Quote:
Originally Posted by MoviePropMaster2008
There have been some dark and disturbing reports from the sandbox in the last ten years...  You just gotta be willing to look at them. Those incidents, though technically rare, make me sick. And Rape by fellow soldiers in the field (again rare) is still an abomination in my eyes, but those incidents are still happening. |
I have a female friend who used to work with me and then later went to work at the Pentagon. While she was there, she became interested in joining the Army as an officer. She went as far as putting together her entire OCS application package (which took the better part of six months) and getting ready to go before the board. And then her office got a new analyst who was former AF. That girl told my friend
countless stories about getting marriage proposals from enlisted guys while she was deployed, and other female friends who had to fight off sexual advances. Needless to say, my friend lost her enthusiasm about joining the Army pretty quickly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SPEMack618
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.
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Interesting story. I recall hearing similar anecdotes while the pundits were debating Panetta's repeal of the ban on women serving in combat roles. I also remember k9870 mentioning this in another IMFDB forum topic. My reaction: Even if we buy that men have a natural instinct to defend women (plausible), can they be trained to suppress it? Being in the military requires people to suppress many natural instincts (namely, self-preservation) - why not this one?
Personally, I don't have a problem with the idea of women serving in combat roles, so long as DoD recognizes the inherent challenges involved and implements training to mitigate them.