Angry Planet - Sex and sensibility in the U.S. military

Episode Date: July 13, 2017

In 2013, the White House ordered the Pentagon to open combat roles to women and gave the military a three year deadline. As women take on more roles in the U.S. military, both on the frontlines and in leadership, the Pentagon must face an issue it’s long ignored – relations between men and women. Tailhook and the Marines United Scandal reveal a military culture that can be at odds with women and their roles alongside men. But the complications don’t end there. This week on War College, journalist Kevin Knodell walks us through the U.S. military’s general discomfort with talking about sex, according to female service members he spoke with. By Matthew Gault Produced by Bethel HabteSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' News. It's not uncommon to see Marine infantry or Army infantry cuddling when it's really cold out. What does that mean when men and women are serving together? and everybody's really cold and cuddles for warmth.

Is that a weird thing? Is that a normal thing? When you start throwing these things together and start throwing these dynamics together, that things can start getting a little confusing. And that's not necessarily wrong, but unless you're willing to talk about it, then we're going to start having problems. You're listening to Reuters War College,

a discussion of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Hello, and welcome to War College. I'm your host, Matthew Gull. Today, we're going to talk about sex in the American military. It's been in the news a lot lately, mostly centering around two threads. The first in 2013, the White House ended a long-standing ban on women in combat rules and gave the Pentagon until 2016 to open them up. But women have been in the American military for decades, and despite the ostensible ban, served on the front lines. But the going hasn't been easy. Women in

combat face outrageous numbers of both sexual assault and harassment. Earlier, they were this year, news broke of a scandal called the Marines United Scandal. It turns out male Marines gathered on social media to swap photos of their female counterparts. As fallout from the scandal widens, more than 30 Marines face court-martial. Here to help us navigate this subject is Kevin Nodell. Nodell is a contributing editor at Wars Boring and writes the Acts of Valor comic series for Naval History Magazine.

He has also freelanced for Vice McClechkey newspapers and was most recently published in Playboy magazine's July August issue. For the article, Kevin interviewed several service members about women in combat roles in navigating the complicated relationships between men and women in the military. The picture that emerges is of an institution wrestling with an identity crisis. Kevin, thank you so much for joining us. Glad to be here. Okay, so how did we get here? Has the military been a masculine environment for so long that there's no going back?

What's the history here? Well, I don't know if that's the case, but it certainly is a historically masculine environment. and warfare itself historically is thought of in those terms. And I don't think without reason, the infantry and combat arms in particular have pretty much exclusively been the domain of men throughout most of military history, with a few notable exceptions. But it is very much a man's world and has been for a long time. So is the new part of this just that women are gaining more prominent roles in the service itself?

Is that what's freaking guys out? Yeah, I think that would be a big part of it. And I think what you need to look at is sort of when things changed. A lot of that did have to do with women getting more prominent roles or moving into the male domain. What you had before is women were relegated mostly to roles as clerks, nurses. Of course, you had your occasional pilots. You had your wasps. You had Women's Army Corps.

had all kinds of other roles, but mostly they kind of stayed in their own little space, and the rest of the work was men doing manly stuff. In 1993, you saw the end of the pinups. Military decided that all nose arts, all aircraft art, was to be gender neutral at about that point, and that was largely to make sure that women felt as though they were included. So they kind of wanted to make things less sexually charged than that way. But the irony I think in that is that it assumes that women are afraid of sex and don't and aren't sexual beings themselves. One of the threads that's in your article is you're talking to these women's service members

and they're saying that, you know, they want a more sex positive vibe in the military. It's not just about sexual assault, but about maturity. Women have been in the American military for decades now, just as you said, you know, most famously, I think, the wasps of World War. two were women fighter pilots. And another thing is despite the fact that they've been opening, they've opened up combat roles to women

as of 2013. I think about this James Mattis quote, who's our Secretary of Defense, that you'd polled for your article. I'm just going to read it real quick. This is from his hearing when they were, when Congress was

putting him through his paces for confirmation. And they asked him about this. He says, I have no plans to oppose women serving in any aspect in our military. In 2003, I had hundreds of Marines who happened to be women serving in my 23,000 person Marine Division. This is 10 years before I retired. I put them right in the front lines just like everyone else. If someone brings me a problem, I'll look at it, but I'm not going to be looking for problems. And that says to me, and this is something that, you know, you and I and other people who talk to military professionals know have known for decades,

is that women have already been on the front lines, especially in these two, in these recent wars, right? Oh, especially for the post-9-11 generation. We've already seen women do outstandingly dangerous things, often attached to infantry units. And when you don't have a front line, you don't really get to choose what is combat and what is not. We saw women going on convoy operations regularly. Convoy operations are very dangerous. IEDs are still, I believe, the number one killer for U.S. troops overseas. You had women doing intelligence gathering. We've had women doing combat missions for well before the post-9-11 era. Yeah, women have already been doing very dangerous things, often working very closely within a long time before 2013. All right, then do you

think that most of the arguments against women in combat roles is more of a perception back-home problem and less of a, you know, real world actually on the front lines problem. Well, that one's complicated to answer because a lot of the concerns that they're bringing up are not imaginary concerns, which is a big thing that is a part of this article. The big problem, I think, is, or not necessarily problem, but the big challenge is sexual attraction, putting young men and women 18 to 26. who are professionally in peak physical condition together at a time when they're really exploring who they are is going to lead to some things that are a bit complicated.

So, okay, well, then that leads me to, I think, pretty neatly into my next question, which is one of the arguments against women in combat roles has long been that men can't handle themselves, that having women around will rile them up and cause readiness and morale to falter. You know, that's usually the line of people that are against this kind of. thing. And if you look at what you just said and you look at the Marines United scandal, isn't that kind of proof of that? I think it's proof that there's definitely a challenge, but I don't know, and certainly know the people who I talked to male or female, felt that that was proof that women are a disruptive influence and that they are the problem.

I think most everybody I talked to agreed that it was actually the Marines United folks who were causing the problem and doing something that was way wrong. But I think what's interesting also when we look at Marines United is that scandal came to light as a result of concerns by male Marines. It was when male Marines spoke out and male veterans. And Thomas Brennan, an infantry Marine veteran and Purple Heart recipients did an investigative piece that people really began to look at it. So I don't know that that's, that the women are really the problem there.

it's their presence or that their male counterparts can't interact with them professionally or look out for them. I don't know that that's really what we're seeing here. Then it's a lack of maturity on the male Marines and soldiers and semen is what you would argue or in what people you've talked to would argue. Yeah. Well, again, I have to stress immaturity on the part of a portion of them, some of them, and also immaturity on the part of some women as well. This isn't really an either or thing. There's a lot of dimensions to this. As with any of these issues, it's very complicated. Do you think then that if we're going to have these integrated, integrated units and we're going to have more and more women joining the military

and being in prominent places, both in leadership and combat roles, that it would, from a practical place serve the military's interest to have some sort of basic sexual education? That's definitely something that people I talk to, particularly Laura Wesley and Colonel Germano felt very strongly

we should be doing. And that is, I think, a big part of this. You have kids joining the military from all corners of the country and the world, and they have very different ideas and have very different upbringings that shape these ideas. So you've got kids moving in from the South who may have come from deeply conservative households

and they're going to be roommates with kids from L.A. who may have had very different upbringings and may have very different ideas about these things. Thank you for listening to War College. I am your host, Matthew Galt. We are on the line with Kevin Nodell. We are talking about his article in Playboy about the role of sex in the American military.

Kevin, just before the break, we were talking about some of the people you spoke with said that there needs to be better sexual education in the military. Did they talk about what they thought that that should look like? It should be part of basic training, should be, you know, just taught afterwards. What did they say? What were their thoughts on that? It was a variety of thoughts, and part of it is that the military hasn't had a great conversation about this. really broadly. So there's a lot of different schools of thoughts on how to approach this.

And I obviously think that's well above my pay grade to determine that. It would probably be something more of an ongoing education thing. It's not as though the military doesn't already shove down countless safety briefs about alcohol down people's throats, whether they pay attention or not is kind of on them. It seems as if right now any time anyone brings up sex in the military, it's pejorative, right? It's tied in with a negative. And is that part of the problem?

I think that that's a huge part of the problem. Though, as I said, it is a challenge. I think that this is a core part of the challenge that they're trying to deal with, is that particularly when we start putting these people together in combat units, people who work in combat units, and any unit really are very close to one or another.

military service is a very intimate experience. It's not like other jobs. You live with one another 24-7 as opposed to just going home at the end of the day. Some do if they are lucky enough to have off-based housing, but that's often not the case. So they can get uncomfortably close with their colleagues sometimes. In the field, and this is without women being in combat units, it's not uncommon to see marine infantry or army infantry cuddling when it's really cold out. What does that mean when men and women are serving together and everybody's really cold and

cuddles for warmth? Is that a weird thing? Is that a normal thing? What does it mean? When you start throwing these things together and start throwing these dynamics together that things can start getting a little confusing, and that's not necessarily wrong, but unless you're willing to talk about it, then we're going to start having problems. All right, let's switch gears a little bit. I want to talk a little bit more about the problems.

How many women did you interview for this article? That's an excellent question. I think that there are about three quoted, but I probably talked to about three times that. Yeah, mostly off the record with people. And what were their concerns? What were the kind of the through lines that you were repeatedly hearing, specifically from the women? Definitely one problem is just that the military is too afraid to talk about. about a lot of this stuff. And when it does talk about it, it often talks about it badly. There's been a major push as a result of many cases of sexual assaults and sexual harassment to improve training and improve resources for women who have been victims of such.

A big example of that is the SHARP program, the sexual harassment and assault response program. I believe that's the correct acronym. And that's the Army's version of this. All the services have their own version. I actually talked to some women. We were having drinks the night before they were going to go to their sharp briefing with their male co-workers and other female colleagues. And they kind of talked about how they always just felt like it was an awkward discussion to have their sharp brief. First and foremost, one of the things is that they always felt like it made them feel as though they were the reason everybody had to say. it down and have this safety brief, that it was the presence of women that made this necessary,

and if the women weren't there, they wouldn't have to worry about it. A lot of it is just talking about specifically rape and specifically anything bad that happens. I think the best comparison to it is that scene in mean girls where they give the sex ed talk. It's a lot like that, basically just saying, if you have a feeling, put it away. It's bad, and it'll hurt you. So just suppress all your thoughts, suppress all your feelings, and just don't talk about it because it's bad. And what were the women's criticisms beyond that? Did they have any suggestions for perhaps how this could be done better?

They just kind of wanted an acknowledgement that some of these feelings might be natural, that it's not something they need to be ashamed of. And even to tell their male coworkers that it's not that big of a deal, as long as as they don't act on it. It's the shame element, I think, that bothers them. And it just gets really weird for everybody. All right, Kevin. So other countries such as Norway and Canada are better integration than America, right?

Can you tell us a little bit about what their troops look like and why we think that they're doing better at this? Well, I mean, I think that Canada is particularly a good case to look at. because they've had full integration since, I believe, 1988, sometime in the 80s. And one of the things that's interesting about that and what strikes me about their case, first of all, I didn't know until this year that they had full integration. And interestingly, a lot of Canadians didn't realize that they were fully integrated until the war in Afghanistan. A lot of people in the public didn't, and even people in the military didn't, just because when they had done it, it wasn't.

such a big deal. Women who were allowed into these fields who could do the job and meet the standards were just admitted and just kind of showed up for work and did their thing. One thing to note, I think, about the Canadian military, though, is when we talk about them having full integration, is that women are still exceedingly rare in combat arms units in the Canadian military. I believe only two percent of infantry officers are women, and I think less than a percent of their enlisted infantry soldiers are women also. However, I think what that points to is simply by admitting the soldiers who want those jobs and can qualify for them, it has created significantly less drama.

I think that a big part of our problem is how politicized and hot button we've made this topic compared to the way that Canada seems to have seamlessly done this for years. All right. Well, we've been circling around what I think is one of the core issues here then, and we haven't really come out and said it. Is this an American cultural problem and less a military problem? Is that kind of the undercurrent here? I don't think it's a uniquely American problem. It definitely is something that affects militaries around the world. It's not as though, as I said, Canada has done very well, but it's not as though they haven't had issues of their own. During the Afghan war, the continuing Afghan war, female soldiers who did have infantry jobs occasionally complained that they weren't always allowed closer to the front lines, even if their job called for it. Sometimes they felt. as though commanders held them in reserve when they could have done the job. So I don't think that this is entirely uniquely American, but there are, it is something that

does affect military readiness. If you're not ready to deal with this, then it will affect team dynamics. But we have seen before and seen in Afghanistan that women also bring benefits to a team, as has been talked about on this podcast before. They can help with intelligence gathering. They bring different perspectives to leadership. So this wasn't in the article, but it was somebody who I did talk to. It was a male platoon sergeant who had served in Iraq and had served with women doing convoy operations.

He described these issues of men and women working together as a challenge but not a problem, And that by overcoming these challenges, there are definitely things that he saw that women brought to the table that ultimately benefited the team. Can you tell us what he said some of those things were? A lot of it's not tangible. For him, it was just saying that they brought a different perspective to leadership that men might not have. Having a feminine perspective on leadership isn't necessarily bad. It's been a criticism, I think, before in some of these military circles that women may be more cautious than men and might not be willing to take the risks in combat. But if everybody is just a man and everybody feels that taking risks is a good idea, then we're just engaging in group things.

So having somebody who might have a more cautious mindset at the table might not be a bad thing. All right, I've got one last question for you, Kevin. The women that you talked to, were they hopeful? Were they excited about this? How did they feel like this was going to be tackled long term? I would say that a lot of them are pretty worried. I think that, and this is a big part of the integration discussion, and I think this is one of the big problems.

I think that people who are against integrating women into combat arms have been unafraid to talk about how this is an issue, whereas advocates have, I think, just sort of willfully ignored this aspect of leadership and this aspect of an integrated force and just been wanted to avoid it. I think because on some level it was to avoid offending women. I think on some level it was, it's scary to acknowledge that men, and women might be different on some level. It doesn't mean that they can't contribute, but to acknowledge that they're different can be, I think, scary for some of these advocates, but they're not really doing these women a favor by ignoring these issues while putting them into these

environments. Kevin Nodale, thank you so much. His article on women in the military and sex in the military specifically. It's titled Zero Dark Dirty, and it's in the July, August issue of Playbill. Thank you so much for coming on War College. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to this week's show. War College was created by Jason Fields and Craig Hecht. Matthew Galt hosts the show and Rangles the Guest. It's produced by me, Bethel Hobday.

A friendly reminder to rate and review our show on iTunes if you haven't already. It very much helps other people find the show. Thanks for listening.