Army Soldiers Forced To Wear Fake Breasts
The fall of the Roman Empire and the destruction of the male way of life continues.
The full article and video is here, but the quotes from the article tell the tale:
The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training.
Army enlisted leaders all over the world are being ordered to take the Pregnancy Postpartum Physical Training Exercise Leaders Course.
The NCOs learn special exercises for pregnant women, who shouldnât push themselves too hard or participate in high-impact activities such as snowboarding, bungee jumping or horse riding.
During the training, each NCO must wear the pregnancy simulator for at least an hour.
A 78th Aviation Battalion mechanic said he was ordered to do the training even though he doesnât have any female soldiers in his unit.
Now before you scream about how it must be “women” or “the feminists” responsible for this absurdity, consider this quote from a male army combatives instructor:
âIt gives me a better sense of what the pregnant woman is going through as she is going the exercises,â he said. âIt will allow me to see both sides.â
It never occurred to <him>, when he joined the Army, that heâd learn to train pregnant soldiers, he said.
âMy initial view of the Army was just kind of â we train, we fight,â he said. âBut my eyes have been opened up to the family aspects of the Army as opposed to just the single soldier view.â
Not only are the women doing it to us, we are doing it to ourselves.  And have been for a long time.  Society is marching the masculine male off the cliff, and he’s going happily.
This is nothing new in the military of course.  It’s simply an extension of something that started during the Clinton Administration in the 90s and just gets worse with time.  I knew the beta male / feminine mentality had invaded the US Armed Forces back in 2002 when soldiers were disciplined because they wrote graffiti with “offensive language” on the sides of bombs they were dropping on the Taliban in Afghanistan.  See, we can’t offend the people we’re blowing up.  That would be mean.
I’m sadly no longer surprised by these horrific stories, and that’s what makes this all so terrible.  If this kind of thing was an unusual event, it would be on national TV news, people would rant and rave, and the military would stop doing it.  Instead, it’s just another nail in the coffin that already looks like a pincushion.
A quick aside on the issue of women in the military, which is what most defenders of this story are going to try to make this about.  (“Oh, you just don’t want women in the military you misogynist!”)  Wrong.  I am 100% for equal rights for women and always have been.  I fully support women’s right to serve in the military.  Hell, my first serious girlfriend was a former paratrooper.
However, that does not mean I’m for the military become less effective. If women want to serve in the military in a combat capacity, they must be completely, 100% segregated from the men. That means women-only platoons, women-only barracks, women-only ships and subs.
Did you know that there are ships in the navy that have to disgorge up to 28% of their female populations when they make port because they all get pregnant?  What the FUCK do you think is going to happen when a bunch of men and women are locked up together on a ship at sea for weeks on end?  Who thought this was a good idea?
(The answer is: politically correct women and their beta male allies in government and the military.  )
And yes, that means if during a state of war the all-women platoons/ships/subs/units/whatever are consistently getting their asses kicked, well, then we proven something, haven’t we?
Equal rights, yes.  A severely hampered military, no.  If you think you can have both at the same time, fine. Put your money where your mouth is and segregate the sexes in the combat sections military and measure performance.  If you are unwilling to do things like this, you are unwilling to have an peak-effective military, which means you are putting lives with risk.
I hope your twisted sense of fairness and political correctness is worth a bunch of young, dead male and female soldiers from now until the end of the United States.  Which will be coming sooner than most people think, precisely because of ridiculousness like this.  (Tell me again why we’re expecting pregnant women to accomplish physical military tasks?  Much less making male soldiers wear empathy bellies and fake tits?)
Oh well.  This is all irrelevant because soon our troops will not only be fighting stupid wars, but fighting them while wearing little dresses and talking about their feelings to a sensitivity counselor while in combat.  I’m sure that will be great for winning wars, stupid or otherwise.
The worst part is that most men refuse to fight this trend.
I’m going to go punch a light pole now.
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You got to be effing kidding me.
I am former military and this really pisses me off.
Also former military, and I will defend it. No reason a pregnant woman service member should get to skip out of PT completely, and also no reason they should be needlessly injured in the process because the PT leader does not understand either their capabilities or limitations. Neither of those two things would enhance the “peak military efficiency” you so worry about. Sounds more like common sense than “PC”.
I will also put your other fears at ease …. I’ve worked with many women in the Navy (and Air Force at a joint command) and can assure you that they contribute to the professionalism and effectiveness of the force. Your idea that they should be “completely separated” from the men in a “combat capacity” is unwarranted, impracticable, and unnecessary. Even defining what is or is not “combat capacity” in a modern military force would be nothing but arbitrary.
U.S. military is among the best and most professional in the world … I expect it to remain that way for as far as I can see. I do not agree with your “declinism”, either for the military or the US in general. I expect both to be around long after you and I are gone.
I’ll also note the experience of the IDF, which is a very elite and professional force … they have women even more tightly integrated and exposed to more direct combat roles. Given the existential threat the Israelis face, if it rendered their forces less effective they would not do it. Nobody is more hard-nosed about this stuff than they are.
As for “offensive language” on bombs … when you’re fighting a counterinsurgency war where the “hearts and minds” of the population are a key military objective …if a picture of something like that shows up on Al Jazeera … score one for the enemy. “Peak effectiveness” generally does not involve scoring the enemy his goals. Damn right they should get in trouble!
Also x-military here, but not US military, so I won’t attack or defend this practice in particular.
I wanted to note that I have served with women and did not see a difference in performance or professionalism. And +1 to Ken in reference to the IDF; I know a number of Israelis and they are nothing if not 100% focussed on combat efficiency.
Well…Ken you have a view so opposite to me on this, we could debate this back and forth forever. So Iâll respond to your points, agree to disagree, and call it day.
1. Women in the military who work in an office environment would not be what I consider a combat role. Iâm talking about women actually expected to do combat (vehicular or personal) at some point if a state of war/conflict exists.
2. Any woman in a combat role who gets pregnant should be immediately removed from that role for at least a year before she can even think about returning. Training should not be an issue…she simply should not be there at all. Women are perfectly able to refrain from getting pregnant if they want to remain in a combat role and be treated like a man. Some of the women in my life are in their late 20s or 30s, have fucked tons of guys, and never gotten pregnant because they were careful. It can be done.
3. I expect the American military and country to be around after you and I are gone also. I just donât expect them to be THE BEST like they are now. Most people donât realize that 500 years ago the world was ruled by…Portugal. Look at Portugal now. Yeah, technically theyâre still around, but… Thatâs what I expect to happen to the US someday. Decades down the road perhaps, but someday.
4. The military does not exist to win hearts and minds. Itâs there to kill people, blow shit up, and come back home when the job is done. Hearts and minds is the purview of diplomats and humanitarian organizations, not the military. Thatâs one of the most insane positions of the modern area in my view, and sadly this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the last three US presidents (as well as future Republicrat presidents Iâm sure).
5. I am not implying that women in the military are not as professional, dedicated, etc, than the men. Iâm saying that there is a physical difference between the sexes that must be acknowledged. I would love to see a female soldier carry a 75 pound flamethrower through the jungle for three days. Viet Nam vets (as just one example) were expected to do this. You think a mixed man/woman platoon would expect their female troops to do something like this? Thatâs my point. To say nothing of sexual / romantic shenanigans that are bound to happen and based on what Iâve read and personally seen, do. (Note: I have never served in the military so I’m sure you could speak to this better than I can, but I know what I’ve seen with friends and family in the military and I know the stats I’ve read.)
6. I agree with you that the Israelis do a lot right, including the fact they allow their first class airline travelers to use sharp, metal utensils instead of the using Nazi-like air travel conditions like here in America. However I donât expect the US to act like Israel at all. If America wanted to be like Israel, they would have done it long ago. They havenât and they wonât. Ever.
The best? The US stopped being the best in a lot of things long ago. Sure you guys have one of the largest and most expensive military forces (Check this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures ). But dunno if that makes it the best. I have also heard that the grunts of the US force tend to be not that bright and inventive in combat situations. But that is mostly because you have a large standing army, something most western nations do not have. As these tend to have only elite forces.
And looking in from the outsides, it also doesn’t look that professional, with the Abu Ghraib tortures, the secret prisons, redefining torture/combatants to get around the geneva conventions(*), numerous incidents with shooting of non combatants (as shown by wikileaks) etc. Mainly getting recruits from the lower income population. Until a while ago the homophobia. This article. Sure there are all valid military reasons for most of it. And for the military it is a us vs them world. As a civilian I never really thought of any of this as very professional.
I agree with Blackdragon on the military not being there to win hearts and minds. There should be separate divisions for that supported by the military. And when the US tries to win hearts and minds it kinda fails all the time (like in Afghanistan. Do like the dutch, go drink tea with the tribal chiefs :D)
I’m not trying to start a flame war or anything. But I have noticed that a lot of Americans are a little bit out of touch with how the rest of the world sees them. It is also totally not relevant to the rest of this blog đ
*: Of course this is something that has been going on forever. By all sides in wars. And most of this is all the fault of higher ups in the chain of command.
Soy … I said “among the best” … not “the best”. I’ve worked with foreign military that, though much smaller, I thought were much better at certain things. The fuck-ups you mention, Abu Graib and what not are very real but beside the point. Yes, those are much worse than writing something on the side of a missile, but that still doesn’t make the latter OK.
BTW … counterinsurgency warfare is very much about hearts and minds. It was the “blow shit up” mentality of certain generals that got us into deep shit after the fall of Baghdad and continued for years after. There is a certain phase of warfare where that attitude is appropriate, but it is almost always followed by a different phase where it is not. It is all part of the job, like it or not.
BD … what makes you think I am referring to office environments? But you can bet a pregnant woman is not going to be swimming ashore with the seals … military is not that stupid. That doesn’t mean she should skate out of PT, and that there shouldn’t be NCOs that know how to appropriately PT her.
Yes, put men and women together and there an unwarranted number of pregs … when I was on subs we used to call the tender the “love boat”. Some of those women use it as an excuse to obtain light duty and get out, because they’ve decided the military is not for them. On the flip side, I’ve seen plenty of men come to a similar conclusion and declare themselves gay … whether they were or not … to get out (obviously won’t work anymore!). Doesn’t change my overall point.
Nowhere did I say US should or will ever emulate Israel. I mention them only to illustrate the point that integration of women into modern combat forces does not necessarily lead to the dire results you predict. The analogy was limited to that narrow point only.
Ken I agree with the idea behind not writing shit on missiles. As a military strategy you do not want the other side to be able to label you as fanatics. You always want to look like the reasonable dudes fighting the fanatics.
I’m just not a big believer in that you should use the military for that. Any group of people mainly trained to ‘blow shit up’ is going to react in aggressive ways when faced with opposition. Of course my strategy for solving counterinsurgency problems is just, never get into a situation where you need to solve it. So I’m not offering very practical alternatives. A well, not my problem thankfully.
Right. But if you occupy foreign lands, you always have to be ready to conduct COIN type operations after you defeat standing army. We got pretty lucky with Germany/Japan 1945 in that we didn’t have to (could have gone differently, for example, if we had insisted Japanese emperor stand down), but wouldn’t consider that to be the normal expectation. Of course, you can say “never occupy a foreign land”, but that’s a political decision … military has to be prepared for all likely outcomes of operations that the pols direct.
>> 4. The military does not exist to win hearts and minds. Itâs there to kill people, blow shit up, and come back home when the job is done.
Blackdragon your ideas of warfare date back to WWII. In modern warfare friend/enemy is not so easily defined and the population often switches between the 2 categories. Sure you can kill everybody in the country, but what objective does that meet?
I highly recommend you watch the Afganistan war documentary ‘Restrepo’
It has the best portrayal of alpha masculinity I have ever seen. Moreover I believe it will help you realize the foley of your above statement
YES. I believe in a military that is only used when absolutely necessary, is used very quickly, and then returns home and is done. The alternative is what we have now: the Dick Cheney neocon empire where we have hundreds of bases and thousands of troops stationed all over the world forever, costing trillions of taxpayer dollars, pissing everyone off, and getting our soldiers needlessly killed. Even in WWII we stayed in Germany and Japan “forever”, which was/is a mistake in my view.
Americans make terrible Romans.
True, but that doesn’t change a thing I said.
Um, we didn’t do that in WWII.
Clean and decisive outcomes like WWII are more the exception than the rule. Even that wasn’t so clean … led to cold war face-off with the Soviets, set the stage for other wars like Korea, Vietnam, etc.
We tried “go home and forget about it approach” in WWI and it got us WWII.
But regardless … military must fight the wars the pols get them in to … they don’t get to choose. So if they’re forced to fight counter-insurgency, there are right ways and there are wrong ways, and it seems like we have to relearn that lesson at great expense every time around.
Highly recommend Thomas E Ricks books … “Fiasco” and “The Gamble” for some good perspective on this wrt Iraq.
There was already something seriously wrong beforehand, if the military was deploying pregnant women into combat.