Need to be able to have a conversation about women in the infantry

Secretary of Defense-designee Pete Hegseth has opened up a needed conversation about women in the infantry and ground combat positions (not other positions) that needs to take place. Before, the official narrative from on high was that women can do anything a man can do, end of story.

Except now we all know that’s not true. The vast majority of Americans don’t approve of men-who-think-they-are-women competing in women’s sports. Why? Because men’s bodies are physically different than women’s bodies and will beat women in sports every time. A guy ranked #400th among men suddenly ranks #1 among women when he tells the world he’s now a woman.

The Left still can’t have honest hard conversations about this but what about everyone else? Is it okay to at least discuss it without immediately getting shut down?

SECDEF Austin has been asked about this and disingenuously spins what Hegseth says into ALL women in the military and how great they are. Hegseth wasn’t talking about all women, he was saying women in infantry ground combat positions.

Gen. Milley was interviewed and said,

“Don’t lecture me about women in combat. Women have been in combat and it doesn’t matter if that 7.62 hits you in the chest, no one gives a sh*t if it’s a woman or guy who pulled the trigger. If you meet the standards, our military must be and always should be a standard-based merit-based military, period, full stop. Doesn’t matter if you are white, black, a man, a woman, Catholic, Protestant . What matters are standards, readiness standards. Do you meet the standard or not. If yes, pass go, collect 200, join the infantry.

🚨Mark “White Rage” Milley really wants your daughters to fight in military combat:

“Don’t lecture me about women in combat. Women have been in combat and it doesn’t matter if that 762 hits you in the chest, no one gives a sh*t if it’s a woman or guy who pulled the trigger. If… pic.twitter.com/0er9zlqa9B

— Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) November 22, 2024

To which the angry commenters on X were screaming, that’s the whole point: the standards WERE lowered for women in the infantry, again and again in order to meet the imposed quota and justify the on-high narrative that women can do anything a man can do.

Maybe (to be gracious) up in the high-levels of the Pentagon, he didn’t see or know what was happening but the boots on the ground did.

Here is recemt thread on X (6 MILLION views) of examples from someone who is/was in the military, probably Army and maybe even West Point because he often mentions service academies (there is no bio in his profile):

Here’s a thread of anecdotes about women in the military. A peek at the actual dynamics behind the “go girl” propaganda. Enjoy.

1. It’s common for Generals to cultivate harems of female staff. Often one becomes “court mistress” and blocks out other staff she doesn’t like.

— 𝐏𝐚𝐮𝐥𝐨𝐬 (@myth_pilot) November 14, 2024

Full Text

Here’s a thread of anecdotes about women in the military. A peek at the actual dynamics behind the “go girl” propaganda. Enjoy.

1. It’s common for Generals to cultivate harems of female staff. Often one becomes “court mistress” and blocks out other staff she doesn’t like.

2. Female commanders commonly become overwhelmed by routine stressful situations. I have had buddies who had to yell at their female bosses to give orders because they went catatonic at breaking down a TOC in a rainstorm.

3. Females breaking down crying on training ruck marches in good conditions. This is common.

4. Females crying when bullets start flying and having to be literally kicked repeatedly to get out from behind cover and advance.

5. Females getting special treatment for basically everything. Preferential admission for schools and training, females being hand-held through Ranger School, females being prioritized for career advancement in order to satisfy diversity targets.

6. If a female gets pregnant, she can avoid deployment. During GWOT there were thousands of women who avoided combat deployment in this way, while their units went on to multi-year extended tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was absolutely endemic.

7. Women destroy toughness and cohesion. First, they can’t perform, so it’s impossible to hold a standard. You can’t haze them. And you can’t haze the men because young guys don’t like being hazed in front of women. Impossible to create a strict relationship environment.

8. On deployment women are (surprise) a constant source of indiscipline. They are always getting mixed up with men and alcohol (even if disallowed). Prostitution rings are not uncommon, often being pimped by a minority NCO.

9. Females have recourse to a whole body of discipline meant to police sexual assaults, but it’s often abused. A common situation at the service academies is for a female to be involved in a consensual relationship, but if caught having sex (which is not allowed on post) she will claim she was being assaulted to escape punishment. Many men have had their lives essentially ruined by their girlfriends in this manner.

10. One unit that I was in had the entire chain of command relived because they had ALL slept with one E4 who had been a stripper before she enlisted. Entire chain from BN CDR on down just one-shotted before they even got to combat.

11. Females in female-heavy units like medical support often start whisper campaigns against bosses they don’t like, filing spurious SHARP complaints in an effort to get their boss fired.

12. This is a fun little one. Female soldiers are notorious for sneaking out the protective plates in their armored vests so they weigh less.

13. Females often abuse the medical system to obtain “profiles” that excuse them from running or marching. One female at one of the service academies was notorious for running competitively every track season, then wearing an orthopedic boot EVERY summer training season.

14. The presence of females in the military has to be supported by endless rounds of training. A lot of time is wasted for this. Many of the trainings bring in civilian diversity consultants which is about what you’d expect. Grad students lecturing to an auditorium of soldiers about toxic masculinity. A waste of time and completely insulting.

15. To summarize:
1. Women can’t perform to the required physical standards, compromising performance
2. Women introduce relational problems that compromise discipline, that can never be solved
3. Women are prioritized for better treatment, which destroys cohesion
Women do not belong in the military.

There’s also a larger point to be made. This feminist boosterism rose to the level of strategic significance. We were in Afghanistan for explicitly feminist goals (educate the little girls) and American female soldiers were essentially supposed to be the template that the new Afghan female would look up to. There was a program that embedded women with SF units that was supposed to accomplish this goal. They were supposed to be like Marvel heroes to inspire afghan girls. We saw how that worked out. The afghan army folded and we pulled out in defeat. In retrospect we can see how the supposed success of Obama era girl power integration really led these people to believe they could reshape Afghanistan at will. I hope the tawdry realities of women in combat shared in this thread give you some insight into just how fake that vision always really was, and how inevitable its failure would be.

Bonus Round stories from friends:

16. “The FET (Female Engagement Team) attached to my platoon once wandered off during a patrol, because their E5 NCOIC fancied herself just the same as a maneuver unit, I noticed but it was too late they were inside some house of the village elder, he freaks out and starts yelling because we’d broken social decorum, patrol ends with all their men throwing rocks at us. Miracle this didn’t end up going a different way.”

17. “You could always tell which unit was deploying at JBLM because in the morning you’d see a bunch of females with the same PT belts with their unit written on them doing “pregnant PT” around the airfield.” (ie units that were about to deploy were easily identifiable because the women in those units would get pregnant all at the same time)

Another commenter: I was at JBLM, can 110% confirm this

18: FET teams nothing but trouble, compromise security: “I’ve got a story. I’m ripping out with the replacement platoon. My guys have already gone back to KAF ready to go home. I stick around and go on patrols for 5 days with the incoming platoon. First day I’m showing them how we do a TCP at one of the afghan police outposts, stopping and searching civilian vehicles. This new platoon had a FET team attached to them, and in the middle of the check point, fully exposed, 3 of the 4 NCOs, instead of monitoring their brand new scared privates on the perimeter, spent the entire op gathered around and flirting with the “cute” FET team. All eyes inward in a little half circle gaggle.”

20. Women getting special UCMJ treatment: “Here’s my women in the military story. When I was a CPT I PCS’d to a new duty station and was immediately put in charge of a female Puerto Rican LTC in my specialty, which is extremely unusual given that she outranked me by two ranks. It turns out this was due to the fact that she popped hot for cocaine during a UA. She was not kicked out, but did have to submit to weekly UA’s for a year. She made it to week 50 and popped hot again. She still wasn’t kicked out.”

21. Female pilot in the Navy experiences a minor accident, claims trauma, command acquiesces to her demands of special treatment:

“Your thread on women in the military hit the nail on the head. While most people can get behind women performing poorly in combat infantry roles, it’s not just limited to these highly physical jobs.

Choose to believe me or not, but here’s my personal anecdote: I am in a navy squadron that flies non-carrier based aircraft. Missions are routine and benign, think 8 hours of sitting in a circle just looking at stuff, nothing dynamic or anywhere close to intense in the ways of aircraft handling.

Our squadron had an aircraft mishap, and I don’t want to go into too much detail for anonymity reasons, but everyone was completely ok and sustained no lasting injuries, but the plane was declared a loss. The pilots were male. The flight officer, in the cabin of the aircraft, was female.

They were all medically evaluated. The men were cleared to return to flying. The female (again, not a pilot) was cleared to fly but went on to claim she was completely traumatized and could only fly under certain conditions. While on an arduous deployment, she demanded that she only fly with certain pilots she “trusted,” only on very easy mission sets, nothing overnight (think 9PM-5AM, so she was on banker’s hours), and she refused to sit her job as the mission commander on the aircraft unless she had a senior O4 in the aircraft with her to help her out. For context, a mission commander is the person trusted with making all tactical and safety related decisions in the aircraft, which she was qualified to do, but refused to now do without someone holding her hand. Additionally, she was an instructor, but refused to teach as she was so scared to be in the aircraft herself.

Instead of taking her mission commander or instructor qualifications away, the squadron chose to acquiesce to all her demands. Why did she even want to stay flying? Because she had a very good job lined up at her follow on tour that required her to be in a flying status, but the nature of the job meant she could get away with not flying and only running simulator events.

The majority of the junior officers in the squadron petitioned the command to strip her of her qualifications as she was not only wasting limited personnel resources to keep her flying, but she was a horrible example for the new pilots and flight officers entering the squadron, that someone this fucked up and useless can just get what they want because if they don’t they’ll just raise a stink.

She spent the last 3 months on a difficult and undermanned deployment doing nothing- living out of a hotel and going on liberty every day as she couldn’t be put on the flight schedule and her ground job was too stressful.

Anyways, just a personal story for you. It’s not even the question of whether women experience trauma and freeze up in the moment; it’s the fact that they use it as an excuse to go forwards and continue to get what they want and be a burden to their squadron mates.”

23: The reality behind behind the first “female Marine infantry.” Alcohol issues, routinely excused from duty, failing to meet standards. The Marine Corps made a museum exhibit dedicated to these women:

“Your thread on women in the military is incredible. I was on Camp Lejeune and my unit was one of the first to begin integrating women. One was habitually pregnant and moved to a regiment office job. The other two never completed a full field op. One would consistently heat case on ranges, the other spent the majority of the work up on light duty. Watched one skip a 2 week field op because she was missing a toe nail. Neither one was ever considered capable of leading, and yet were promoted to Corporal ahead of the men. Even the Lance Corporals that were filling in as squad leaders (typically a Sergeant billet.) We also had one come to us from the West Coast on her first contract. Had big alcohol problems and got herself moved from coast to coast on her first contract. Insane tbh. Anyway, she was supposed to be a big deal as the first female infantryman, has a whole exhibit to herself at the USMC museum. They gave her a NAM on her way out for just being a corporal in a corporals billet. Meanwhile I again had male E3’s holding E5 billets that couldn’t even get a letter of appreciation. Complete clown show. One of those other females also got the entire mortar section infected with chlamydia. After I got out they began integrating females into the command. Female LT dropped out of a battalion hike. Female 1stSgt would skip entire field ops. Morale is so incredibly low with females in a unit.

24: Further detail on female strategies to avoid duty. It’s common for females in the military to get pregnant to avoid deployment. Some then go on to abort the baby. They are not ordered back to deployment once no longer pregnant.

Some other comments to this thread:

“Everything in this thread is real. I’ve seen some of the situations listed unfold with my own eyes, and I’ve heard from Marines regarding situations involving females in other units absolutely getting preferential treatment.”

“In OCS had a unit with females, not one of them could complete an actual morning run. All of them fell out before the run ended. So that didn’t happen, the runs just became walks.”

“When I was in the Air Force I saw 90% of this stuff. They have ruined multiple workplaces I was in with drama.”

“I can attest to all of these issues during my time in the Army during GWOT.”

“A family member was in the room/chain of command at the Pentagon for both the women in combat and trans eligibility decisions and noted that they were entirely political decisions. No one thought it was a good idea.”

“As a female, I absolutely agree with your post. Women are not built for combat.”

“All true. I’ve seen much of this personally.”

“How about the first female CSM of an army division. 101st ABN DIV. She was an MP. 1st time ever a non infantryman was the DIV CSM. Goes to range 1st week. Can’t shoot. Physically doesn’t know how to fire an M4. Complete shit show. Gets promoted to CSM of military district of Washington. Gets caught fucking a Major.”

“You may not like it but these are the truths about women in the military. On a deployment Had a female LT ( I was a CPT) try to get me into bed with her, knowing I was married. She had just been punished for fucking an NCO in her Platoon. Many such cases.”

“My leg is permanently fucked because of a female E6. We took contact while escorting a food convoy (so all cooks) and during the firefight, we had to cross the road and enter a building for cover. As me and our last man were crossing the road, a sniper shot at the doorway that she was supposed to be holding suppressing fire from. She got scared and closed the door, cutting off our safety. I kicked it open and off it’s hinges (lol for what little hinges there was on those doors, to be fair) at full speed, which knocked her on her ass as she was right behind the door. She got butthurt and tried starting and argument DURING A FIREFIGHT about rank and how I was in the wrong. When we got back she tried to push papers on me for disrespecting leadership blah blah. In the end she was reprimanded for a slew of things and stripped of rank for her actions. We also had a female colonel who joined our support brigade that decided she wanted to make a name for herself by being the first female colonel to go outside the wire. Welp, she made a big deal of it and got the convoy targeted and three of our men killed, four permanently disabled, and two of our trucks destroyed. Of course it wasn’t her truck, she was fine. Still got medals for the horrific thing she wasn’t hit by. Females in combat is NEVER a good idea and I say this with experience. This doesn’t even get into the morale/sexual issues that come with females being on teams creating love triangles, jealousy, and sexual entanglement that break down troop readiness. Any argument for American female troops in combat is ignorant and woke.”

“I detect no lies. I’ve seen exactly the same examples & especially in females w/ rank, many with something to prove. When shit hits the fan, we are different. Women have roles in the military that are strategic & important. However, NOT in gunfights & not on a combat team.”

“I deployed 2x to Iraq, and one chick got caught getting a train ran on her by 5 marines, one got pregnant in country, 2 all but moved in with their senior enlisted and this is just the ones I remember easily. Absolutely useless for anything but stress relief, and causing stress.”

“I recall back when I was on CINCLANTFLT/SACLANT staff they were talking about extending women, who at that time were not allowed by law in combat, into certain combat-related positions. One of the studies they looked at was done by the IDF, who initially had integrated women into their combat rolls but ended up removing them. One major reason for the pullback was that the men focused more on protecting the women than they did on the mission, which hurt combat efficiency.”

“I have sooooooooooooooooo many stories about why females should not be soldiers. In almost a decade of service I only met TWO female soldiers that both knew their jobs and performed to standard. The rest were complete shitbags.”

“As a woman who was in the military, officer, pilot, I have to agree. Although I didn’t interact much with enlisted, I did see shit from women in Basic that I knew would go with them wherever they went. It’s a man’s world. They are best at it.”

“When I was at 30th AG (reception battalion before basic training) one guy used his shirt to wipe some sweat off his face and a nearby girl accused him of flashing his abs as a form of sexual harassment. He was kicked out before he even got to start basic training.”

“Made worse by the psychological instinct factor…Male soldiers will instinctively go to help a fallen female soldier before a fallen male soldier on the battlefield. It creates a very dangerous liability for everyone!”

“I wasn’t a ranger, but I was infantry. We had female engagement teams attached to us a handful of times, and it never went well. Minus the triggering of IED’s, I’ve personally witnessed them do everything you mentioned and more.”

“My daughter was in combat three times. She performed exceptionally well. She despised most of her female peers, and does not believe women should be in combat units.”

“This thread demands attention because it means we are being systematically lied to, either by: 1) soldiers, airmen, and marines (often ex-, no longer subject to disciplinary action) or 2) social theorists. It would be worth putting in a little effort to know which side is lying.”

“I always ask “what do you do when a female soldier becomes pregnant?”. She is immediately non-deployable and on profile. You have lost her for 10-12 months. Now, make her a gunner or tank cdr. Make her a platoon ldr, XO, or CO of a company. They have to be replaced. Then we can talk about physical characteristics. Was the average female going to pull my 185 pound body out of a burning vehicle?”

“It is real world questions that have to be asked and everyone is afraid to address it. Combat arms is in the business of closing with and destroying the enemy and you have be well trained and a cohesive unit. It ain’t Hollywood.”

“The Israelis ended up putting women into limited combat positions, but one thing they demanded of any woman in a combat role was that she be able to meet the same physical standards as the men. No exceptions.”

“Unfortunately it’s pretty common, at least from the time period I was there. Let alone all the prostitution rings with females not making it through customs because they had hundreds of thousands in cash… it’s insane the things that the average citizen isn’t aware of when it comes to deployment.”

“Every Ranger who has been out on a combat mission with a Female Engagement Team, Cultural Support Team, or other female attachment has a story to tell about what it’s really like with these supposedly “elite” women in combat. They quit on the objective, couldn’t carry their rucksack to the exfil site, defied orders and triggered a daisy-chain IED that caused a mass casualty event (true story), and so on.Talk to anyone who has had to actually endure these utterly ridiculous social experiments in combat. It’s exactly what you’d imagine and worse.”

“I drove rescue boats in the CG. In order to qualify as crewman you had to pass a series of assessments. Most women couldn’t pass them. The solution? Lower the standards. I refused to helm a boat with a crew member who couldn’t pass the original.
I was forced out.”

“During nic at nite females were crying as tracer rounds went 15 yards over there head, they froze up, nobody could crawl further until they moved, I had to crawl over them and was scared of a SHARP complaint in the near future smh”

“Im a former Recon Doc and ill just say BIG OL FUCKING FACTS! 2 out of every 10 are physically capable…..and it changes absolutely nothing. Still fucked everything up.On any deployment of 6mo+ length or more, they will be sleeping with a couple guys, or the whole team. Fact!”

“All of that is enough reason and more, plus seeing women dying next to you on the battlefield and hearing them scream is absolutely awful for morale. The list goes on and on for why it’s a poor idea. Total gender equality is such a terrible idea.”

“It seems there’s been a misunderstanding. The goal isn’t to make a better stronger military with strong warriors. The goal has been to sissify the military in a manner to reflect a sissified nation. With that knowledge you might see the effectiveness of what has been occurring within the ranks.”

“Even setting aside competency or willingness to do the job, there’s a moral perverseness to putting women in killing roles.”

“I agree and could tell some stories as well. I’ve met once of the first female rangers and she complained constantly and she wasn’t in an infantry unit. Her leadership skills consisted of yelling at troops if they didn’t listen to her confusing and contradicting instructions. She complained enough to leadership to get transferred out to Bragg, she hadn’t even completed a year on assignment. She must have threatened some sexual harassment charges because move orders don’t happen in days when a request is suggested by anyone in her position. She’s in the 75th now and God help those Rangers, my buddies from group tell me they hate her just as much as the troops did at her last duty station. Waste of a good patch is a direct quote. As so if they had this woman as one of the first, just imagine what they are pushing through the course now. Sad to see who is now “Leading the Way”.”

“I was the first sergeant of the garrison company at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. My company included a platoon of engineers. All males until we got a female Private First Class assigned. Cute young blonde, and she was an Engineer straight from training.

Over the next several months the platoon leader and platoon sergeant were in my office telling me that they had to break up fist fights in the platoon as various young male engineers dated or were trying to attract her attention. Turns out she was a fickle young woman. They asked me to reassign her to a different position in the company. Under the regulations, I couldn’t because she was required to work in her assigned military occupational specialty (MOS).

I attempted to counsel this young lady several times. Didn’t do any good. Had an outstanding senior female NCO counsel her. Didn’t do any good. She was happy with all the attention she was getting from all those young male soldiers. This went on for months.

Finally, I told the company commander that I was recommending that we ignore regulations and get her out of that platoon. So we assigned her to a new “duty position” as the “assistant supply clerk for Engineer Operations” in my Supply Room. I threatened my Supply Sergeant with great violence if I found out that he was screwing her. Being a smart young sergeant, he understood that I was serious and ignored her attempts to . . . compromise him.

Another quick story. I was the first sergeant of an Airborne Anti-Tank Company during Desert Storm. I had a transportation platoon attached to my company since we didn’t have organic transportation sufficient to carry the infantry platoons that were attached to us. The truck drivers came from a National Guard unit. And the drivers were female troops.

During the build up prior to the invasion of Iraq, a couple of those female drivers became wealthy. I started hearing the rumor that “if the truck was rockin, don’t come knockin’. ” The company commander and I started chewing asses left and right. Luckily for us, we soon invaded Iraq and other considerations commanded our attention.

I have served with some unfukinbelievable great female soldiers, NCOs, and officers. All staff. I do not want female soldiers in a combat unit. I don’t want lone female soldiers assigned to otherwise all male platoons.

Command Sergeant Major Ronnie Strahan (https://ncolcoe.army.mil/About-Us/Hall-of-Honor/CSM-Ronnie-Strahan/) once told me: “Women and men in foxholes ain’t a good idea. Being together leads to lovin’. Lovin’ leads to fuckin’. Fuckin’ leads to trouble in the ranks.”

Couldn’t be more clear than that. Soldiers are not office or factory workers. It is a different life that requires different customs, norms, and rules. It’s just that simple.”

___
Etc, etc, etc, too many comment examples to list them all. We’ll leave with these comments:

“Women should not be in active combat for the same reasons males should not be allowed in women’s sports.”

“What I’ve learned from X today: woman don’t belong in combat. Men don’t belong in women’s bathrooms. Do I have that right?”

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Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services

Upcoming DACOWITS Meeting Dates
Dec. 10-11,2024 (AUSA)
Mar. 18-19, 2024 (TBD)
June 24-25, 2024 (TBD)
Sep. 9-10, 2024 (TBD)
Dec. 9-10, 2024 (TBD)