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Old 12-01-2014, 02:55 AM
Nyles Nyles is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by SPEMack618 View Post
I'm not qualified to speak towards gender integration.

I was a Cav Scout and am currently an Infantry officer. Totally male career fields. And I have problems conceptualizing how a woman could integrate into said units. Especially if we out at a COP for a month straight.

I will share one story that sort of explains my view, and which my sister says is a sign a rampant sexism in America.

Being a Cavalry Squadron, we had organic aviation assets. A Troop of a Apache gunships and a Troop of Kiowa Warrior scout helicopters.

One of the Kiowas was flown by a warrant officer, who was a sorority girl in the real world. And she was also very friendly around us, not to the point of flirtatiousness or anything, but she wanted to know the guys she was flying support for. We cared for her immensely.

And one day, she got shot down in the middle of a firefight. And we went ballistic. Everybody and his battle buddy was wanting to ditch their sector, their overwatch position, whatever and go tear assing across an open field, liberally crossed with heavy Dishka fire, and pull her out of her Kiowa.

No way in hell we'd have behaved that way had it been a dude chopper jock.
I certainly understand that, but I think that, like MT2008 says, that can be overcome, but the only way is for men to get used to serving with women to the point where they understand they're soldiers like any other. My rotation had a young, very attractive, female reserve augmentee from the LSSR serving in one of the PPCLI rifle companies - she probably got hit on a lot at first, but after a few months of going to the strip club with the guys, spitting chew into a pop bottle in the back of the LAV and going weeks without showering, she was just another one of the guys. When you don't segregate, people have a chance to get to know them as fellow soldiers instead of just women, and it changes.

Another similar example is a friend of mine, also from my rotation, who on his first tour when he was still an infanteer, came out of the closet for the first time in the back of a LAV under mortar fire - "F**k it, I don't want to die living a lie. Sgt, I'm gay." He took some shit for about a week, and then the rest of his platoon were standing up for him when the rest of the battalion found out. Point being I think people in general will be pretty open minded if you give them a chance to be.

Don't take this as an argument for political correctness - the army is the army and if you can't do the job then you shouldn't be in it, but there's plenty of straight men out there who can't handle it either. I'm definitely NOT saying the standards should ever be lowered, I just think that women should get the same chance to prove themselves that men do.

No argument on the soldier on soldier rape - anyone in the states hear of Russell Williams, the former commander of CFB Trenton who's currently serving a life sentence for several rapes and two murders. I was in Afghanistan when he was arrested, and we were ordered that he was always to be referred to as Mr. Williams. When he got his dishonorable discharge, they burned his uniforms, shredded his commissioning scroll, and broke his medals, and our only objection is that he's in civilian and not much harder military prison.

Totally unrelated, but were the Kiowa pilots also complete insane on your tour? Seems like every week we had a new C/S Shamus story. Were you with 1-17 Cav? They actually took over Dand district from us at the beginning of 2010.
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