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Fighting is for men

Should women be allowed to stay in the combat arms?

  • Yes

    Votes: 63 78.8%
  • No

    Votes: 17 21.3%

  • Total voters
    80
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Gunner

Army.ca Veteran
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PUBLICATION:  National Post
DATE:  2005.11.09
EDITION:  National
SECTION:  Issues & Ideas
PAGE:  A22
COLUMN:  Barbara Kay
BYLINE:  Barbara Kay
SOURCE:  National Post
NOTE: bkay@videotron.ca

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Fighting is for men

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As soon as Remembrance Day lapel poppies make their annual appearance, wars, old and new, occupy my thoughts. I am especially keen to see the film Jarhead, which tells the story of a U.S. Marine who fought in the first Gulf War. By all accounts, Jarhead follows on other classics of the war-movie genre by answering the timeless question of why young males are willing to face torturous training, brutal hazing, long-term celibacy, excruciating tedium, dust, mud and the risk of death (or worse) in war.

Jarhead will no doubt be seen as hate propaganda in peace-loving Canada, where pacifism is in vogue, and traditional military values are viewed with suspicion. Not coincidentally, our Canadian Forces (CF) are deeply demoralized; military historian Jack Granatstein predicts a mass exodus of 20% over the next few years.

Reviving a military with cruelly degraded mechanical resources -- with virtually no significant new funds available for use until 2009-10 -- will be a difficult job for recently appointed Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier. His most pressing task is to stem rampant attrition -- in 1993, enlistment stood at 80,000; in 2005, at 58,000. Re-masculating the Forces would be a good place to start.

Nothing better illustrates Hillier's uphill battle than political termagant Carolyn Parrish's reaction to his perfectly reasonable assertion, in July, that terrorists are "scumbags ... who detest our freedoms" and that it is the Forces' job "to be able to kill people." She declared Hillier "dangerous" and "testosterone-fuelled."

Parish's reflexive hostility to Hillier's personal manliness is, unfortunately, emblematic of the anti-male attitude behind the transformation of our combat forces into the integrated, "sensitive" New Military. Women have served in the CF since 1951, and today represent up to 14% of the CF. They were deployed in support roles until a Human Rights tribunal in 1989 struck down barriers to all service options, including combat.

This meant integrated training with men. Since then, it's goodbye testosterone, hello estrogen, PMS, pregnancy -- and lower, gentler criteria. The single-standard Old Military shaped <recruits> to meet fixed benchmarks. The double-standard New Military fixes benchmarks to meet enlistees' shapes.

To maintain the fiction of gender neutrality insisted upon by the social engineers who pressed for integration, and produce the appearance of equality of outcomes, co-ed physical training has been dumbed down to accommodate women's lesser strength and ability, an insulting disservice to male <recruits>. But women also have female reproductive issues that can't be similarly obscured, and that receive special treatment. Pregnancy, for example, allows women to withdraw from combat duty with honour, while men have no such combat escape hatch. Some "equity."

Feminists perceive the military as simply one more government or social institution in need of accelerated PC behaviour modification to ensure functional and numerical parity for women. Manliness as a virtue has already been eradicated from scholarship, early education, child psychology, family law, and social work. Now it is the military's turn.

But combat troops aren't like teachers or postal workers or bus drivers. The military is -- was -- a unique, genetics-dependent culture, as specific to males as midwifery is to females. Men don't fight for the feminist ideal of androgyny, but to protect the women they love -- wives, daughters, mothers, sisters -- and the values they represent -- normalcy, freedom and peace. Former U.S. infantry officer Brian Mitchell, author of Women in the Military: Flirting with Disaster, points out that rather than shortfalls being a reason to <recruit> women, <recruiting> women causes shortfalls: "The more attractive you make the military look to women, the less attractive you make it look to men."

In spite of the military's ardent courtship, women leave the CF for domestic obligations or greener career pastures at double to triple the rate for men. Add extra expense for female-specific injury and medical needs, double those of men's, not to mention costly flights of PC-induced idiocy (our Forces once commissioned a pregnancy combat uniform), and you have an institution in denial. Sadly, according to Granatstein, "It will take a large number of dead female soldiers before we snap back to reality".

Rick Hillier's comments have been labelled "controversial." Nonsense. He's a breath of fresh air, a role model for young men seeking purpose and self-realization through the ultimate male bonding experience.

Apart from rear-service, medical and administrative functions, where they shine, women don't belong in the CF. Hillier would do well to take a leaf from the Jarheads' copybook. Unlike the other Services, the U.S. Marines enlisted women, but successfully resisted integrated training. Consequently, they are the only U.S. Service to have easily met their <recruitment> goals, ensuring their continuing capability to field the world's most motivated, cohesive and effective combat units. More power to them.
 
Wow. Truly inspiring for those women wanting to serve their country.

::)
 
I've thought about this before, and got a couple points.

I don't believe there is anything wrong with having women serve in the combat arms.

Provided, they are set to the same standards. I dislike the male and female entrance physical examination being different in the combat arms. Whom does this serve? No-one. I don't care if you're male or female. If you can't handle the same load across the board for the infantry (or anyone else, for that matter), then sorry, but this isn't the career for you. I've seen plenty of tough women in the military, enough to know that they are an asset, not a detriment. Its the ones that scrape by in the examinations and can't carry a C6 on ex that give the bad impression. Then again, I know plenty of guys that can't do it. Overall, standards have slipped immensely over the past while. Maybe I'm wrong.

The police have ONE standard for physical entrance to their forces. Why can't we?
 
Interesting article I suppose and written by a woman no less.
 
Baloo said:
If you can't handle the same load across the board for the infantry (or anyone else, for that matter), then sorry, but this isn't the career for you.

I totally agree. And I'm sure there are plenty of men who struggle with the physical aspects as well.

The police have ONE standard for physical entrance to their forces. Why can't we?

Well...depends on the police force. But the point remains.

 
There are both mem and women that should nto be in our current combat arms.

If the addition of women was simply that it would not have be so crippling -- but it was included with a whole legion of additional problems -- so now you have a generation of weak, and improperly cultivated soldiers.

 
Damn straight! Thank god it was said by a woman! Did we really commission a pregnancy combat uniform? Please say its not true!
 
steve-o said:
darn straight! Thank god it was said by a woman! Did we really commission a pregnancy combat uniform? Please say its not true!

If CADPAT is dress of the day and you're pregnant...I guess you can call in sick for 3 months and stretch out your Mat leave, or the Army can give you suitable clothes to work in.  What's the problem?

It is an interesting article.  I don't expect there will be much debate on the subject among the powers that be; the decisions seem to have been made long ago.
 
Although I agree with the dumbed down standards and that both men and women are getting in when they shouldn't have, Ms Kay should have looked at the Combat Arms percentages and she would have seen how low the numbers actually are.  It isn't really an issue; the nature of the job still makes it a man's world - just like logging or pipelining.

Next.
 
steve-o said:
darn straight! Thank god it was said by a woman! Did we really commission a pregnancy combat uniform? Please say its not true!

God forbid women get pregnant. I guess women *shouldn't* serve because the idea of a pregnant woman in a uniform is too ridiculous for you?

Other employers provide mat leave, why is this even an issue in the CF?
 
people arent mad or concerned because women are in the military and they want them out, theyre angry because the military had to accomodate its training and mentality to better suit women, and lowered the standards pretty much across the board, everywhere.

The standards should be higher than they are now, and they should be that.A standard. A troop is a troop, male or female. If they cannot meet the requirements, then they do not belong in the military. End of story.

Making physical examinations easier for women is ridiculous. Especially when you don't do it for the men either... what kind of message does that send? "Well youre a female, so its expected you wont be as strong or fit."

If you arent strong or fit enough, then become so, or get out.
I know this might seem "unfair" to all the women and aspiring ones going into the CF, but when you consider war requires a high standard of training in order to survive and be successful in combat, tough ****.

If you want to go complain to the war gods that war is too hard and it should be made easier and have the standards lowered so women can play to, you go right ahead.

Making any kind of regression in training was a huge mistake. Women want in? Fine. But we arent changing a single standard anywhere, and if they make it, good for them, but most of them wont. - What should have been done, but wasnt.
 
Ms Kay's quote from Jack Granatstein's prediction that we will lose 20% of the CF in the next 5 years isn't really a prediction.  Thousands of us joined in the late 70s and we rode the wave of FRP and stuck it out.  Our retirement time at the decent pension of 30+ years is just around the corner.  This huge exodus will become a reality.  Issues such as parental leave for men and women will have to be examined.  We suffer significant work loss from parents sitting at home for several months because they can.  Ms Kay's article hits home, it's a shame it won't change anything in our socially engineered military.

:cdn:
 
SHF said:
We suffer significant work loss from parents sitting at home for several months because they can.  

What is the alternative?  You're talking about parents of newborns, right?
 
Other employers provide mat leave, why is this even an issue in the CF

Other employers don't require their employees to charge machine gun nests, "yomp" 30 kliks with 100 lbs of kit on their backs, or disembowel "opponents" with a bayonet...

Regardless of my own, personal points of view regarding women in combat, I will always maintain that it is ludicrous to compare the CF to "other employers".... no matter what the topic at hand is about
 
Isn't paternity leave provided to CF members?  I believe it is, but somebody can clear this one up.  So if we allow women to take time off for parenting needs and we allow men to take time off for parenting needs, then what is the use of comparing it to the issue of rucking and charging an MG nest?
 
KevinB said:
There are both mem and women that should nto be in our current combat arms.

If the addition of women was simply that it would not have be so crippling -- but it was included with a whole legion of additional problems -- so now you have a generation of weak, and improperly cultivated soldiers.

I agree; I watched and, to my regret, participated in lowering standards - all sorts of standards - to accommodate.  Some of us, me too I guess, confused adjusting and adapting with what happened: lowering; shame on us.

We managed when we should have been leading.
 
muskrat89 said:
Other employers don't require their employees to charge machine gun nests, "yomp" 30 kliks with 100 lbs of kit on their backs, or disembowel "opponents" with a bayonet...

Regardless of my own, personal points of view regarding women in combat, I will always maintain that it is ludicrous to compare the CF to "other employers".... no matter what the topic at hand is about

To add a quote from the CDS "We're not the public service of Canada, we're not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces"
 
Infanteer - maybe you missed my point. In my mind - I hate comparing the CF to "other jobs", no matter what we are talking about. We ask things of soldiers that other employees don't ask of their employees - whether they are accounts, carpenters, store clerks, or crab fishermen..

Specifically regarding women in combat, or even maternity leave in the CF.. sure, make the arguments pro and con - I just don't see much value in comparing the CF to other employers
 
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