As President “Whenever” Obama continues to drag his feet on his campaign promise to repeal DADT, I was struck by this story about women serving in the military in the Monday New York Times.
For generations, people argued that women could not serve in combat roles not just because, you know, they’re girls and so not physically capable of soldiering, but also because the very presence of women would ruin unit cohesion and morale. Essentially, the same argument homophobes and bigots make against gays serving, and the argument once made against racial integration.
Well, once again reality refutes the bigots. Some money quotes:
Opponents of integrating women in combat zones long feared that sex would mean the end of American military prowess. But now birth control is available — the PX at [Forward Operating Base] Warhorse even sold out of condoms one day recently — reflecting a widely accepted reality that soldiers have sex at outposts across Iraq.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the first in which tens of thousands of American military women have lived, worked and fought with men for prolonged periods. Wars without front lines, they have done more than just muddle the rules meant to keep women out of direct enemy contact.
They have changed the way the United States military goes to war. They have reshaped life on bases across Iraq and Afghanistan. They have cultivated a new generation of women with a warrior’s ethos — and combat experience — that for millennia was almost exclusively the preserve of men.
This new reality—women can be, and are, accomplished and professional soldiers—hasn’t changed the fact that sexual harassment, and assault, are far too common. And, as usual, these problems are put in terms of the potential subject positions men can imagine women in:
Staff Sgt. Patricia F. Bradford, 27, a psychological operations soldier, said that slights, subtle and not, were common, and some were easier to brush off than others. Women are still viewed derisively at times in the confined, occasionally tense space of an outpost like Warhorse.
“You’re a bitch, a slut or a dyke — or you’re married, but even if you’re married, you’re still probably one of the three,” Sergeant Bradford said.
At the same time, she and other female soldiers cope with the slights, showing a disarming brashness.
“I think being a staff sergeant — and a bitch — helps deflect those things,” she added.
And take the following passage, change “separating the sexes” for “kicking out the gay men and lesbians”:
The issues that arise in having women in combat — harassment, bias, hardship, even sexual relations — are, she and others said, a matter of discipline, maturity and professionalism rather than an argument for separating the sexes.
Finally, the last word which will, if the President every comes through, be something said about gays in the military a few years down the road:
“There was a lot of debate over where women should be,” said Brig. Gen. Heidi V. Brown, one of the two highest ranking women in Iraq today, recalling the start of the war. “Here we are six years later, and you don’t hear about it. You shouldn’t hear about it.”
And we won’t hear about it anymore once bigotry is seen for what it is.
in addition there are so many out women in the military, a very open secret
I hope you’re all reading Army@Love.
Ethically speaking, the military always seems to be a century behind the real world.
One of my all-time favorite memories from Iraq involved a female soldier who was guarding the day laborers we had in the camp (doing cleaning, digging ditches, etc.) One of the Iraqis had wandered away, and she told him to come back. He had an issue with getting yelled at by a woman… stood there and cursed and spat at her feet. She turned around to yell for the male Sergeant on the other side of the group, and when she did, the laborer slapped her on the ass. In one motion, she turned around and butt-stroked him across the jaw with her M-16. The guys was knocked out cold before he he even hit the ground. Funnily enough, we didn’t have any trouble with day-laborers after than. Moral of the story is, women can do damn near everything we men can, and sometimes they do it with STYLE…
@danhowes
No, not always. The vast majority of soldiers are young, not necessarily highly educated, and are not taught to question too much (the nature of the job pretty much requires following orders whether you think they’re dumb or not. That’s how things get done). They tend to take a live and death view of a lot of things. But I would venture to say that, while they tend to be somewhat conservative politically, the general level of ethics and morality is very high in the military- the reason you hear so much about things like Abu Gharib and the Marine shootins is because of their relative rarity. Most occupying militaries are much more destructive than ours (see also: Kashmir, Chechnya, etc).
So the reason we don’t want to have women and gays in the military (active combat roles, whatever) is because the straight men can’t handle it like mature adults. Easier to try to restrict one than to educate the other, I guess.
@6 no, the men can handle it, it’s the senior officers that can’t – they still think we’re operating on Mad Men rules.
A lot of the straight men AREN’T mature adults yet. A very large number of them are 19-year-old boys, still full of arrogance and ignorance. That’s where a lot of the problems come from; those guys haven’t yet come to grips with dealing with women or gays as fellow soldiers.
@3: Actually, in the article, it mentions that army officers have been putting women on the ground for a while, particularly since Iraq, but because their actions don’t have Congressional approval, they often resort to bureaucratic loopholes to get the paperwork done. One example in the article is that instead of “assigning” a woman to a unit — which isn’t allowed — she’s “attached” — which is.
In civilian life, those guys would be flat-out fired for their behavior. Make an example of a few of those knuckleheads by dishonorably discharging them and you’ll see the problem, among the lower ranks at least, clear up quick.
women get to be bitches, sluts, or dykes.
and men get to be assholes, dicks, or fags.
see? equal but different!
The most amusing thing is that there have been women and gays serving in NATO for decades.
With no problems.
America is just … slow.
As long as they can pass the same physical fitness requirements men do I’m all for it
Hardly any of them do though
@ mkyorai,
The general level of ethics and morality is very high in the military? Tell that to the 25% of females serving who’ve been sexually assaulted. Tell that to the ones who got punished for reporting it. Tell that to the Dykes, Bitches, and Sluts.