Mixed gender rooms in the armed forces.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve noticed there are a lot of veterans from various nations armed forces here.

Since Norway made conscription gender neutral in 2013, this obviously led to a large influx of women into the armed forces. To put it mildly. This initially led to practical issues about sleeping quarters, bathrooms etc. After some experimenting, the solution landed on was just to domicile both genders together. Six or eight bed rooms.

I wonder what the opinions of armed forces people here are about this. Its been going for some years now.

Incidentally, the 2017 survey of the conscripts show a gender divide on the subject. Males are 15 % neutral or negative to mixed-gender rooms. 19 % are positive and 66 % are very positive.

Among the females, 8 % are neutral or negative, 14 % are positive and 78 % are very positive.

2

I’m currently in the US army, and I can tell you that it’s getting more “gender neutral” and female friendly by the day. I’ve done ‘field training exercises’ where the males and females have had to live and sleep in the same room or tent and frankly, I do not like it one bit. Males and females should never share the same sleeping quarters unless they are married, in a relationship, or related to each other.

3

I must agree.

We’re human beings. Of whatever gender/ sexuality/ identity. Doesn’t matter. You mix up 8 adults, far from home, stressful situations…

You wind up with lot of 50 year olds sitting around the American Legion Hall bar muttering about " this one time, at Boot Camp… "

Not good.

4

Is this a morality thing with you? Or a whoosh?

If everyone is sleeping, how would you know who’s in the room?

5

Six-to-eight-bed mixed gender dorms? No biggie. That’s how youth hostels work nowadays, although most of them offer female-only (but only rarely male-only) rooms as an option. Sharing one on one would be awkward; sharing with a whole bunch of mixed-gender folks basically just turns the whole room into a semi-public space.

6

Not so much a morality thing, it’s just that it opens up possibilities for problems. Personally, I also feel that it’s somewhat emasculating and humiliating.

7

Totally aside from morality issues, there are also practical considerations.

Most mainstream media outlets don’t like to report on drawbacks to “enlightened” policies, so you probably don’t know about the problems.

This is just from the British military.

8

I’m not sure that making the genders bunk in separate rooms does much to reduce this. What would reduce this would be making servicemembers take long term contraceptives, such as implants, IUDs, or their equivalent once they exist for men.

A bigger problem would be whether or not there is an increased incidence of rapes. Which are supposedly extremely common and the majority of servicewomen in the U.S. military report being assaulted at least once. Though I’ve heard from an NCO in charge of investigating them that the actual majority of rapes are male on male.

Norwegians are a different people and a different culture. Maybe this isn’t as much of a problem for them.

9

I can’t follow this and I am from the dark ages where the rare times women were on the ship, their quarters were guarded from the rest of the ship’s personnel.

What would be humiliating about it?

Post-Navy I did work on the spring fit-out of the Clearwater, and we were happy to have a spot on the floor of an attic loft for our sleeping bags and it was mixed gender then. This was way back in the early 90s. Not to mention camping trips.

You sound a little like Mike Pence here, thus my confusion.

10

I’m from the dark ages too, and I can testify that single gender accomadations could also have problems. We had a couple gals that were rumored to be gay(this was the mid-70’s) and nobody wanted to bunk in the same room with them. Scuttlebutt said this happened with guys too, but I don’t know as much about that.

11

I’ve shared hotel rooms (and, hell, on occasion, shared a bed) with women who weren’t a relative, nor a romantic partner, of mine. I attend gaming conventions with friends of both sexes, and we often wind up sharing rooms.

D’you know what we did? We slept. No big deal. I didn’t feel emasculated; I’m fairly certain that my female friends didn’t have an issue with it, either.

Your posts over the past few weeks suggest to me that you have a few hangups.

12

Okay, this will take a while.

I was an instructor at the USCG training center on Governor’s Island NY from 1979-1982. The main building for the training center was an older 3 story brick building. It was divided into 14 sections, labeled A through N. A much newer section was added on, that was O section.

The first deck from sections A through N were admin offices and classrooms. There was a library there too. The upper 2 decks were barracks (more like dormitory rooms). O section was all dorms. When I first got there, A-C, E-N sections both decks were for male students. D section, both floors, were for CPOs, both student and permanent party. O section deck 1 was for female students and permanent party. Deck 2 was for male permanent party 1st & 2nd class petty officers, and deck 3 was for male permanent party 3rd class petty officers and non-rates.

In each deck section was a large bathroom. Urinals with privacy separators, toilets in stalls, a row of sinks and mirrors, several washing machines and driers, and a large shower. 6 or 8 could shower at the same time each with their own nozzle. O section was different. The heads were larger and there were 2 on each deck, 1 at each end.

Changes came. The CPOs wanted nicer quarters and more females were coming as students and permanent party. So… female students were moved into both decks of D-section. The CPOs moved into O-section 1st deck. Permanent party female 1st & 2nd class POs shared the 2nd deck with male 1st & 2nd class POs, and female and male permanent party 3rd class POs and non-rates shared the 3rd deck.

O-section 3rd deck males used the head on one side of the deck and the females used the one on the other end. O-section 2nd deck, one head was male only. Because there weren’t that many females berthed there, they had a sliding indicator mounted on the door to indicate “Vacant”, “Male”, or “Female”. The only complaint I ever heard was some females griping about having a row of urinals in their head.* No gripes about a different gender walking in to the head already in use. And I heard of no problems with personnel going to or from the head in bathrobes or pjs.

So, at least there, it worked.

*It wasn’t my problem, but my opinion was “Why not just grow some ivy in them? They can water them by just pulling the handle.”

13

There’s also the USS Acadia, the first US Navy warship to have men and women together in wartime and was nicknamed “The Love Boat” due to 36 pregnancies.

14

If I may ask TMI questions, how exactly do these sailors manage to pull off the sex? I was under the impression that warships give people just about no privacy and no time for 1-on-1 time whatsoever, unless you go into the head together (but then you’d be seen coming out of the lavatory, or people’d see you going in.)

15

Unless there’s an explicit policy against getting soldiers pregnant, and as long as the sex was consensual, I don’t see how this is really a problem (other than a headache for logistics and long-term unit planning departments.) I mean, a serviceperson could just as easily turn up pregnant on deployment having been knocked up by their partner just before shipping out, is that also a “problem”? Obviously, there should be decent sex ed and readily available birth control anyway.

16

Well besides fratenisation ruining unit cohesion

17

Is there a specific policy against that? And does it, really? I know officer-enlisted fraternization is usually officially sanctioned, and for much better reason.

18

There are pregnancies when the genders are in segregated housing. I doubt bunking them together matters to the pregnancy rate. As someone pointed out, a room with 8 people is pretty public. Mixed sex dorms may even reduce rape, as there would be fewer places to go where another man isn’t likely to walk in and potentially break something up.

Like kenobi, I’ve shared hotel rooms with unrelated men, and we had no problems.

19

This doesn’t seem like a gender divide at all, those match pretty close to each other.

20

I’ve never been in any army, but my summer camp (courtesy of the mountaineering club at my Jesuit high school) had and still has mixed-gender tents. On occasion someone tries to get their underwear into knots and are asked “oh, your home is gender segregated?”

In most of Spain, teens hire spaces for the summer; spaces which include beds and sofas and other comfortable furniture. In the big cities where those aren’t available, people have sex in cars. Some of those cars are legendary uncomfortable to have sex in, yet people managed.

If people want to fool around they’ll find a way. If they don’t want to, the opportunity is irrelevant.

Maybe the brass could have tried having into place other options than “abstinence or abortion”.