End of the Patriarchy by Falk Gerhard;

Author:Falk, Gerhard;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4189556
Publisher: UPA

Chapter Five

Women in the Military

I

Anyone who joins the American military will inevitably face a severe “culture shock.” This means that all those assumptions an American citizen expects to encounter every day are absent from the military. This refers to the rights and freedoms which American citizens expect because they are enshrined in the constitution and assumed to exist without further question.

The military treat enlisted women and men in a manner not far from the treatment endured by federal prisoners. Like prisoners, military personnel cannot quit their job at will. If enlisted for three years, the women and men in the military have to stay there as long as the enlistment continues. Soldiers also face a hierarchy so segmented and rigid that the new recruit enters a world reminiscent of Prussia in the nineteenth century. Soldiers are expected to salute every time they happen to walk past an officer. Unlike the dictum that “all men are created equal,” the military teach that all men and women are unequal. And that the lowest ranking soldiers, called “privates,” have about the same standing as erstwhile plantation slaves.

The military is close to being a large prison. The normal constitutional guarantees included in the first ten amendments do not apply to the military, which has its own code of military justice, a most brutal means of suppressing all initiative or possible dissent.

An example of this king of suppression is reported by Gutmann. She observed how some young male recruits ran competition although told by their drill sergeant to run in a circle until he returned. This “initiative” was immediately stopped by a female drill sergeant, who could not tolerate even this mild expression of initiative.1

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press do not exist in the U.S. armed forces. Instead, all soldiers must conform to the opinion of their “superiors.” These “superiors” are all non-commissioned and commissioned officers who have absolute power over those whose rank is beneath them.

How can those deprived of all freedom and rights be expected to fight and possibly die for a freedom they do not possess? This antiquated means of conducting our defenses dates from the days of 18th century Prussian methods introduced by Count von Steuben during the Revolutionary War but not efficient today. Women recruits into the armed forces are faced with these conditions.

There are slightly more than 214,000 female service women in the U.S. armed forces. These women account for no more than 15% of the armed forces of the United States. Because they are such a small minority, women have the advantage of being highly desirable amidst so many sex starved men. Yet, the same one sided sex ratio also includes the hazard of sexual assault, which has been the source of a major complaint on the part of female soldiers.2

Sexual assault is common in the armed forces. According to a most recent report, an estimated 26,000 instances of sexual assault took place in the military in one year, despite the publicity given these crimes and despite the condemnation of such conduct by President Obama.

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