There is no privacy on a submarine. People are working everywhere, there’s no free space in dark corners, there’s no private rooms where one could spirit off a helpless woman. So then we’re talking about rape in the context of a hoard of men victimizing a woman in a public situation… but in reality, I think sexual assault on a submarine is about as feasible as it is on a C-17 cargo plane flight.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see female military personnel take pregnant at a large rate per sexual encounter - they’re young and healthy. It’s the rate of sexual encounters that should concern. (Particularly, as we’ve learned in the current war, the rate of nonconsensual ones.)
What if the pregnant woman gives birth while at sea? Submarine quarters are cramped as it is, and now it has to accommodate a baby.
Granted, physically speaking, a baby doesn’t take up much room, but it’s all the ancillary materials and overhead involved. (The diapers, bottles, clothes, crib, etc.)
Even if you calculate the day of delivery to be after the final day of deployment, labor may need to be induced early due to some unforeseen medical condition.
Women have given birth under much more unusual circumstances (incl. IIRC in an open lifeboat off the Outer Banks during WW2, after the ship the woman was sailing in was sunk by a German U-boat). But I assume no subs will be underwater for a whole nine months, and pregnant sailors can be given shore assignments if they might give birth during a planned sub deployment.
Women tolerate g-forces better than men, at least on average (there are always people exceptional for their gender). For airplanes, women not only perform maneuvers equally well as men, they also have a lower accident rate at all levels of aviation.
For cramped quarters like subs and space, women are, on average, physically smaller and consume fewer resources such as food, water, and oxygen.
Women are on average less aggressive which is probably a good thing in tight quarters.
Pregnancy is not an emergency.
Seems to me a requirement to be on reliable birth control is not unreasonable. How about an implant? If a woman can’t tolerate that sort of birth control too bad, then she doesn’t get to serve on a sub just like a woman (or man) with poor vision doesn’t get to fly fighter jets. All sub crew women have to get it two months in advance and pee on stick before deployment.
Abortion clinic? How about a small stock of “morning after” pills? A first trimester abortion isn’t that big a deal anyhow from a procedural standpoint.
Yes, even implanted BC can fail - if a woman “suddenly gets pregnant” while on patrol I don’t see where this is a medical emergency. She can probably continue in her assigned duties for a couple months until the next convenient time to off-load her. Now, if some bizarre medical complication occurs that’s a different matter, proceed as if for any other severe injury or illness.
Yeah, 'cause civilian women never get raped… oh, wait…
Seriously, this “women in the military might be raped!” thing is BS. Women might be raped at any time in their life. Yes, we would all like to see the rape rate hit “zero” but barring that happy day, I have to ask which world has the higher rate of rape, military or civilian? Because if a woman is less likely to be raped while in the military then that entire argument goes down the drain, doesn’t it? I’m not convinced a woman in the military is at any greater risk of rape than anywhere else.
The US has had women coming home in body bags for decades now. Society has not collapsed on account of it. There have not been riots in the street. Within my own lifetime this has become more and more accepted as both a risk some women choose to take, and the decision to serve and thus take that risk something a woman has a right to do. We do not have a shortage of women of reproductive age in the US, so that’s not going to jeopardize the ability to produce the next generation.
As already noted, people in subs are actually subjected to less radiation than surface dwellers. The reactors on subs are heavily shielded because, lets face it, radiation is bad for men, too. Women pilots, on the other hand, get more radiation than surface dwellers yet women serve on flight crews both military and civilian, and some even do so while pregnant. We allow women to serve in space, and that has greater radiation exposure yet (though to my knowledge we haven’t had a pregnant woman in space yet). This is not a significant risk.
Not really - the military only accepts healthy people, the vast majority of which are young and in their prime reproductive years. Healthy young people have sex. When healthy young people have sex, even with birth control, a certain percentage will get pregnant. The “fecundity of active duty military females” is nothing astounding, it’s the normal fecundity of healthy human women.
Now, I do believe that there are some women who deliberately seek pregnancy in order to escape duty they don’t like. There are men who literally shoot themselves in the foot to do the same. That’s a different problem than fertility, and shirking of duty through various means is a problem all militaries deal with. The difficulty is separating out the shirkers from the genuine “oops” in a military woman who does not want to get out of her duty or end her military career. I don’t have a ready answer for how to do that, and I’m not sure that anyone else does, either.
I think it’s come up several times just because it’s a shock that in a highly disciplined authoritarian group it’s allowed to happen at ALL. And frankly I think it’s obvious that if stopping rape in the military were a priority than it would be as rare as murder or similar crimes, but in recent years it certainly doesn’t seem to be.
As a woman submariner is presumably a healthy woman (not only did she pass standard navy requirements, I assume sub crews are also checked prior to deployment) most likely she’d have a normal labor and delivery. It wouldn’t be a lot of fun, but as noted above, woman have given birth in much worse places than a climate-controlled sub with at least a basic infirmary available. Wouldn’t be fun, but most likely it wouldn’t be a problem, either.
As for the “ancillary materials” - well, don’t worry about bottles, have her breastfeed. Diapers might be an issue, but I presume there are some sort of laundry facilities on board anyway and something could be jury-rigged out of cloth items like towels and undershirts, of which I presume there are spares aboard. A baby doesn’t really need clothes or a crib - just some blankets/towels to be wrapped up in and a safe place to tuck the kid for sleeping. My parents were delayed in getting a crib for me so I spent a couple of my first weeks sleeping a dresser drawer. Is childcare going to interfere with her working on board? Yes, probably - what, people don’t get sick or injured on sub crews? She’ll have to be on reduced duty until the kid is sent ashore.
Of course you wouldn’t have the baby on board long term (barring some extremely bizarre circumstances) but seriously, I like to think Navy personnel are clever and resourceful enough to cope with the problems involved for a few days or even a few weeks until the baby can be transported ashore (whether or not mom goes with the kid is a matter for the military to work out).
Oh, please - and a woman’s uterus might fall out of her body without warning! Oh my God! Don’t let a woman set foot outside her house!
(Yes, that actually can happen, see uterine prolapse)
It seems obvious to me that if you find a woman is pregnant before deployment she doesn’t deploy. If she turns up pregnant after deployment… well, let the captain, on board medical people, and the Navy work that out. If a woman has to stay until near her due date, well, that’s just a risk she has to take. C’mon - all sorts of sudden medical crap can arise in men as well as women. We let women serve other places where dealing with a complicated pregnancy would be a problem, like overwintering at the South Pole, how can it be argued that a sub patrol is that fundamentally different?
Is the military rape rate rising… or do we have better and more publicized information? There have been some high-profile cases in recent years but I’m not convinced they represent an uptick in occurrences. I think in the past a lot of rapes were swept under the rug or kept much more quiet than they are today.
I was reading about a woman that was raped in Iraq and she didn’t get a fair trial. She was working for a government contactor. Of course this isn’t exactly the same as being in the military.
I was the first/ only woman in an all male department and three of my co workers and one boss were ex Navy, squids. These guys must have forgotten the disapline they learned in the Navy. The only reason I lasted there 13 years was because I learned to keep my mouth shut, look the other way and always carry a weapon. I would not wish it on any woman.
Hey, If women want to go down for 3 months in a sub with a bunch of men, Good Luck. I wouldn’t. I also don’t think it is good for morale and it could get very ugly. Human nature being “what it is”, not what we want it to be. If anything does happen it will be squashed.
This is just about as ridiculous as 'Don’t Ask Don’t Tell".
Women on submarines is a terrible idea. What if they menstruate all over the Trident missiles?
Wouldn’t be any less terrifying than the “F*** the enemy” messages the air force writes on bombs.
Not an issue. Women can only serve on surface ships if they are less than 20 weeks pregnant. According to sites like these, the actual time underwater for submarines seems to be about 2-4 months at a time. For fast attack submarines, a few of these patrols equal a deployment. ETA: the 20 week policy can of course be modified as necessary.
And also, I find the comments raising the issues of radiation and fertility to be patronizing. Why is it okay for men and women to serve in dangerous positions – including fighter pilots – risking life and limb, but OMG there’s no way to trust a woman with the decision of whether she wants to risk her OVARIES!?! Losing a hand, eye, or life is one thing, but losing an ovary – well, we just can’t let that happen!!!
Former submariner here…
Most everything has been addressed. Personally, I think that this policy change is a long time coming. It is foolish to exclude half of the qualified people who could capably serve on a submarine.
When I was serving on a submarine 15+ years ago, there was no real objection from most submariners even then. The biggest objection allegedly came from submariner’s wives.
My executive officer (XO) often remarked that he didn’t see what the big deal was with berthing areas. He proposed the “$2.99 Wal-Mart solution” for partitioning off berthing areas–i.e. a shower curtain. As for heads (restrooms), either make one of the two enlisted heads female only, if enough women are assigned, or make the heads coed. All you have to do is prohibit people from walking around exposed. The heads all have stalls for the toilets and the showers, after all. There’s only one officer head, but it’s only got one toilet and one shower, so having female officers on board is no big deal. You take turns just like the officers do now.
Exposure to hazardous chemicals is one reason. The atmosphere control equipment is only so good, and unless you ventilate the sub, you can get a buildup of fumes that are not harmful to healthy adults, but may be harmful to a developing fetus. I think that mandatory birth control is a good idea.
Exactly. I wore a TLD dosimeter for the whole time I was assigned to a submarine, and I got the highest exposures off the submarine than onboard.
Exactly. On average, you can stick your arm out on a submarine, and you will hit somebody. Unlike large surface ships, there are absolutely no private places on a submarine. Even on the toilet, there’s someone outside telling you to hurry up. A submarine is not quite as crowded as a commercial airliner, but it’s close. You are never out of earshot of others, and you are rarely out of sight.
Well, we are at a serious and impending risk of the entire species dying off of underpopulation.
My main point here was that 27% of all active duty women in the measured population became pregnant. This is not a “normal” population in that pregnancy is discouraged and has harsh negative consequences from every angle for active duty women. You would expect that this population would be way, way below civilian rates, and in the end 27% of all active duty female soliders still became pregnant which is only moderately less than average civilian rates.
I think that in the face of overwhelmingly negative consequences for pregnancy that it’s “impressive fecundity” that that over one quarter of all active duty women in the test cohort became pregnant. It’s astounding.
Fine. Then take up the cause to say that women’s reproductive systems make them too unreliable to serve in the armed forces. But nothing you have said so far specifically pertains to the unsuitability of women to serve in submarines.
And again, you are relying on data that does not describe pregnancy rates for women serving on ships.
Just as point of info is it true that women in close quarters tend to synchronize their menstrual cycle?
I think women should serve on subs, I’m just pointing out that expectations that sperm will not meet egg because of the availability of birth control and peer to peer professionalism may be somewhat optimistic. I think that science should also take this opportunity to study the effects of male and female pheromones on the opposite sex in close quarters. There are lots of fascinating studies that could be done.
Then your submarine was different from mine. My time was divided approximately 3 ways:
[ul]
[li]1/3 of the time I was on watch in the control room surrounded by people.[/li][li]1/3 of the time I was sleeping or socializing in the mess. Plenty of people around.[/li][li]1/3 of the time I was working alone or with 1 other person in the sonar instrument space. Plenty private. No one else around or within earshot.[/li][/ul]
There are lots of private spaces on a submarine and lots of opportunities for shenanighans or abuse. But this doesn’t change my overall opinion which is that I agree with you.
One thing that no one has mentioned yet - sailors have very different social conventions than the rest of the world. Things that would be acceptable or laughed off on a ship would land you in prison in a normal environment. Abuse (ranging from teasing to quite nasty pranks) is constant. I can think of 10 despicable things right off the top of my head. Add in the potential for sexual abuse and I don’t envy the first group of women to enter that environment at all.
I think the navy would be better off if it toned some of that crap down. We didn’t have women on ships in my time (during the 80s) and I have often wondered whether the women that serve on ships these days have adapted to those ways or whether the men are better behaved than the ones that I knew.
It’s probably no different in the army or marines in that regard and they have been able to make it work.
And, once again, if they can make it work on ships, they can make it work on submarines. No difference.
I’m not a reproductive biologist - perhaps one will show up here. However, the last time I checked, eggs were ‘continually sloughed off and replenished’.
My radiation biology classes are in the distant past, but radiation effects on gametogenesis are probably not all that different between the sexes.