Women and homosexuals in the armed forces

Great Debates
21

I think this the point the Army officer brought up in your assembly is a good one. I can’t tell if you are making light of this reaction in men, disregarding it as unfounded, or just making fun of it. It is real. Maybe not for some men, but I would guess for a large majority.

Can a man not be a good soldier, and still have a natural urge to protect a woman in trouble? To all you men out there, how many of you are more affected by a woman’s anguish than a man’s? If you saw a woman tortured or subjected to sexual violence or mutilation, do you think your urge to protect her would be stimulated more than seeing the torture of a fellow male soldier? I would, and I don’t think this is a minority view in men.

I’m certainly not saying I would be indifferent to the torture of a male soldier. If seeing a man tortured rated a 10 on the proverbial scale, for me, seeing or hearing a woman in that circumstance would rate a 12. Something different within me would be brought out if I had to witness such treatment against a woman. Or a child. If you think such a protective streak is uncalled for or patronizing, so be it.

I was in the military and am very glad the situation never came up either way. My unit was about 50/50 male/female. Would I have broken down if one of my fellow soldiers was captured and tortured in my presence? I can’t answer that question. I would hope that I would not. I do know it would be harder if a woman were involved. There is just something about a man dying in combat that, while terrible, can be accepted as more natural (for want of a better word) than a woman dying under those circumstances. Men go to war. Men die. Such is the way of this world. Maybe society should not be so quick to wish for similar acceptance for women.

I need to qualify what I said in the previous paragraph. I would break down. No doubt about it. Hopefully my training would be such that I would not “break down” in the presence of the enemy. But seeing a fellow soldier tortured would surely haunt me for the rest of my life. Male or female; however, it would be somehow a different type of haunting if it were a female and I was helpless to protect her.

I have seen two people die violently in front of my eyes. I just so happens that one was a male soldier and one was female. At those times when such horrors creep into my mind, it the the instance with the female that causes me to lose sleep.

22

I think the argument about a man breaking down and giving information to stop the torture of a captured female solider interesting. I believe the military does train for this contingency. Some of this training is classified but I have read where military personal are subjected to simulated torture of men and women to prepare them for this possibility in event of capture. I don’t know if this is true. Also, if men will break down if a woman is tortured and this is a very common argument for opponents of women in the military what is to prevent the interrogators from pulling a women or child for that matter off the street and abusing them to break the male solider?

23

labdude, I must say something here. You mention women being “mothers, sisters, and daughters.” What about those women who have the “right stuff” to be in the military, but have either chosen it as a career or who have no relatives to speak of? One of my good friends from high school, a female, fits both of those requirements. Who’s to say that she can’t be a naval engineer just because she’s female? If she is ever called into combat, she said, “I’ll go. I won’t like it, but I’ll go.” Females, if held to the standards, can do it just as well or ruthlessly as any guy. I think the women who go into the military with iffy physicals and borderline meeting of the requirements should probably not be allowed in; women who prove overwhelmingly that they can pass the standards should. Easy as that.

Enough personal stuff. Now onto another question - I’m curious, what is your position on nations like Israel, where both men and women must serve in the army for a certain period of time? (Please correct me if I’m wrong on that fact)

24

You all are forgetting something: Men and women are just human. The notion of ‘protecting’ women is just as old and just as wrong as the notion of black being subhuman. If a person can’t stand up to torture, that person should not be a soldier. If a person can’t stand up to seeing another being tortured, that person should not be a soldier. It’s as simple as that.

25

So, how’s the view from up in that ivory tower? How do you know whether or not someone can stand up to torture unless the situation is at hand? How many people sitting at home can honestly tell me how you would react if forced to watch someone tortured?

There are differences in how men and women react to situations on an emotional level. This is true for daily circumstances; how can you assume such a difference disappears in the face of adversity? Writing it off as “men and women are just human” without even attempting to explore how innate or visceral responses may differ is very short-sighted. It is not “as simple as that.” It’s easy to write off an argument that doesn’t fit with your preconceived ideas of sexual indiscrimination. Anyone who can reduce the complexities of emotional reactions to such a dogmatic statement appears to have no interest in exploring why emotional reactions might be different.

Maybe there is an evolutionary component. Maybe not. I’ve heard that many women feel compelled through an emotional response to protect a child in trouble. Any child. I’ve heard that this reaction can be considered instinctive, and is generally stronger than the typical male reaction. Is this true? I’m not sure. But it is way too easy to just say “men and women are just human,” thereby implying that there can be no difference in reactions.

I know that I would rather die protecting a woman than live with myself knowing that I was indifferent to her suffering.
And your comparison to subhuman blacks is ridiculous.

26

One thing you are forgetting (or choosing not to recognize), divemaster and labdude, is the fact that the person being tortured isn’t a woman, a sister, a mother, or a daughter. She is a soldier in the United States military, trained to fight and die for her country just the same as you. Once she puts on that uniform and grabs that gun, she ceases to be anything else but a soldier.

Yes, that is a simplistic way of looking at it. However, do you look at your male buddy in combat and think, “He shouldn’t be here. He’s someone’s son/dad/brother/boyfriend/husband.” No, you look at him and think “He’s a soldier–just like me.” We have to look at people in combat this way. If we didn’t, no one but unloveable, unmarried, friendless orphans would be allowed in the military.

The simple fact of the matter is that a soldier is trained to fight and kill. Yes, it sucks and is practically unbearable to have to hear someone being tortured–that’s why torture works. But when you are a soldier, you are trained for these situations.

It seems odd to me that the same men who make such a fuss about the emotional strain of women in combat (the torture angle) are the very same ones who will spray napalm on thousands of screaming individuals and rationalize it by saying that it was their “job.”

27

**

Let’s see how this works out. Men have more muscle mass, a larger lung capacity, more upper body strength, and bigger bones. It seems to me that males are more suited to physical violence then women.

We wouldn’t have many soldiers then.

Marc

28

See? There’s the choice. Either reduce the total number of soldiers we have (bad idea) or actually train the ones we have to endure the horrors of war–no matter how brutal and terrorizing they may be (good idea).

29

I think we’re getting a bit off the subject here. Suffice it to say no matter how much training a soldier has he or she is still a human being. Apply enough pressure and eventually you’ll crack the toughest nut they have.

What you want to make sure of is that men and women can work effectively in the field with one another. What you end up having is a bunch of young men and women living together in tight quarters for a long period of time. Gives a whole new meaning to “sack time” doesn’t it?

Marc

30

I agree. However, the point is that if serving beside a woman is going to cause a male nut to crack sooner, who is the weaker nut–the male who cracked or the female who didn’t? I mean, if a female soldier is being tortured and is not giving up vital US secrets but the male soldier hearing her cries of pain can’t handle it and starts singing like a canary (the situation discussed by the Army fellow at my assembly), I’d have to say the weak link is the one with the Y chromosome.

31

Has anyone here ever been in the Army? I have. :slight_smile:

Short-term classified information is changed often for a fairly simple reason; nobody can keep a secret long. If you are tortured, you will eventually sing like a canary; every real army in the world just assumes that. You’re given some training in how to behave as a POW and how to recognize and counter psychological interrogation techniques, but trying to screen people for resistance to physical torture is pointless and a waste of time.

If they’re telling you THAT’S why women aren’t allowed to be soldiers, they’re lying. The Army doesn’t expect men to hold out against it either.

There are a lot of assumptions being made in the women-and-gays-in-the-Army debate that really should be questioned:

  1. Who says sex in the ranks is bad for morale? Everybody assumes it, but is it true? Norman Dixon, in his “On the Psychology of Military Incompetence” suggests the opposite - that healthy and whetted sexual appetites are the sign of a good soldier, not a bad one.

  2. Who says men will be made weaker by the presence of women? The bond between soldiers is one fo the strongest known; surely you can’t really change that by changing gender. There is considerable evidence to suggest that mixed-gender groups are better at dealing with adverse situations than homogenous groups.

  3. While men may be physically stronger than women, it is worth noting that the average weight of an American soldier in the Second World War was 155 pounds (see Ambrose.) Soldiers are not all Arnold Schwarzenegger. Anyone who is phsyically fit and not absurdly weak or small can be a fine soldier. What evidence is there that you need to be unusually strong to be a soldier? A decent level of cardiovascular fitness and you’re OK.

32

Seeing as there seems to be general agreement about the OP, I’ll toss another log into the fire.

What does everyone think about the fact that the physical requirements for military forces are different for men than they are for women? Don’t have a cite handy, feel free to dispute this if it’s wrong. (I’ve seen this fact numerous times).

Many posters indicated that they have different feelings about females suffering than about males. Are there any official military policies which distinguish between men and women regarding such matters?

33

Izzy, it depends which physical requirements you’re talking about.

If the intent of the differing requirement is to meet a desired recruitment quota for women, that’s obviously just a political game and serves no purpose.

If the intent is to legitimately measure physical fitness with the recognition that that can be measured better if different methods are used for each gender, that’s something else.

34

RickJay,

I think they’re pretty straghtforward - men so many pushups, women somewhat fewer etc.

I suspect that they are doing it to enable enough women to enlist. Looming in the background, is the knowledge that if the physical standards keep women out of the military, a lawsuit will ensue, which challenges the physical requirements as unnecessary and irrelevent. This has happened in other fields (police, firefighters etc.)

35

I have a brother who is currently in the reserves. He just got back from Fort Wachuka(sp?) not long ago for a few months of intel training. During a recent discussion this topic came up and he indicated that military studies show that women do not perform nearly as well as men do in one glaring area. Handling stress. He said that in other areas they perform quite well, but that in stressful situations performance was noticeably different. I don’t have any studies to cite but I’ll see what I can find and post it here.

That being said I would agree with some of the sentiments expressed earlier which support the notion that only those physically and mentally capable of doing the work of a soldier should be allowed to be one. I tend to think that the American battlefield army will always be heavily, if not exclusively, composed of men. Probably because…

  1. Society seems to find the idea of women coming home in body bags more repugnant then men and…

  2. Because most women do not seem to be interested in that field of work (probably also influenced by society).

Last but not least, IMHO I feel that men and women should be required to have the same physical fitness standards (same number of pushups, situps, etc.). The fitness standards should be set to what is necessary to perform the work. If what is necessary is lifting X amount of weight, or running 5 miles under Y time, then thats whats required. I don’t know how accurate todays military fitness standard is in relation to the required work so I can’t really say whether the standards need adjusting.

Grim Beaker

36

“That said I think only a very sick nation would allow women in combat positions. Ask your self ‘what are we fighting to protect?’ Are we fighting to protect our homes, our mothers, our sisters, our daughters? If we are then how can we send them off to fight while we (the men left) stay home.”

“Can a man not be a good soldier, and still have a natural urge to protect a woman in trouble? To all you men out there, how many of you are more affected by a woman’s anguish than a man’s?”

“Society seems to find the idea of women coming home in body bags more repugnant then men”

The problem with such arguments is that our society already trains and arms women and sends them out in uniform to protect society in potentially deadly situations. Not just during the occassional war or conflict, as with the regular armed forces, but every single day. In the course of that duty, some women have been killed and many more have been injured.

We call them police.

I doubt anyone here would seriously propose that women should be banned from police service. But female police officers and detectives are just as likely as their male counterparts to end up in an exchange of gunfire, or have to physically restrain a resisting suspect, or have to wade into a barroom brawl and restore order. Police officers have to have the same “unit cohesion”, the same implicit trust that their comrades will risk their lives along side them without hesitation, as soldiers have to have. And I’m sure that romantic/sexual relationships occur from time to time between male and female police officers.

37

My points on how a man might react to seing a woman suffer should be taken as a focus for debate, not a call to ban women from the armed services. Remember, my particular unit was about 50/50 male/female, and likely better for it.

I was specifically responding to two posters who it seemed to me were disregarding out-of-hand what I believe to be a real emotional reaction for many men. I think it should be something that our military addresses. However, in my view, those instances where social engineering attempts to trump tactical preparation, the political decision-makers do not wish to entertain any thoughts that men and women have inherent differences on how they respond to specific situations.

It is too easy to fall back on the “men and women are exactly the same and I don’t want to hear anything to challenge that” mentality. I challenged that assumption, and one poster at least provided a thoughtful response. One with which I still disagree, but at least it seemed less knee-jerk.

For what it’s worth, I have no problems with women in the military. I do have problems with the thought of women in combat units, however.

Re physical standards. When I was in basic training (Army), the minimun number of push-ups to pass was: men (42) and women (18). Sit ups were almost even in the mid 50s I believe. 2-mile run: men (15:52) women (around 19:00). I’m going on memory now, but I know I am very close. Be aware that standards are different for the other branches (especially those slackers in the Air Force!), become less stringent for older soldiers, and may have changed over the last 15 years.

I’m not saying this is wrong or should be a hinge upon which to keep women out of the military; I’m just getting the figures into the debate so it can be used as a factual basis of discussion, if needed.

38

Let me start of by saying that I was an enlisted, Navy female in a rate (job, MOS, whatever you call it I was a CTM, which means I was an Electronic Tech with a very high clearance) that, at the start of my enlistment, did not allow me on combatant ships due to my plumbing. In my rate, serving at sea or at less-than-desirable commands (which meant nothing more than Diego Garcia) gained extra points and oooooh-factors on advancement exams, which put women at a disadvantage. To make up for this disadvantage, females were given a little extra oooomph. Oh, yeah, go ahead and ask me if THAT made women popular with the men.

Anyhow, please let me bring up a couple of points:

  1. Some have mentioned that the torture of a woman would be harder on her shipmates than the torture of a man. Yet Spritus Mundi says that he worked with 2 women who were not good soldiers. If someone is NOT a good soldier, I would say that no matter what his/her sex/sexual orientation, his/her torture would affect shipmates very little.

Let’s say you’re a guy working with, among others, 2 people. One of these people is also male, and is your best friend. Back home you barbecued together, watched PPV wrestling together, and spent every Vikings game together in front of the tube. Person 2 is a female, and she’s the most useless piece of taxpayer dollars you’ve ever met. You, your buddy, and the chick are all captured together. Are you going to tell me that the torture of the useless female is going to affect you more than the torture of your best friend? Didn’t think so.

  1. The physical standards are different for males and females, and differ between the four services. Because of my unusual job I was stationed on one Air Force base and one Army base. I knew male Marines that could not pass the Navy’s female physical requirements and female AF members who could max the Marine’s male physical requirements. You tell me, who’s the better military “man”??

IMHO, there SHOULD be 2 physical standards - those who can and those who can’t. If you can meet these standards, by all means serve on combatant ships (oh, yeah, it takes a LOT of physical skill to push that chaff button) and fly your plane into combat areas and serve in artillery units. If you can’t meet these standards, you get shore duty, baby. (The only reservation I have to this is females serving in front line infantry units. Apparently women get UTIs when not able to wash on a regular basis. Also, if you were hiding from the enemy, where the hell would you put your used tampons?).

  1. Oh, don’t EVEN get me started on gays in the military. I had more f**king problems with straight males than I ever did with gay men or women. “Oh, she slept with him, she must be a slut…Oh, she didn’t sleep with me, she must be a dyke.” Give me a break. Out of the…6? 7? 8? women in my department at my first command 3 of them were lesbian. Ya know what that means? They came into work, did their job well, then went HOME OFF THE BASE TO THEIR OWN SPACES to their girlfriends. Just like the married chicks I worked with came into work, did their job well, then went HOME OFF THE BASE TO THEIR OWN SPACES to their husbands.

OK, I just re-read this and realize that some people are going to point to my # 2) and say “See!!! See!!! THAT’S what I’m talking about!”, well, bite me. Get your head out of you ass and do your job. If you spent more time doing THAT and less time wondering how I am in bed you’d get a lot more done.

39

I agree with the above posters that anyone who is going to be expected to fight in a combat situation should have to pass one set of standards–male or female, gay or straight. If your out there protecting my ass, I want to be absolutely positive that you are the best in everything. I don’t want you out there just because your unit needed another soldier with a uterus. You better be able to do everything that everyone else in your unit can do. If you can’t, get the fuck off the front line and do something you can do. That said, I don’t care if only one woman out of 400 is able to pass the requirements to fight in combat. That’s fine. I only want the best–no matter what kind of plumbing they have. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t discount someone strictly because of her plumbing–she might very well be the best soldier in the unit.

40

There are certainly lots of women around who could beat my sorry 145-pound ass (back then - sigh!) when it comes to physical proficiency - but I used to consider myself a pretty decent infantryman even so. I even got some official recognition of that.

Enlist whoever can and will do the job - be they women, gays, red-haired, yodelers or what have you. If you have more candidates than openings, take those who look as they might become the best soldiers first.

This is not necessarily the biggest & strongest recruits, however:

The ability to keep working and thinking (yes, even infantrymen have to think - and think fast, sometimes) when you’re stressed, scared, hungry, tired, cold, wet & miserable counts for a lot. I have a feeling that a lot of women would outperform most men in this area.

Being controlledly aggressive when necessary counts for a lot.

Knowing your weapons & equipment inside out counts for a lot.

Being able to resist interrogation: It’s not trivial, but as has been pointed out, very few people can resist serious torture. If you’ve been taken prisoner, odds are that whatever tactical info you have is being changed already - there are procedures in place to do just that.

What I’m trying to say is that while a good soldier must possess some physical strength, physical strength in itself does not make the soldier. And I guess I consider myself an example of that.

As for morale problems due to sexual preferences - well, bugger that, so to speak. “This isn’t high school, it’s the unprintable army, and the sexual preference of you, your squadmate, your mother and her pet goat is not an issue here, soldier!” - where’s the problem ?

S. Norman