-Caveat Lector- >From the Wall St Journal March 24, 1999 Men, Women and War By Stephanie Gutmann, whose book "The Kinder, Gentler Military: Can It Fight?" (Scribner) is scheduled for publication in March 2000. For the third time in two years, a government-sponsored panel has examined the effectiveness of "gender integrated training" in the U.S. military--the practice of mixing young men and women for boot camp in every service but the Marines. Like its predecessors, the latest group, the Congressional Commission on Military Training and Gender-Related Issues, called in experts, was briefed by top brass, designed new survey "instruments," collected data and toured bases. And once again the group, which presented its findings last week, reached a predictable conclusion: The services should stay the course. That means that at a time of crisis-level attrition and more missions than ever before (e.g., Kosovo), the military is stuck with a policy that makes the situation worse. The services are in the middle of a personnel shortage as bad as after the Vietnam War; last year every service but the Marines came up thousands short of recruitment goals, despite relaxed recruiting standards, a more generous GI Bill and snazzier ad campaigns. "There is something going on out there in the force we can't put our finger on," one Army officer was quoted as saying. What's going on is that sex integration in "initial entry training" has devastated morale and recruitment. Anyone who doesn't see this hasn't taken a serious look at what an ex-Army girlfriend of mine calls "the giggly, undisciplined slumber party" that constitutes mixed-sex basic training in the "new military" of the '90s. Basic training has morphed into something even a veteran who did boot camp in the mid-1980s wouldn't recognize. What happened? In the early '90s, when Congress was eager to cut budgets and reassure feminists that it took sexual harassment seriously, the Pentagon faced enormous pressure on "gender" issues. The military, the argument went, was full of harassed women, and the entire warrior culture--"not just behavior but attitudes," as one representative put it--had to be "reformed" through sensitivity training, constant monitoring by on-base equal opportunity officers, and giving women a bigger, more visible presence. It was especially important to integrate boot camp, "the most intensive period of socialization into military culture," as one social scientist describes it. Dissent was not to be tolerated: If a general spoke up to say that sex differences might cause problems in a program that attempts to simulate actual combat, he was dismissed as sexist. Today even talking about physiological differences between the sexes can bring sexual-harassment charges at a military installation. Meanwhile the people on the ground, who actually had to make the new directives work--drill sergeants, company commanders and such--kept bumping up against reality. If you put women in an old-style boot camp with men, the women got injured at frightening rates and dropped out. Since keeping women around and happy enough not to get on the phone to Patricia Schroeder was a bigger priority then maintaining a warrior class, the grueling, transforming experience of boot camp had to make way for a more sensitive approach. The Army's manual for drill sergeants now includes instructions like these: "It is essentialthat the cadre develop the soldier's self-esteem, self-confidence, and positive attitude towards army service. . . . Leaders help soldiers cope with unnecessary stress by . . . conducting periodic morale/feedback sessions and conducting and requiring effective counseling. . . . Stress should exist between the soldier and the task to be accomplished, not between the soldier and trainer." In a year of touring bases to research a book about the new military, I found that while this touchy-feely approach is OK for most of the girls, the boys tend to get bored and disenchanted. Their experience has little in common with the coming-of-age stories they've heard from their fathers and big brothers who served. Indeed, it hardly feels military at all. "You're gonna start losing boys 'cause it ain't hard no more," bellowed 19-year-old Ronnie Gugliameti, an Army recruit, as he sat on a classroom floor recently, waiting for instruction to begin. The point was made especially starkly one day last December, when I visited the Great Lakes Naval Training Base. By sheer coincidence--the Navy would never set up such a test for a visitor--I got to watch two companies, one all-male and one mixed-sex, at the same two-week point in their training. They were running what the Navy calls the "confidence course" (formerly the obstacle course). Before recruits were let loose on this collection of balance beams and climbing walls, they had to watch a safety video that carefully went over the techniques ("grasp the rope firmly") and each element's possible dangers. Then a trainer lectured them on the expected attitude: "I don't care how fast you go or how slow; this is just to have a good time. What really counts here is teamwork. Some of your teammates are gonna need some help. If you see them hanging there [on the chin-up bar], don't just walkby. Grab 'em by the legs--I don't want to see any thighs or butts!--and push 'em up." After the lecture, the boys in the all-male group shotoff the blocks and whizzed around the course, their competitive juices obviously flowing. Their recruit division commanders (the naval equivalent of drill sergeants) looked on with quiet satisfaction as they tried to figure out which of their charges they'd send to an all-trainee athletic competition some weeks away. When the mixed sex group started the course--following a lot of preparatory giggling--many of the girls immediately fell behind the boys or got hung up on elements like the climbing pole. Knowing they were being graded on how well they "helped their teammates," the boys stopped and grabbed the girls' legs (not their thighs!). From an observation deck, I looked down at a huge swatch of exercise area filled with what looked like a modern dance performance: bobbing girls, supported by boys, attached at the leg--in many cases one boy on each leg--furiously pumping the girls up and down. Meanwhile the RDCs (two men and one woman) made bitter jokes about the "unmotivated" company they'd been given to train. Scenes like this are repeated every day at bases around the country. So why do the commissions keep coming up with the same endorsement of integrated training? One reason may be that they're committed to the ideology, like the modern-art devotees Tom Wolfe described in his book "The Painted Word." What you saw on the wall doesn't matter; it "made sense" only when you knew the theory that went along with it. Another reason is that commissions don't often get to see scenes as stark as this. The U.S. military (except the Marines) now seems to be spending a huge portion of its resources on spin control, steering many of its best and brightest officers into public affairs. Base public affairs departments have become masters of the Potemkin Village tour. Reporters can't just walk aroundtalking to people; they are given introductory briefings, "itineraries" and minders--usually officers in uniform--who have the effect of intimidating any trainer or recruit who might speak honestly. Likewise, members of the various study panels--middle-aged, formally dressed, self-important, notebook carrying, obviously civilian--troop around bases in groups of four or so, radiating their official status. Since nobody is sure who out there has the power to sink his career, and the new military is filled with many layers of attitude monitors, recruits and trainers take the safe course and answer panelists' questions with approved boilerplate. Anyway, what good are these panels, filled with people who have spent years becoming "distinguished experts on military gender issues"? By and large, their minds are already made up. Instead, why not assemble a commission consisting of recent immigrants, former bricklayers from, say, Cameroon. It's best if they don't speak English, so they don't get the spin the publicaffairs officer is frantically downloading into their ears. All they'd have to do is look, and look, and look some more and ask themselves: Is this what I'd want my military to look like? DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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