Gender Integration - Is It Worth It?

Here's two stories about the disruptive presence of women on navy warships, the USS  Cowpens and the HMS Portland.

The USS Cowpens:

An ill Navy skipper allegedly shirked his duties by holing up in his cabin on a San Diego-based cruiser for weeks on end — effectively leaving his crew leaderless.

Capt. Gregory W. Gombert was also having an inappropriate relationship with the warship's acting executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Destiny Savage, according to a recent Navy investigation.

The "unduly familiar" relationship disturbed much of the USS Cowpens' 330-member crew, authorities said.

The results of the investigation, which were reported in U-T San Diego, show that Gombert's ailments should not have prevented him from leading the ship from early January until March.

"The violations revealed by the investigation, especially the blatant abdication of command responsibility on the part of the (commanding officer), are among the most egregious I have encountered in my 32-year career," wrote Vice Adm. Tom Copeman, who is in charge of the Navy's Pacific surface ships.

The HMS Portland:

The first female commander of a Royal Navy warship has been sent home after allegedly having an affair with another officer.

Commander Sarah West, 42, took charge of the frigate HMS Portland in May 2012, but has been sent home from duty after claims she was having a relationship with a male officer on the same ship.

This would breach the Armed Forces’ Code of Social Conduct, which prohibits personnel from having relationships with subordinates if they compromise ‘operational effectiveness’.

While the Royal Navy is investigating the affair, Cdr West, from Grimsby, Lincolnshire, retains her position as commander of HMS Portland.

It is not known whether the male officer is married.

Cdr West recently described herself as ‘single’, having been married to a former Royal Navy pilot in 1998. The pair later separated.

A Royal Navy spokesman said last night: ‘We are aware of an allegation of a breach of the Code of Social Conduct on board HMS Portland, which we are treating seriously.

‘Anyone who is found to fall short of the Royal Navy’s high standards can expect to face appropriate action. It would be inappropriate to comment further.’

Earlier this year, Cdr West said work commitments had got in the way of her love life.

She said in a newspaper interview: ‘I’m really proud to be the first woman but I’m not reinventing the wheel. Lots of women in the services have challenging roles. It’s just that I happen to be newsworthy at the moment.

Sure, it takes two to tango, I am fully and completely cognizant of that. After forty years in law enforcement I realize that people misbehave all the time. But this comment by an alleged female naval officer (Cassidy, A.) drives me nuts:

Women have served on naval ships officially since 1978. We are approaching 40 years of women in the sea services – there is not a person serving on active duty today who remembers a time when women were not on ships. Women on ships are not sirens out to get the left-behind wives’ well-meaning men (see my previous description of my daily appearance). We’re there to work and serve the public according to a deeply felt personal calling.

That said, yes, there are the anecdotes of ill-behaved adults on ships, but adults act badly in doctors’ offices, high rise buildings, teachers’ lounges and other workplaces, too.

A warship is not a doctor's office or a dentist's office or a school. I could care less if the dentist is diddling his hygienist, or if a doctor is banging the receptionist or if the school principal is humping the home economics teacher.

Why don't I care? Because none of these people are entrusted with national security. The lives of scores, perhaps hundreds of personnel are not in the balance if they are distracted by emotional issues prompted by unprofessional attachments.

I don't care if a receptionist is in a pissy mood because she'll never have to participate in the landing of a F/A-18 with bingo fuel on a heaving deck.

A hygienist will never be tasked with concentrating on a sonar return (is that a whale fart or a Russian ballistic sub oh I wanna kill that cheating sonamabitch).

A dentist won't be standing watch looking for small craft packed with explosives in an unfriendly port.

A school principal won't be guiding a tactical operation to land a squad of SEALs off the coast of a hostile nation.

Men will be men; a lot of young men make foolish decisions and a lot of guys are just selfish idiots. They can find enough trouble all on their lonesome without throwing females into the mix. Gender integration is nothing but a surrender to feminist (lesbian) demands to acknowledge their false claims that woman are just the same as men. They're not.

And let's touch on the subject of military pregnancies. It's a real problem.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Just over ten percent of women in the military said in 2008 they'd had an unintended pregnancy in the last year - a figure significantly higher than rates in the general public, according to a new study.

The findings come amid news that the Pentagon will lift the ban on women in front-line combat jobs starting in 2016.

"It does definitely have implications for troop readiness, ability to deploy (and) troops in combat missions if they are potentially at high risk for unintended pregnancy and pregnant women can't be deployed," said Dr. Vinita Goyal, who has studied unintended pregnancy in female veterans at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

[...]The rate of unintended pregnancy - 105 for every 1,000 women - was a small increase over the rate in 2005 of 97 per 1,000 servicewomen. That figure is also 50 percent higher than rates of unintended pregnancy among similarly aged women in the general, non-military public. [Emphasis mine ~ sig94]

"Clearly unintended pregnancy is an important public health problem for everyone. It seems particularly important for the military population because obviously it can disrupt a woman's career," Grossman said.

And this really drives me up a wall. This idiot Goyal is more concerned about the implications of an unintended pregnancy on a woman's career rather than the combat readiness of our nation's armed forces.

I got a career enhancing solution for ya - keep your knees together!