Gender bias at Navy?
Astonishing.
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I wouldn’t mind seeing the good admiral, some of his staff and perhaps others sued for everything they’re worth by the fellows who were dismissed, or otherwise harmed, for having their civil rights violated under the 14th Amendment.
Other’s mileage may vary, of course.
I raise my hand to second this motion!
Wow…how can we cr5eate good leaders when there is a double standard? I know…we “had to” to keep from hurting feelings.
Well, in keeping with the highest priority there now being “diversity” it would bring further enlightenment to see how those males fell out WRT race. Hard to believe that the flag could not see that sooner or later the stats were gonna be made public and then be used to stab him in the butt.
Leadership? Me thinks not.
Women are a fatal cancer in the armed services that eventually will–speeded along if homosexuality is legalized–see the devastation of morale and serious degradation of combat effectiveness as Sovietization via the PC thought police continues apace–and cynicism and contempt for the double standards and shadow parallel promotion system metastasizes into massive loss of the most qualified and highly motivated–leaving only second-rate garrison soldiers adept at playing PC politics and gaming the system.
That is the best encapsulation of the situation I’ve read.
When gender management is the most important thing, we have lost our way.
Hey, get on board for the big win…
DIVERSITY… it’s a STRATEGIC initiative… The JCJS (then CNO) told me…
What a joke… I can’t even hide my distain for these policies and the people who created them…
virgil, my friend [and I feel you are] … I wish you had included a bit of a caveat in your post above. Some women are toxic almost anywhere, I will admit, as are some men. But there are good, even great women involved in serious work, like protection of our country and others… people like Maggie Thatcher, and Golda Meier leap to mind, and politicians and governors of this country as well.
Do you feel that all women are unsuited to the admittedly tight constraints of the military? Or do you think that perhaps some can do a good-to-excellent job in what is a tough, demanding venue?
Marianne
Marianne/
Sure, “some” women can do “some” jobs as well–in some instances better–than men can. My point–how do I make it in less than book-length–is that the hormonal differences alone inevitability lead to all sorts of things–fraternization, etc,–which affect the good order and discipline of the services. And “gender norming” of physical standards eventually leads to the lowering of standards for everybody, and massive cynicism as the entire structure is bent to the will
of the PC crowd; the ability to perform the mission degraded, and careers ruined if one doesn’t “get with the PC program.” It’s a matter of the tail wagging the dog. Does one distort the entire system so as to cater to a few?
Entire scholarly books have been written on the subject. Two of the best (sigh, we’ve been here before–and will be again until fossils like me are dead) are “Men, Women & War” (2001) by Martin Van Creveled, and “A Kinder, Gentler Military: How Political Correctness Affects Our Ability To Win Wars” (2001) by Stephanie Gutman.
I’ll await more criticism, then expound some more as necessary. (Where’s Skippy-san when I need him?)
Virgil,
You are doing just fine-those are great books.
I think my views on the issue of women at the Academy are already fairly well known.
SAVE THE MALES!
Marianne;
I learned, from trying to bait a fellow officer (a GURL), and walked away finding out she was a professional. I then changed my world view that professionals come in all genders, races, and other discriminators of people. I realized the corollary is also true: Lazy, stupid, selfish people also come that way. We should only grade on professionalism. We should never have had to have had this discussion in this tone.
It’s when we “quotaized” the system, we lost the edge.
When I was at OCS, years and years ago, a black man was no different than a white man–fail once, go to the board, fail twice, go home. A woman, however, could get away with absolute murder and still get commissioned. A black woman couldn’t be removed from the program, no matter what she failed in or how many times. It’s been unequal as long as I’ve been in and everybody, including the women, knows it.
Well, it seems to me the bad actors here were Rempt and Mikulski, neither of whom – strictly speaking – were women in the military.
Lex/
I’ve got to disagree somewhat and say the O-6 career officer diplomat in you is being slightly disingenuous. Those two took the actions they did ONLY because of fear of the PC Gods, I’d wager–and I’m a betting man–as opposed to any inertial moral/ethical compass or reflection on the long-term needs of the service. Unless, of course, one defines “Ultima Thule” for the services as PC “diversity” for it’s own sake above all else–as the true sine qua non of combat effectiveness.
Lex, in a way you are a classic example of the type of officer I simultaneously jealously admired and sorrowfully came to, in a way, and on another intellectual/emotional
level, almost despise on this subject–despite the presence of otherwise stirling qualities.
I greatly admired officers such as yourself for having the psychic temperament–a temperament I frankly did not possess (at least in the requisite quantities)– to diplomatically curb one’s tongue and smoothly, adroitly, navigate the PC shoals while keeping the big picture of the overall mission always in mind; managing the often quite thankless task of motivating ALL the troops/herding all the cats, in the same direction towards the common objective with a minimum of wake turbulence while all the while simultaneously advancing one’s own personal career.
Thus by avoiding tilting at wind-mills the accomplishment of the overall mission of the command was also achieved–no small feat.
Men such as yourself who can successfully pull off this neat little trick (from what little I have gleaned about your personal command style) are always in short supply.
Yet at the same time it is men such as yourself that, IMHO, are part of the longer term problem, in that you–and other highly competent officers like you–by the application of your considerable skills to “work” a badly misguided system–are simply making the service you are devoted to increasingly more “efficiently ineffective” in the long run by the successful short-term application of your efforts.
Now, I full well realize that even if one wants to fall on one’s sword publicly, there are familial considerations/responsibilities to be taken into account; and the question is always posed: “Is it worth the certain sacrifice of a career and the future of one’s family to publicly grand-stand with almost certain minimal overall effect? (Few people have the standing of a WWII hero Max Taylor to retire as Army Chief of Staff to write a best seller blasting the Army–”An Uncertain Trumpet”–and eventually be re-called to be JCS Chairman by a JFK) Thus most answer the “fall on the sword” question by electing to stay in, working within the system and making real, even if incremental, improvements where one can.
I guess the problem is always one of critical mass.
A single officer leads but a suicide charge–at head of thousands, he may yet carry the day. But, unlike fish, men do not, by nature, easily school for instantaneous, mass, major directional changes. So I guess the blogosphere will have to remain for now the briar-patch for the truly dissatisfied.
Well, perhaps you impute more to my leadership abilities (and careerism) than in the end they deserve.
My position on WITS has mellowed over time, but anyone who knew me on active duty would, I think, laugh to hear me described as someone who let the politics of the service keep me from expressing my opinion. If anything, the opposite was true, and part of the reason why better men got to lead air wings and command ships while I served on staffs is because I had this nasty habit of blurting out the truth under pressure.
When I was a midshipman I had what would probably today be labeled retrograde opinions on women in the service, but I have now put away midshipman thinking as those feelings – in my own case, anyway – were emotional rather than rational, being all tied up with some anachronistic self-image. Not all warriors need to stack their bodies at Thermopylae to serve effectively, and the more trigger pullers we can get out from behind desks to go bug hunting, the better off we all will be.
Those negative perceptions were augmented rather than otherwise by the kind of dual standards that Admiral Rempt apparently chose to use to stamp out sexual abuse at Navy. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing I suppose history will tell – I’m quite certain it helped to mold a mini-generation of cynics – but when you’ve got a battle ax like Mikulski shining a light up your wrecked ‘em, the first priority of the institution is survival. Not that I’m defending him (and I doubt that I’d have done it the same way myself) but if Rempt felt that he had to sacrifice a few folks so that the rest could get the message, then he wouldn’t have been the military officer to do so.
I’ve served with great sailors, chiefs and officers over the years, and came to the conclusion that no pre-judgment of their character was possible based on gender. If you’re trying to attract the best talent available for service in technical ratings, it simply doesn’t make sense to me to leave half your human capital – slightly more in America – on the sidelines. Especially when the boomer generation fades into the sunset and other employers are competing for the same dwindling pool of folks that you are.
I led a damned fine combat squadron that was made up of many individuals that became welded as a team. We had issues with some of our women, but also with some of our men. If the ladies were slightly more likely to get pregnant, the men were more likely to have accidents, car wrecks, DUIs and other kinds of problems. And I also have two daughters now, and – should they choose to serve (unlikely) – I would resent it if they were categorically excluded based on their gender, worse yet if someone considered their presence there a “cancer” without bothering to get to know them.
And, when it’s all said and done, our job is to get the mission done with the resources Congress provides us – a sailor learns to deal with the sea as he finds it.
The “feminized” military that so many people tried to scare us with back in the 80s and 90s seems to me to have done a bang-up job beating a force of 375k troops defending their own territory in Iraq with a force less than half that size – and this when conventional wisdom dictated a six-to-one advantage for offensive operations.
In my personal opinion, the service is less harmed by the presence of women in the ranks than by the reaction of senior officers and diversity bullies who try to make a whole collection of folks swallow cool-aid concoctions rather than deal with individual miscreants regardless of their wedding tackle.
Well said.
Lex/
“The more trigger-pullers we can get out from behind the desk to go bug hunting, the better off we all will be.”
That’s a truism, alright, Lex, won’t argue with that, but you and I both know THAT’s not the name of the game. The name of the game is that a bunch of career feminist ideologues–mostly outside the services–are determined to prove that women are TOTALLY inter-changeable with men in ALL trigger-pulling roles–to the extent they are perfectly willing to spend billions of scarce dollars to retro-fit submarines to prove a PC point. And the Sec. of the Navy and the CNO made loud noises that they were perfectly willing to bend-over and take the ram with no hesitation rather than call this sort of insane craziness for what it is.
The point is NOT about the individual abilities of your daughters, however meritorious. Rather, in my view, it’s all about the over-all, long-run cumulative distorting effect on personnel and promotion policies, organizational structure and recruitment and retention numbers which is a matter of concern to those of us who believe that women, serving in the numbers and billets they do now, are the sole reason senior officers and “diversity bullies” try to make kool-aide the drink of choice for everyone in the service in the first place.
And that “dealing with the sea as one finds it,” while perhaps necessary to effect short-term survival, becomes–absent strenuously voiced complaints and principled opposition–in effect a vote for the ultimate shape of the service as the “diversity bullies” would have it by their own warped ideological lights.
And be not deceived, these people DO NOT CARE about the fighting effectiveness of the armed services. Theirs is a view of the services as a social anthropological experiment in the advancement of their cause–the flames of which are fed by an oxygen composed of a firmly held but naive belief that the US is so advanced technologically speaking that we cannot ever seriously court defeat no matter WHAT our personnel policies are. And anyway arming ourselves only provokes bad people. And it is THIS belief that allows them to be comfortable with using the armed services as a societal plaything for their leftist vision of “the good” despite (or perhaps because of) solid evidence of the dysfunctional aspects their policies bring in their train.
Of course, I fully expect these types to act this way. What drives ME to despair is the way those who should know better supinely roll-over before these PC onslaughts and act, in effect, as traitorous Quislings helping the enemy to carry out our own destruction.
I had/have naively expected more philosophical and political backbone than that from my “leaders”–fool that I was/am…
Your mileage may vary-I found over the years that all male units were a lot easier to work in and ….a lot more fun.
Its not about what they can or cannot do-or how nice they are or anything else. Its about the opportunity cost the service pays ( and our society pays) for having them along on the journey.
You’ll forgive me if I don’t ever drink that kool-aid.
I forgive you, but I’m surprised. You have drank all the other Kool-aid!
Lex, I’ve jotted a little here lately on what I’ve learned about the Italian campaign. Women can’t and won’t fight wars like that. It’s a little disingenuous to compare the Iraqi Army, much of which had already agreed to stay in their barracks to avoid destruction, to a real army, a dedicated, unyielding foe who possesses real advantages in terms of terrain, firepower and simple numbers. America has not fought a war like that since women were allowed in, and certainly not since they were allowed into combat billets.
There are exceptions. You’ve highlighted a few in these pages. While most of the female officers I’ve served with have been mediocre at best, I also served with one who could probably kick all our collective asses. Still, allowing women to serve in the military when there has been no demonstrated need to do so is a piece of a great and wicked egalitarianism, forced top down by fiat, one that most on this board recognize and do not concur with. There is truth that leaving half your human capital off the table is unwise, but does it best serve us as a people and a nation (and there is a difference) to build a niche for that capital in the military, where it is not needed, without accurately reckoning the cost of what that niche-building takes from us?
It is not for nothing that the Marines have never gone out of their way to advertise for women (“a few good men” and all that), and have never had trouble meeting their recruiting quotas.
When I was at the Aluminum Zoo (USAF Academy) we had a female cadet in my squadron who I am pretty sure NEVER once in four years actually passed the Physical Fitness Test (PFT). That was despite different standards for the women. I am not one of those that thinks women don’t have anything to bring to the table, but I am a strong believer that standards need to be set appropriately and then applied evenly.
You’re exactly right.
And I think it sounds like from 2001-2006 the Navy academy was trying to outdo the AF academy…which had a very bad rap during the time and hasn’t really been able to shake it, even though the charges of sexual harassment et al were almost entirely erroneous from what I’ve caught from the people who were there at the time. Both male and female.
Lex, without the false charges from the women involved, Rempt and Mikulski wouldn’t have been in that position to begin with, would they? Look at what happened to the AF academy leaders in similar positions, who actually required evidence for crimes.
“A military leader’s main goal is to accomplish his mission and ensure the welfare of his subordinates …. It is acceptable and even necessary for a leader to be unfair if it helps accomplish the mission.”
Interesting. Makes me wonder how much of the unequal treatment was for the sake of institutional self-preservation…
(Reading between the lines, I’d guess the person quoted thinks that’s what it was. Very damning.)
This reflects the expected results when military officers abdicate their leadership responsibilities as warfighters and become butt-kissing sycophants for political correctness cowed (a word especially apt when dealing with Mikulski) by self serving politicians.
Even worse, how has his action shaped the sense of justice, and of leadership, and adherence to regulations and the law in the minds of the officers trained under his supervision? (Or is it merely PC indoctrination at USNA nowadays?)
Well all knew what was going on back when Grandpa Rempt was running the show.
We were just convinced that justice couldn’t really be perverted so bad for so long; somebody with a bunch of stars was going to say “This is crazy. And illegal.”. . .it just never happened.
Still a great institution, but I do wonder about a place who’s job is to create warfighters which only allows its students go to the rifle range once in 4 years, but has a 4 part continuum of sexual harassment/PC sensitivity training seminars as a graduation requirement.
Issue: How will those who were scarred, but not rejected view all other decisions made along their career paths? This will be particulalry called to question if the decision makers are attendees of this institution during the span of the mentioned years.
Not only will it be burned into the minds of the USNA grads, but the ROTC/OCS and LDO types will now all have a question of any judgment being tainted by this bias.
Not something that makes for good order and discilpine, let alone the bonding of “we’re all (but some us are more equal than others) in this together sentiments of daily life in the Sea Service.
Sad that this was pushed by a flag officer. He’ll retire and this will be his legacy for a decade or more to come.
“…Rempt, a Navy Judge Advocate General lawyer who asked not to be named said the purpose of military law is to preserve the “good order and discipline” of the military, not to ensure that justice is done in each individual case.”
Call me a moroon..I don’t get it.
Mr. Kelly writes a pretty good article. He had been fighting the FOIA battle for awhile. I had sent in a bunch and got a load of crap that ran counter to what the instructions dictated. I am glad to see that he finally got the FOIA requests honored.
There most certainly was a slanted approach and nod to feminism during that period. As a result, we have unleashed a bunch of officers indoctrinated in the way of der kommisar.
In praise of Mr. Kelly, I have found his articles, to be rather middle of the road and he tends to not spin one way or another. If you are a die hard academy fan, you may not like him, but I think he does a good job telling the truth. Whether he released this at this time to get even for them yanking his chain or the FOIA releases came at this time, I do not know, but if the Academy had followed that whole Honor, Courage, Commitment thing rather than PC, self preservation and Senatorial sucking, I think they’d find they would actually have less problems.
Virgil, officers like Lex and CDR Salamander remind me every day that I read and learn what kind of men they are, that I was a fool for not joining the Navy.
I completely disagree with your description of Lex.
Byron, I agree.
I would have suggested the USAF as a first choice, however, this being a naval oriented blog, out of respect and courtesy for the host I will refrain from doing so
It is interesting that, as the years advance for us, many who had not went into the service do wish that they had done so. Among friends and colleagues this topic comes up surprisingly often. It was a most rewarding, unique four year experience. Unfortunately, and unlike many other life choices, there is a rather limited time frame where we have the option to do so.
I believe that Lex would have been a leader I would have been proud to follow.
Of all the personal blogs that I read, were I limited to read only one, it would be Neptunus Lex. Content, style, professionalism, openness, variety, caliber of host and readers/comments: hands down the best that I know of. (see 6.1.1)
Not that there aren’t a lot of other great blogs, just saying if I had to choose…
Byron/
Re-read what I had to say. I wasn’t trying to denigrate Lex, far from it. As I stated, I’m envious of, and have great respect for, those who have the command temperament that his writings obviously (or seem so to me) reveal. My lament is that, at a different level of analysis, paradoxically the very abilities of guys like Lex to “work the problem” and adjust and adopt like any superb officer, much like G-Man suggests below@15, only makes it that much easier for the “Quislings” in the Sr. Command structure to go with the PC flow, rather than resist it and thus needlessly force what I regard as unnecessary and dysfunctional changes upon the services. So when I said ay one level I “despised” Lex I meant it metaphorically to illustrate my frustration about the fact his very abilities made these changes seem un-harmful and thus not needed to be resisted.
Virgil, on all levels you are wrong. And no, I never thought you were disappointed in Lex personally.
I don’t know if Lex feels like you owe him an apology, but given that he took the time to post up a long reply to you, on top of everything else, tells me you should apologize.
Lex is and was a helluva officer. It’s the Navy’s loss that they didn’t send his name to Congress.
Byron/
I’ll try one more pass at this. I thought I had taken great pains to point out my admiration in even my original post for the kind of officer Lex represents, and my regret that my personality type would not allow me to successfully stay in and work the system (in the best sense of the word) in ways that Lex was/is clearly so capable of. I have obviously somehow failed to get that point across, but don;t know how many times and in what variations of the English language I need to say it in order to satisfy you and others on that score. My deficiencies as a wordsmith are obviously greatly in evidence.
The point I was TRYING to make, was that from my point of view, the frustrating part is the very qualities that make guys like Lex fine officers just trying to do the best with ( in this case) the PC cards that are dealt them means that their very successes as officers trapped in a system not necessarily of their own making serve to make, paradoxically (that word again) difficult any efforts to resist the long-term, slow cancerous spread of what I regard as the PC Sovietization of the force. Earnest attempts of guys like him to just “get ‘er dun” with a minimum of histrionics–and their success in doing so–only makes me cry, as the spreading dry rot of Political Correctness is unconsciously disguised by the effectiveness of guys like Lex in making an inherently flawed system work–and who are too diplomatic to be openly confrontational about it. Hence my choice of the word “despise” (As in love-hate–obviously by now at this stage a very poor choice) to try to illustrate my frustration with what I see as careerists wedded to the system blind to the “evil” that they do by doing good, i.e., their own personal incremental improvements and/or contributions serving only to perpetuate what is (from my pov) a fundamentally, very fatally flawed system.
And while Lex and I would probably be in almost total agreement about the nature of the flaws in the current system regarding this topic–we would greatly differ about the nature of the remedy. Hence I “despise” him on one level even as I admire him PRECISELY because he is so damned reasonable and effective at working within the system that it makes it all the harder for bomb-throwers like me to convince the mob the pressing need to storm the institutional gates.
Damned cheeky of him that….
Virgil,
FYI, I get you 100%… just so you know you aren’t crazy…
Like you, I was a “Fire for Effect” kind of officer on these matters, tending to light a fire and then pour gasoline on it to get my point…
In fact, while there were a lot of reasons I “departed the pattern”, it was not being able to take this stuff with a straight face anymore…
Byron, I don’t think Virgil was insulting. He offered some gentle and constructive criticism that applies to a large swath of the Navy’s career personnel. At what point will those personnel, senior officers and senior enlisted, stand up against the things that are eating away at the Navy from within? At some point, the ship will sink if we keep relying on the pumps instead of stopping the flooding.
Byron – FYI, there is a lot more to the Navy that what you read in print… it’s not all “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” with theme music and people extolling their personal beliefs…
Reminds me of the guy who was a hippie son of an old Marine during Vietnam… years later he wrote a piece saying he wished he’d joined and lead a Marine rifle company in combat…
That’s very easy to say, in retrospect.
Rhino, at almost 58 years of age, I’m long past any ideas of “glory”, if there ever was such a thing. What I meant was that after many years of working around the Navy, and reading about the great people of the Navy throughout history, that I deeply regret not taking on the challenge of becoming a sailor, and having to work with great people like the ones I’ve met or read about.
Now the big PC thing at USNA is diversity. They even are recruiting using a “graphic novel.” How comfortable would you be sleeping knowing that the officer with the midwatch was attracted to the Academy by a comic book?
It’s not restricted to USNA, it’s Navy wide…
WITS are here to stay, and the leadership needs to understand that people that join the military don’t slowly adopt the military way of thinking, but over time the military adopts the joiners way of thinking. In 5 years, the diversity/PC crowd will crow over the successes of the US Mil when an openly homosexual is selected for command. But those types have been running businesses and academia for years. Point being: we can’t change it, we can only learn to effectively mandate/direct/teach/train/organize/lead the way with the gifts given. I’ve flown with female pilots that are plumbers, absolute plumbers. I’ve had female ADs that can’t carry a toolbox. I’ve had female DivOs that couldn’t find their spaces much less lead. But I’ve also had the opposite, and those gals brought quite a bit of professional good to the squadrons-much to my chagrin. Like Lex I’ve got 2 daughters – one with a 4.0 Summa Cum laude and 1560 SAT, one with a 3.7 and a 1380 SAT. Smart, good looking like the Blonde Bombshell Unit, confident, talented and one can land a C-172 on a dime. They would bring much to any organization. But they both fight any signs of being treated unequally, and the youngest had to resort to gunfire to settle a perceived slight – on the college gun range – and she won. I’ve beat the message into their skulls to set no limits.
Lex’s last para outta be required reading in tomorrow’s Yellow Bird. Echo XF.
Virgil, you sir are a moron. Not to mention a relic of the past.
Veron/
I resemble that remark! In fact I highly represent it!
Satisfied now?
I like my relics. The older I get, the more I realize how much smarter they are than those of us trapped in our own little window.
Veron, what qualifies you to judge Virgil?
Hey Lex, I am with you man. The Israeli’s tried integration of women into combat units and it failed miserably! I commend the Marine Corps for NOT integrating women during basic. Does the name Kara “Revlon” Spears Hultgreen ring a bell? Pushed through training too green and wound up crashing her F-14 trying to make a trap. At least her RIO had the guts to punch out and survive. The cover-up was when it was deemed engine failure, but the real report cited pilot error. There ARE some very talented women in the service, and I tip my hat to them in respect, but when there are blatantly two set of rules, and no longer a level playing field, I have to call it fowl. If they can’t cut it and screw up then they should get the same treatment as “guys” to or they will hide behind getting preferential treatment and really start chaos in the ranks. I have seen this repeatedly in the business world where women are artificially elevated to positions they are not fully trained or mature to handle and the damage is unbelievable!
Agreed. And in my experience, it’s the deserving females who worked to earn their rank and responsibilities who hate this practice the most. It’s gotten pretty sad when they announce a female’s been selected for such and such position and everybody starts trying to figure out if she earned it by virtue of her abilities or her ovaries.
BigNavy’s official diversity quotas do nothing to allay such fears, either.
Don’t forget the really big win for Navy…
A Minority Female… you know if she continues to fog a mirror, she’s gonna go far…
Having homosexuals in the ranks didn’t seem to hurt the effectiveness of the Greeks, and for that matter having a woman in charge seems to have actually helped the French army after about a generation of continual defeats.
So it’s not really about the gender, nor which way one’s rudder skews, it’s more about maintaining a professionalism within the group.
Which, given my two examples, doesn’t seem to be anything new.
So why are we still having difficulty understanding this?
I maintain the PC part of it, that nobody be offended and that everybody’s special in their own unique way, is the crux of the problem. When we play with numbers as if the groups matter instead of the individuals.
Regarding Kara Hultgreen, who qualified her for an F-14? Don’t they know women can’t even *drive* fer crying out loud?
Just kidding, Marianne.
– Max
“Having homosexuals in the ranks didn’t seem to hurt the effectiveness of the Greeks”
When did Greece become a military power to emulate?
Seriously!
In a different era Rhinowso, and I suspect that you are aware of it. Try researching the historical period around 300 BC.
Alex did pretty good at that time.
Seriously!
I gotcha now…
But look at where it got them!
Kara was a friend of mine. She did the best she could at something she desperately wanted to succeed at. She didn’t kill herself in that F-14.
We killed her.
Lex,
While it might feel correct to you that all the sturm und drang over LT Hultgreen and Women in the Service, and as Naval Officers, our response to that stimuli, could have been responsible for pushing a young woman beyond her limits, I would submit that is the very essence of human existence.
We exist to prove ourselves and to achieve greatly, not realizing that we are sometimes more likely to end in Defeat than Victory because of chance and fate, and not because someone else ardently wishes us to fail. Pressure is a good thing. More pressure is sometimes better. It improves the species.
While you may feel some responsibility for pushing LT Hultgreen beyond her limits, you should recognize it is a human trait, and it is one which has brought us to where we are today. We demand improvement. We demand justice, even where none is necessary or possible. And we feel badly when we overstep the bounds of good judgment or common sense and something bad happens to someone else.
But even you said it. She desperately wanted to succeed. And that drove her as much as any of the other pressures which we, as officers and Men of the Navy, subjected her to.
No one killed Kara Hultgreen. She died a good death, doing what she wanted to be doing. And I wish I could go out doing something I desperately wanted a chance to do as well. A Spartan Death. Because a wretched existence with no chance to achieve anything for myself or anyone else is a Fate worse than Death to me.
I’m sorry you had some feeling of responsibility for her. But you know it ain’t really your mistake.
Subsunk
Subsunk — one of the toughest things I ever had to do was as a replacement instructor, was to look at a young, recently designated aviator, and ask him if he had considered another way to make a contribution to the Navy. It is a tough call — but it has to be made, with all of the ramifications that go with it. Because we owe it to the crew that will fly with them, with the people on the deck they will aim themselves at, and most of all — we owe it to that fellow aviator and their loved ones.
Now, on top of the tough call of ending a person’s dreams, you add the pressure, often not subtile, to get female aviators to the fleet. The RAG commanding officer when LTs Hultgren and Lorenz went through was a former CVW buddy. I cannot imagine the pressure on him. Combine that with the pressure to give a fellow wing wearer a little extra slack — one more hop and the light will come on — and you have almost an impossible force to overcome.
I don’t speak for Lex — I am just saying that, as an institution, we failed to live up to our highest calling — demanding operations, as safely as they can be done.
Subsunk- while I agree with your intent, I respectfully disagree with your assertion that “No one killed Kara….”
I was a RAG instructor and LSO during this time and watched the same drama unfold on the right coast as Lex did on the left.
The Tomcat was a hard plane to bring aboard, day, night, good weather, whatever. It was not uncommon for Tomcat RAG students to DQ at the boat. (Anyone can feel free to correct me, but I bet it was around 15-20%).
Kara was a good officer and a good stick, but she was not ready to go to the fleet in the Tomcat. If they had evaluated Kara the same way they did everyone else, she would have been a RAG DQ, and repeated FCLPs and CQ phase. I have no doubt that she would have qualified and gone on to do great things. But they were not allowed to disqual her and no-one stood up and did the right thing.
Kara was killed by Pat Schroeder and her cronies on the hill. She was killed by CNO Kelso, Adm Reason, and other Naval “leaders” that did not have the cajones to do what was right in the post-Tailhook PC BS arena.
If you didn’t play by their games, you got fired (See “Arthur, Stan” and “Dunleavy, Dick”) and we had too many weak-assed admirals who were afraid to stand up and do what is right.
BTW – for Scott, to mention Lorenz in the same context as Kara is a disservice to Kara. Lorenz was a POS who had no business being a Naval Officer, let alone an aviator.
Best
N
It’s tough to hold two points of view on the subject. Initially, watching the powers that be attempt to craft a complete set of double standards and imposing the frailer sex into a military that held to one single unified and accepted standard that set minimum standards, presumably for some reason that made sense was a bit tricky. Watching, as others have pointed out, how it appeared that the navy reached the point where black females were held to absolutely no minimum standard kinda made one move on into the future “knowing” that there was an entire subset of officers that you knew you could not count on for anything. Any credentials they had were worthless.
And then there were the female gunners mate apprentices that graduated A school but could not, of course, at the time, move on to a seagoing billet in the same rate and so were kept on to INSTRUCT new gunner’s mates in the intricacies involved in maintaining 5″54 guns at sea. That was irksome. One just knew that all these women who by law could not go to sea were therefore sucking up all the quality/good shore billets and extending the men’s afloat tours since there were fewer and fewer justified ‘in rate shore tours”. So we started to see the creation of countless make work billets ashore. Like we somehow needed thousands of acting master at arms security police to write tickets for cars that had expired registrations and guard each gate with not less than 3 personnel per watch station and pier sentries too!
Slowly, over time, our attitudes began to shift. We started meeting and working with the smart, tough, dedicated and outstanding young women who joined the navy for the same reasons that we did and as each of us grew older and wiser and they began to be allowed to do the same jobs that we signed up for in seagoing billets we gained respect for them. A respect that overcame the initial circumstances of our integration. Professionals can still recognize professionals and share respect but it cuts both ways. Those wise enough to see the good can also see the bad. There still exists a double standard as I know from going through the endless efforts at my last command to separate an unfit officer from the service. Any man would have been gone in a month. Her? It took a year of increasingly bizarre hoop and wicket work to get her gone and this was one of those cases where we literally had the photos with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each in her own handwriting.
Mutatis mutandis.
If you go up against the PC rabble in any meaningful way, you may very well change your mind. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, set the standard and hold it. You will lose women in the service. But those women will be better sailors and would be those that you would want to sail with.
That said, ask male officers if they’d rather sail w/ all males or a mixed crew and overwhelmingly, you find most would rather lead an all male crew. Why is that? Less drama, no concern about sexual harassment, and you can discipline your troops w/o fear that the chain of command will leave you hanging. The double standards are killing us. I’ve met good female troops, no doubt, but the bad ones and the Navy’s way of dealing with them makes me interact with women with skepticism. Also, I am very tired of seeing women cry at sea. We have an enlisted that when she doesn’t get her own way sits out in the smoke pit and cries. YGTBFSM!
“Also, I am very tired of seeing women cry at sea.”
Amen. I saw one, a bridge phone talker at GQ, cry because she couldn’t get her phones to work. I’ve never seen a male do that.
Yikes! I can cry at the drop of a hat (sappy TV, someone being kind when I’m feeling down, watching someone else cry for a good reason, etc), but you’d think in a high-stress situation like that the adrenalin would override it.
Just out of curiosity, did she stop functioning or did she just cry? I always had a problem with tears until (in the civilian world) I had a woman working for me that would cry at the drop of a hat, but it was just a stress reaction and she functioned fine. She taught me to be able to completely ignore it to both of our benefits. Now if the sailor in question was unable to function for crying your point is well taken. If it was stress response (say like where a male might get aggressive and start slamming things around or swearing) I would have to ask if the problem is hers or yours?
Easy solution: no mention of race or sex on any fitrep or eval or in service record. No first names, only initials. No photos. No differences in PRT. Will eliminate things like a black LTJG giving his fitrep input with “number one black LT” and “number one black divo”. Will eliminate the PRT double standard. Yeah, there will be an inevitable decrease in numbers but the quality cut will move up. In time, the female/minority professionals will make their mark and earn their success on a level playing field, just as they would want it to be. As SSGT Payne, USMC said to us so long ago at P’cola – “there is no white, no black, no brown. Just Marine Green – and you’re mine, all mine. ”
Of course, this is about as likely as having a full moon for every night landing.
G-man,
Since when did the Navy ever use “Easy” solutions? If it can be done harder, more wasteful, and in more time… why not do it that way?
Lex said
“In my personal opinion, the service is less harmed by the presence of women in the ranks than by the reaction of senior officers and diversity bullies who try to make a whole collection of folks swallow cool-aid concoctions rather than deal with individual miscreants regardless of their wedding tackle.”
This is such an excellent quote that I am saving it. This problem is far beyond the Academy and is part of every day life on the active duty side. “Diversity” now means “Men last” and minority Females go to the head of the line. Everyone is so afraid of being labeled as gender biased or racist that the knee-jerk reaction is favoritism to females. And, yes, I know some extremely professional and capable women in uniform and they hate it. Promotions, opportunities, choice positions are offered up so leadership, in many cases, can claim the coveted “diversity” label.
The deployed warfighter no longer is accorded preference. If you are a minority female you get the “nod” … other females can get away with poorer performance, in some cases, than men and still promote higher than the same performing man.
This is a problem created at the O-7 and above level and we will never be rid of it. It is a disgrace.
“Promotions, opportunities, choice positions are offered up so leadership, in many cases, can claim the coveted “diversity.” The deployed warfighter no longer is accorded preference… …This is a problem created at the O-7 and above level and we will never be rid of it. It is a disgrace.”
Well said. I agree completely. And it’s exactly why I left. I took the CNO at his words and voted with my feet rather than experience sexism/racism for being a white male and grind my family on another 2-3 deployments to nowhere…
Sure, I could have “Stayed to make a difference”, but we all know that is a joke, a byline…
What they (the talking heads) should know is that people have a hard time hiding there contempt for them… and I’m not just talking about JO’s…
My son went through the Academy and graduated in 06′
To say that there was a witch hunt on during that time orchestrated primarily, IMO, by Mikulski and projected by Rempt would be an understatement.
I lived in total fear that my son would come afoul of the gender police. If male, you were doomed.
The incident of the underage female mid, drinking with a false ID and having something in excess of ten shots in an hour, then stumbling back to her rack and having sex with a male mid is still fairly clear in my mind.
She was retained, he was tried for rape and discharged from the Navy. I am not saying that anyone should be given a pass for having sexual relations with a drunken, underage female. But… the unequal meting of justice was simply outrageous.
Babs,
That wasn’t just the academy, that happens in the service at large. Right now. If the woman is intoxicated she is considered to be unable to give consent, even if she expresses consent at the time.
Next morning regret is the source of a lot of rape litigation in the services. It’s a charge that actually tends to stick.
I’ll add that the reason the women usually aren’t punished for related misconduct in such cases is because she would be forced to incriminate herself in order to report the rape. That’s the problem the AF Academy had…they punished the women for misconduct as well as the men, but the public screamed that the women were being punished for being raped. The system kind of lends itself to unequal justice.
I’m going to stay out of the larger discussion of women in the military, but I did want to respond to your comment about your son’s fears.
I heard the “witch hunt” fears from plenty of fellow midshipmen. A lot of “I can’t fry her, because she’ll assert sexual harassment” and whatnot. Frankly, even under Rempt, that thought was a load of crap, if you try to carry yourself professionally and honorably. (I don’t want this to being taken as impugning your son’s character, just as a disagreement with his assessment). That says nothign about the possibly inequal justice of sexual assault cases at USNA.
I’ll probably be accused of being a kool-aid drinker for saying this, but Liz, I think you have misrepresented the USAFA sexual assault cases. Punishment for the misconduct was actively being used as a means of silencing the reporting of sexual assault cases. Admittedly, military sexual assault, especiall of the date rape variety, is phenomenally complicated issue, as you point out. Offer immunity, and you will take heat for inequal punishment; however, the limited reporting options available before the USAFA event led to a situation where the number of assaults being reported (much less prosecuted, and across the board, not just AF) was far, far lower than anonymous surveys demonstrated. We can get in a circular argument about the definition of sexual assault all day, especially in a situation where both parties drink heavily, and consent becomes a very tricky legal position, an argument I don’t really feel like having.
A LOT of good thoughts here. Certainly enough to make a great article for Proceedings. Nah, they would never have the cojones to print.
Rhino, a thousand gomens for being so forgetful on how things are done the hard way, or seemingly so.
Always curious about the doings of the Services to our south…
How many female flag officers are there (or, for that matter, how many female CMCs), in key positions? In other words, is there a female presence at the upper level influencing the gong show of gender (sort of) integration, or is this purely a collection of male admirals being slapped around by Congress-critters, lobbyists, activists, etc?
Also, what is the usual purpose of at-enlistment and in-training PT standards? General personal fitness, to ensure that candidates don’t keel over of a heart attack, or job-specific requirements – haul a line, or load an artillery piece?
If it’s the former, then a gender-specific standard might almost make sense: define the level of fitness to be reached, and what that signifies for a given gender.
If the latter, then do a Service-wide study of minimum requirements by trade for physical ability (a corpsman must be able to do x) and figure out how to test and train for those standards. Once you’ve got, you know, fully justified physical minimums (and, if necessary, psychological parameters), for a given trade, let in anyone who can meet the standard. Which goes for that female LT B describes as going to cry in the smoke pit whilst at sea. Needs to bloody well accept that this is service life; a lifestyle that, due to well-known constraints, is classically “masculine” and, you know, hierarchical and unforgiving.
Probably too easy…
Speaking of too easy, I do like the sounds of G-man’s post on May 21, 2009 at 4:52 am…
Diversity, imposed top-down, is the damned cancer here: not the act of having both genders, the assorted orientations, and varying skin colours in uniform, but the oft-ridiculous and morale-killing efforts of the CoC to encourage same. At the very least it suggests the brass have nothing better to do with their time!
You all know I don’t have a dog in this fight, except retroactively in the dim past. But reading through all of your posts, and liking and sympathizing with all of you, I seem to perceive an over-arching pattern here for which modern society is primarily responsible. And since I watched it while it was happening over the past 40 plus years, I wanted to bring it up, since it absolves all of you from creating this present mess and places the blame where I feel it belongs. I blame political correctness and diversity bullies.
Since about 1960, when the children of the WWII vets shook off the wisdom of their parents and decided to change society to a “if it feels good, do it” philosophy, we’ve been sinking into a morass of ‘situational ethics,’ ‘men and women are supposed to be just alike except for plumbing’ [a really stupid concept that, and very popular right now] and ‘I/me am the most important person in the world and it’s crucial that I throw off all outmoded societal restraints and seek my inner truths.’ Uh-huh.
Let me hasten to say, that the most smart, sensible bunch we have in today’s society is our military, who have learned the necessity of order and discipline, and have the courage to lay down their lives, if necessary to protect us, the civilians. Some of us, at least, are enormously moved and grateful.
But in the chaotic shuffle to impose ‘equality,’ both of gender and of opportunity, civilian society has forgotten that equality of opportunity doesn’t mean equality of outcome. And that men and women are different from each other in some ways and always have been [thank God they are! I'd be a very bored old woman if they weren't.] We’re supposed to be different — different in our approach to problem solving, and crisis management. Men are physically brave, goal-directed and crisis solving. Women can solve crises too, but their methods are inherently different. Not necessarily better, or worse, but different. We’re supposed to mesh, my friends, not duplicate each other. No one who watched the course of the London Blitz, day after day, could deny the constant bravery on the part of the citizens, both men and women, in their resistance. Hitler didn’t expect it, and didn’t believe it. The rest of us watched in awe, and gratitude.
All this being said, I want to emphasize one thing that the modern feminists and us old fogy chauvinists sometimes forget. Women and men handle challenges differently. And that’s hardwired in their DNA.. It doesn’t mean that they are “less than men.” But it does mean that they’re different.
So I tend to go along with those of you who maintain that women don’t belong on the front lines of physical combat. But we continue to need them desperately in the support mode of our military. We need their stability, their compassion, their talent for organization under pressure.
You know, a study was done after WWII was over and the blitz was finished, organizing the statistics of what happened. Ashley Montagu quoted it at length in his groundbreaking 1950s book, The Natural Superiority of Women [Don't barf, guys, I've got a point here]. There were fewer nervous breakdowns among the women who endured the London Blitz than there were among men. That’s the stability I was talking about. But it was the desperate and continuous bravery of the British pilots who flew day after day, night after night, for months and months and months, that saved the asses of the rest of Western Civilization until we could get our war stuff together and defend ourselves. We owe them, the Brits, and I’ll never forget it.
That’s my take on it, dear hearts. The big rascals in this mess, are diversity bullies, as Lex so tellingly put it, and political correctness. A pox on both. On Flag Day this year, which is my birthday by the way, let’s celebrate the differences between us, and fly the Gadsden Flag. Don’t Tread On Us!
Marianne
I’ll give ya a big amen! Very well said. Right on the money!
Status! Influence! Power!!!!!
Not really anything I ever saw obtained by your average Midshipman, Ensign, LTJG or even LT in my experience.
Status? Amongst the crew, maybe yes. Amongst his peers in the world, not so much…… Most young officers attained higher status with the crew and their peers by bucking their superiors, not by doing what they said. Try ordering someone else’s dog around and see what your status is in the real world.
Influence? Over whom? As an officer, sure you had influence over the Enlisted Men. But even a new Ensign recognized his influence went no further than an actual salute rendered based on the collar devices and not based on his abilities until far longer into his career. Influence over anyone outside the Navy???? Didn’t happen.
Power? Now I’m laughing. What power did a new officer in the Navy have over anything? He could order the Men to do something. Whether it got done was a toss up. The troops know leadership when they see it, and maintain order by conducting themselves according to what keeps them, and their bosses from getting in trouble too much. Otherwise the guys with real power, the O-5s and higher folks who can crawl up their ass with a microscope and make a list of their shortcomings as long as the anchor chain will simply make their lives miserable and their existence horrible. And that is real power.
The power of an Ensign, even a boat school Ensign, wouldn’t fill a thimble when compared to the Power, Influence, and Status of a Leader. Whoever Mr. Katz interviewed for that quote was a tiny fish in a Naval Academy pond, doesn’t realize he is plankton in the world out there, ready to be eaten and crapped out again by those with real power and influence……………
Subsunk
Pogue, the one case was handled by another sailor who did her job just to stop her blubbering. The other case was a LT that would walk around the halls crying because the Navy would not let her out early and she had gotten married thinking she would. The command would cut her slack to fly back and forth to spend the weekend w/ her husband. So, I guess they didn’t completely break to the point where they were useless, but they affected those around them, and in one case, others had to take up their slack.
I have not even gotten into the pregnancy on deployment issues, or the false cries of assault I saw w/ no repercussions for the females. No doubt there is a double standard. I watched one convening authority destroy a young man’s career when he was advised by SJA, and NLSO, that there was no assault. The young man was acquitted and not only did he get his well deserved NAM denied, but he was tossed out of the command and sent to another promptly. He was a good troop, but he wanted to get out ASAP after that. Sad, really.
Back in 1986, the CO of the Frank Cable (AS 40) was relieved of command after being falsely accused of sexual harassment by three female seamen. He was eventually cleared, but by then it was too late. That did it for me, if female seamen can take down an O-6 with false charges, then nobody is safe.
I had to laugh at the men/women equality thing the other night. I joined a coed softball league and they make us use different balls when pitching to women and also if a male is walked and a female is following, both get to walk. Equal, indeed. We know it in sports, but when it comes to life or death positions, we’ll fudge the data for sociological and political reasons. I mean, why not? These politicians pushing this usually don’t have sons in the military.
I, like many of you, am torn between two competing principles. I am fully convinced that an all male service is the best route to achieve unit cohesion and esprit de corps. I am willing to recognize that those days are mostly past, but it remains an ideal. It just makes running a military unit easier. Given the difficulties in running a unit in the first place, I can’t see a lot of upside in making the job any harder.
But just like the rest of the commentariat here, I have a strong sense of fair play. We want to see people succeed. We don’t want to discriminate, on whatever basis. Some of you have daughters whom you are quite justifiably proud of, folks who could do most anything they chose to do.
How do we reconcile this ideal that all of us should be able to perform to the best of our abilities in our chosen field, when we know that even the presence of fine performers is often disruptive to the collective good of a unit?
Dunno.
That’s why I went Infantry.
Well,
My oldest daughter graduates from college on Saturday. I’ll be off the grid till Monday sometime as I get her and her possessions back to the house.
She has lightly broached the subject of OCS. I plan on doing some research on it for her over the next few weeks, before I give her my honest answer.
I, too, am torn. Women are equal citizens, and as such, ought to bear the burden of defense as any man should. However, if we fail to recognize the inherent differences, we do everyone a disservice.
It’s our modern Gordian Knot. I wish i had a sword that could strike it clean through and unravel all the cords, but I don’t. I’m just a father with one son in the service, and a daughter giving thought to the service.
Fortunately, my hair is already gray, so I have that going for me…
AW1Tim/
My father used to always say: “Let it gray–but let it stay!” LOL!!
Congrats to your Daughter!
As you gentlemen well know, gray hair on a man makes him look distinguished… even sexy!
Would seem that, in the general sense, a recognition and assessment of those differences as they apply to Service life might offer benefits to the pointy end: perhaps, as an example, the greater resilience of women that Mrs. Matthews refers to could be encouraged, as a balance to the hair-on-fire approach native to the Mk I young male.
Of course, conducting such an assessment would require find assessors without axes to grind.
So scratch that idea…
Would the most concise summation of the issue be that a new twist on the eternal leadership problem of integrating civilians into armed service is being approached as a management issue?
Congrats, shipmate! Another generation to make waves….no pun intended…more like stirring the pot, like AW1 does here and elsewhere..
Well, Tim, rejoice, you aren’t bald. That, and she graduated. Congratulations to her and you.
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