The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Discrimination,’ Arguing by Exceptions, and the Obvious Insanity of Androgyny

Posted on | December 26, 2013 | 46 Comments

Liberalism’s obsession with equality requires us to pretend that such distinctions as “male” and “female” are ultimately meaningless, and that any policy which recognizes these categories as significant must be abolished in order to prevent discrimination.

This is where the rhetoric of liberalism is exposed as a species of madness. While proclaiming their devotion to “diversity,” what liberals are actually striving for is homogeneity and conformity: All institutions must be equally diverse. Institutions that are not “diverse” — all-male clubs or all-female schools or all-black fraternities — are inherently discriminatory, by this logic, which is how the American Studies Association justifies boycotting Israel, making the Jewish nature of the Israeli state analogous to apartheid.

In this way, “diversity” becomes the enemy of pluralism, and the next thing you know, you’re nose-counting some more-or-less randomly selected category and denouncing the discrimination that results in the shocking shortage of Latino gynecologists.

“We must end this Social Injustice because . . . Progress!”

Perhaps the best example of this weird worldview is the crusade for “gender integration” in the military. Liberals believe women must have the “opportunity” to march 12 miles in full combat gear and engage America’s enemies in firefights or it’s “discrimination.”

Unfortunately, this “discrimination” can only be abolished by lowering standards, as the case of Kara Hultgreen demonstrated nearly two decades ago. Under pressure from the radical avant-garde of political correctness, the Navy and the Air Force had gotten into a competition to see which service could produce the first female fighter pilot, which resulted (predictably) in the destruction of a $38 million jet and the death of its unqualified pilot:

On approach to the USS Abraham Lincoln, Lt. Hultgreen made five major errors and ignored repeated wave-off signals by ship’s landing officer. One of those errors caused the F-14A’s left engine to stall, sending the plane out of control, because Lt. Hultgreen mistakenly jammed on the rudder. In the twenty years of F-14A’s service, no pilot had ever stalled an engine this way. . . .
Documents obtained by Elaine Donnelly, director of [the Center for Military Readiness], shows that Lt. Hultgreen not only had subpar performance on several phases of her training but had four “downs” (major errors), just one or two of which are sufficient to justify the dismissal of a trainee. The White House and Congress’ political pressure to get more women in combat is the direct cause of Lt. Hultgreen’s death.

So said Professor Walter Williams in 1995 and, whatever the number of female jet fighter pilots in the U.S. military today, every one of them is stained by tokenism, their status as aviators tainted by the knowledge that they “qualified” only because they were graded on the curve, so that qualifed male candidates were flunked out of training merely to make a way to fill a gender quota.

Nobody in uniform — and certainly no officer who aspires to promotion — can speak that truth out loud, however, and so there is a silent conspiracy of dishonesty, everyone going along with the androgynous myth that justifies the “gender integration” policy.

One can always say that, in a nation of 300 million people, there must be some women who are physically strong enough to endure the rigors required of candidates for elite military roles. But even if we stipulate this, the overwhelming majority of qualified candidates for those roles will always be male and therefore, even if you had no traditionalist objections to women serving in combat, only a fanatical obsession with “equality” could justify abolishing the all-male status of those roles.

Alas, some people are just obsessed fanatics:

Last month, three women became the first of their sex to graduate from the Marine Corps’ famously grueling Advanced Infantry Training Course. The Marine Corps was asking a simple question by running small groups through these courses in experimental test batches, two to five women at a time: Can the female body withstand the rigors of infantry training? The answer, these women showed, is that it can.

Well, congratulations, but I’d be interested to hear from other Marines in that AITC session whether they think these women got any special breaks, and I’d also like to hear from veteran Marine sergeants whether they think there has been any relaxation of standards, because (a) I’m just skeptical that way, and (b) the Kara Hultgreen Syndrome inevitably persists. But never mind that, because now they’re trying to revive the G.I. Jane fantasy:

So if the barrier to integrating women into the infantry isn’t a physical one then what is it?
It’s cultural. And that’s why the infantry may not be the best place to start in military gender integration. Instead, as counterintuitive as it might sound, the military should begin with its Special Operations Forces: elite units such as the Green Berets and SEALs. Although not the obvious move, starting here would likely make for a smoother transition over all. . . .

(Note that the inevitability of a “transition” to a gender-neutral military is assumed as the premise of the argument.)

So how do you responsibly alter the culture so women are accepted and the force remains effective?
The solution currently being proposed is to conduct these test cases and then, based on the results, add a small number of women to a 140,000-man infantry force in the Army, Marine Corps, and National Guard while leaving our much smaller 8,500-man force of special operators all male for the foreseeable future. This would drop a very small number of female infantrymen and infantry officers into a culture they’d be too small to affect, putting them at an enormous disadvantage. . . .
If the military were to integrate elite formations such as the SEALs, Marine Special Operations and Army Special Forces, a few highly capable women in those communities would provide cultural proof that females can hang with “the toughest of the tough.”

Yeah, good luck with that. Let us assume that, as with the three women who made it through Marine AITC, you were able to find some exceptional women who could scrape through SFAS with a little nudge-nudge wink-wink “adjustment” to the standards.

Fine. You’ve got yourself a handful of token Lady Green Berets, and then what? At what point does the calculus of this social-engineering project have more to do with fielding the most effective combat force than with satisfying your idol Equality?

Men and women are different in fundamental ways. Attempting to argue away the truth of this general observation by calling attention to exceptional examples is the same kind of dishonest intellectual gamesmanship which justifies the legality of abortion — the vast majority of which are simply matters of after-the-fact contraception — by talking about rape. At some point, public policy has to be based on common-sense general principles, and not twisted into pretzels to conform to intellectual abstractions.

No heathen sacrifice at the altars of Moloch required more fanaticism than does our latter-day devotion to Equality.

 

 


Category: Feminism, Intellectuals, Military

Comments

46 Responses to “‘Discrimination,’ Arguing by Exceptions, and the Obvious Insanity of Androgyny”

  1. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 26th, 2013 @ 3:30 pm

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MT-2Zca6Evw/UrebMhVGl_I/AAAAAAAAeHg/y0OeL27ld-o/s1600/-6691875658469ac2.JPG
    http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2013/12/i-denounce-moloch-worship.html I agree with you Stacy, but I am willing to make case by case exceptions.

  2. DeadMessenger
    December 26th, 2013 @ 3:36 pm

    I was about to call this brilliant, but then I realized it’s all common sense, which is the highest compliment I can give an argument these days. Good one, Stacy.

  3. robertstacymccain
    December 26th, 2013 @ 3:42 pm

    Some ideas are too obviously true to be of any interest to intellectuals. Therefore, obvious truths can lapse into disrepute because no “smart” people ever speak on their behalf.

  4. jakee308
    December 26th, 2013 @ 3:45 pm

    the Left has been trying to disband the military for years. they may finally have seized upon the way to accomplish that goal.

    Many qualified operators will leave not due to sexism so much as a desire to maintain standards and as a survival mechanism.

    who would you want on stealth infiltrations where everyone must be capable to the highest degree but you have to have members who are physically unable to perform thus putting YOUR life and those of the team’s at risk, let alone the mission itself.

    The ultimate in affirmative action and tragic result. let alone the loss of reputation and reliability.

  5. robertstacymccain
    December 26th, 2013 @ 3:47 pm

    The people who are most fanatical about women in combat are — coincidentally! — also the most fanatical in opposing U.S. military action abroad.

  6. jakee308
    December 26th, 2013 @ 3:49 pm

    Don’t be fooled. we don’t know the whole real story. There’s a reason why there’s an ongoing purge in the military and that’s to get rid of those officers who will demand standards be maintained and blow the whistle and tell the truth about what’s really going on. Praise for her if the PR is accurate but can we really trust the military command to tell the truth? Can we trust this administration to tell the truth? Do you trust them? Do you?

  7. Dana
    December 26th, 2013 @ 3:57 pm

    Unfortunately, the article you cited from The Atlantic was in error.

    There were 15 women who started the Marine Corps infantry course, not the “two to five women at a time” as was claimed in The Atlantic. This was easily researched, and it’s not difficult to find the articles in The Washington Post.

    The pass rate for men was 83.1% (221 out of 266) and 20% for women (3 out of 15, although a fourth may pass after retaking the final test following an injury during her first finals.)

  8. Legion
    December 26th, 2013 @ 4:01 pm

    Good, let all women register for the draft.

  9. Stogie Chomper
    December 26th, 2013 @ 4:39 pm

    I remember that case of the lady fighter pilot. She was murdered by political correctness, the left’s insane compulsion with making every facet of civilization a model representation of human diversity. I am still waiting for professional football to put Code Pink grannies as offensive linemen in the NFL.

    And, if is found that 0.8% of the population is black lesbians in wheelchairs, then 0.8% of all brain surgeons should also be black lesbians in wheelchairs. Anything less is proof of discrimination.

  10. Socialism is Organized Evil
    December 26th, 2013 @ 4:47 pm

    Both societal preservation and self-preservation require active physical separation from those infected with the illness of liberalism. Conscious physical separation, at each and every opportunity. No more sympathy – liberals must be actively treated as the uncivilized pariahs they actually are.

  11. Matthew W
    December 26th, 2013 @ 4:54 pm

    The million dollar question:
    Why would a woman want to be in combat if she didn’t have to be?

  12. Charles
    December 26th, 2013 @ 4:58 pm

    The classical way of answering this question would be to form all-female combat fighter squadrons and infantry companies, put them into battle, and see how they perform.

    As for Kara Hultgreen Syndrome, is that the one where you pass unqualified persons through because of political correctness or where you
    pass them through out of a desire to see them fail?

  13. JeffWeimer
    December 26th, 2013 @ 4:58 pm

    Anyone can be a garrison soldier, so why put their premise to the test of combat?

  14. MikeM
    December 26th, 2013 @ 5:05 pm

    I went through ARC, the Marine Corps Amphibious Reconnaissance Course, at Coronado in 1987. This is, or was at the time, the course required to earn the MOS of 0321 – Reconnaissance Marine. The washout rate was something in the neighborhood of 60%. This was out of a pool of the most physically fit and mentally tough of Marines. I can assure you with absolute complete confidence that there is not a woman alive who could pass that course. The odds are right up there with my becoming a world renowned ballerina. That is to say not a chance in hell. If you haven’t been there and done that, I can’t describe it in any words that will make you understand. If 6 out of 10 of a pool of the hardest men in the Marine Corps can’t hack it, then the odds of a woman passing the course is exactly zero.

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  16. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 26th, 2013 @ 5:52 pm

    Common Sense = That is why they call him crazy.

  17. robertstacymccain
    December 26th, 2013 @ 5:57 pm

    Exactly my thoughts, based on what my son went through in SFAS. They took a carefully screened group of excellent soldiers — prime specimens, every one of whom had already gone through AIT and Airborne — and only 40% qualified.

  18. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 26th, 2013 @ 5:57 pm

    The Israeli Defense Force has had women in it for years, but to be in an elite fighting force the test is objective. Thus the reason only about 3% of combat solders in the IDF are female. They also have a 70% female combat battalion (which can come in handy in certain circumstances–such as dealing with Arab women). And that is the way it should be. If a woman wants to serve, she should be given a chance (not a pass).

  19. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 26th, 2013 @ 5:58 pm

    Of course they are. Coincidentally, they also did not serve themselves.

  20. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 26th, 2013 @ 6:15 pm

    I know that combat soldiers will remain mostly male and that is not going to ever change. That said, are there roles in a combat setting that women could fill and actually perform at a high level at? Of course. But they will be limited by the physical limitations that women have compared to men, just like age plays a limitation on younger men vs. older ones.

    And I also know the push by the left is driven by other issues other than combat performance (which they at best care nothing about or actually want to impeed).

  21. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 26th, 2013 @ 6:21 pm

    1) There are patriot women who want to serve and 2) combat service matters for officers and promotion. But that has to be balanced by not putting other troops at risk by serving (either because you can’t perform has well or will be marked as a potential target by the enemy). There are roles women could be just as effective as men and roles they never will be.

    And to answer your real question, there are those who are not promoting this in good faith. And they don’t care if troops are put at risk to drive their own ideological points home.

  22. darleenclick
    December 26th, 2013 @ 6:35 pm

    Men and women in general are fundamentally different when it comes to physical strength. Reality. However, women are not only capable, but can excel at tasks where they are manipulating machinery (racecars, helicopters, jets), since reaction time and judgment are the skills, not brute strength. Same for snipers. Women are/can be just as skilled at firearms.

    “Men who go down to the sea in ships have long had another way of expressing the same moral behavior tagged by the abstract expression “patriotism.” Spelled out in simple Anglo-Saxon words “Patriotism” reads “Women and children first!”

    And that is the moral result of realizing a self-evident biological fact: Men are expendable; women and children are not. A tribe or a nation can lose a high percentage of its men and still pick up the pieces and go on, as long as the women and children are saved. But if you fail to save the women and children, you’ve had it, you’re done, you’re THROUGH! You join Tyrannosaurus rex, one more breed that bilged its final test.

    I must amplify that. I know that women can fight and often have. I have known many a tough old grandmother I would rather have on my side in a tight spot than any number of pseudo-males who disdain military service. My wife put in three years and a butt active duty in World War Two, plus ten years reserve, and I am proud ? very proud! ? of her naval service. I am proud of every one
    of our women in uniform; they are a shining example to us men.

    Nevertheless, as a mathematical proposition in the facts of biology, children, and women of child-bearing age, are the ultimate treasure that we must save. Every human culture is based on “Women and children first” ? and any attempt to do it any other way leads quickly to extinction.”~Robert Heinlein, (see, too, Starship Troopers where women are overwhelmingly pilots)

  23. Ex USAF
    December 26th, 2013 @ 6:37 pm

    An interesting perspective from 2012 …
    http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/get-over-it-we-are-not-all-created-equal

  24. MikeM
    December 26th, 2013 @ 7:09 pm

    God bless your son. He’s chosen a damn interesting way to make a living.

  25. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 26th, 2013 @ 7:18 pm

    Well put Darleen.

  26. Frankie
    December 26th, 2013 @ 7:29 pm

    Your son went to jump school right? Ask him if he ever saw a female running PT with the guys. I’m guessing the answer is No. When I went back in the dark ages, they made it as easy on the woman as possible. (Ran 2 miles to our 6, modified pushups, no pull ups, etc) so they could graduate some. Woman in the military want to be equal? Fine, make them earn it and do every qualification task than men do.

  27. Zohydro
    December 26th, 2013 @ 9:05 pm

    I wonder how our precious out-and-proud homosexual troopers are doing in the elite forces… I hear they’re are not booting the diseased ones anymore:

    http://www.sldn.org/pages/hiv-and-military-service

  28. richard mcenroe
    December 26th, 2013 @ 10:53 pm

    Like this?

    http://tinyurl.com/44j7eyh

    Frankly I’d rather follow a Texas woman with her deer rifle into combat than a platoon of drafted Pajama Boys….

  29. Eric Ashley
    December 27th, 2013 @ 1:02 am

    Read ‘Amazon Legion’ by Tom Kratman for an interesting view on this.

  30. Alessandra
    December 27th, 2013 @ 7:24 am

    The very best take on the “gender” is just “a changeable cultural prop that doesn’t matter” was done by a discussion on TAC.

    Basically, picture the following situation: A man “thinks” he is more comfortable being of the female gender and being female, so he puts on a dress and make-up and says: now, I’m a woman. (Remember that liberals are incapable of seeing just how insane he is right there, so to them, the man is now of the female gender. Collective insanity is always more fun than single insanity).
    Would a woman with a lesbian problem then say: hey, now I’m going to be attracted to her? If she says yes, then it means that for LGBTs and their idiotic liberal cohorts, being “female” is reduced to hanging a certain garment on the human body and splashing some paint on its face. A clearly idiotic claim on its face. In case the lesbian pig says she is not attracted to the man who now claims to be of the female gender, because he is still a man, then the whole claim that gender is a mere cultural construct falls apart. One can obviously use a heterosexual imaginary example to illustrate the same logical fallacy.

  31. Alessandra
    December 27th, 2013 @ 7:29 am

    Wait, Darleen is a woman?! What? Then she doesn’t have a wife. And she has a major homosexual problem. And people with a homosexual problem are too deformed to conceive children from healthy heterosexual sex, which is the only wholesome way to have sex and what nature intends. Picture a world where there are no heterosexuals and it’s grotesque. Picture a world with only loving heterosexuals, with no LGBTPs and it’s the most beautiful thing ever.

  32. rmnixondeceased
    December 27th, 2013 @ 7:48 am

    Darleen was quoting RAH whose wife Ginny was the described WAVE …

  33. Alessandra
    December 27th, 2013 @ 7:51 am

    Thanks! I thought that was weird!!! LOL

  34. rustypaladin
    December 27th, 2013 @ 7:52 am

    You beat me to this.

  35. rustypaladin
    December 27th, 2013 @ 8:31 am

    The military has already tried putting a woman through Special Forces training. In 1981, CPT Kathleen Wilder went through the Officers Special Forces Course and, after some controversy (Yeah, I’m using a euphemism. Look it up if you are interested. It reeks of politics), was termed qualified for Special Forces. She never served as Special Forces or wore the beret.

    There is something that is always forgoten when discussing this and this is the reason why feminists will never have the “equal” they want in the military. Even if they lower the standards you will still need to find exceptional young women and convince them to join the military. Then, you have to convince them to join combat arms. Then, you have to keep them in the job after realizing how much suck there is to go around. Women who break glass ceilings generally do not go into a job because they want to break a glass ceiling. They go into a job because THAT’S THE JOB THEY WANT TO DO! To truly break the glass ceiling in “Infantryland” you have to find a woman who is twice as good as her peers at being an infantryman and actually wants to be infantry. Good luck with that. After 21 years in the Army I have met one woman that met these qualifications. I have met many exceptional female Soldiers but most of them would not have made good combat arms.

  36. freddy the fixer
    December 27th, 2013 @ 8:38 am

    Brilliant post, guys.

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  38. Dana
    December 27th, 2013 @ 9:38 am

    I had written about this before, here, so I already knew the numbers. Of course, I knew the numbers because I had done the research previously. You’d think that a paid writer for The Atlantic could do the same work that an unpaid blogger, who has to work 55 hours a week to put food on the table, managed to do.

  39. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 27th, 2013 @ 10:57 am

    http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/181608/ Okay, not good. Not good at all.

  40. robertstacymccain
    December 27th, 2013 @ 1:11 pm

    Feminism is a species of madness that views men and women as competitors, whereas sanity requires that men and women be cooperators.

    Insanity has become increasingly prevalent in American public discourse, because sane people are not the loudest voices in the conversation.

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  42. Quartermaster
    December 27th, 2013 @ 10:48 pm

    Any country that intentionally places women in combat is a barbaric country unworthy of Defense.

  43. bobbymike34
    December 27th, 2013 @ 10:59 pm

    Exactly this is another way of making the military weaker and making it harder to defend and protect this nation.
    Are we really better off as a nation with possibly hundreds of women coming home ‘remains non-viewable’?
    I don’t wish this on men but in defense of freedom it sometimes is required of us.

  44. K-Bob
    December 28th, 2013 @ 7:48 am

    I’ve always wondered about that bit.

    That’s why I always use the term GBLT-eieio
    instead of whatever acronym they come up with.

  45. K-Bob
    December 28th, 2013 @ 7:54 am

    In over the transom:

    All you have to do to fight a war is have the coolest avatars. Everything else is done by computers.

    Sincerely,

    Hollywood

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