantry and armor without sustaining substantially higher rates of injuries than men.
Much of the momentum for sexual integration of the combat arms rests on the assumption that the substantial sex differences in physical capacity, while real, are no longer significant, because battlefield prowess is now “a matter of brains, not of brawn.” Thus, the lessons of primitive warfare – or even that of any warfare prior to the late 20th century – are thought to have little to teach us. This assumption is both misguided and dangerous.
Modern ground combat still requires substantial physical strength. Today’s infantry soldier often carries between 75 and 100 pounds, and sometimes more. Just his rifle, ammunition, helmet, and body armor can weigh 60 pounds. Add to that food, water, night-vision goggles, various other electronic gear (and the batteries for it), and pretty soon the soldier is carrying a very heavy load – indeed, heavier than that of the soldier of World War II. ”
http://volokh.com/posts/1196781943.shtml
Piloting an aircraft, esp. a fighter plane, can be physically stressful, but in modern aircraft isn’t normally a matter of brute strength. And pilots are less likely to have to take over someone else’s job than someone in the infantry. Strength still helps, but things like good general conditioning, reflexes, intelligence, quick thinking, etc, are the main concerns, and someone without brute strength doesn’t have to be a serious liability.