All right maggots, listen up! For today’s post, I want your cockholsters shut and your dickskinners at your side! I am sick of this gaggle-fuck, you slimy twinkletoed little cock-suckers. You had better sound off that you love the Virgin Mary before I rip off your heads and take a giant shit down your neck!!
Oh, let’s watch the whole thing!
Now get the fuck out of here, you unorganized grabastic pieces of amphibian shit!
Goodness, that was exhausting! The language! Oh my! And that’s just the Marine Corps! I wonder what the Navy gets up to? Does anyone here know if sailors swear?
Before we answer that question, let’s take a stab at understanding what role the use of vulgar, aggressive, obscene language in the military plays. In his pamphlet, Embrace the Suck, Colonel Austin Bay writes
Waging war is a risky, all-encompassing endeavor physically, emotionally, and psychologically. It displays humankind at its best and at its worst, and the warfighter’s slang reflects the bitter, terrible, and inspiring all of it.
Slang, jargon, idioms, vernacular and especially TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) are a way of distinguishing an “us” and a “them”. Find almost any group of people with shared interests, and you will almost certainly find language that is interpretable only to the group in question.
Harry Potter fans have their own language:
Translation: Especially on days when one is tired, it’s important to have coffee before coming to work, wouldn’t you agree?
So do Trekkies:
We won’t even get started on techies!
[Edited to add: One for Leap of a Beta]
And it just so happens that the Navy has its own language and way of communicating, and that language serves a purpose.
At its core, warrior slang is a language of discipline and shared suffering, experiences that produce a tough human epoxy: the industrial strength social and emotional glue binding military comrades and building military units.
http://www.npr.org/2007/03/08/7458809/embrace-the-suck-and-more-military-speak
This is Captain Holly Graf, previously in command of the U.S.S. Cowpens, a guided missile cruiser. She was stripped of her command when staff accused her of being verbally abusive.
According to 29 of the 36 crew members who were questioned for the Navy’s report, Graf repeatedly dropped F bombs on them. “Take your goddam attitude and shove it up your f______ ass and leave it there,” she allegedly told an officer during a stressful maneuver aboard the 567-ft., 10,000-ton vessel.
“Get the f___ out of my stateroom.” She allegedly told a male officer, “The only words I want to hear out of your mouth are ‘Yes ma’am’ or ‘You’re correct, ma’am.’ “
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1969602-2,00.html
And apparently, she was physically abusive, too. She once threw a wadded up ball of paper at a junior officer!
Apparently, a coffee cup went flying, too. Yikes. That would hurt. Yeah, I’d accept the coffee cup as “assault”, but a wadded up ball of paper? Really? Oh, now hold up. She choked her junior officers, too. That seems a little unbecoming for an officer. And it’s definitely assault.
http://www.susankatzkeating.com/2010/01/captain-holly-graf-plows-down-whale.html
The story in Time doesn’t offer a whole lot of details, but it does specifically draw attention to the fact that Captain Graf is a woman, calling her “the female Captain Bligh” right in the headline.
And it looks like it was other women who found the Captain grating, although the three complaints that triggered the investigation were filed anonymously.
While most of the witness statements contained in the IG report didn’t specify whether the person testifying was male or female, the IG asked at least two female officers whether they viewed Graf as a role model. A younger woman recalled going to Graf to seek her help. ” ‘Don’t come to me with your problems,’ ” she said, quoting Graf. ” ‘You’re a f______ department head.’ ” The officer also said that Graf once told her, “I can’t express how mad you make me without getting violent.”
A second female officer told the IG that Graf was a “terrible role model for women in the Navy,” alleging that Graf once told her and a fellow officer on the bridge, “You two are f______ unbelievable. I would fire you if I could, but I can’t.”
The case leaves me with a number of questions:
Would a male captain get away with this?
Is the Captain being held to unrealistic standards about being nice and sweet and kind because GIRL?
How in the hell did she get the job in the first place?
According to the Telegraph report on this case, the answer to the first question is “No!”.
The obscenities and tirades were shocking to sailors because although they may have been familiar enough with colourful language from shore leave, on the bridge of a US Navy ship there is hardly any talking, let alone profanities. The Navy’s ideal captain is cool, polite and respected. Yet the Naval investigation report into Capt Graf’s conduct, obtained by Time magazine under the Freedom of Information Act, showed that out of 36 witnesses interviewed, 29 confirmed verbal abuse by Capt Graf. Names were redacated from the report.
Researchers at Technische Universitat Munchen in Germany have found that women who are cheerful aren’t perceived to have leadership qualities, so it probably wouldn’t have helped the Sea Witch out that much had she been all candy apple sweet as pie to her crew, either.
It’s true that assertive women who take very little shit are perceived as bitches, while their male counterparts are perceived as confident and assured, but that doesn’t seem to be what is happening with Captain Graf, either.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/04/03/why-successful-women-terrify-us/
Looks like Captain Graf might have been just a straight up bitch. Her profanity and aggressiveness wasn’t meant to build anything or anyone up: it was meant to tear down.
“She never missed an opportunity to insult, embarrass, attack, undermine, or belittle. She did it with both shrieking, and with silence. With frontal assaults, and snide comments.”
So that brings us to the last question: how did she manage to land on the bridge of a billion dollar Navy cruiser?
Ah, here we have a story. Captain Graf comes from a military family, her father and her sister-in-law both high ranking officers. A poster girl for women in the Navy.
Nicole Waybright, an officer who served with Graf on the Curtis Wilbur, thinks the Navy felt pressure to promote women, so it “put her on the best and most complicated tactical platform.”
But Graf had neither the temperament nor the experience for the job. “She was a terrible ship handler,” Waybright says.
http://www.businessmanagementdaily.com/33551/dont-promote-too-quickly
Militarycorruption.com has photographic evidence of Captain Graf racing her ship against a destroyer, in defiance of all protocols, risking the lives of both crews.
It is crazy for the cruiser COWPENS and destroyer McCAIN to be “drag-racing” like a couple of “hot rods” on the high seas. This “full throttle” contest in the Pacific Ocean came within 300 feet of disaster. Note the crew members on the fantail of DDG 56 looking over in horror at the bow of the 10,000 ton COWPENS, bearing down on them, in what must have seemed like a collision course.
It certainly did to everyone on the bridge of the guided-missile cruiser – everyone, that is, but crazed Capt. Holly Graf who refused to allow a “collision alarm” to sound. As if THAT would have made any difference if her boat had sliced off the fantail of the McCAIN and sent it and several hundred sailors to the bottom of the ocean.
http://www.militarycorruption.com/hollygraf5.htm
The writers at military corruption have an interesting perspective on just how and why Captain Graf gets away with her behaviour: she’s well connected, protected by special interests and she gets very special treatment.
Not only did she escape real punishment, the wimpy leadership – and we mean YOU, Roughhead and Mullen – tried to pull a fast one recently and quietly slip her into a rear admiral’s slot at AEGIS (BMD) in Virginia. After all, Holly “the special one,” has a big sister who’s already a flag officer. Her daddy is said to be a retired four-striper. This is one gal with “big-time connections.”
Her most fierce proponents have been members of “The Sisterhood,” a small but powerful group of lesbian senior officers at the Pentagon. To them, Holly can do no wrong. No woman “of their kind” can. And, if someone like Holly’s criticized, well, that’s “sexism,” don’t you know? Men are such chauvinists, anyway.
Well now. Those are some pretty interesting allegations. I wonder if they’re true?
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they ARE true. Captain Graf is a warning sign for all organizations explicitly endeavouring to promote women into positions of leadership. One there, women will band together to promote other women, no matter how unqualified and incompetent. It’s right there in the word that describes their political ideology: humanism feminism.
Some might argue that the old boy’s network has worked in the past to promote incompetent, unqualified men, and perhaps that’s true, but what exactly are we aiming for as a society? To replicate the very worst features, only this time in favor of women?
If Captain Graf is anything to go by, that is going to be one hell of a frightening world.
We’ll all be grabastic pieces of amphibian shit!
Sounds lovely.
Not.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
Im surprised that no one decided to shove her in her cabin and leave her there for the remainder of deployment. I would’ve, disciplines and rules be damned.
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Wouldn’t they have been right to though, if she did indeed risk the life of her crew on something so stupid
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A naval officer with this out-of-control a temperament should be cashiered immediately. For the “drag-racing” stunt alone, she should be court-martialed.
Ship captains are expected to be, and should be, cool and calm. Because the XO (executive officer) is paid to run the ship; the captain is paid to THINK. Good god, how would this harpy have acted if an enemy had started shooting at her ship?
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Does anyone here know if sailors swear?
Of course we don’t, dammit. Are you trying to fucking defame my cocksucking reputation or something?
It is indeed amazing that an officer of this fucking poor caliber was promoted to such a position of authority. But, hey, the damn Lesbians have to stick together, and duct tape ain’t fucking cutting it.
Of course, it’s not really Capt. Graf’s fault: She “repeatedly”…spoke of a “groupthink mentality” aboard her vessel. Graf said a “small group of disgruntled officers in the Cowpens wardroom were spreading rumors throughout the crew and convincing others that the command climate and [her] demeanor were far worse than they actually were.”
Yes, feminists will band together to promote and protect their own, but in any fucking organization, be it the military or a cocksucking business, accountability usually rears its ugly head sooner or later.
While this particular case clearly had some fucking feminist fucking overtones, I’m going to go with the fucking fact that she comes from a fucking senior military fucking familiy that really fucking protected her. Damn it.
The real fucking question is why wasn’t she court-martialed, for fuck’s sake…
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Marines. FMJ is about Marine Corps Basic Training, not the Army. It might seem like a small difference, but to us, it is a point of pride; we are Marines, not soldiers.
Sounds like a brutal work environment. I see it all the time–women getting away with behavior that would cost a man his rank. Do not even let me get started on sexual assault… That shit is out of control.
The Shadowed Knight
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Fixed that for you.
I am all apology!
Semper fi
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Captain Holly Graf received an honorable discharge. If she had been a man, she would have been booted out in disgrace with a less than honorable discharge. And she knows it, as does everyone else.
Here’s a short breakdown of her conduct: http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2010/11/good-day-for-trip-to-navy-yard.html
A link to the actual IG report here:
http://admiraltymaritimelaw.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/navy-inspector-generals-report-on-holly-graf-part-1/
Please read this stuff, it goes far beyond bad language and a little spilled coffee and a wad of paper. This woman was truly the Sheriff of Cuntingham.
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Why are my posts lost in the ether?
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That one made it. Weird.
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I don’t see any posts from you pending, Liz.
That is weird. You’re posts should never get stuck in moderation. It seems like a WordPress quirk. Some days the approved commenters get published automatically (as they are supposed to be), and some days single comments will go to moderation.
I will have Pixie take a peek at what is going on.
UPDATE: you got spammed!
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I’m saddened by the lack of Dongles in the techie jargon.
I’m torn about this.
I’m of the mind set that I really fucking hate any media taking a jab at our military for any reason. If they’re doing their job to protect our country, they can implement whatever methodology they’ve found to do that best. They will have my full support in doing so, and I will know that it is a sacrifice of the men in uniform to simply survive bootcamp by becoming a man trained to turn a human soul into a pile of meat without hesitation or compunction. The media inserting their noses into the process, to my eyes, seems to have done more harm than good as we now have our boys coming back home without the proper training to deal with their issues from bootcamp and battle, all thanks to our shortsighted desires to make bootcamp ‘more humane’ because we gave control of policies over to the citizens who had no business or authority to make those changes.
This is different from media covering the state of a war, because whether or not our country has any right being in a war and taking actions against other nations is a FAR DIFFERENT question than what training the men acting on the ground receive first.
That being said, this woman seems like a horrible representation of the products our military are able to produce after the affects of the actions I’ve described above. Leaders unable to lead. Women being overly assertive, masculine, and degrading instead of calm, cool, collected leaders able to look at things rationally and inspire confidence in times of trial in the men following them.
I suspect that the best way to reassert a proper military would be to get the media out of the training, so that eventually the truth of masculine strength and power would assert itself again over time. Let the results speak for themselves without any damn feminist groups sticking their noses into the training processes or the numbers of men vs women in the military or positions of authority.
But that’ll never happen.
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LOL!
I hope the seriousness of her offences come across in my post! She choked her officers! She’s lucky they had enough restraint not to punch her in the face.
I was attempting (and perhaps failing) to mock the media coverage, which tried pretty damn hard to make it sound like a few paper balls got chucked around and it was no big deal.
Both articles end with defenses of Graf.
And not one of them mentioned the whole racing stunt where she nearly took out a destroyer, which would have killed hundreds of sailors.
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Oh no! Probably my links to blogs. Thanks JB.
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Whenever I read about shit like this, it makes me drop to my knees and thank God I retired from that politicized Iron Yacht Club nearly two decades ago. Things in general were becoming intolerable even then (I nearly walked away at 17 years and ultimately told them to keep their goddamned pension even after 20), but I can only imagine what things must be like now.
How in the hell did [Holly Graf] get the job in the first place?
Your own answer to that question, JB, was spot on: Political/family connections + Affirmative Action + membership in a “protected class” (I gather from both Holly’s pic and your description of her Amen Corner that she’s a lesbian, and thus an AA “twofer.”) THAT IS how it works nowadays. The Navy is arguably luckier than other services in that it has seen less combat lately in the Warren Terra, and no real combat at sea, than the other land services and thus hasn’t really been put to the test –yet– by having less-than-qualified people (of either sex) in command of its combat vessels. While the odds of the surface fleet being so tested any time soon are remote, the danger to crews is ever-present and serious. Not than anybody really cares, because it’s still mostly MEN out there on those floating steel powder kegs.
Believe it or not, I actually served under a couple of female officers (one an Academy grad) who IMO would have made excellent ship commanders, better, in fact, even than many of their male counterparts. They were, through anomalous biological wiring, calm, collected, cool, professional, and rational, exactly the sort of traits essential to combatant command. Sadly, they were anomalies. Most of their fellow female officers treated their commissions exactly as many female professionals in my post-naval career treat their corporate positions: as entitlements rather than obligations, especially when it came to deploying under hardship conditions (I once, as a division Chief Petty Officer, literally held the hand of my female division officer as she cried in frustration, one of the most degrading things I’ve ever done). As I said before, I can only imagine that things have gotten much worse in the nearly two decades since I became (somewhat) human again. (BTW, don’t you find the idea of a woman commanding a combat vessel repugnant?)
Oh, and a minor technical detail: The video clip is from FMJ is of MARINES, not Army (not that I as a former sailor would take offense to anything Marines take offense to – :)~ )
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Really?!?!
You missed the purple dongles? How do you miss purple dongles? Your purple dongle location software must be malfunctioning.
You’re going to have to activate the supersonic deccelarating contrarotating turbines vertically, we’re getting a little too close to the Sun. Depress the aerothermic thermoreceptors!
Accelerate the isothermal axio tractor beam value of parametres! Invert the compressor radio ratio. Energize the tandem of elerons vertically while I turn up this interplanetary microphone.
Ha ha.
Just kidding. I only posted them now.
You’re welcome.
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I fixed it! I swear!
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Love it. My cold heart has been temporarily warmed through mirth and laughter.
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My father-in-law is career military and I’m not sure I have ever heard him swear in almost 20 years. My husband, who is not military, swears like a sailor. We often quote “A Christmas Story” when talking about my husband…
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I’m sure this domain will be blocked for me again because I clicked on this link, at least for a day or so. But before I get myself banned by heuristic proxy (not blog owner), I wanted to say that I’m pretty sure there’s a fantastic article somewhere in the manosphere of the specific confusion women have towards the social meaning of men challenging other men, with profanity and otherwise. It was about what women look like when they pretend to be men leading men. I think it was a Rollo article, but I can’t find it at the moment.
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Dalrock has a good one that I use as my go to, though Rollo has a few too. I prefer the Dalrock one because it provides both allegorical evidence that led to a death as well as statistics on the physical reality that women are trying to compensate for. Knowing that they are lacking in the brute strength, and that men can almost always physically over power you while also having a deeper, more commanding voice, leads to the dramatic overcompensation demonstrated by Holly Graf
Dalrocks Dying to be treated like one of the guys:
http://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/dying-to-be-treated-like-one-of-the-guys/
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Hey JB:
OK, I have to add a bit of my perspective here. As background, I was a navy officer for 8 years. Three aboard a more ancient CG than Cowpers, two on 7th Feet Staff and a few more on exchange with the French navy as a navigator on one of their Cruisers, then a Destroyer. One correction. Cowpers is a Ticonderoga class guided-missile cruiser, not a destroyer (goes to mission mostly, now, not necessarily size as it used to be—size doesn’t matter :). Anyway, Cowpers is of the same class as Vincennes. I was the staff duty officer the night Vincennes, under our fleet-level operational command, thought they shot down an Iranian F-14. …Until my friend the spook officer called me into the spook hut. “Problem is, the Iranians don’t appear to be looking for a downed F-14. They’re looking for a commercial Airbus.”
Here’s part of the problem from my view, quoted from your post:
“Researchers at Technische Universitat Munchen in Germany have found that women who are cheerful aren’t perceived to have leadership qualities, so it probably wouldn’t have helped the Sea Witch out that much had she been all candy apple sweet as pie to her crew, either.”
I’d say it’s averages where in the military with its culture, the overlap between good men and women commanders in OPERATIONAL commands is rather small. Also, recognize that there are just tons of men who are crap for commanders. It’s a kind of a “rock star” deal.
The vulgarity is an ethic of sorts. We’re all as foul mouthed as can be but be balance that be being meticulous about context (when, where, with and to whom). Boot camp and basic training are one place where it’s specifically taken to such an extreme as to become caricature, not to mention good recruiting fodder for the right sorts of people.
Even though there were no female ship captains back in my day, rest assured there were plenty of men just like her and we all had a word for them: “Screamers.” There’s a disparity between what sorts of people get promoted in peacetime vs wartime (you can guess) but Screamers usually get stopped somewhere along the line. Think of it as the Screaming being direct evidence that they have fulfilled their personal Peter Principle.
A final thing: that militarycorruption deal about the “drag race at sea.” Oh, my, so breathless. I can show you dozens of photos in my personal stash a lot closer than that. It’s Nuthin’. You simply can’t tell anything from that snapshot out of the ordinary and there are a whole number of reasons why ships would be even closer than that underway, such as replenishment, mail or personel transfer….lots of stuff and I’ve been there for it all, and supervised it all as 1st Lieutenant deck officer.
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Interesting. Thanks for this perspective.
So do you feel she is being treated fairly then?
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I’m happy to reflect that the military is still one of the places where not always, but far more often than IRL, everyone eventually gets exactly what they deserve, or close.
I figure she ought not to have gotten that far. The progression for SWOs (surface warfare officers) is division officer, department head (usually some bullshit stuff in-between), XO, CO. Unless you are just total shit most get a pass as a division officer and will be able to go to department head school and get sent to 2 separate 18 months tours, either 2 as an engineering officer (2 types of plants or size of plants) or, 1 as ops and 1 as weps. This is the proving ground for a 30-something. This is where the navy is supposed to separate the men from the boys from the Screamers from those suited to drive desks on land.
She probably ought to have gone to a shore command after that 1st Dept head tour.
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Most of my personal impressions on Holly Graf came from Neptunuslex’s website (RIP). There were a lot of military participants on that site, the family still keeps it up.
So…you were there when they shot down the Iranian passenger plane? That sucks! 😦 Must’ve been quite a night.
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Liz, it was pretty surreal. And on the eve of American Independence Day, ’88. We were sitting in harbor, Yokosuka Japan, USS Blue Ridge, a command & control ship that has the roughly 70 officers of US 7th Fleet permanently embarked.
Yea, I was SDO (staff duty officer) and the only other officer on duty was the spook. Since we were in port most everyone else was at home. So, I got the privilege of calling COS Archie Clemmens (retired 4-star, now) and then he called the Admiral.
Weirdest of all was being relieved at about 7 am after a sleepless night (you can imagine) and driving across the peninsula to my beach house in Hayama, listening to Armed Forces radio just as the news broke to the public.
A couple of months later we happened to be in port Subic Bay at the same time as Vincennes on their way back from deployment. Some of the officers were staying for R&R at the same hotel as I, out in barrio Barretto. A very quite, reserved & somber group. You can imagine, even though there would have been only a small handful of individuals directly responsible.
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i’m a Navy Corpsman. marines get shot, i stop the bleeding. i was in yokosuka for 3 years. been on both the cowpens and mccain and was parked next to the mccain for the entire stint.
and i curse like a fucking sailor.
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Were you under Captain Graf?!?!
I don’t mean literally, obviously. Her tastes seem to incline more towards the “effervescently happy”, shall we say?
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no. but i know about the situation. i happened after i was gone. i left yoko in 2006. i meant i’ve physically been on both destroyers. one of the CO’s for the mccain used to walk around with a loaded six shooter. he was fucking nuts. but his crew loved him.
i was on the blue ridge. i did drills with the corpsmen on the mccain since i was an EMT and CPR instructor at the time.
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What you’re dealing with here is an absolutely terminally stupid misunderstanding of what it means to be assertive, commanding, and powerful. This is a common mistake made by many women who are trying to live in a “man’s world” like the military, especially in command positions. They see a man doing those things and try to emulate that, but they just can’t quite pull it off – in some cases because they misunderstand those attributes entirely, and in others because they are trying really hard and just failing to emulate them. However, in most cases, instead of assertive, commanding, and powerful, they end up being assholey instead of assertive (ie, instead of pointing out the truth even when it is hurtful, they are just hurtful, period; mistakenly confusing that with assertiveness). They end up being nitpicky and passive-aggressive instead of commanding (confusing abusiveness with leadership, and micro-managing with commanding) and violent instead of powerful (confusing threat of physical harm with having a powerful presence – two different things that are easy to conflate).
I’m not saying that this is a condition of all women, nor that it is exclusive to women, because I see men make this mistake all the time. My ex-boss was a perfect example of a guy that got leadership and command mixed up with just being plain abusive. He proved to me that this is an ego/self-esteem issue, so this isn’t a condition exclusive to any sex. It just seems like you get a situation where women are more prone to developing these issues because they are constantly feeling like they have to prove themselves.
What they don’t understand is that the act of constantly trying to prove yourself is very transparent to most people, and so it is a ruthless cycle – the more you try, the less faith your underlings have in you.
Notice above that I said “ex” boss. I moved on because I found out that he needed me more than I needed to put up with his shit.
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”It’s true that assertive women who take very little shit are perceived as bitches, while their male counterparts are perceived as confident and assured”.
This is false. The problem is women mistake rude and obnoxious behavior with confidence, when in fact it’s the opposite. Just look at the men around you who you perceive as confident and assured. Are they malicious and rude without provocation? If they were, would you still call them confident?
The same applies to women. Confident women are respected. And they are quite about it. The women who complain are insecure and cannot handle being held to the same standard as men. This is basically their lamentation, being treated equal to men.
I’ve read many studies who tried to prove this non-existent double standard. They all picked women who are bitches, erroneously branded them as ”assured”, and only then did they ask people how they perceive them.
More often than not, the more confident you are, the _genuinely_ nicer you are. Not the other way around. People respect you for being (among other things) fair and respectful yourself. These women are the opposite.
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Jebus man…there’s just always something about Type A assholes: the eyes just aren’t right. Take a good look at Captain Graf’s pic.
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Yep, I see. You still have my gratitude for insulting the Marines, though. :)~
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The problem is women mistake rude and obnoxious behavior with confidence when in fact it’s the opposite.
This exactly. In other words, over-compensation. One sees this with women in the corporate world all the time. There seems to be a deep-seated, subconscious need to PROVE themselves, as if they assume that the default attitude among the majority of their male peers is thst they don’t deserve to be there – even when the men believe no such thing and exhibit no such attitude. I’ve seen some very sad and very destructive (to the woman’s professional reputation) examples of such unnecessary over-the-top behavior that really revealed nothing more than paranoia and insecurity and most certainly not leadership ability.
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Goober and Vladimir both:
+1
Hell, when I was in my initial “boot camp” like training, complete with six MC Gunnery Sergents al-la “Officer and a Gentleman,” without the local tramps, karate practice, love affairs, proposals, and suicides—though I have done the upside-down cockpit in a pool, and it’s a piece of cake—they really schooled us—male and female candidates alike—every night when everyone else would be watching TV.
“SCHOOL CIRCLE! NOW!”
I’ll never forget it. These were long, conversational lessons on the ethics of being a good officer, from the perspective of a career enlisted man who was your nemesis for 8 weeks. I just wonder how many officers who turned out to be shit were snobby about all that in their track. I wasn’t, and I continued to learn from Chiefs, and Senior and Master Chiefs in the navy who were hierarchically subordinate to me (and plenty of 1st Class POs too—in fact, I once fired a shitty Chief who was doing his FIRST TOUR AT SEA after 20 years in the Navy; gave him a desk job and made my 2 1st class electrician mates heads of the division)
…One of the commanders of the school was a Navy LCDR, a female. Short in stature, blond & petite, but I remember her the most. She had a command presence. Who knows? Brothers, perhaps? Military family?A great dad? A high achiever mom with social sanity? A natural? Smart mignon?
Nobody knows. And conversely, when a male is an absolute wanker, who knows?
The essential takeaway is that on any individual level, it is and should be individual. I’ve known complete shit and complete greatness both ways gener-wise. It’s just that because the military is a tradition of maleness, it’s rarer for the ladies. And in some ways, not their fault particularly. Guys who want to be in the military have a literal library of stuff that speaks exactly to how they need to be. What do women have?
Is the blunt force object of the military (precision in ethics and hierarchy, in order to make a very efficient and effective mass killing machine that is not particularly good at making critical distinctions in the heat of shit) the place for social experiments? Sure, the EU lets everyone in, but then again, they didn’t have to spend the trillions required to protect them and stave of YET ANOTHER FUCKING WORLD WAR. I used to tell the French Officers this when I was on exchange: “tell me again about your social system, most developed in the world. Only, when you do, please thank America for defending your asses for the last 40 years so you could spend your money on trains, pensions and healthcare.”
…And so, the issue really comes down to women in the military in the first place. I grant that they can be good, great, amazing commanders, soldiers and sailors on every single level. It is possible. They can also be just as shit as anyone else in all of those roles.
The 2nd CAPT of my first ship, USS REEVES (CG-24), came from being captain of a tender ship. These are mobile repair units. Can’t do everything a shipyard can do, but they do a lot. Back in those days, tenders were the only navy ships females could be assigned to. Basically, his deal: there were some great female sailors and some bad ones, just like the guys. The problem is: THE OBVIOUS.
You know what I mean. Drama. He had to deal with tons of drama brought on in a NATURAL SOCIAL SPHERE that was specifically designed because of its singular mission, to be a professional UNNATURAL SOCIAL SPHERE. All these arguments over the years like “can’t have women in combat roles because guys will protect them instinctively,” is utter bullshit. Guys protect other guys and risk life & limb to do so all the time and get medals for it.
If one wants to make an argument about having females in combat, it’s not about competence, or that they will be favored. It’s about a whole social realm that’s hardwired and simply takes over. Drama. Endless drama.
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you probably just pulled that out of your ass, but somehow it still made sense
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Reminds me of the job I just left, feminists taking over, I got the fuck out.
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