I recently saw video footage of the
President surrounded by the heads of all the services; they had assembled to
address the continuing and scandalous problem of sexual harassment in the armed
forces. The elephant in the room, of course, was young women in the military
serving in close quarters with young men.
In 1954 at age
eighteen I joined the Navy. My reason was the same as everyone else’s in those
days: to serve one hitch to satisfy the military obligation and then to get on
with the rest of my life. At that time every male between eighteen and
twenty-six was subject to the draft.
Just
about every boy I grew up with in my neighborhood joined the Navy; one went to
law school and then joined the Air Force. Another got kicked out of the Air
Force Academy
when he decided that love was more important than flying jets. He got married,
which was not permitted in the service academies in those days. For all of my
friends and for most young men of the 1950’s and 1960’s, military service was a
major inconvenience, so I never heard anyone complain – because no one ever did
– about being denied his right to serve, only about the requirement to serve.
Most served honorably and after discharge bragged about it, but few young men
either enjoyed service or stayed longer than necessary. When I decided to
reenlist, no one could understand and some were rude enough to say I was
wasting my life. That’s the way it was in the circles in which I grew up.
For
reasons unrelated to the draft, a few women joined the services. In those days
women served in administrative, clerical, or medical areas. At that time I
never heard the phrase sexual harassment uttered by anyone because it was not a
problem. Men and women lived separately and worked together only ashore in
offices, hospitals, or clinics. Women did not serve on ships at sea or in field
situations with infantry or other combat units. The armed services of those
times recognized the wisdom of the ages. They did not mix hormone ravaged young
men and young women together in situations guaranteed to create the problems
now plaguing the armed forces.
Why does anyone,
other than pusillanimous admirals and generals and radical feminists who hate
the military but want to make a political statement, think that sexual mixing
in the armed forces is a good idea? What genius believes that putting healthy
young men and women together in explosive, sexually charged situations is not
going to cause problems? Who besides the god of political correctness benefits
from these arrangements?
I
served twenty years in the Navy, many of them at sea on ships with cramped
living and working quarters. At sea men live and work in very close quarters.
They sleep one on top of the other in cramped berthing compartments, shower in
communal showers, and perform other bodily functions, always in the presence of
an audience. Worse, they behave as young men have always behaved. They make
crude, bawdy, and obscene remarks and they play offensive practical jokes. For
example, one time I returned to my bunk to find a balloon sized condom filled
with water in the center of my mattress. Fortunately, I saw it. Had I not I
would have had to sleep on a wet mattress for weeks until it dried. And
everyone would have had a huge laugh. And that is by no means the worst of it.
That’s the way men are. Why put women into the mix?
Mixing
young men and young women together under these circumstances creates huge
management problems, which are now causing much hand wringing and consternation
among the leaders of the services who serve the god of political correctness
above all others.
Young
men by themselves cause enough trouble. When at sea as an independent duty
hospital corpsman (a paramedic) I worked directly for the executive officer,
the second in command. I saw him spend large portions of his time on personnel
matters: sailors who got drunk and got into fights, sailors who got drunk and
drove cars into either other cars or trees, sailors who got arrested, sailors
who ran up huge debts with local merchants and then would not pay them, sailors
who impregnated local girls and then refused to do the honorable thing, and so
forth.
Adding women to
this mix is idiotic. It increases the costs of operations and degrades
readiness simply to satisfy Gloria and her progeny. Is there really a right to
serve in the armed forces? Where exactly is it enumerated? Most of all, how do
women benefit from the inevitable sexual harassment? Who benefits? No one;
worse, women suffer, and the taxpaying citizens of the United
States pay more for less.
