There has been 30 years of sustained bludgeoning of the warrior culture that used to be the thing that attracted young men to the military according to investigative journalist Stephanie Gutmann, who recently gave a talk on “The Kinder, Gentler Military” for the American Freedom Alliance’s “War on Men” conference.
She is the author of “The Kinder, Gentler Military: How Political Correctness Affects Our Ability to Win War” published in March 2000.
Reviews of the book:
“Gutmann…tours boot camps and aircraft carriers; haunts the hearing rooms of the military’s gender advisory boards; and talks to soldiers, sailors and airmen (male and female)….and she raises questions that demand to be answered. [She] has written a highly charged polemic that rips through public relations cant like a tank breaking telephone poles…Still, Gutmann is no extremist in these matters. She offers a set of policy recommendations — one of which would be to eliminate sexual recruitment quotas — that would keep the armed forces open to any and all who meet the necessary high standards. ….Since the latest phase of the integration of women began, the armed forces have not had to fight a long, tough war against a strong foe……If such a war comes and the gentler military does not do well, Gutmann’s hard-headed book will have provided an early-warning signal.” — New York Times, March 24, 2000
“When the Marines dropped their famous slogan, “We’re looking for a few good men,” and replaced it with “The few, the proud, the Marines,” they weren’t just eliminating a worn-out ad campaign–they were pursuing a controversial social agenda. “The nineties were a decade in which the brass handed over their soldiers to social planners in love with an unworkable (and in many senses undesirable) vision of a politically correct utopia, one in which men and women toil side by side, equally good at the same tasks, interchangeable, and, of course, utterly undistracted by sexual interest,” writes journalist Stephanie Gutmann. The Kinder, Gentler Military–an expanded version of a cover story Gutmann wrote for The New Republic–is a devastating critique of the military’s sex-integration efforts. She reports of women “allowed to come into basic training at dramatically lower fitness levels and then to climb lower walls, throw shorter distances, and carry lighter packs when they got there.” This has led to problems in the field: during the Gulf War, says Gutmann, “men in many units took over tearing down tents or loading boxes because most of the women simply couldn’t or wouldn’t do these chores as fast.” Liberals will accuse Gutmann of hostility to feminism, but her strong blend of reporting and analysis overcomes that charge by describing the frustrations of women who want to contribute to the military’s old-fashioned warrior culture, not its newfangled Peace Corps mentality. The Pentagon doesn’t want you to read The Kinder, Gentler Military; that’s all the more reason why you should.” –John J. Miller
“Stephanie Gutmann’s new book, The Kinder, Gentler Military, debunks the received wisdom [that resistance to raising the proportion of women in the military is inherently sexist] through first-rate reporting on the reality of the contemporary military. There is, as it turns out, a simple reason why academic studies and official commissions cannot get at the truth in this area: in the wake of the 1991 Tailhook scandal, which ended the careers of many navy officers who were found to have been insufficiently vigilant in rooting out sexual harassment, the military has become one of the most politically correct of all American institutions.” — Francis Fukuyama, author The End of History and the Last Man, Commentary, February 2000
Another talk from the same conference: Dr. Bradley Thayer gives the keynote address, titled, “Why Communists Wage War on Men, Women, and Children.”
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