Biased Against Women

[gennee]

I was reading an article that stated that women are three times more likely to be be discharged under Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Basically, I'm not too surprised because the military is not all that kind towards women's issues either. I wonder how many of those discharged are transgender?

www.tucsonobserver.com

Gennee

[Guest nayomi2438]

As long as the old guard is in place there will be reservations about women serving. I have seen some cases that are the very topic you bring to light. If women are not wanted the leadership will look for any excuse possible to terminate them for things their male counterparts would not be so harshly treated. I know from personal experience that women can perform specific tasks as well as any man but I cannot say that the majority of women I know would willingly go through what our troops did in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. These were different times and the generation had different expectations from men.

There is still an old school feeling that women do not belong in the military. The draft did not include women because many Americans believed and still believe that conventional warfare is not an environment befitting of a woman. Can you picture a lovely pair of manicured hands and hose and heels in a trench? I know that is not a realistic picture but it is the kind image conjured up by the generation of the WWs and after.

In this current generation of unconventional warfare hand to hand combat is less apt to occur. The younger leadership is taking a slightly different view of women in the military. I see society getting softer as lines between genders blur. I cannot imagine the term “metro sexual” in 1968 without thinking of some young man getting ridiculed severely. Today it’s mostly accepted as some guys paying more attention to themselves and their dress, not drawing much attention in most circles.

I personally had a little different feeling about things because of my hidden desires. To some minor degree, I take offense to the mention of the military trying to make a man out of me. I was always a man; they just trained me to be an effective killer in pursuit of defeating the enemy, defending the American way of life, and our constitution. I am still a man but girl do I like it when I can pretend not to be. It washes all of the bad boy and macho thoughts out of my system and allows me an opportunity to not present myself as that tough guy. My wife loves me but I know she love the other me as well.

[gennee]

I'm not a macho person either but I did enjoy my time in the service. One of the sad facts about the military is that the old guard really don't or chooses not to acknowledge that women played roles in our military.

Gennee

[Guest nayomi2438]

I spent three years in a unit that was 20 percent women. We deployed to many places including Desert Storm/Desert Shield and the often forgotten Haitian situation. I would be proud to serve with them again. Those ladies did everything that was asked of them. There were complaints but no more than the guys, in fact I heard the "men" complain about more than the women ever did.

Girls rock! I know things will change in time. I just don't know if I'll be here to see it.

[Guest Donna Jean]

I was a C-130 Loadmaster in Vietnam....

The only women in that war were nurses....

(of course they didn't know about me....)

Now there are entire crews on C-130's that are wome the pilot..co-pilot...Nav...Loadmaster....

I guess that I was just ahead of my time!

HUGGS....SNUGGLES and HUGE PARACHUTES!

Donna Jean

[Guest DeniseNM]

Well I know that there is still some problems for women but it has slowly, albeit very very VERY slowly, gotten better for women in the military. I know the unit I was with over in Iraq had quite a few females (probably around 40%) in it and they did just as much as the males did (we did site security in Baghdad at Victory Base and then convoy security). I have also see recently that the Navy is about to start putting females on submarines, granted it will be female officers, but it is still females. That was something that I thought would not happen anytime soon when I was in the Navy back in the 90s. So things are changing but there will always be idiots that think women don't belong in the military. Heck there are still some idiots that think that non-whites don't belong in the military too. So as the saying goes "The more things change the more they stay the same".

Denise

[Guest Gina9223]

Well, I was in the US Navy for 20 years. There were women from AVA school on with only one command being 'stag' and it still had nearly a dozen women in support roles.

What the article said is true too. Women are harassed and called 'a small levee' way too often and always because some guy thinks he's gods gift to woman kind and the young woman in question should just spread her legs because he asked. If she says no then she's a 'a small levee'.

The command I retired out of had an incident where a young woman was outted to her supervisor by a coworker. Her supervisor brought her into his office and demanded sex or he would kick her out. She went to her Chief and told him of the situation. Her Chief demands sex as well. From there she went to the CO's office and outted herself and demanded to be kicked out.

During my time in I served with over 60 people who were processed out. Pre-DADT, Post-DADT, using other regulations for Trans and Intersexed personel. 13 gay, over 40 lesbian, 2 bi, 7 MtF, 4 FtM and 2 IS people were kicked out. The attractive women were harassed to have sex to prove they were hetro or just to blackmail them into having sex with them.

In those numbers are two 'witch hunts'. One of those witch hunts rounded up 1 gay, 2 MtF, 3 FtM and over 20 lesbians. All but 3 were in one division. The 20+ lesbians? Most weren't, they stood up for thier supervisor who was one of the FtM's and a Gosh darned good person and supervisor. Under that one supervisor everyone in that division advanced to E4 during that year.

Everyone keeps thinking that once the old guard dies out it'll become better. The old guard gets to pick the new guard and they pick people much like themselves.

[Guest Sakura_Stingray]

i know there are military personell and even veterans on this site so i hope what i say will not be offensive to any of you... but i have a big problem with the military... when i was 8 i had a strong sense of life and that i thought of various situations and various ways to perserv my own life.. i never want to die and so forth... when i found out that males had to sign a thing on their 18th birthday incase of a draft or whatever i became realy fearful of the military.. to me it was and still is a life threatening situation in that disgusts me in the worst way.... and seeing how the military is being controlled by politicians it makes me even more fearful... i can remember i whined to my mom about it telling her that it is not fair that i have to do something that i do not want to do(she did not know my feelings of being a girl back then) and she told me "The only way to get out of a draft situation is to excel in education" and for that was a struggle ith the education in my area but i went on managing...

for me anything involving death as a possibility i try to avoid it... i have always been mad fun of because i "will not serve the country" but in my opinion i can serve the pople of the country more efficiantly by staying home instead of serving politicians of the country in military service....

call me unpatriotic and call me a communist i do not care.. it will not change my mind about the actions of the military

im waiting for a time in history when people could through away their human nature of dominance and fighting for territory or all of that stuff and just live like the human race in startrek... helping human kind for the sake of human kind and not the greed or religious atrocities against each other...

i guess i can always live in my dream world as a hermit away from society

[gennee]

I was drafted(but enlisted instead) in 1971. There were many different feelings from each soldier but we all served. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Gennee

[Guest mia 1]

This is kinda gross but when I was in basic my drill Sargent said,,,,are there any gay guys here(not the term he used)..because if there are you will be dismissed from the service,,but before you raise your hand I have to tell you,,If you say you are your gonna have to prove it to me and the showers are upstairs.....ANY VOLUNTEERS....????

There weren't any this was during the 60's ...long before any thought of gay or lesbian rights,,and transgendered , forget about it, ...someone named Christine Jorgensen,,was the only name ever heard......and hardly ever heard at all........