Jeannette,
I can vouch personally for the combat ineffectiveness that FETs cause and when talking to other SOF units, I can assure you the CSTs are the same. You talk of political pressures that these men gave into but ignore how you benefited from them directly and how in the past I have yet to see you or any other woman who is pro-females in ground combat advocate for an increase. Please spare me the self-righteousness when you and others with you never wrote in the past for equality under the standards, advocated for dropping the quotas, etc…but now you are of course writing furiously.

Jeannette,

“Eric: Do some research, you’re missing quite a bit. Don’t post the same older stats on every site you visit. Personal, baseless attacks detract from the point you’re making, especially when you don’t know anything about my service.”

What am I missing? The research is current, the West Point Study and the Presidential Study are older but you and your gender have not made a giant evolutionary leap forward. Please, back up your statements. Counter the research, I have my stuff backed up, none of it is hard to find. So, please, make a valid argument against it but saying “do some research” when I have it and posted it is not logical argument.

As for the personal attacks? What is personal? That you and all the women who push for this never railed against these past injustices or quotas but now of course act as though you want equal treatment? If it is true it is not a personal attack Jeannette. As for your background, do some research, even your Air Medals are online, not hard to look up and does not equal you being an SME on ground combat.

I’ll tell you what, I will stop getting upset at what I see as a huge hypocrisy that I see in your writing if you will argue against the questions I posed or even my research cited.

Maggie,

You can’t call something a red herring when you don’t address my central premise–women will be in combat roles. It will not be kept from happening. I don’t know why you’re so sensitive to any notions of sexism or racism, but I’ve said unequivocally that I am not, NOT, inferring that. I don’t know how much more emphatic I can be regarding that.

I addressed my premise first in every post I’ve made. From there I addressed where we should be devoting our energy–figuring out how to make it work.

I’ve approached this pragmatically fromt he start. This is not an abstract issue to be debated as–if–it was going to happen. It will happen, so lets move the debate beyond why or why not and towards making it work. So that we don’t have conditions forced upon us that don’t work.

Have a plan to make it work, submit the plan, and do an end-run around those who wish to see this happen for the wrong reasons (political agenda).

M.ittles,
The data is out there, it is clear but you somehow fail to grasp that it is politics not facts that matter.
I think my posts lay it out simple enough for a ship driver yet every time I do lay out facts it would seem people choose to ignore them rather than debate them. The classic is that the tests are outdated somehow. Ha! As though there has been a giant evolutionary leap forward in the last 20 years, heck, the last 1000 years.
Try and answer the questions I laid out, tell me how it makes us more combat effective? Etc….until then it’s all emotion and want someone “want’s” instead of what’s best for the organization.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

When we publish under a pseudonym our “experiential” certainty is invalidated. I’m sorry guys, that’s just the way it is. If “Mr.SemperFi” tells me that he “saw it when I was at Paris Island” it means little. When Gunny Smith, USMC, who did a tour as a DI and a tour working with the FET’s tells me that he experienced something…he is validated. That’s actually part of what give’s Capt Petronio’s article such strength. It is also what gives MAJ Haynie’s writing a solid foundation. I’d love to hear an honest discussion between the two of them, which could help us all better understand the issue.

There are great strengths to writing under a pen name (the ability to take on subjects that may cause political or career pressure, the ease with which we can set rank aside, etc) but there are also weaknesses. Yes, this may be the interwebs…but it is still publishing, and it is still The United States Naval Institute. To quote a revered veteran “this is not ‘Nam, Smokey. There are rules.” They apply to all of us whether we choose to use our own names, or another. Comments on the internet are just that, comments. Blog posts are just that, blog posts. Articles that have been through an editorial process are even something else. Don’t conflate them as all the same thing.

This is a subject that will require serious people to do serious work, on both sides of the issue. Dealing in absolutes will get us nowhere. Well, that’s not true, dealing only in absolutes will create a no-mans-land between the arguments, which will deliver the maneuver room for political considerations to be the only ones that matter.

BJ,
You are assuming that a few things-

One, that there is in fact room to maneuver on this, it is all politics.

Two, you are assuming there is an equal standard. They are women and hence can write either way on the topic, they can use their real name and will feel no blow back for the men, not so much.

Three, pseudonyms are needed if you are still on AD, it is just the way it is. It’s not hard to find the posers from the folks who have been there or who are still in. You can always see the reality of the effects women have had on the military since they have been mixed in, if you are still in you would have seen it both here and overseas. Overall it is a negative effect in my view but that is one thing that is just my opinion. If a man, especially in a Field Grade or above position goes against the conventional wisdom that women should be in all spectrums of the military and he does so openly then he is done.

Lastly, here is just one example of a man who tried to make things equal-

“WASHINGTON — An Army general in northern Iraq has added pregnancy to the list of reasons a soldier under his command could be court-martialed.

The new policy, outlined last month by Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo and released Friday by the Army, would apply to both female soldiers who become pregnant on the battlefield and the male soldiers who impregnate them.

Civilians reporting to Cucolo also could face criminal prosecution under the new guidelines.

Army spokesman George Wright said the service typically sends home from the battlefield soldiers who become pregnant. But it is not an Army-wide policy to punish them under the military’s legal code, he said.

However, division commanders like Cucolo have the authority to impose these type of restrictions to personnel operating under their command, Wright said.

Cucolo oversees forces in northern Iraq, an area that includes the cities of Kirkuk, Tikrit and Mosul. His Nov. 4 order was first reported by the military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

Cucolo’s order outlines some 20 barred activities. Most of them are aimed at keeping order and preventing criminal activity, such as selling a weapon or taking drugs.

But other restrictions seemed aimed at preventing soldiers from leaving their unit short-handed, including becoming pregnant or undergoing elective surgery that would prevent their deployment.

Under Cucolo’s order, troops also are prohibited from “sexual contact of any kind” with Iraqi nationals. And, they cannot spend the night with a member of the opposite sex, unless married or expressly permitted to do so.”

Now, this is what he started, guess what happened about a week later after he issued this policy? Well, he had to rescind it. Not even a month went by for a man in a combat zone until he was told he could not hold them to the standard. It’s a joke and thinking that the author for using her name is somehow more credible is simply not being honest with yourself. She is a pilot who is in her position due to unequal treatment, quotas (they are hard) and the same double standards for physical readiness that she now somehow advocates for. It’s all a joke man, the GOs have the moral courage of a politician and the women who are advocating for this know full well they have always worked under a different standard and that the standard will be dropped again for them if they open up ground combat. There is no example in our history where we have held them to an honest equal standard nor will there be in the future. Read the diversity report I linked to in a previous post and then someone, anyone tell me that quotas won’t be instituted?

YN2,

I was not responding to you specifically. I believe that integrating the services righted a wrong and strengthened the Military. I don’t see how it relates to the current discussion. I am not accusing you of anything. You have nothing to defend.

You, MI and others believe that women in combat units is inevitable. Some of us don’t.

This post was not written with the message “It’s coming, how can we best implement.”. It was written as “I don’t like the way it is and I want it to be different”.

BJ,
One, I did not say I doubted you were there, I don’t know you from ‘Adam’, take a wrap off “Ghostrider”. As for the writing, outside of Webb who else ever did that openly against women in combat? Webb also did that in a very different era and as a civilian, not as an AD officer, so not the same thing. Let’s not act like our GOs are not politically motivated to do what they must due to pressure. American GOs do not have a custom of resigning over something they see as wrong with the exception of a JAG over torture. So, please, let’s not act like the AD Officer Corps is falling over themselves to get both side of the story on this topic. It is career suicide, plain and simple.

Two, if you did not treat the women any differently, then please explain why you did not resign in protest over their getting quotas for flight school via the Academies? Or the different physical standards? Yes, that was meant as a bit of a wise remark but you can’t say that you “take personal affront to the insinuation that I taught/graded/mentored them differently” when in fact you did just by how they got to be there, how their standards are and in the end the effect they have due to politics.
So, if you say you did not treat them any differently, not buying it and you would be the first person I have talked who did say that.

A few replies:

Maggie: Superbly said and admirably succinct.

Malachi: I quite agree. Never a doubt. However COMMA recently COMMA the blog seems a bit fixated on women Marines and why the Corps isn’t perfect for them just yet, and what needs to be done…

Appropriate and timely, but there are other fish in the sea, some of which will bite us all, and some quite soon, which are not quite so frequently presented, if at all. Just lobbying for getting a topic or two in edgewise, and just possibly one that can generate more light than heat. Call me jaded, grumpy and a tad partial toward the blue water Navy.
Just don’t deny my esteem for good Marines and the Corps they serve as part of the Naval Service.

Of course if the AD Navy guys were drowning Admin with pithy posts on hot topics (which I kinda doubt) the list would come off nice and easy, and all would be on an even keel (that’ll be the day).

Perhaps I really am wishing for more AD Navy folks to blog under their own name (or nom du blog), daring to think, speak, and write (and blog herein) at least as often and as well as the ladies of the Corps.

YN2: of all the things that I have lost to retirement, I miss my YN the most often. Thanks for the kind word.

Sigh, Jeannette,
The fact that you refuse to acknowledge that you are the result of not holding an equal standard or that we have never done that in our history is a bit false don’t you think? I understand some of the points you put up you think are worth debating but yet you don’t? So, you put something like this out on the net as an article, stating your view but are not willing to engage the real and honest factors that come into play on this topic. I’ll answer them for you.

Here I will address each of your points you seem to think are not worth really answering back.

“The main objections seem to be along these lines:”

-women and men are different but women are categorically similar to each other

(yes, just as men are categorically similar to each other, to say otherwise goes against common sense and a little thing like science)

-women are weaker

(As a whole they are, when men and women are put into physical training their bodies respond differently. When men are sampled compared to women and both genders have been exercising the chances you will find a man that is stronger than a woman is about 98.5%, please read Kingsley Brownes “Co-Ed Combat”)

-women can’t do it

(Some may be able to but the cost in unit cohesion, wasted man hours on frat, the simple fact that she will be more easily injured due to her skeletal system frame, the cost of it and that there is no need to change makes it not worth it. You are not in direct combat even and you are already cost more in morale, distractions, wasted man hours, political correctness, lowered standards and “touchy feely” BS. What do you think will happen when you are in combat arms?)

-10,000 years of history say women can’t do it

(Yup, what is your retort? You say recent experience backs your view but having been to Iraq 2x and Afghanistan 4x I have not seen it and the only people I ever advocate for combat inclusion are O’s, Politicians and non-combat folks)

-there is no value that women can bring to any combat unit

(Not in direct combat, in intel, in MEDCAPs during a COIN War but otherwise, nope. So please point out what you bring to the table?)

-standards will be lowered

(They have been throughout the introduction of women into the ranks, why would that change now? Again, what is your retort outside wishful thinking?)

-this is a feminist, political agenda talking

(Lmao! There is! Have you read the Diversity Report? Have you followed NOW and DACOWITS at all on this topic? Perhaps that bastion of non-gender motivation SWAN has missed your view? It is not the only thing driving this but if you think that identity politics don’t play into it you are again not paying attention)

-sequestration is looming, so we should just stop enlisting and commissioning women anyway

(Not sure where you got that from on here but who doesn’t love a straw man right?)

-we need more posts by men in the Navy

(Yeah, we would like honest debate about this and in the open but if you are honest with yourself you know that it is career suicide to do so while on AD if you are a man. If you think it is not then I question your situational awareness or your integrity.)

-women will not be allowed to fail due to political agendas

(Did you see my posts on West Point and Navy Damage Control? Have you been in the same military I have been? Or are you going to ignore those actual documented cases because it does not fit your agenda?)

-current PFT/PRT standards are different

(Yup, retort on how to fix this?)

-women are only in the services to fill quotas

(They are, it is again a documented fact they have quotas for jobs at the OCS/Academy level and “goals” on the enlisted side. What do you call it?)

-our combat experience over the past decade is nothing like in previous wars, so we can’t use the data of the past decade (and women couldn’t do what was done in previous wars)

(There has been no air to air, no real ground threat against aircraft that has been consistent or thick, so no, in the air it is not a real bit of data to use. There has been no sea warfare, so again, not a real bit of data to use. On the ground we are a huge tooth to tail ratio, at the grunt level and I include SOF in this, it is still very similar to past counter-guerilla wars but not to conventional ones. Infantry is still infantry, but that is the point, females are not out getting into it with the enemy. Going head to head after the TIC is not the same. Yes, stepping on a mine/IED counts as a KIA but it is not the same as clearing a room, going head to head or even hand to hand. CAS and IDF is about to go away for the most part, being an aggressive, strong grunt who can shoot, move and communicate is going to be even more paramount. Your “equality” endangers my life, sorry if it hurts your opportunity to advance but I kind of like my life more than your job.)

Look, a women can be just as brave as a man, does me no good when she cannot hump as much kit as I can, as fast as I can or as long as I can. It does me no good when she cannot drag me to a safe position or to a CASEVAC platform. It does me no good when she gets injured at a far higher rate than I do. In short, desire does not equate to ability. Men and women are vastly different both physically and mentally, it is genetic and science backs me on that. Even our brains act differently and that is being more and more proven every single day but it is like not one person wants to acknowledge that white elephant in the room. I am tired of it, I am tired of the obfuscation I see come out of officers’ mouths, tired of the out right lies I hear out of peoples mouths and tired of everyone being “offended” at everything. I think your inability to honestly defend your position is sad. I think that many of the folks who advocate for this idea are motivated by an illusion of equality and meritocracy in the military frustrating . I think the inability of people to be honest about this topic is disheartening. I think this is a good example of why I have little to no faith in the senior officer corps. Tell you what Jeannette, I will look at the people who advocate for this position a little better when they start putting as much effort in increasing our physical standards by making them actually difficult, then enforcing them and holding to them, finally then advocating for the same standards. I have a feeling I will be waiting a long time to see that amount of energy from a group has done nothing but benefit from the massive double standard in treatment, stationing, quarters and standards throughout the last few decades.

Ladies & Gentlemen-

Before we get too hasty here, I refer you to this fine article from the NY Times by a former Marine Infantry Officer and graduate of that sacred and unholy institution, which occupies the fortress-like and decidedly separate Mitchell Hall, the Infantry Officers’ Course.

Remember this is the first day, there are many more and many worse ones to come… I know. I am a proud graduate from the Church of Violence, though it took far more to accomplish that feat than I would ever acknowledge to my Marines.

My pull quote:

“Of 96 officers who had started the endurance test, 76 passed, 7 quit, 7 were injured and 6 failed.”

All male. All volunteers. All of impressive physical ability. But remember the reporter left out most of the blood, sweat, tears, grit, shame, confusion, and wonderful surprises that are a part of the damnable CET. Very anecdotal, but the requirements to graduate are not dictated by TECOM as a strict 80% average on graded exams. This is the only exam these men will take, as IOC views an 80% score as not good enough. Especially, when it comes to the practice of interpersonal violence and the judicious application of Marine Infantrymen.

Still believe it is worth the time, effort, manpower, and money to find the few exceptions that might be able successfully complete this course? For your consideration:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/09/us/grueling-course-for-marine-officers-will-open-its-doors-to-women.html

Capt. Woody,
I am a fan of Ayn Rand but the military is and must be about the organization not the individual. As soon as people think in the manner you do the military will cease to be an effective group and we are on that route now. The military must be and should be about the group not the individual, the fact that you would propose that idea of the individual over the group is a bit shocking to me but consistent with the what I have seen in the non-line community unfortunately. Your line of thinking disappoints me. I do not understand the train of thought that the military should be about the individual over the group, it would seem that you have lost the things the military should instill. An 06 who thinks in this manner has not taken on the intangibles that the military continues to offer the youth of the country: self-sacrifice, loyalty, honor, nobility, fortitude, etc…it’s supposed to be all about the group. The very nature of the military is about the group, I am lost after reading your post. Check your premise.