I froze my way through nine weeks of Boot Camp at Ft. Sill, OK when I was barely eighteen years old. The training section of the base went co-ed about halfway through my AIT course. We’d had three female Drill Sergeants in basic, and while they were for the most part convincingly tough, they were only women in the academic sense of the word. I remember thinking that if I ever woke up next to one of them, I’d run away to the nearest monastery and never speak again.
This was the U.S. Army Field Artillery Training Center. If you had an Artillery job, this was where you went to learn how to hit targets that were miles away with 155mm of molten, high-pitched whistling death. Or in my case, with a blanket of baseball-sized submunitions spread out over the space of a football field. Either way, it was a distinctly male speciality. Those cannons are loud, after all, and the ammunition is very, very heavy.
I happened to enlist during a time when the powers-that-be were switching everything up. I’ve never understood their reasoning, as it wasn’t made clear to us, or to the men training us. I just remember my Drill Sergeants (the men) being angry about it. While the presence of women at chow and in the training area was a welcome sight after three months, we were all painfully aware of how quickly the intensity dropped when we had to train alongside them. We ran slower, marched slower, and anything remotely combat-related ground to a halt.
The new standards they had to adhere to meant certain exercises were out. The ruck-sacks were lighter; the forced-marches shorter by several miles. The profanity and barking of orders was downsized and dumbed-down. Group and individual punishments went up, both because we made more mistakes given the shift in temperment and the cadre were consistently frustrated with the whole situation.
We were caught between being young guys happy to be around young women and wanting to tell them to ruck-up or shut up. We already knew that the experience we were getting was considerably less intense than it used to be. Adding the distraction of a sudden onslaught of new standards and forbidden language made for a very muddled and half-assed training environment. In short: we felt cheated. I remember feeling like I wasn’t measuring up to a time-honored standard because someone had yanked the challenge out from under me to make things easier for the ladies.
My first twelve-hour pass, I went to a movie and played a few games of pool with my friends. We arrived back at the barracks to a frenzied tell-all of how some of the guys had gone halves on a couple of hotel rooms with some of the girls. Two days later, we were exhanging all of our laundry and linens because some of the guys had caught a raging case of lobster-sized crabs. Remember, this was just in training, in a pretty structured environment. It was much worse down at Ft. Hood, where I would eventually be stationed. The soldiers I knew who’d done a year in South Korea used to say that marriage licenses weren’t valid over there. They weren’t exactly “valid” over here, either.
There’s no uniform or standard of behavior that supersedes human nature. If we can get around ideas like torture, “friendly-fire,” and the like, then there’s no sense in assuming that military discipline or a set of values will overcome the innate human desire to get laid, even in the most dangerous circumstances.
I know nothing of combat; my tenure ended before the present conflicts began. I had months of time in field, but it was in the safety of fenced training areas in central Texas and California, surrounded by blank ammunition and store-bought snacks. I rarely mention my time in the Army because as a soldier, I don’t compare to the people who’ve spent years deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I feel uniquely qualified to talk about this specifically because I didn’t go to combat.
Training in the field, we’d be awake two or three days at a time. At eighteen and in the best shape of my life, it kicked my ass. There’s nothing quite like trying to navigate a heavy track vehicle with night-vision goggles when you’re so sleep-deprived that you’re hallucinating nightmare versions of the Muppets coming out at you from the trees. I couldn’t do it now. I could barely do it then. I can’t imagine doing it in combat.
Ever dug a proper foxhole with the standard-issue entrenching tool? I have. It sucks. The e-tool is this miniature folding shovel that can double as a weapon if you’re ever unlucky enough to require it. You dig in the dirt where you are, and it’s either soft and yeilding or rocky and impossible. When you’re finished, if you have the energy left to stand or your hands will still close into fists, you didn’t do it right. But you have a handy little spot for cover and concealment, providing you don’t immediately have to move to another location, where you get to start digging all over again.
Ever carried a .50 caliber machine gun, it’s tripod, and ammunition up a half-mile hill?
Ever double as an ammuniton handler on a Paladin crew? Some of those rounds weigh upwards of ninety pounds. They’re smooth metal, without any corners to grip them, and dropping them is worse than crossing the streams. We did a live-fire exercise that lasted all night and into the next day, which meant I spent eighteen hours lifting and moving over 120 of those things, eventually thanking God that I picked a machine that could lift its’ own ammunition.
How about that point where the weight of your basic combat load really starts to sink into you, pulling your shoulders down and sending sadistic phantom drill-bits into your lower back? How about collapsed arches and seeing the skin of your feet come off with your socks at the end of a 25 mile road-march?
Hell, how about something simple, like the month-long live-fire where it rained for five days straight and every single article of clothing I’d packed got wet and stayed that way? Whether withering heat or blistering cold, I endured these things at an infinitely slower, easier pace and intensity than exists in combat.
My wife at the time was an MP, and she was relegated to the Armory because she wasn’t strong enough to mount the MK19 grenade launcher on her humvee.
One thing I haven’t seen touched upon in this debate is what my Drill Sergeants (the men, all of whom were Desert Storm veterans) liked to call “bloodlust.” The ability to zero in and kill another human being, should the need suddenly arise. In combat, if surviving is high on your list of priorities, you have to be able to do this without hesitation or judgement.
Nobody seems to question whether or not women innately possess this ability, or could be trained to develop it. I knew that driving a track around the woods and running fire mission drills was to condition us for the reality of killing people on a large scale. It wasn’t something we talked about, but we all knew that both the purpose of the machine and the tactics we were training with was to kill other people. Men with families and children. Men whose names and histories we would never know. We were trained to see them the same way we saw the pop-up targets on the firing range. I have to seriously doubt the average woman’s ability to get past their own humanity to such a degree.
Once upon a time, I could run two miles in thirteen minutes and do a hundred push-ups without stopping. While I don’t know what the hell happened to that part of my personality, I clearly remember being keenly aware of how much harder everything we were training to do would be under fire. I remember seriously doubting my ability to maintain in that situation. I wasn’t the best soldier by any means, but I believed in what I was doing and I took it very seriously. I knew what I was capable of, yet was very much aware of my limitations.
“Combat” nowadays may be very different than what we were training for thirteen years ago, but I still can’t get my head around why they think women belong anywhere near it. It’s not just a Boy’s Club, it’s a place where everything bad that can happen usually will. Sending women home with gunshot wounds and missing limbs and severe PTSD won’t prove anything. It’s setting fire to the houses on either side of the one that’s already burning, just to maintain a uniform appearance. It’s a completely pointless endeavor.
{ 41 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s probably the best time to do something this stupid, frankly, with the mess overseas winding down. As I’ve said elsewhere, many of the front-line and combat support positions will be ill-served come our engaging a first class enemy (which insurgents are not) by integrating women and dropping the standards.
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=16592
Lots of interesting stuff there.
You know you are talking common sense, and logically. Neither are allowed in in the feminine military; how dare you breach protocol. Saying the logical conclusion of sending weaker females into harms way where they will get pregnant before deploying and use their benefits to go to college while leaving their fellow soldiers in harms way without the required help is a bad thing for the troops is a horrendously sexist, and misogynistic thing to say.
And I love it. Too bad the yes men posing as tough brass over at the Pentagon are too career driven to say it.
“Nobody seems to question whether or not women innately possess this ability [bloodlust], or could be trained to develop it.”
Convince the woman the enemy was her boyfriend who is now sleeping with a woman half her age, with big tits. She’ll cut his dick off and make him chew on it.
Don’t kid yourself. You get a woman mad, and she’ll incinerate the planet.
I don’t think Obama is serious about sending women into combat. There may be a petition to require women to register for the draft, but it is time-limited and all 100k signatures have to be obtained by 02/23/2013.
He may talk a good game about trying to equalize selective service registration requirements for males and females, but when Obama himself or a future president has no choice but to reinstate the draft, there will be a massive uproar over actually requiring the numbers from 1 to 366 to be drawn for females as well as males. The upside is that women would stop whining when one forgets their birthdays and instead would want their birthdays forgotten. Most men do not want their birthdays remembered due to the draft.
The only uniform I have ever worn was provide to me by the Boy Scouts but I do know a bit about how governments work and institutional cowardice. There will be more ‘on paper’ combat roles more than ‘actual’ combat roles. Rather like construction sites, the on the ground staffing decisions will result in women doing the military version of flag duty at the intersection, painting and putting on the tie wrap while the six foot 225-lb men work the 125-lb jackhammers.
BTW: The scouts was a lot of good fun. To this day I have credited the fact that I have never stabbed my hand cutting a bagel due to my time in the scouts: Both hands behind the blade! I remember having that drilled into my head and I still think of that when in the kitchen at least two or three times a year.
Also a great benefit to being in the scouts was the timber hitch knot. Damned useful.
Great article, and thank you very much for your service.
Combat pay or no, this is a significant part of what it means to be a man:
“I knew what I was capable of, yet was very much aware of my limitations.”
Although it suits my ego, I find some parts of it to be unbelievable . The summation is about right but, I’m not against the idea of assistance , By proximity .The fallacy that she only see’s herself as useful in the social sense of Eye candy is Annoying to me Knowing the average Women in the Army rates only at a 4 on the looks scale but , as comrades and drinking buddy’s , She rates at a 8 . And Is useful in a social sense . Buy this is the Job of the Red Cross with Feminist have Taken over and Made into a Nightmarish Waste of public Funds . .
I find that teaching an Idea that is already known is Lunacy if your not teaching the right people the right idea .
Some women are brave and sturdy . There assistance on The battlefield Can be Justified .
But doing this just to prove to some female up on the hill that will never Try to give it her all , Is just futile . Its Just throwing someone under the bus for trying .
Feminist are Now throwing there sisters Under the bus , And using an entity that should never be questioned by politicians , The Military .
The fallacy that feminism has not permeated the Government Can be seen self evident in this Issue
How deep into the government are they Look at it ,Its right in front of you .
Wait until some of the military women begin using the “it’s that time of the month” excuse to get out of combat duty. Of course, that excuse has been used as a defense for killing a spouse who allegedly at some previous time. was “battering” her.
Since only men have been {previously} drafted, wouldn’t affirmative action dictate that for the next several decades only women should be?
You know, to make up for such blatant previous discrimination.
The thing is, those at the top don’t care about any sort of combat efficiency. War is a business – the “war on terror” was a godsend for the MIC, a war that can’t be won, but one that can’t be lost either.
That’s why this sort of PC nonsense is let loose.
OT: Woman gets exactly what feminists say women want – equal relationship with alpha male – then flips out, brutally murders alpha male, stabs, shoots him and slits his throat. Claims his behavior justified the killing.
Sets a legal precedent, I would say. First use of the “he hurt my feelings” defense. Let’s see what the jury makes of this.
I think that we need to all the way and just ban t men from the military altogether! They are the cause of all the problems in the military and the world anyway. With a military that is totally staffed and run by women, we would usher in a new millennium of peace. There would be no wars because wars are a male construct. Using the females’ superior negotiating and communication skills, we would be able to avert wars. The US military would be used for peacekeeping between hostile nations that are still run by men. I can see it now!
Drone warfare and otherwise non-personal killings are becoming the norm. Women probably are at least as suited to that kind of… methodology as men are. It seems more similar to the Milgram experiment than anything we normally associate with war.
I have a new tactic for us, a homework assignment for project Mayhem.
Go out and start a conversation with a liberal feminist, and agree with them. Then take that issue to the extreme. Such as, equal employment in Special Forces, the military must have equal numbers of women as men in Special Forces.
*if you hate your shipmate, and you can swim while he/she can’t, sink the ship.
We all know feminism is self destructive, lets give feminism a little nudge so it can kill itself off faster.
Zorro
Women can be really good at the application of violence so long as they are in a safe position. For example some of the “best” (read: cruel and vicious) prison guards of Nazi Germany’s concentration camps were female.
But when it comes to sticking your neck out in danger, something that is crucial for being a real soldier, women have proven themselves time and time again to be inferior. The greatest difference between men and women is not physical but psychological.
the females will suck up to their COs to get the COs to make men take bullets for them while they cower in the bunker
when the smoke has cleared they will emerge, place foot on enemy dead and pose for time magazines special grrrrl power issue
with this ‘experience’ behind them they’ll fast track to promotion where they’ll be able to order men to take bullets for them directly
also the tech snowball (drones, missiles, etc.) is reaching a point where it will soon no longer matter if soldiers aren’t so strong and brave
and does anyone honestly think that the feminists would be pushing for full integration if they weren’t aware that a considerable margin of safety is being afforded for females between that growing snowball and the chivalry that they can summon to their aid at will?
it’s also very revealing that feminists do not push for full integration in sports like they do the military
they’ve had all the time in the world to do it!
why do you suppose that is?
wouldn’t have to do with the fact that on the battlefield there’s no fans in the bleachers seeing the females when they drop the ball eh?
personally, in light of the tech snowball, i think they’re pushing for an all female military [when killing can be done without so much as breaking a nail is the day the females completely take it over]
they will use false rape, harrassment, etc. to get male officers fired so they can move in
then they will use that power to control and oppress [civilian] men directly
Dude, proponents of this kind of thing have seen the co-ed shower scene from Starship Troopers (the movie, not the book) too much and never served in the military!
One of the main reasons I decided not to re-enlist was the degree of racism, favoritism, and sexism that already existed, even in the predominately non-combat role that the Army had been playing for almost a decade.
I can’t imagine how bad it must be now, or how much worse it’s going to get.
I can’t see how women in combat hurts the MHRM. In fact, training millions of men to view women as disposable beings–just like men–can only further our cause.
If we want true equality then that requires that women lose their right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness just like men.
@evil: The females will suck up to their COs to get the COs to make men take bullets for them while they cower in the bunker.When the smoke has cleared they will emerge, place foot on enemy dead and pose for time magazines special grrrrl power issue. With this ‘experience’ behind them they’ll fast track to promotion .. .. the which gung-ho, reckless-yet-craven behaviours in at least one historical conflict led, as sure as night follows day, to fragging, “accidental” blue-on-blue headshots, and other infractions of military discipline. Ooops.
@Eleanor: I think that we need to all the way and just ban t men from the military altogether!
I’ll drink to that!
This is about gender discrimination, because there just might be a select few women that are as equally capable as the weakest man.
While Panetta and others pay lip service to “standards remaining the same”, we all know they HAVE to change because of the relative dearth of women able to qualify for combat. The military PR dept will need to parade around some anecdotal examples of women who have made the grade, and the “grrl power” compliant media will lap it up.
Remember this is NOT a feminist cause. If they had their way there’d be no military at all but maybe the National Guard, and our tax dollars would be re-distributed to social welfare and health inititiatives specifically for women. But they won’t protest it either because it’s being initiated under a Democrat administration.
See how the sisterhood is so adept at refusing to bite the hand that feeds MRAs? See how loyal they are to Democrats regardless of a few pesky disagreements over policy? See how “POLITICAL” they are?
This is what the peace time military will look like. With women integrated to the combat units with the lowering of standards to make it happen we will hve the same failings that the army had early in the war in Iraq. (jessica lynch unit) The combat arms unit trained as men and performed as men in both gulf wars the next will be men trained as women. five to ten years of men trained in an invironment of homosexuals and women. Homosexuals are now in the lead on this so will now be a problem where as before they were illegal and had to blend in to the masculin culture being how they were men they did what it took and looking at there performance they were acceptable and in some cases above average. Now they run the agenda and have no check just as women will have physical and pschological standards reduced along with tradition to make them more comfortable.
Add to that how effective will a white male be as a fighter from day one being called a sexist racist everyday for years. When we live in a police state all of these points including this article is good news.
“Sets a legal precedent, I would say. First use of the “he hurt my feelings” defense. Let’s see what the jury makes of this.”
You know, I’m beginning to wonder why we even have courts anymore. The Government and women are clearly above the law and men are just processed through them as a formality knowing they will receive maximum punishment and/or found guilty whether they are or not- just an accusation is all that’s required.
When there is no need to send the very best ….
+1 to Ode. The Khmer Rouge used various methods to execute their enemies, a category that eventually came to include anyone who could read and write. They beat them to death, smothered them, shot them, etc.
But one of the methods they settled on at several death centers was simple: a short hoe with the blade cut in the shape of a triangle. The intended victim was dropped on the ground, and the hoe brought down sharply at the base of the skull, causing almost instant death. The Khmer found that teenaged girls were perfect for this form of execution. But there is more.
Sometimes a man or even a woman might try to resist in some fashion. Then the teenaged girls would gather around, and using their sharpened hoes, slowly chop the offending victim to death – slowly. They’d chop pieces one by one off of the squirming victim, sometimes taking over an hour to finally kill.
Of course, the victims were trussed up so they couldn’t get up and fight.
I can see more than a few American women who could and would volunteer to execute “sexist pigs” in this manner…as long as there was no danger to themselves.
@greyghost: “just as women will have physical and pschological standards reduced along with tradition to make them more comfortable”
I believe this has already happened. When you hear the new military talking about women being held to the same standards, it’s important to understand the newspeak definition of “same standards”. It means the same effort, not necessarily the same outcome. Thus, if a man is expected to do 25 plank-style pushups and some bureaucrat decides that 5 kneeling pushups is an equivalent effort for a woman, well, the men and women are held to the same standard (of effort).
I can only imagine how this will play out when a platoon has to disembark out of a chopper and run for cover, with the women expending the same effort to get halfway to cover while all the men are hunkered down. Pop! Pop! Pop!
They’ve already redefined jobs to fit the lowered level of female performance, such as was pointed out by another, carrying a wounded soldier on a stretcher is now a 4-person job, whereas it used to be a 2-person job, removing 2 soldiers from performing other tasks.
OT:
Heads up to brothers in BC Canada starting 18 March 2013.
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Weekend+Extra+love+money/7942899/story.html
http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/BCs_new_Family_Act_redefines_commonlaw-12054.aspx
Hi guys. I am in “Nam”, aka Houston, Texas. Cut off, surrounded,trying to type on my wife’s “iPad”. Went to massage with my brother-in-law; I think my wife is trying to convince me to move here.
Agree with pugs about re-enlistment.
But what will the enemy do when our combat females give them the dreaded “silent treatment”?
You’ll notice that when they talk about women in combat they will remind us all that “women get the same training that men get, ” and “women pass the same tests that men must pass.”
This is all true. But they are graded differently for both. Girls will do push-ups and hump rucks but they’ll do the push-ups on their knees and the rucks will weigh half as much.
All of this will create resentment in men and that means that more of them will join the MHRM.
It’s win/win really. Women become more disposable and men get pissed off and turn against feminism.
The bit I just cannot understand – why do you all seem to care?
Well I know I actually wanted to join the military before I came here.
‘The profanity and barking of orders was downsized and dumbed-down.’ — When I was in basic training (Australian Army – Combat Engineer) One of the women – Yes, we’ve been infected with the pc disease as well – complained about the swearing. I said ‘If you can’t handle a few ‘naughty’ words, how the fuck are you going to react when some camel herder starts shooting at you?’. Fuckin’ women really shit me some times.
You know, they say there are no atheists in foxholes.
Could it be possible there are no feminists in foxholes?
Convince the woman the enemy was her boyfriend who is now sleeping with a woman half her age, with big tits. She’ll cut his dick off and make him chew on it.
Don’t kid yourself. You get a woman mad, and she’ll incinerate the planet.
This isn’t bloodlust, is it? From what I understand of bloodlust, its a red haze where the only thing that exists is you and your target – nothing external invovled – no emotional thought, just your own survival.
Women don’t behave that way. They respond out of personal injury and rage. That is not a survival instinct – it is a raw emotional response. It might actually be safer to have a pro-life pregnant woman on the battlefield than a liberal feminist – because at least the pregnant woman will fight tooth and nail for the survival of her baby – because she is emotionally driven to do so.
Why care? Because peace is a temporary situation between two wars. The weaker the military is, the sooner the empire will fall.
TradCon Feminist promotes “male utility” and “female pedestalization”.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/05/to-be-happy-must-admit-women-and-men-arent-equal/
Obviously NOT pro-MRA material.
So, I heard this news and actually sighed thinking to myself – the finally did it. This is the endstate of a political agenda and, importantly, not a military one. Anyone can learn how to kill, machines and weapons do the rest and having been in the military standards can be made exceptionally low. They’ve been calling for this for some time now and given how radical barry is, its no surprise. This policy comes from people who hate the military and have never served. This comes from sedentary individuals in the bowels of academia who have become so dogmatic about the religion of progressivism that they’re willing to go this far to prove the notion that men are women are completely the same. And to them, petitioning the government to make this change and just that is all they ever wanted. Whatever happens afterwards is inconsequential, what matters is perpetuating this false myth of “equalism”…thanks WF Price for that great word. This is an unbelievably stupid policy. The ramifications will be far reaching. But, I’m pretty much convinced that America is no more, we’re in decline. China just pasted us. Iraq and afghanistan will likely be the last adventures america can afford, we can’t even refuel our carriers anymore. And, let me tell you, we probably spend as much if not more in the military on stuff like pregnancies etc as we do on real training, ammo, gear etc. Last note, for all of those that know and accept the simple truth that men and women are different, this recent act is an unspeakable insult to all the MEN that fought and died in previous wars. I don’t think if you resurrected a fallen Marine from Iwo that he’d be happy to hear that she isn’t just as good but better than him? Alas, I have to admit, they all died in vain.
Men will make foolish moves to protect women…maybe even the “enemy”. What if your platoon leader is an old battle axe, but the other side has some hot girls. Look out.
Hey waning of the feminist movement. Females are inferior physically to men for combat. They ain’t filing affirmative action suits, demanding equal punishment on the battlefield, now are they?
It is the male instinct to protect women that they use against men with devilish effectiveness.
@Jean Valjean
You mean the MRM. Not MHRM
I don’t know what other countries have with women in combat.In our country we even have a war hero that was a woman, in the first world war.She was at first helping as a nurse but after her brother died, she decided to take his place as a soldier, being the first woman enrolled on the first line.By the end of 1916 she became the first woman second lieutenant in our country after she was awarded for bravery and military virtue. She had managed to hold on the battlefield though injured in both legs and facing poor conditions(typhoid fever outbreak).She died in the summer of 1917 after being shot in the chest and her last words were “Go ahead boys, don’t worry.You’re with me” .Her troop avenged her by winning that day.She was 23 when she died.She wasn’t a symbol of a woman being strong, she was a symbol of sacrificial bravery and resilience and since most of the soldiers were young or even younger than her, psychical strength and determination were their main attributes.
Let me give you my thoughts. I served in the Army as well as the reserve components. Having women in the military might work if — and this is a big “if” — they were held to the same standards as men. The thing is, the standards are not physical but psychological. I’ve seen female soldiers fall apart and turn on the tears over the most trivial of things. I see a witch hunt has broken out in the Air Force recently over pornography. If female soldiers (airpersons?) go into mass panic over porn (in one case, a copy of Maxim magazine!), then how are they going to deal with the psychological rigors of combat?
Because it is the psychological dimension that counts in warfare: unit cohesion, morale, the combat focus (“bloodlust” if you like). A battlefield is, after all, an “atmosphere of hostility.” It is the psychological factors which allow men to triumph over that atmosphere. If women are going to play the victim, then they will not be able to perform under combat.
What is worse is that too many men go into white knight mode, thumping their chests to protect the females. This wrecks unit cohesion and turns a unit into an armed mob. And armed mobs have a habit of getting annihilated on the battlefield.
Think about it. Supposing an enemy decided to target America’s female soldiers by dropping leaflets containing the Centerfold of the Month ™ on them? Would all the grrrrrl troops go into mass panic, turn on the tears, go running for big strong men to protect them?
Perhaps as part of basic training, female troops ought to be given training in the joys of pornography.
Seriously, unless these issues are addressed, the US may find itself in a world of hurt.