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Advice for women on BMQ and other courses [MERGED]

  • Thread starter Thread starter the patriot
  • Start date Start date
If woman choose to be in the combat arms , all the power to them. There are standards which are expected of everyone, regardless of gender. If they pull their own wait, hey,climb in. The only easy day was yesterday. :p
 
There are rules against fraternization?? I‘ve seen no evidence of that.

I‘ve seen instrcutors having affairs with students. Everyone that goes overseas seems to have stories of fraternization. A quick check of The DND Op Apollo photo archive shows many in-service couples (including officer‘s and enlisted), either saying goodbye or deploying together - all proudly displayed by the military. If there‘s a rule against fraternization, somebody didn‘t tell NDHQ.

Joining the military to meet girls is stupid, the odds just aren‘t in your favour - and If It‘s In Green, It Ain‘t Clean (that goes for both sexes). However, DEU‘s and a kilt go a long way in a nightclub....
 
OK, for clarification purposes:
On course we were told you should‘t be dipping yer wick in the platoon inkwell, as it were. But yah, for the most part that was ignored. Personally, I didn‘t see anything I would wanna stick it in. They were all either fat and ugly, had "issues" ( :rolleyes: ), or were so damn dirty I wouldn‘t touch them with a twenty foot pole.
I also think that sorta **** being carried on within a platoon is wrong, given the fact that if it goes wrong (and it invariably does) there‘s gonna be a lot of unneccesary drama going on on parade nights. You wanna roll the dice that she isn‘t going to "forget" ( :rolleyes: ) to take her pill or isn‘t all disease ridden, well have fun, but don‘t expect any sympathy from the medics when they shoot you full of antibiotics.
But I‘m justly a lowly private, what the **** do I know.
 
to maurauder
funny about all that stuff your saying about women.we tend to say the same things about you men.and after some of the stuff iv heard about overseas and what people have done there ,im surprised anyone dates military period.military women are no worse or better than civilian women.same goes for men.there are no real rules against fraternization but you can be charged if your caught at work or in the field doing the nasty.we had a couple that got a bunch of extras when they were caught at work.but other than that anything goes.
 
In my 26 yrs as a Sapper I have seen many women come and go and use the system to their own advantage and advance and there are only two female‘s to date who work ,drink,and mix and who are still Sapperet‘s (My choice of Word) and both of these girl‘s Engineering knowledge has caught many a Sr. N.C.O. out (me included)and both were excepted by all of us because they could hump panel‘s,dig,lay fence,mine‘s,and all the rest we Enginerer‘s do and if I was younger I would have them in my section any day,they even shamed a few male‘s!!!!!!!

It‘s to bad we could not have more female‘s like these two who take the job to heart!

(Retireing Soon)
 
Candidule- you must remember TV adverts are , exactly that, TV Adverts. i ‘ve never seen old , bald, fat,CSMs/PL WOs in the adverts, just young, fit, CUTE people!
Infanteer- your first answer WAS on the the MARK!
Enfield/Disturbance- NO fraternatization rules?? I guess you have never signed THAT document on in -clearance to WATC, HUH!????
 
Imagine if the folks who make the beer commercials did the ads for the CF!!!

And don‘t go telling me that hotties and buff dudes in the beer ads aren‘t real... Next thing you‘ll be telling me is that there is no Santa Claus! :crybaby:

Rob
 
Originally posted by ender:
[qb]There are rules against fraternization? You wouldn‘t know it. They must have skipped that on my 2‘s. What are the actual rules? (I mean, obviously you keep it out of your chain of command, but other than that?)[/qb]
Ender,
From reading your numerous posts, it seems they‘ve skipped quite a bit during your trg (or else you missed it).

However, since I‘m in a gratuitous mood today (albeit cranky), I‘m only too happy to answer your question (actually, it also falls under the heading of "never pass a fault", but I digress ...):

CFAO 19-38 pertains to "Personal Relationships" (i.e. fraternization)
CFAO 19-36 covers "Sexual Misconduct"

Also, a recent court martial in Toronto provided an example of military justice in this regard (and, yes - I do mean "justice", as opposed to "the legal system" - it resulted in a conviction on two counts of sexual assault, and it should be known by all and sundry that the chain of command definitely did not turn a blind eye). - you‘d do well to read up.

Here is a link to an informative JAG briefing:
Sexual Offences and Sexual Harassment

If anybody needs more info, advice, or whatever - y‘all know where to find me.

Dileas Gu Brath,
M.A. Bossi, Esquire
 
The front page of the Toronto Star news paper Sat. edition has picture of a Canadian woman soldier crawling out of her sleeping bag in the open on a mountain side in Afghanistan.
The report below the picture says she is with our troops in the battle with the rest of them.The look on her face looks like she is thinking
"what have I got myself into". I know many countries have women in their forces but I didn‘t think they were allowed in ground combat.
How many countries do this ???
 
I saw the same photo, and I don‘t know if she‘s actually in a combat trade. Most of the women I‘ve seen in photos so far are support trades - even some air force clerks. (why AF clerks are there I don‘t know.) I hate how the press always publishes the pics of females - if there are 20 guys and 1 female working, I guarantee the female will end up in the paper.

Women still make up a miniscule portion of the Reg Infantry, and I would be surprised to find any that have gone into the NCO ranks and stayed there. Right now 1.9% of the Combat Arms are female.

No nation that I can think of that plans to fight a war has women in it‘s combat arms.
Israel and Russia tried it out of desperation, and it didn‘t work in the long term for them and was discontinued.

Here‘s a recent NATO article.
www.nato.int/docu/review/2001/0102-09.htm
 
Very interesting article Enfield, but they forgot to mention that we also have 2 physical fitness standards based on gender, but only 1 set of combat functions to base them on. I was told once that it depends on the effort: a female running to level 5 did the same "effort" as a male running level 8... at the end of the day, if a person‘s effort cannot lift a sandbag, is that person useful ? :cdn:
 
I saw the picture of the soldier. She is a combat engineer and the picture reflects a person just waking up vice "What have I got myself into". Maybe you think she‘s waiting for the Sgt to bring her a coffee? There was a picture of a male infantry soldier in a similar pose and he has the same expression on his face...exhaustion.

I don‘t have a problem with men or women, gays, lesbians, or heterosexuals, whites, blacks, red, yellow or poke a dot individuals. If someone wants to serve their countrty, fine. There must be one standard as there are no pink road wheels when you are changing track. You can either do the job or you can‘t. Not all women can or want to do
it...but then again, very few Canadian men want to do it either.
 
That‘s a good point Gunner.
However, I think it has to be balanced. If there was one standard across the board, how many women would make it in? Since it‘s 1.9% with two very different standards, I would suggest the number would be a lot lower. The stats for police tactical teams and fire departments that maintain a single standard would, I think, support this. In a highly-publicized event, the British allowed several Navy and Army women to go through the Commando course to serve in Royal Marine support units. Not a single one passed. There is what, one female SAR Tech?

Now is it worth the radical changes necessary to a combat unit to welcome that tiny group of women? There are obviously issues with having women in combat units - the European Court even agrees on this - so is it worth the changes for the small gain we get?
In an overall sense, I am in favour of allowing everyone the oppurtunity to serve in any trade or unit they are able. But changing an entire battalion or battery or squadron just so one or two GI Jane‘s can serve doesn‘t seem right.
 
IMHO, there should be one standard for combat arms. I mean, if the woman gets the same pay and is supposed to do the same job, why should it be easier for her to get in? If she can‘t do what a man has to do to get in, how will she do what a man has to do on the job?

I don‘t have a problem with blacks, yellows, blues, greens, woman, man, gay, straight, as long as they can do the same job as the other guy. (or gal)

Anyway, just my two (canadian) cents.

Fred
 
While a few dinosaurs would continue to exclude women merely b/c they are women, most of us would agree that if they can meet the (single) standard that would be good enough for us.

The problem then becomes defining the standard:

- should it be based on a set of easily measured physiological tests? Problems - what is the "right" heart rate (and why is it so), and is it the same for men and women?

- how about physical tests? Problems - what tests (and why) are suitable proxies, and do similar results by men and women indicate that they are similar soldiers - or that the women is better?

- perhaps tests based on battle skills, such as lift and lower a 105 round a certain number of times? Problems - need specific tests for every trade, need to determine what is suitable - e.g., do we tets based on typical rates of 105 fire, max rates over short durations, etc.? The tets would also have to be conducted as the skills are - which is not always in single-person tasks, but as parts of teams.

- on all of these physical fitness tests, we also have to ask what we are trying to achieve -- limiting the military to a few super-soldiers, setting a minimum fitness level suitable for combat, setting a fitness level representative of a certain percentile of the population, etc.

And then after all that is done, we have to accept that there are other standards that are not as easily quantified. Think back to the last time you were assessed on a task that you did differently than your evaluator -- maybe you do it differently b/c it is faster, more precise, cheaper, etc. when you do it your way. Maybe you think your way through processes differently, etc -- since we are not all robots and we think and do physical activities differently.

It is a complex task to determine what the standards should be, how complex they should be, etc. -- also a very expensive task. And if the determination is for different tests for different trades, it becomes even more expensive.

All of which is to say that the current testing is probably a cost-effective physiological assessment of fitness using simple tests and aimed at ensuring similar levels of fitness. A chin-up is hardly a test of capability in battle and there is no reason to think a women should be able to do as many chin-ups as a man. What she must be able to do is hump a pack, aim, shoot, and think like a soldier.

My experience is that most of the women I worked with could -- and some of the men couldn‘t.
 
Hi Gunner,

Good too see you are fixed on the aiming posts and still shooting straight.

For the dino soldiers, the AF Clerks in Afganistan are members of 3 VP, they had too do all the unit training :mg: prior too deploying. PERIOD.

Get with it and stop lamenting on the days of old, from what I remember from my rusty bio-puter, I really don‘t miss the good old boy, :rage: slap happy knee jerk days.

I have worked with women since 1989 in field roles (all aspects), I have not had the opportunity too have a women let me down on a deployment (operational or training) yet. But I can recall many a man who dropped the ball out of slovenlieness, drunkeness, or incompetence :evil: .

There is a lot of pressure on women too perfrom in all roles within the CF, and in my humble experience and opinion, they are up too the challenge ;) .

Get off the double standard high horse and worry about doing a good job yourself (lead, follow or get out the way), or at least if you are a Monday Morning Quarterback, ‘can you still get off the line without breaking a sweat‘ :skull: .

Ubique
 
Well
i had a Female Gunner for my Bosnia tour, Damn she was so useless. But she got on most film shots. One time we were being shot at and she was more worried about her damn camera then the a**hole with the AK. Reality set in when she saw the holes in the Cougar doors and side. We have 7 Females in the Regt that are Cbtarms and 6 are just as poor. We‘ve had two female troop leaders and ones gone Pafo and the other ? Most are pushed through just because their a female, I‘ve been at the school and seen it. so go on a tour and find out boys.
SGT CD,CDS com
 
Not being from the "old-boys" army, I try and remain open-minded. However, the evidence seems overwhelming...
***
Women In Combat
Facts From A Closet
Occasionally I have written that placing women in physically demanding jobs in the military, as for example combat, is stupid and unworkable. Predictably I‘ve gotten responses asserting that I hate women, abuse children, cannibalize orphans, and can‘t get a date. A few, with truculence sometimes amplified by misspelling, have demanded supporting data.
OK. The following are from documents I found in a closet, left over from my days as a syndicated military columnist ("Soldiering," Universal Press Syndicate). Note the dates: All of this has been known for a long time.
From the report of the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces (report date November 15, 1992, published in book form by Brassey‘s in 1993): "The average female Army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, 31.7 pounds lighter, has 37.4 fewer pounds of muscle, and 5.7 more pounds of fat than the average male recruit. She has only 55 percent of the upper-body strength and 72 percent of the lower-body strength… An Army study of 124 men and 186 women done in 1988 found that women are more than twice as likely to suffer leg injuries and nearly five times as likely to suffer [stress] fractures as men."
Further: "The Commission heard an abundance of expert testimony about the physical differences between men and women that can be summarized as follows:
"Women‘s aerobic capacity is significantly lower, meaning they cannot carry as much as far as fast as men, and they are more susceptible to fatigue.
"In terms of physical capability, the upper five percent of women are at the level of the male median. The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man."
From the same report: "Lt Col. William Gregor, United States Army, testified before the Commission regarding a survey he conducted at an Army ROTC Advanced Summer Camp on 623 women and 3540 men. …Evidence Gregor presented to the Commission includes:
"(a) Using the standard Army Physical Fitness Test, he found that the upper quintile of women at West point achieved scores on the test equivalent to the bottom quintile of men.
"(c) Only 21 women out of the initial 623 (3.4%) achieved a score equal to the male mean score of 260.
"(d) On the push-up test, only seven percent of women can meet a score of 60, while 78 percent of men exceed it.
"(e) Adopting a male standard of fitness at West Point would mean 70 percent of the women he studied would be separated as failures at the end of their junior year, only three percent would be eligible for the Recondo badge, and not one would receive the Army Physical Fitness badge…."
The following, quoted by Brian Mitchell in his book Women in the Military: Flirting With Disaster (Regnery, 1998) and widely known to students of the military, are results of a test the Navy did to see how well women could perform in damage control -- i.e., tasks necessary to save a ship that had been hit.

"Test .....................................................................% Women failing .................................................% Men failing
.................................................................................Before training /After ............................................Before training/After
Stretcher carry, level ..............................................63 .......................38 .................................................0 ............................0
Stretcher carry/up, down ladder ..............................94 .......................88 .................................................0.............................0
Fire hose ...................................................................19 .......................16 .................................................0 ............................0
P250 pump, carry down .............................................99 .......................99 .................................................9.............................4
P250 pump, carry up ..................................................73 .......................52 .................................................0 ............................0
P250, start pump .........................................................90 ......................75 ..................................................0 ...........................0
Remove SSTO pump ..................................................99 .......................99 .................................................0............................0
Torque engine bolt ......................................................78 ........................47 .................................................0 ...........................0"
Our ships can be hit. I know what supersonic stealthed cruise missiles are. So do the Iraqis.
Also from the Commission‘s report: "Non-deployability briefings before the Commission showed that women were three times more non-deployable than men, primarily due to pregnancy, during Operations Desert Shield and Storm. According to Navy Captain Martha Whitehead‘s testimony before the Commission, ‘the primary reason for the women being unable to deploy was pregnancy, that representing 47 percent of the women who could not deploy.‘"
Maybe we need armored strollers.
My friend Catherine Aspy graduated from Harvard in 1992 and (no, I‘m not on drugs) enlisted in the Army in 1995. Her account was published in Reader‘s Digest, February, 1999, and is online in the Digest‘s archives.
She told me the following about her experiences: "I was stunned. The Army was a vast day-care center, full of unmarried teen-age mothers using it as a welfare home. I took training seriously and really tried to keep up with the men. I found I couldn‘t. It wasn‘t even close. I had no idea the difference in physical ability was so huge. There were always crowds of women sitting out exercises or on crutches from training injuries.
"They [the Army] were so scared of sexual harassment that women weren‘t allowed to go anywhere without another woman along. They called them ‘Battle Buddies.‘ It was crazy. I was twenty-six years old but I couldn‘t go to the bathroom by myself."
Women are going to take on the North Korean infantry, but need protection in the ladies‘ room. Military policy is endlessly fascinating.
When I was writing the military column, I looked into the experience of Canada, which tried the experiment of feminization. I got the report from Ottawa, as did the Commission. Said the Commission:
"After extensive research, Canada has found little evidence to support the integration of women into ground units. Of 103 Canadian women who volunteered to joint infantry units, only one graduated the initial training course. The Canadian experience corroborates the testimony of LTC Gregor, who said the odds of selecting a woman matching the physical size and strength of the average male are more than 130-to-1.
From Military Medicine, October 1997, which I got from the Pentagon‘s library:
(p. 690): "One-third of 450 female soldiers surveyed indicated that they experienced problematic urinary incontinence during exercise and field training activities. The other crucial finding of the survey was probably that 13.3% of the respondents restricted fluids significantly while participating in field exercises." Because peeing was embarrassing.
Or, (p. 661): " Kessler et al found that the lifetime prevalence of PTSD in the United States was twice as high among women…" Depression, says MilMed, is far commoner among women, as are training injuries. Et cetera.
The military is perfectly aware of all of this. Their own magazine has told them. They see it every day. But protecting careers, and rears, is more important than protecting the country.
Anyway, for those who wanted supporting evidence, there it is.
©Fred Reed 2002
 
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