Secretary Cohen Implicitly Confirms that Gender Integration Conflicts with Good Military Order, Discipline and Readiness
(Washington, D.C.): Secretary of Defense William Cohen got a little-bit-pregnant
yesterday.
He accepted part of the recommendations of his hand-picked Commission on Sexual
Integration
in the Military headed by former Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker.
Air Force, Army and Navy to add physical barriers in dormitories used by new recruits so as to
minimize the chances for distracting contacts between the sexes during basic training.
In so doing, however, he undercut the rationale for what is — whether he denies it or not — a
“politically correct” rejection of more far-reaching proposals advanced by both the Kassebaum
Baker commission and the House of Representatives. More importantly, he has
shredded
whatever logic underpinned the proposition that sexual integration is only a problem
in
boot camp.
Chemistry 101
The fact is that obliging men and women to sleep in close proximity, whether in basic training
dormitories or subsequently in tents, barracks or ships, creates opportunities for fraternization that
have a ruinous effect on the good order and discipline the military requires to perform its mission.
Pregnancies, disruptive jealousies, double standards masquerading as “gender norming,” adultery
and destruction of the families of service personnel — to say nothing of sexual abuse and rape —
are only part of the problem. Even more worrisome from a national security point of
view is
the prospect that armed forces wracked with such behavior are unlikely to be able to fight
as cohesive units should they be called upon to do so.
This is not rocket science. It does not even require a Ph.D. in physiology, which Rep. Roscoe
Bartlett (R-MD), one of the most courageous opponents of sexual integration in the military, has
earned. All it takes is common sense: Put men and women together in intimate
circumstances for any length of time and it is simply human nature that their performance
at their assigned tasks will be complicated, if not significantly degraded, by other
distractions and considerations. Were national security interests to be compromised as
a result,
the price for capitulating to what Elaine Donnelly calls “fem fear” in the
from today’s Washington Times would be very high, indeed.
Take It From the Rocket Scientists
As it happens, though, even rocket scientists — or at least astronauts — can comprehend the
dangers inherent in such capitulation. According to a Reuters news item published in yesterday’s
Washington Times, NASA is now confronting the implications of sexual integration
as it
considers staffing for long-term space-flight missions like the international space station and a
flight to Mars. Reuters reports that “Norm Thagard, the first
astronaut to fly on Mir in 1995
thinks it best not to mix sexes on such a mission….’I would be in favor of single-sex
crews
simply because sexual competition in an isolated environment can result in serious
problems.'” An experienced Russian cosmonaut, Musa Manarov agreed. Manarov
“spent a
total of a year and a half on Mir,” and “compar[ed] a member of the opposite sex on board to a
loaded gun in the home. ‘It’s like a weapon that could misfire….If you don’t have the weapon at
all, it just won’t go off. It’s worse [without women], but we’ll be free of various surprises.'”
The Bottom Line
As evidence of the hollowing out of the U.S. military continues to mount,
whether it is possible both to accommodate the demands imposed by “fem fear” and to
meet the needs of the Nation’s security. If not, the former should be sacrificed before the
latter. A good place to start would be by separating the sexes throughout basic
training, not
just at night.
– 30 –
1. This is progress over his initial reaction which was largely to
stiff-arm the Commission’s
findings. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Stopping
Gender-Integrated Training Should
Be Only the Beginning of the End of Social Experimentation in the Military (
16 December 1997).
2. See three previous Center’s Decision Briefs in
the “Clinton Legacy Watch” series: # 22:
More Evidence of a Hollow Military (No. 98-D 62,
7 April 1998), # 17: Dangers of a ‘Hollow
Military’ (No. 98-D 23, 5 February 1998) and
# 2: The Re-Emergence of a Hollow U.S.
Military (No. 97-D 105, 25 July 1997).
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