-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?
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