Do Female Engagement Teams Prove Women Can Serve in the Infantry?
The Stars & Stripes profiled a book released this month by Megan MacKenzie titled “Beyond the Band of Brothers: The U.S. Military and the Myth that Women Can’t Fight”. Here is the part of the article that shows this author knows little about what she is advocating for:
MacKenzie acknowledges differences between the sexes but objects to them being cited as evidence of women’s inferiority for combat positions.
“It’s starting to get old,” she said. “We keep going back to women and men are different but ignoring that warfare is also different and physical standards also potentially need to be adapted. Most militaries around the world are adapting the physical standards because war has changed so much. Just basing standards around measuring the fitness of an average 23-year-old male doesn’t tell us much about whether someone can be a combat soldier.”
Debate over physical standards also ignores that in recent years many women have been in de facto combat positions, particularly those who were in cultural support teams attached to Special Forces and Ranger teams in Afghanistan, she said. Many received combat-action badges. Some were wounded. Two died during direct-action raids. [Stars & Stripes]
Unless exo-skeletons are invented fitness will remain a top requirement for an infantry soldier. Serving in the infantry is physically hard and women are at a biological disadvantage. I have no doubt that the few exceptions like 1LT Shaye Haver and CPT Kristen Griest who recently graduated from Ranger School would be welcomed in the infantry if that is what they wanted to do.
MacKenzie like other advocates before her also continue to cite female engagement teams as evidence women can serve in the infantry and special forces. Female engagement teams did not do the grinding daily work of infantrymen and special forces; they had their purpose and they executed it well and their purpose was not to do infantry work. Also being in a combat position and earning a CAB is also not evidence that someone can serve in the infantry. She is basically making an argument that sounds good to people who have never served in the military before, but those of us who have served know better.
I’m not sure I want to live in a society which encourages its women to fight and discourages its women to nurture.
Historically these societies have been rather brutal and unpleasant to themselves and those around them.
CH, the sickness is found in the cult of personality pseudo religion.
+100 CH.
No one is “encouraging” women to fight. Most women don’t want to. But for the few women who heart and soul wish to serve their nation, and are physically able to, they should be allowed to. Saying that the only nature of women is to nurture is pretty generalizing, dehumanizing, and pretty damn sexist. I guess I should go tell my husband he can no longer help raise my son because mommy is the only nurturer. I am a female combat veteran and nothing held me back from defending my nation and my beliefs, not even some urge to nurture. Lol.
Female combat veteran from what country? 🙄
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/09/08/marines-women-in-combat-experiment-gets-mixed-results/
“But for the few women who heart and soul wish to serve their nation, and are physically able to, they should be allowed to. “
Saying that those who heart and soul wish to serve our nation can only do so in a combat capacity is pretty generalizing, dehumanizing, and pretty damn sexist. I guess I should go tell my husband he needs to raise our sons instead of deploying because mommy can serve her nation as a combat veteran.
IN fact, one can actually actively SCREW OVER one’s country by the act of “serving” in a combat capacity if that capacity is inefficient and ineffective cost to gains wise. THis is the opposite of “serving one’s nation”.
How much time, money and effort in wasted man hours have gone into all of these studies and sensitivity training operations to “prove” that “women can do it!” (if…this, this, and this changes). How much is lost in morale? How many men have to go back doing double tours (while their own infants are being born) to fill the slot of that woman who got pregnant or had some female-related issue that got her out of the field. The GAO should do a study on THAT ONE. But they won’t of course, because Congress would never fund it as they don’t want to know.
I guess I don’t understand the use of “Limited War”. Someone wants war with the USA, we should flatten them like a friggin’ coackroach. All-in or all-out.
Come on, Misuchan… are you for real?
“Saying that the only nature of women is to nurture is pretty generalizing, dehumanizing, and pretty damn sexist.”
Perhaps… if that is what I had actually said, that is.
Maybe it is not in a woman’s nature to do well at reading comprehension?
Instead, I wrote of societies which discourage nurturing instincts and encourage their women to be as violent as their men instead of acting as a moderating factor.
Example: Two guys get in each others’ faces. Their female partners pull them apart while they make a show of fake reluctance with no harm done in the end… or… two guys get in each others’ faces and their little warrior princesses yell, “Kick that mutherfukker’s azz!” Soon everyone is on the floor punching and pulling hair and yelling “fukk you, biitch”.
Which society do you want to live in?
This self-destructive model exists/has existed in sub-cultures and nations… and has done no favors for anyone involved. Women make great women. They make poor men.
“No one is “encouraging” women to fight.”
Unless you count the entire media industry which promotes fake archetypes of women in leather catsuits with smoking machine guns emerging unscathed after a gymnastics routine through a force of now-dead male soldiers… and many, many, many less obvious examples… while giving much less glamour or credit to the housewife raising well-educated and properly-socialized children who will grow up recognizing their strengths and developing them instead of chasing manufactured nonsense.
“I am a female combat veteran”
You have been sold the idea that to be equal to a man, you must be the same as a man… ignoring your gender-based strengths, and even considering their recognition to be degrading. You remain chronically second-class by chasing after men’s gender-based strengths which are mostly unachievable by most women.
Anybody who points this out is “pretty damn sexist”… but it remains a fact… which is probably why it is such an effective way for men to control women while giving them the hopeful illusion of potential power… when, in fact, they are throwing away the true power they can have because they believe it is unfashionable.
Women are such suckers.
…and for one last dose of reality…
Misuchan looks to be around 5 foot 3 inches and 140 pounds. Her “combat” experience was on crutches at the TOC in KB. She had mental health issues when she returned from deployment. She has a reputation among those she served under of having a feminist chip on her shoulder… looking for offense even if it does not exist.
This is not to say she did not serve honorably, was not an asset in her job, or was not in danger. But she is intentionally confusing the act of being in a war zone with affixing bayonets and charging up a hill… which is the point of this discussion.
Like the author of the article, she confuses the ability to fight with the act of showing up.
…and wishes to push that confusion onto others to satisfy misguided personal agendas.
This is the wrong place to sell that.
Bump.
I would be interesting to see a response to Chickenhead’s comment in #10. As I have maintained serving in a combat zone is not the same as serving in the infantry or special forces, which is true for both males and females. This is a tactic used repeatedly by feminists to try and claim women can serve in the infantry and special forces.
With that said I have maintained that if women such as the two graduates from Ranger School want to pursue an infantry career they should not be prevented from doing so. However, I am against artificially trying to increase the numbers of women in the infantry by lowering standards or giving special treatment which it appears the author in the article wants.
Stumbled across this one:
http://qz.com/#499618/the-us-marines-tested-all-male-squads-against-mixed-gender-ones-and-the-men-came-out-ahead/?utm_source=YPL
:quote: In 2013, the US military lifted its ban on women serving in combat. Shortly after, the Marine Corps began what it calls an “unprecedented research effort” to understand the impact of gender integration on its combat forces. That took the form of a year-long experiment called the Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force, in which 400 Marines—100 of them female—trained for combat together and then undertook a simulated deployment, with every facet of their experience measured and scrutinized. :/quote:
OK, what did they measure? I have been somewhat in favor of women in combat based on successful experiences with women in combat roles on-board ships during my Navy career, but I wasn’t so sure about ground based combat. The USMC did test and evaluate this, and the results are not very favorable for mixed units.
:quote: Overall, the report says, all-male teams and crews outperformed mixed-gender ones on 93 out of 134 tasks evaluated. All-male teams were universally faster “in each tactical movement.” On “lethality,” the report says:
All-male 0311 (rifleman) infantry squads had better accuracy compared to gender-integrated squads. There was a notable difference between genders for every individual weapons system (i.e. M4, M27, and M203) within the 0311 squads, except for the probability of hit & near miss with the M4.
And:
All-male infantry crew-served weapons teams engaged targets quicker and registered more hits on target as compared to gender-integrated infantry crew-served weapons teams, with the exception of M2 accuracy.
And:
All-male squads, teams and crews and gender-integrated squads, teams, and crews had a noticeable difference in their performance of the basic combat tasks of negotiating obstacles and evacuating casualties. For example, when negotiating the wall obstacle, male Marines threw their packs to the top of the wall, whereas female Marines required regular assistance in getting their packs to the top. During casualty evacuation assessments, there were notable differences in execution times between all-male and gender-integrated groups, except in the case where teams conducted a casualty evacuation as a one-Marine fireman’s carry of another (in which case it was most often a male Marine who “evacuated” the casualty)
The report also says that female Marines had higher rates of injury throughout the experiment. :/quote:
This is a critical difference between shipboard combat and ground combat. The females I worked with and taught were adept with the M16 and what few M4s we could get. (Tenders are pretty low on the Navy’s combat stores list, so newer rifles were few and far between). We didn’t have to set up and break down firing positions on the fly, they were built into the ship at construction. We just needed to set up sandbags around the .50 cal and M-60 mounts.
One thing that was noted was actual experience:
:quote: The tests come with at least one important caveat: As the Marine Corps Times notes, many of of the male study participants had previously served in combat units, whereas female participants, by necessity, came directly from infantry schools or from noncombat jobs. :/quote:
So, will female Army Infantry or Marine Infantry units improve with experience? Probably, but will it improve enough?
Not sure what the correct coding is for ROK Drop, so sorry if my quotes are not right. I won’t know until I hit submit, and by then it will be too late…
There is really only one question that matters: Will female presence help the mission?
In just about any case that involves combat, the answer is H-E-double hockey sticks, no.
If the answer is no, they shouldn’t be there.
So what’s the point? Are we out of men who can perform this task?
Are we out of men who can perform it BETTER?
No, and no. We’re expending resources to attempt to find a square peg that can fit in a round hole. If they find a square one that’s almost round enough they can pound it in, what’s the point?
Right on, Liz. And likewise, if the wimmin could do it better, put them in.
And therein lies the question. Can wimmin do it better? What can they do better?
Just read an article about the Soviet Women’s Sniper Corp, and many of these women had very high body counts. Not burdened down with the metric f-ton of cr@p standard infantrymen carry, smaller and able to get into hides that ‘big, strong men” couldn’t, they had a niche they could fill.
I wouln’t expect a female to be a SAW or M-60 gunner, and I admit to my knowledge limitations on ground operations as a sailor. But I’ve also read several of the John H. Poole tactics and training books, and Col. Poole does state that the Western Armies tend to bring everything to the battlefield, while non-Western forces just bring weapon, ammo, and a few rations. I know the U.S. tends to train our “native allies” in non-armored, light and fast techniques so when someone does a hit and run against our positions, someone on Our Side can at least run after the attackers, rather than chase them at a slow lumber.
As currently set up by doctrine, women should NOT be in infantry. Too much gear, not enough upper body strength. Human physiology. But I also remember a cartoon of U.S. Marines over the years. Revolutary times they stood up straight, had a small ruck, a rifle, bag of shot and a powder horn. But as the years passed, they were weighted down with more and more gear until they were practially crushed under their rucks.
Is this really the best way? (Asks a sailor who only wore a flak jacket and helmet, because everything else is stored less than 200’ away in any direction)
While I admit there are wimmin in Dallas that do scare me more than ISIS, we in the West have a matched set of cultural luggage to maintain. The main reason for keeping wimmin out of combat has never been because they are not tough enough: it’s entirely sexist. Western Culture puts wimmin above men. Wimmin are to be protected and preserved. Only rude, selfish, or unmanly men would argue against this.
Excerpts from Wikipedia:
The practice of women and children first arose from the chivalrous actions of soldiers during the sinking of the Royal Navy troopship HMS Birkenhead in 1852 after it struck rocks. Captain Robert Salmond RN ordered Colonel Seton to send men to the chain pumps; sixty were directed to this task, sixty more were assigned to the tackles of the lifeboats, and the rest were assembled on the poop deck in order to raise the forward part of the ship. The women and children were placed in the ship’s cutter, which lay alongside.
When examining medieval literature, chivalry can be classified into three basic but overlapping areas:
1. Duties to countrymen and fellow Christians: this contains virtues such as mercy, courage, valor, fairness, protection of the weak and the poor, and in the servant-hood of the knight to his lord. This also brings with it the idea of being willing to give one’s life for another; whether he would be giving his life for a poor man or his lord.
2. Duties to God: this would contain being faithful to God, protecting the innocent, being faithful to the church, being the champion of good against evil, being generous and obeying God above the feudal lord.
3. Duties to women: this is probably the most familiar aspect of chivalry. This would contain what is often called courtly love, the idea that the knight is to serve a lady, and after her all other ladies. Most especially in this category is a general gentleness and graciousness to all women.
YMMV
From what I have witnessed, women in the military are a force divider not a force multiplier. Period.
“I would be interesting to see a response to Chickenhead’s comment in #10.”
Let’s not hold our breath. Deployment Princesses pretending to be warrior queens and taking easy offense at truthful statements by twisting their meaning in their own heads to fit ideals based mostly on imagination and wishful thinking don’t function well in environments stripped of bullshyt…
…but I could be wrong. She might come back with a solid argument of some sort.
“…but I could be wrong. She might come back with a solid argument of some sort.”
No, I’ll wager you’re right.
She’ll probably run for public office.
Because those taking easy offense at truthful statements by twisting their meaning in their own heads to fit ideals based mostly on imagination and wishful thinking function VERY WELL in environments filled with bullshyt.
Hence the reason we masses get the government we deserve.
@18, Leon I have to disagree with such a generalized statement. I have worked with many good female servicemembers and considering their numbers in the ranks the military could not function today without them. With that said from my experience when they become force dividers, just like if it was a male soldier, is when they are given special treatment.
You don’t need to white knight GI. Sure I have worked with “good” females – they were a minority – but the mission would get done just fine; better, faster and cheaper without them. You know they ALWAYS get special treatment. As far as their numbers – that was engineered and could easily be undone – that’s no argument. Americans have been hoodwinked by the GI Jane narrative (or about any action flick these days with an ass kicking female lead). Of course none of that has much to do with how soldiering works. And of course they trot out the Israeli model but always neglect to mention it was an abject failure and was abandoned. I’ve posted about that here before.
I guarantee you, if you could give an honesty pill to military leaders at any level, they would confide that they would prefer not to have to deal with women in their units. The military should be about the mission and only the mission.
It is funny, “Female Engagement Teams” first made me think of packs of Filipina’s roaming the ville.
Leon, my experience with female soldiers has been more good than bad. As far as special treatment you are right in the sense that female soldiers always get special treatment because of the unequal PT standards. Those will likely change in the future with the talk of establishing gender neutral standards. Besides that special treatment is whatever NCOs allow them to get away with. For example if NCOs allow the male mechanics to always carry the toolboxes and other heavy equipment for female soldiers than they will never learn to do it for themselves.
Male NCOs can treat the females the same as the males.
Females that don’t want to be treated as the males have the sexual harassment/assault trump card that can be played at any time with nary a consequence to themselves.
Male NCOs are wise to keep distance from females.