Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Women in Combat Has Always Been a Terrible Idea
From the time that the military decided to put women into combat roles, I knew that it was going to be a bad decision for everyone: for men, for women, and for the military. I don’t object to women being in the military, especially in a volunteer army, and with the shortage of candidates. But the premises that were hidden underneath the explanations of equal opportunity to put women in combat roles are what disturb me the most.
A new report was just issued regarding the status of women in special operations units:
Female soldiers face rampant sexism, harassment and other gender-related challenges in male dominated Army special operations units, according to a report Monday, eight years after the Pentagon opened all combat jobs to women.
U.S. Army Special Operations Command, in a lengthy study, reported a wide range of ‘overtly sexist’ comments from male soldiers, including a broad aversion to females serving in commando units. The comments, it said, are ‘not outliers’ but represent a common sentiment that women don’t belong on special operations teams.
More than 5,000 people were assigned to these units, including 837 female troops, 3,238 male troops, and the rest defense civilians.
The decision to admit women to Special Operations has never made sense to me, and now with so many other opportunities open to women throughout society, it makes even less sense.
I think there are many myths underlying the importance of women in combat roles.
- We need women’s voices in the military. My question is, why in combat roles? Men and women have different interests and skill areas; in what way does a woman’s voice in a combat role contribute to a better military?
- Women need to have the exact same opportunities as men. The problem is that we assume that women should be able to do exactly the same jobs as men, because men’s jobs are—what? —more important? Do we not need every single person that staffs a support job to work at a high level and at high standards? Doesn’t it matter that the non-combat jobs are critical to success on the battlefield?
- The Army apparently holds in higher esteem combat jobs rather than the non-combat jobs. That seems like a valid assessment, since the combat roles require the soldier to put his life on the line; the sacrifice is the ultimate one. On the other hand, non-combat jobs can make extreme demands; are there avenues for promotion when a woman is in a non-combat role?
- Women say they want to be treated like men. So why do some women expect special accommodations for pregnancy? Or believe the Army should pay for their abortions and expenses when they have to travel for treatment? Or pay for their child care?
- Women want to be able to serve like their military families of origin. Why can’t they serve in a non-combat role? Besides, isn’t serving all about serving the country? Or is it about you getting your personal goals met?
- Women shouldn’t be excluded because the job is dangerous. Why not? Why should they risk leaving their children motherless when they can serve in safer roles?
* * * *
I don’t want to give people the impression that I think women shouldn’t be in the military. And I believe we have some military women on this site. It’s tough enough serving with children, tolerating the separations and other challenges. But to have the danger of the job darkening the background doesn’t make sense to me. Especially when there are challenges to making women’s roles equal.
I also can’t help wondering if this is an insidious after-effect of feminism. I know I made choices in my life early due to the feminist influence. But to what degree are women desiring combat positions to prove that they are equal to or better than men?
It’s no surprise that some of the servicemen are behaving badly and it shouldn’t be tolerated. Instead, what I see is that men are being forced to take meaningless training, which takes valuable time and dollars, probably creates resentment, and will probably be ignored by the violators. I know that men in the military still harass women, and I’d like the military to make more of an effort to punish the violators. I’d also like to identify a way for women to believe they need to speak up when they are harassed. Here are some of the training subjects for the men to get them to behave:
The report made 42 recommendations. Several involving increased training and messages to the force to expand awareness of sexual harassment, mentorship, health care and other issues, have been done. Other changes are in progress.
Overall, the report said that gender bias is ‘deeply embedded’ in staffing and equipping the special operations force.
And are standards being lowered? There’s this point:
While there is solid agreement that standards cannot be lowered for females, many interpret that as prohibiting any gender-specific accommodations.
‘Women may require different tools than men to perform the same task,” the report said. “A mentality change is necessary to modify the archaic attitude that supplying tools to female service members is an act of accommodation versus simply providing our warfighters with the right tools for the job.’
So they’re trying to say the standards are simply different, not lower.
For those who are military and retired military, what do you think?
Published in Military
I want to address the harassment issue. Because I think it requires superhuman behavior.
You take men who are already inclined to violence (albeit in a “legal” format). You put them in raw, life-or-death situations. You remove normal routine intimacy. And then you expect them to not behave in a direct manner when they see a woman they like the looks of?
It is unrealistic at best.
In the UK, they let women into the navy. Within the first year, HALF of them “became” pregnant. Shocker.
I’ve never served in the military. But my understanding is that one problem here is that traditionally, the purpose of the military was to fight wars and protect America. That was the whole purpose of the military. So promotions generally happened for service in combat. Without serving in combat, promotions are more difficult.
So if women are not allowed in combat, you’re limiting their opportunities for promotion.
Which is a problem. Unless you think that the purpose of our military is to fight wars and protect America. In which case you don’t care who gets promoted, as long as the military is highly effective.
In sports, we teach kids that the team is more important than the individual. In today’s military, perhaps that is not the case.
Point taken. But the military can’t fight wars without those people who back them up.
Women in particular desire intimacy, and the army is not an environment that provides that; it’s not intended to, unless you talk about working as a team. I think some women mistake physical intimacy as a substitute. It happens in any environment.
Women have beaten me over my head all my life that they are as good as any man except when they are better. They want this so let them have it. I am tired of fighting a losing battle. Actually since we are being required to fill most positions in the country with equal numbers of gender lets make it a requirement that the military be 50% women.
Somebody (don’t recall whom) shared this letter: I then passed it along to a man with five boys and one girl. He left the military as an MP who had served with Special Forces.
His response was that he loved it:
EDIT: You can remove the word “christian” from the above letter with no loss of applicability.
These days, this could be easily accomplished by simply reassigning the gender of enough males to female upon recruitment, complete with nicely framed certificates honoring such recruits’ induction into womanhood. Voila, equity goals met!
Please don’t give them any ideas, GPentelie. Somebody might actually take you up on that!
Good post, and I hope it is promoted to the Main Feed.
Thirty years in uniform (US Army, both active duty and reserves), including Infantry, Transportation, and Chemical Corps. I likely would bore the socks off of every reader with anecdotes regarding the myriad problems with the military’s (mostly failed) attempts to erase the differences between men and women in the various services.
Bottom line: It was a failure when attempted in the 1990’s. It was a failure when forced into law in 2015. The civilian academics, bureaucrats, and elites who favors such policies don’t care that they are a millstone around the neck of combat efficacy. The uniformed senior leaders (the “perfumed princes”) who go along with it are motivated by the desire to protect their own careers, rather than the higher ethical and moral calling of acting and doing what necessary to protect and preserve those who go into harm’s way.
Yes, I can think of at least one “gal” who would be happy to:
Thanks, PH. I respect your opinion from other times you’ve commented, so I’m glad you’ve weighed in. I’m so sorry that the military continues to use this issue to pad their own careers.
I have never served in the military, but the nature of my job has required me to spend a lot of time in their presence and to use a technique I call “listening.” The nature of the role of our special forces requires that they rely on the performance of each and every member of the team to be nearly superhuman. Someone who, say, can’t keep up will put the mission and the lives of the team at an unacceptable risk. (They also want gear that works the first time every time. They really like that a lot.) The military goes to a great deal of expense to identify individuals capable of performing at this level, and training them to do what needs to be done virtually by reflex.
The military is not an encounter group. It exists to perform its function, which is to kill people and break their stuff. If you need to build your self-esteem, join a mental health support group. You’re less likely to get yourself and other people killed.
Well said, Percival! Yes indeed!
Unfortunately, it’s all part of the plan.
OUT: Be all you can be!
IN: Be whatever you like!
Excellent post, Susan. It’s a topic which has come up now and then over the years, but I don’t remember when it’s been more cogently presented, or had more food for thought in it. I think (although I’m sure many on the site know better than I–that even Israel, which regards its compulsory military service and training as necessary because it sees itself in a defensive posture, limits combat roles for women, although they do serve in some combat roles. That–the “defense-at-home” argument–is the only one I think has some validity when it comes to training woman for combat roles.)
Myself, I’d be glad, if push ever comes to shove–in the spirit of a great many Westerns I seem to remember–to be handed a gun, told to stay in my kitchen and shoot anyone who comes through the door. I think I could just about do that, at a pinch.
Also, we need to ensure women die at the same rates as men in the military. Lots of work to be done there.
And in jobs. We need quotas until women die at the same rate as men in jobs.
I spent 20 years in the USAF doing support jobs. I am totally against having women in combat roles.
I served in the army 72 – 78, the post-Vietnam era. I was an admin guy (combat arms guys called us REMFs, or Rear Echelon..you do the rest). Outside of a combat zone during that time enlisted promotions were pretty much automatic based on time in service/time in grade up to grade E4 for enlisted personnel. Starting at grade E5 (Sergeant or Specialist 5) it was more competitive and required recommendation by your commander, a board appearance and then placement on a list where promotion to the next rank was based on a cut off score the army issued monthly, generated by shortages of certain Military Occupation Specialty codes.
So prohibiting women from serving in combat under most circumstances doesn’t interfere with promotions based on merit in their job specialty.
I actually think the way to prevent more of this sort of thing is having the military include both sexes.
There is a chain-migration phenomenon that I’ve seen happen in single-sex institutions such as colleges and whole towns and lots of organizations. I think it is part of the explanation for what happened in the Catholic Church in Massachusetts in the priest scandals. The Church, as much as I admire it, should have let and encouraged priests to have families a thousand years ago. Instead, in Massachusetts it became a haven for single-sex-interested people. I believe fervently that single-sex organizations are a really bad idea.
The way to work with having both in the military is to have tough standards and stick to them. That will solve those problems. It would probably keep women out of combat where they don’t do well.
That’s very helpful information, Casey. Thanks!
The army isn’t and shouldn’t be a single sex organization. And to ignore the problems it causes by having both sexes serve in combat doesn’t help performance.
Exactly. And I am glad that’s true. All they need to do is create and keep really stringent physical performance standards. That will keep women out of combat, for the most part.
The Army has long had minimum height standards for men, among the reasons for which is that increasing the range of body sizes means increasing the variety of sizes of uniforms and other equipment, thus putting a greater strain on the supply chain. And all sorts of vehicles and weapons have been designed with an expected limited range of body sizes
A little over thousand years ago was when the Church really started to crack down on families. It was not like it started out that way; they added it.
Women on US Navy ships have a sudden wave of pregnancies before long and/or dangerous deployments too.
Well, it WOULD be a way to “balance” the military without giving up actual performance.
There have been shocking stories about physical fitness requirements being reduced so that candidates can pass the tests–not just soldiers and marines and sailors but also fire fighters and police officers. Some “woke” zealots pretend that the standards have not been lowered, while others pretend that the old standards were arbitrary and can be lowered without consequences.
It’s not just about abilities and proclivities. Fundamentally, from a biological survival-of-the-species point of view, women are more valuable than men. When a society is threatened and must be protected, men are expendable. In that situation, that’s what men are for.
To expect that women should be treated the same way shows a completely failure, or refusal, to understand how reality works.