Truth Has Consequences: Women and Men are Different

I’m beginning a series on common sense truths which are real, and which therefore have negative consequences when we ignore them or try to pretend that they don’t exist.

The following is written with two assumptions in mind:

1. The vast majority of women and men in the military do their jobs extremely well.  Individual tours of duty can be very positive.
2. In any large population of people, there are the ten percent at each end of the bell curve who significantly over- or under- perform everyone else.  This post is written primarily about the other 80%–i.e,, most of us. 

Women and men are equal.  In value.  In worth.  Not because I think so, but because we were made that way.  God created male and female in His image, which is why we have the same worth.  And by the way, it’s also why a believer cannot be a racist, because we are all brothers and sisters, but that is a related story.

Men and women are of equal value in God’s eyes, but we are created with differences, and we therefore have some different functions.  This is not so hard to understand if you just look at us, or if you have raised a son and a daughter.

And we are wired to respond to each other in certain very predictable ways, particularly in our youth and at times of close and sustained contact, unless overridden by rules and norms. Believing macro-evolutionists should agree with this assessment, for the “good of the human race”, i.e., procreation.

The elitist progressives in our country seem to have checked their common sense and normal experiences at the door, insisting instead that there are no real differences between the genders, and whatever minor ones may exist, we should be able to ignore them and get on with being all the same.  Particularly in the military.

Are they crazy?  And why have we allowed them to convince us that something we know to be true is instead false?  That makes us accessories to all of the havoc that is now following.  We cannot change common sense truth; but we will all suffer the terrible damage of pretending that we can.

Look at just a few of the consequences of pushing young women and men together in close quarters in the military, often under extreme stress, and occasionally requiring life and death decisions:

1. Consensual sex is way up in the military, meaning that before even assessing the physical consequences, there is a dynamic at play that has nothing to do with military mission readiness or defending our nation, but instead actually distracts the members of the team from that readiness. 

2. It follows that unwanted pregnancies are also up.  That leads to abortions or unintended births, just like in the civilian population.  But there are two additional considerations in the military.  As a nation we are paying to put our grown children into situations which encourage pre-marital sex.  And there are huge consequences to military efficiency and readiness, because a pregnant woman must be removed from her work station.   

3. Individual consequences of pregnancy. See this link for the Navy’s policies (and view a bizarre photo placement), and to gain a sense of how complicated this becomes for the individual servicewoman.
   And, I imagine, for the father.  Not to mention the child.  Since many women in the military come from broken or dysfunctional homes, there may not be extended family support for the child or children when the single mother deploys.  What then? 

4. Operational consequences of pregnancy.  Airplanes and ships must be diverted to “evacuate” pregnant women from their duty stations.  A friend who captained a Navy tender, a large floating repair ship, as females were just beginning to ramp up in the service, was constantly having to coordinate flights to meet the ship at different ports in order to move the pregnant women to shore duty.  More importantly, when a woman has been trained in a crucial area of expertise, and she must suddenly depart due to pregnancy, there may be no readily available replacement for her expertise, and the unit’s mission readiness may be severely damaged.  And when the replacement is found for her unexpected departure, what life disruptions are being inflicted on that individual? 

5. Women do not stay in the military, on average, as long as men, for whatever reason(s),  meaning that there is a significant extra cost to recruit and train the personnel to fulfill any mission.  Yet there is the admonition from on high to keep up the percentage of women in the military, and some personnel rewards and promotions are based on doing so; therefore more young women are constantly being recruited to replace those who are leaving. At a time of severe budget constraints, could not those funds be better used to pay, train and equip those who will serve longer? 

6. As seen in the turmoil over the alarming number of sexual harassment cases, the proper way to investigate and try these cases, and the serious consequences for anyone even accused in such a situation, we have created a powerful and always present issue to divert our service personnel from their primary mission of defending us. 
   

7. A related consequence hits everyone in any leadership capacity in the military.  From the first rung of a squad/team leader to the top of the Joint Chiefs, military leadership now means being a sensitive counselor as much as a warrior, tactician, or technician.  And those whose natural ability does not include sensitive counseling are either encouraged to leave or realize that they don’t fit any more.  Meanwhile, the military suffers as social experimentation trumps leadership and readiness. 

8. Marriages may be tested or destroyed.  Who wants his or her spouse to deploy for six to twelve months to live and fight in close quarters with potentially attractive members of the opposite sex?  What part of the marriage relationship, even if not physical, will be shifted to someone else during that period?  Can the marriage then recover? 

9. General efficiency is diminished.   My captain friend tells an anecdotal story which he attributes to an experienced chief on his ship, who estimated that whenever you added a young woman to a working group of five young men, after a month the overall performance dropped by at least 20%.  He calculated that you might still have two men working full time.  But of the other three, one was upset because he used to be sleeping with her.  One was distracted because he was currently sleeping with her. And one was impossibly bothered because he was trying to sleep with her.  She was distracted by juggling all of the attention. Together the four of them added up to at best only two full-time equivalents.  The voice of someone who has been there. 

10. All of the above issues apply equally in peace or war.  But imagine the impact when a young female soldier is captured by the enemy.  Will she be raped and tortured? Will she be used as bait to lure her colleagues into an impossible rescue attempt? 

11. There is one final issue.  Any organization does not do well when it is founded on a lie or a problem which no one is allowed to talk about, or even acknowledge exists.  When continued membership requires that one perpetuate or add to the lie, people of integrity simply leave, if they can, or turn cynical, if they can’t.  Honest communication and general discipline, not to mention respect for the leadership, diminish quickly. Is it any wonder why the military seems suddenly to be hit by a plague of lying, cheating, bad behavior and sexual abuse?  One factor is certainly the new restrictions on chaplains.  But the 800 pound gorilla named “the consequences of ignoring common sense where young men and women are concerned” must also be a contributor. 

The purpose of the military is to protect and defend our nation.  It must train and work efficiently, because when pressure hits, every member must be able to do his job effectively and well.  There are already enough challenges in the constantly evolving threats of our enemies without us adding more challenges and impediments.

Everything written above seems to be utterly common sense truth to me.  In light of these truths and the consequences of ignoring them, what exactly have the progressives gained for us from the social experiment of pushing women into front line and combat roles?

All of us, women and men, should want our military to be the best at what it clearly has to do.  Not a failure at what others have made up for it to do.