I posted a piece on Saturday about some of the issues around women in combat. It has drawn quite a lively response, both in support of and opposition to my arguments. I know that post barely touched on the myriad real-world logistics and complications, foreseen and unforeseen, that would come with implementation of a full integration of women into all military MOS’s. One of these issues was brought up by commenter BK:
But let’s talk about efficiencies… Is it efficient to have to to secure separate facilities for a handful of women in an environment that is completely dominated by males? This is the reverse of racially integrating the services. At that time, we had twice as many barracks and latrines as we needed because they had to be divided by race. By integrating the services we reduced the physical footprint of the military. It made sense. Effectiveness was difficult at first (there were race riots and lynching) but eventually the culture adapted and from a physical/mental stand point there was no discernible difference. Efficiency was IMPROVED by integrating the services and therefore, it was a win-win situation for the military.
Such is not the case for introducing women into combat units. Again, I think the culture will likely adapt, as it did after integration, but it will be painful in the short term and in today’s media environment considerably more well known than the problems of racial integration. (Consider the gender equivalent of racially motivated lynching…and no, I don’t have enough faith in the young Soldier fresh off the street and fueled by alcohol to expect that he will behave appropriately.) But eventually, this will all die down. (Just as racism and racially based attacks still occur in the US military, such things would still occur to women in the future, just not at the scale of the initial levels.) But…and here’s the kicker, I now need to expand my infantry basing requirements to include separate facilities for women, and that makes the force less efficient.
Aha! You say. Well, let’s just go the way of “Starship Troopers” and make everything unisex! Women and men can shower together. They can bunk together (in the same open bay, not in the same bed…at least, not officially). Problem solved. But, you gotta convince the wives and girlfiends this is a good idea (we eventually got their consent for missile silos and subs) and you have accept the abuses that are going to occur.
Related to the issues BK broached, I had a conversation with a friend last night who asked me to square for him what seemed like disparate viewpoints: the desire for equality of opportunity for women on the one hand, and the special measures being undertaken by the military currently in an attempt to curb sexual assaults on women. I told him I did not see these as conflicting, not considering sexual assault prevention as special treatment but rather as an attempt to provide a reasonable baseline for a safe workplace. Both men and women deserve to be able to go to work without fear of being raped or otherwise attacked, and while even more underreported among men, this is a problem for both genders.
In the course of our conversation, he rightly stated that the way the sexual assault issue is framed is wrong - as being about men attacking women rather than simply about perpetrators and victims - and contributes to stereotypes about women being soft and weak, and men being tough and brutal.
I’ve been thinking about this and the issues brought up in the comments, and the conclusion I’ve reached is that the issue of sexual assault and the inequality issues I touched on in my Saturday post and its comment thread can be seen as symptoms of the same larger issue, a very basic mode of thinking that needs to change, specifically that woman are ‘other.’ Women are being viewed as an alien presence being forced upon military units. I don’t believe that everyone sees things this way, but I do believe that a good many people do. I suspect that we would find significantly fewer sexual assaults in units that foster a sense of camaraderie that includes everyone, regardless of gender. If the women in a unit are truly embraced as part of the unit, then it is not such a stretch to consider gender-neutral facilities and combat MOS’s.
The framing that my friend was referring to keeps women separate, and that is where it goes wrong. Sexual assault prevention is not about protecting women from men, it’s about protecting people from criminals. Sexual assault is not OK no matter who is committing it and no matter whom it is being committed against. I further reject BK’s argument - an argument that is quite common, I would add - that says essentially that men can’t be expected to not rape women in certain circumstances. This attitude not only takes agency and personal responsibility away from men, but represents a dangerous complacency with criminal behavior. [Update: please read the comments below. BK has responded to indicate that I misunderstood the original argument, and to clarify what was actually meant].
A more useful approach would be to work to change the culture that frames women and men as separate creatures in need of separate rules; and to straight-up expect more from people. If we treat rape as an inevitability and an expectation, we foster a culture where it’s seen as something verging on acceptable. Until we make these changes in our individual and institutional attitudes, inequality and sexual assault will both continue to be problems.
I’ll be the first to admit that this requires an enormous culture change, an alteration of deeply ingrained beliefs, cherished ideas, chronic complacency, and low expectations. It might seem idealistic, and I’ll cop to it: in some ways, I’m an idealist. I’m not blind to the enormous practical challenges and personal and logistical trials of such an undertaking. But I do believe in asking more of people, in holding people to a higher standard; and I believe that while we may never reach any ideal, if we don’t even bother to conceive of one, then what’s the point? I won’t accept inequality - or a rape epidemic - because the problem is too large or institutionalized or intractable, or because fixing it is too hard or painful or uncomfortable. We need ideals to weigh the right and wrong of our choices against. We have to want something better.
I’m not all starry eyes and pies in the sky though. It is a fact that the slow but steady arc of change has been toward allowing women into more and more roles in our military, so that it seems to be only a matter of time before all paths are open to women. I know that we need more than just high expectations and speeches about equality; we need consistent and serious consequences for sexual assault, and a sober assessment of standards and leadership. (See Jason Fritz over at Ink Spots, whose last couple of posts on this have been really giving me food for thought, on this subject. And I think a reassessment of leadership priorities is a good idea in general, not just because of gender issues). I think we are doing ourselves a disservice if we aren’t considering the future, and thinking about the best way of getting there and what changes we can make now that might ease later transitions.
One final confession: I’m still thinking all of this through. I considered not posting this, but I don’t learn nearly as much if I’m not participating in the conversation. I think public discourse is important in a general sense, and on a personal level, I appreciate all the comments, from those who agree with me and those who don’t. I’m happy to have people point out the angles I’m missing, or help me to flesh out ideas through debate or dialogue. So let’s keep talking.
I would appreciate it if you would review my comments more carefully. I do not make the argument that men can’t be expected to not rape women in certain circumstances. My argument is that you have, as you yourself admit, a very idealistic view of the men and women who serve. Yes, they are all worthy of our respect for putting on the uniform during a time of war, but that doesn’t change who they are. And who they are in many cases (but certainly not all) are young people, not even adults yets, who grew up in very different environments than what you or I probably did. Many of them are incredibly naive about the world in general but even about themselves and when you talk with them you are amazed at the gulf between you.
It is not that they are stupid or unable to get real jobs or from poor neighborhoods or anything like that. You are taking a sample of society in general but admittedly one that among our youngest servicemembers is less representative of the full spectrum of our society. And you find that you have young servicemembers who have drug and alcohol problems, who were abused, who have very different views on sexual responsibility, who have criminal records, etc.
I absolutely agree that what is required is a mindset to teach our young people not to victimize each other. But you are not going to achieve that in the military alone. In fact, I think the military has been the best example of how we CAN change mindsets through mutual respect and dedication to a common goal. But that takes time and the majority of our issues occur at the junior servicemember level. Before they become acclimated to military culture. In other words, you need to change their mindset before they join the military. There will still be work to be done with regards to the command climate (there are problems with rapant sexism in certain male dominated units) but the real problem I indicated has to do with the young, newly recruited who are getting used to being around one another.
And I am of the opinion that you are going to have to do your Starship Troopers/BG shift to unisex facilities before we can integrate women into combat arms and consider that an efficient use of resources. Do that, and it won’t matter what is “fair”, it will simply be about finding the best resource (male or female, straight or gay, one ethnic group or another) to fill a requirement. At the present, whether a woman is the best (or even just appropriate) resource for the Infantry or SF (where I think you could actually find better examples of utility) is going to be hamstrung by the efficiencies trap. If you have to build one more latrine or provide one more barracks room to accomodate just one asset, you are not doing the service justice.
[most of this comment was also posted over at Ink Spots:]
Serious question-what would evidence of “equality” look like in the highest ranks? 50% women? 16.4% women (the % of commissioned officers in DoD that are women)? Here’s a stat for you: in the Fortune 500, there are 12 companies with a woman as CEO (or 2.4%). In DoD, there are two women 4-star officers (more accurately: one current, one very recently nominated). That’s 5.7%; not only double the % of Fortune 500 CEOs, but also drawing on a smaller proportion of the workforce (assuming that Fortune 500 companies have much greater than 16% female population).
So what problem are we trying to solve here? It seems that whatever problems women face within DoD, they also face to the same or greater extent OUTSIDE DoD. So are “men only” jobs like infantry/armor the controlling variable here? I’m not sure that it is. You might say the problem is the glass ceiling in society at large-and that’s fine, but I don’t think allowing women in the infantry is going to solve it.
I’m not talking about quotas or some particular percentage. You are absolutely right that there is a gender discrimination problem in society at large, and I didn’t mean to imply that it only exists in the military. This issue, however, is a case of women not even being allowed to compete for positions, purely because they are women. I don’t think allowing women in the infantry is going to be some magic bullet that ends all gender inequality in America, or that suddenly 50% of all four-stars will be women, but I’d predict that it would improve the percentages in the highest ranks, giving us a better chance that the abilities of that half of the population are being put to use as part of our military leadership, and it will put to rest an inequality of opportunity.
I do not mean to imply that you are demanding that a certain quota be met, or that you think women in infantry/armor would be a cure-all for society’s ills.
I ask about what problem we are trying to solve because I think that is important to clearly define up front (what sort of war; don’t try to make it something it’s not; etc … all that CvC stuff). If the inequality of opportunity ITSELF is the problem, than that should be argued on its merits: i.e., “women should be allowed into the infantry (&etc) because equality of opportunity is an inherent good / gender discrimination is an inherent bad.” But if the problem is one of the perceived EFFECTS of the policy (e.g., can’t get promoted to the highest levels), that’s another story. Specifically, I’m not convinced a lack of combat MOS assignments are the proximate cause of inequality in the very senior ranks, because (1) there are men who have risen to the highest levels after starting out in gender-integrated specialties (e.g., aviation), and (2) the % of woman 4-star officers already exceeds the % of woman CEOs in the Fortune 500 (an imperfect metric, admittedly). Therefore, changing that particular policy may not have the intended effect, and I wonder what your prediction of improvement in the percentages of women in the highest ranks is based on.
Back to percentages: I throw those out not to discuss specific quotas, but again to define the problem. If the percentage of women in the highest ranks is in need of improvement, that raises the question of how much improvement would render the problem solved?
First of all, maybe I’m off, but I’m pretty sure the large majority of high-ranking officers, and those holding the more influential positions, come from a combat background, so I think it’s reasonable to think that a career in those units could improve women’s access to leadership positions/promotions.
Second, this is not really what I was talking about to begin with. To clarify: to me, inequality of opportunity is a problem in and of itself. I believe that men and women are equal and should be judged on individual merits, not arbitrarily assigned roles based on gender.
On your first point: yes, that is a reasonable hypothesis. My point is to test it by examining the variables: in the private sector, the explicit job restrictions by gender do not exist, and yet the % of woman Fortune 500 CEOs is smaller than the % of woman 4-star officers in the military. I know that this comparison is by no means scientific, but it suggests to me that another variable may be at work here.
On your second point: I think I may have conflated your post and Fritz’s at Ink Spots when I was talking about defining the problem. Your position is clear.
On re-reading my comments, I suspect you read “accept the abuses that will occur” to mean that men just gotta rape women. In fact, I was referring to “abuses” not as a physical assault but as in “taking liberty with the rules set forth” kind of way. That if you allow for unisex habitation, what you will need to anticipate will be for men and women (and other combinations thereof) to “hook up” or otherwise violate the rules. Naturally (as anyone who has lived in co-ed dorms can attest) when these “relationships” go bad, young people tend to become spiteful, cliquish, and otherwise not like the cohesive team we would like them to be. This is not a military problem, this is a young person problem that can be observed in any similar environment where bed hopping is not uncommon. As they mature, it tends to get better but there is no denying the science of hormones and the reality is, 18 year olds don’t think like us. Literally, their brains do not process information the same way and saying “we just have to expect them act like mature adults and focus on the mission” is not fair to them biologically (and again, this transcends race, gender, or sexual orientation).
A possible counter to this problem may be to limited women in combat roles to a certain rank. In other words, like SF, you can’t just join combat units from the beginning of your military career. Some time has to be allowed for maturity to set-in (and for hormone levels to die down) before a woman can join a combat unit. Which again leads me to believe that you might have better luck with SF units vs. line Infantry units. The majority would be present in both sexes at that point and you wouldn’t have the disparity of mature women and still too young guys serving in the same unit.
Sorry for taking up so much of your comments…
You are right: I did misinterpret your mention of abuses as well as this: ” (Consider the gender equivalent of racially motivated lynching…and no, I don’t have enough faith in the young Soldier fresh off the street and fueled by alcohol to expect that he will behave appropriately.) ” in your comments on my last post to mean we have to resign ourselves to sexual assaults. I will update the new post to acknowledge the misunderstanding.
And your points are well taken. To be quite honest, I haven’t given enough thought to some of the issues you bring up to be able to state where I stand on them, but I will definitely take what you have said and give it some consideration. I do have a couple of responses though. First, the stuff about hormones and that sexual attractions, etc. pose a distraction, reminded me of some of the arguments I heard against ending DADT. So although your suggestion that maybe women should have to reach a certain rank/maturity before joining a combat unit is an interesting way of facing this issue, I’m not sure any solution that has that particular sort of unequal standard would really hold up. I think it’s probably an all-or-nothing proposition with women either allowed in these units or not.
And what I meant about not being ready for unisex facilities was not that we need to build separate facilities now, then integrate them later, but that we need to work on making the culture safer now, while women still aren’t allowed in these units. Because I think you are right that we will need to be able to do this without separation. That’s an argument for trying to break down separations and improve the culture now so that when the time comes, it’s not so unthinkable.
As you suggest, I made the same concerns known during the town hall meetings we had regarding the repeal of DADT. However, DoD made it very clear that there would be no special facilities/bunking arrangments made for those individuals. Which negated the efficiency argument. If it didn’t increase the footprint of the organizations AND it reduced the amount of time and money we spent on enforcing an intentionally ambiguous law, then that was a win. Did it increase our effectiveness? I would argue that repealing DADT did NOT increase our effectiveness. But, except for some possibly minor cohesion issues initially, I don’t think it has or will (at least in the long term) negatively impacted our effectiveness.
When the same can be said about women in front line combat roles, that they either improve or at the very least do not negatively impact our effectiveness and our efficiency, then I will gladly accept them in the ranks. Until then, I don’t care about “fair”, I care about effectiveness and efficiency. All other arguments are a waste of air or bytes.
Re: waiting for a certain age or maturity level to join a combat role-I think that is absolutely the way forward. The precedent is already set that even men cannot join SF until they have reached a certain level of rank and/or maturity. (Though this was reduced during the GWOT to get more bodies into SF, this idea of “shake and bake” SF troops right off the street is largely, at least among those SF officers I personally know, not considered the best idea. It works for now because SF has been caught up in doing a lot of direct action type missions vs. their typical unconventional warfare role which most agree requires much more maturity to enact.)
So you could absolute allow women from the intel and MP and similar careerfields to go through SF selection. They meet the same standards, they are in. And this is the way you show the rest of the military that women can be every bit as effective as men in combat. Let them *earn* the long tab and the rest of the argument gets easier. (But again, this assumes that the co-ed facilities issue is assumed.)
As a point of reference, the Army’s SERE school, particularly that which deals with the SOF elements does include women POWs, subjects them to the same humiliating treatment as the men (to include co-ed strip searches), and capitalizes on Santorum’s concerns about men and their protective feelings about women. However, those who graduate quickly learn that female Soldiers accepted the same risks and responsibilities and so threats to abuse/torture them do not warrant any more result from the male trainees as it would if it were a male soldier being threatened. Again, this suggests to me that it is a maturity issue that Soldiers of this capacity are sufficiently mature and professional enough to ignore gender in order to accomplish the mission.
Further on the “fainess” issue. WRT DADT repeal, one of my early arguments was about General Order Number One down range. According GO1, when I am down range at, for example, Al Udied, I as a male cannot have a female in my living area. However, as a male I can have another male in my spaces. I objected to this policy saying that it would give an unfair living situation to homosexuals.
However, if we follow my current line of thinking (because if you are not willing to admit when you were wrong, you are intellectually dishonest), we can see that my argument was without merit. If a heterosexual couple violates GO1, there is the potential that the female servicemember could become pregnant (intentionally or otherwise). In that case, she would have to be removed from the combat zone (yes, I know Camp Cupcake is hardly combat but it still falls under that set of rules) and someone else would have to be brought in to take over her job (most likely on short notice).
Homosexual couples, however, do not share this risk. If they violate GO1, they are not risking a resource (again, people are resources) and therefore endangering the mission. They are still not supposed to violate GO1, but heterosexual couples have the additional rule of no mixed genders in the same living spaces to further mitigate the risk to the mission.
So, allowing homosexuals to enter each others quarters is “not fair” to heterosexuals. But this isn’t about equality, its about effectiveness and efficiency.
(GO1 is not universally enforced. In Baghdad, 1st CAV did allow married couples to share CHUs but with the understanding that if the female Soldier became pregnant, they would both be court-martialed for endangering the mission. At Al Udied, even married couples who were deployed at the same time could not be in one another’s living areas.)
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