Women and the "Bro" mentality in the military

[adultsitecms]

Kayla Williams, an Arabic linguist, was the only woman with a group of about 20 troops posted to Iraq's Sinjar Mountain in 2003, and she was almost one of the boys. To kill time while off-duty, the men pretended to hump everything in sight, including the Humvee, during their relatively unsupervised patrol. They put their testicles on one another's faces in a practice called "tea bagging." Their behavior was ridiculous but common among bros deployed in dangerous, remote locations. Sometimes, the men included Williams when they threw pebbles at each other, aiming for holes near the crotches of their pants. "[They started] throwing rocks at my boobs when they were throwing rocks at each other," Williams recalls. "Is that sexual harassment, or are they treating me like one of them? Is it exclusive or inclusive? I can't answer that. It's complicated." But she didn't let it bother her too much.

Then one night, while monitoring the outpost on the side of a mountain, Williams went to relieve a guard on duty. He grabbed her hand. "He had pulled out his penis and was trying to put my hand on his cock," Williams says. She wasn't quite worried she'd be raped—the junior enlisted Army soldier, then 26 years old, was carrying a gun within earshot of others who would hear her if she screamed—but the guard was frighteningly aggressive. After trying to get her to sleep with him, or at least give him a blow job, he gave up and left.

Still, Williams was angry. When she told men in her unit about the incident, they said she'd joined a man's military and asked what she expected to happen. "It definitely made me feel guys who were sexually harassing me, who were violating the rules, who were doing the wrong thing—that guys felt they were more important as soldiers because they were men." Williams, now a Truman National Security Project fellow and the author of Love My Rifle More Than You, didn't want to be a victim, so she stopped joking around and came off as unfriendly, she says. It was a lonely decision with potentially steep costs. "It's hard to be in a combat zone when I'm expected to rely on these guys for my life, but [I] no longer felt I could trust them to not sexually assault me if I let my guard down."

The military's sexual-assault epidemic is well-known—and it is not confined to high-profile cases like the sex-abuse educator discovered running a small-time prostitution ring at Fort Hood, Texas; the Army sergeant charged with secretly videotaping female cadets in West Point bathrooms; or the 33 instructors ensnared in a sex scandal involving twice as many students at Lackland Air Force base, also in Texas. Those scandals fueled the congressional and media frenzy over the 3,374 reported sexual assaults in the military last year. The Pentagon estimates that sexual assaults actually occur far more frequently—and that 26,000 troops were victims of unwanted sexual contact (6.1 percent of the military's women and 1.2 percent of its men) last year alone. Fewer than 1 percent of adults in the civilian world experienced something comparable, according to data in the most recent National Crime Victimization Survey.

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I guess the question we should first ask is - what do you want your military to look like?

Thomas P.M. Barnett articulated the current dilemma of the US military in a insightful way. He said that we are asking the military to do two tasks. The first is to be a hyper-aggressive killing machine that obliterates all enemy resistance. He calls this "the Leviathan", the traditional armed forces that were used to stare down the Soviet Union. The second is the regime-changers, the counter-insurgency units, the forces that are designed to keep security and cobble together a fragile democracy. They are diplomatic, patient, and use measured and proportionate force. He calls this the "SysAdmin" force - the force designed to trouble-shoot and maintain the international system. The two tasks are not compatible.

For the Leviathan force, you want locker-room masculine aggression. You want absolute team loyalty and trust, and sky-high, irrational levels of confidence. They are there to rip the enemy to shreds in an unfair fight. This would be the combat arms of the the military, the line infantry, the special operations units. If women can be integrated into that environment without damaging the esprit de corps, great. But unit morale and effectiveness come first. Gender equality is a distant second priority to combat effectiveness. As Bennett put it, he wants the Leviathan force to be "male, early-20s, and slightly pissed-off."

For the SysAdmin force, I think it would be absolutely beneficial to have women, both for practical reasons - women will have access to some segments of the society that men will not - and for symbolic reasons, to show an example of American values.

So...what do you want your military to look like?

[Supz]

I think you are retarded

[MaDalton]

i think women in the military should be nurses or doctors...

in my six weeks of military (that i had to do by accident) i witnessed a female officer trying to command a group of male soldiers marching around and we laughed our asses off cause she sounded like Minnie Mouse giving orders.

i have nothing against women in leading positions, i had female bosses as well and got along fine with them.

but when it comes to the army, they are simply in the wrong place

[Ferus]

The army will always consist of mostly dumb uneducated civilians, who's best chance in life was risking taking a bullet in a politicians fight over oil or other naturel resources.

You will not find smart and well-balanced people in the army, so why do people expect them to behave as such? They are Cannon fodder/usefull idiots

[Rochard]

I can only begin to imagine what it would be like to be a woman in the military. I was in infantry and it was just not an environment women would do well in. We spent our free time sharpening our knives, at the shooting range, and reading magazines about firearms. I've never met a woman who enjoys doing these things AND be good at hand to hand combat.

I'm not saying I'm against it, it's just not an area where women have much interest.

The problem we have these days is that there is no real battlefront: The women in motor transport suddenly find themselves in the middle of combat.

I believe the USMC just announced that women will be serving in combat in 2014. On one hand I feel this is good - let's call it "cautious optimism" - but on the other hand I feel women are stupid to even think of potentially subjecting themselves to the horrors of combat.

Originally Posted by Ferus

The army will always consist of mostly dumb uneducated civilians, who's best chance in life was risking taking a bullet in a politicians fight over oil or other naturel resources.

You will not find smart and well-balanced people in the army, so why do people expect them to behave as such? They are Cannon fodder/usefull idiots

You couldn't be any more wrong.

The vast majority of the people who go into the military do so for adventures, opportunities, and education. Most do not go in because of a sense of pride or desire to serve their nation. Most kids who go in are the kind that didn't want to go to college, and didn't want a traditional 9-5 job. That's not to say that anyone in the military is "stupid" or dumb; It's a job with lots of on the job training.

You can either pay to go school for a trade, or you can get paid to go to school, get three years of the on the job training, and potentially travel around the world.

[theking]

Originally Posted by Ferus

The army will always consist of mostly dumb uneducated civilians, who's best chance in life was risking taking a bullet in a politicians fight over oil or other naturel resources.

You will not find smart and well-balanced people in the army, so why do people expect them to behave as such? They are Cannon fodder/usefull idiots

Pigshit. Prior to Iraq and Afghanistan...All branches of the military required a minimum of a Highschool Diploma (GED's were not acceptable) to qualify for enlistment. NCO's were required to have an Associate Degree or the equivalentcy. Many senior NCO's had a Bachelor/Master Degrees with some having a Doctorate Degree. All Officers had to have a minimum of a Bachelor Degree with Field Grade Officers having a minimum of a Master Degree and many Officers having a Doctorate Degree.

A spotless criminal record and a 100% perfect health record.

As in all armed conflicts/wars standards are reduced...to some extent...to keep the required number of warm bodies in the ranks.

[Rochard]

Originally Posted by theking

Pigshit. Prior to Iraq and Afghanistan...All branches of the military required a minimum of a Highschool Diploma (GED's were not acceptable) to qualify for enlistment. NCO's were required to have an Associate Degree or the equivalentcy. Many senior NCO's had a Bachelor/Master Degrees with some having a Doctorate Degree. All Officers had to have a minimum of a Bachelor Degree with Field Grade Officers having a minimum of a Master Degree and many Officers having a Doctorate Degree.

A spotless criminal record and a 100% perfect health record.

As in all armed conflicts/wars standards are reduced...to some extent...to keep the required number of warm bodies in the ranks.

Sure sure.

I signed up without having graduated high school and known drug use. This was back in 1985.

[Socks]

I was recently at my cottage and was sitting with a bunch of off-duty police officers, one of them female. In Toronto, we recently had a police officer charged with murder for shooting a kid on a streetcar. Shot him something like 8-9 times, with maybe 15-20ft distance from him, the kid wasn't near anyone else - and only had a knife. He was really no threat.

So we were talking about that stuff, etc. This female officer says she's never been discriminated against for being a female, and that they don't treat crimes by officers differently than citizens. She used an example of a DUI, that she'd arrest an officer friend if she pulled him over and he'd been drinking.

She said there is no "old boys club" basically.

Then she says in passing that one time a fellow officer slapped her ass in the locker room, and she just "gave him a look" and didn't "whine to her superiors".. I agreed she should let that pass. But, I said what if I was walking along the street and slapped her in the ass? What would happen? She eventually conceded that she'd arrest me. So I explained that indeed there are double standards, and it is hard for them to speak out against each other. Prime example. She got up and stormed off and didn't return.. I was like wtf? Sensitive subject I guess.

[theking]

Originally Posted by Rochard

Sure sure.

I signed up without having graduated high school and known drug use. This was back in 1985.

When the Military became an all volunteer force....the standards of enlistment continually became higher and higher as the ranks and retention were maintained. It reached the point that...in at least one case...a person I knew that had a Bachelor Degree was denied enlistment in the Airforce because they had to many speeding tickets. If I remember correctly they had three tickets.

BTW the Marine Corp was the last branch to bring their enlistment standards up to the level of the other branches of the Military. It used to be said of the Corp..."they will take anybody"...but that was never the real truth...but their standards of enlistment usually were lower than the other branches.

[DamianJ]

Originally Posted by Rochard

I was in infantry

Really??

Why haven't you mentioned that before?

[VS_Jeff]

Originally Posted by Ferus

The army will always consist of mostly dumb uneducated civilians, who's best chance in life was risking taking a bullet in a politicians fight over oil or other naturel resources.

You will not find smart and well-balanced people in the army, so why do people expect them to behave as such? They are Cannon fodder/usefull idiots

I wonder if you think that the rate is sexual assault by men is lower at universities. It would be interesting to compare the stats of both, I have a feeling that they are pretty similar.

[theking]

BTW...I didn't have to serve with women and if I would have been required to do so I would have left the service.