Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Women on submarines.......??


You think that women ought to be serving on submarines? The Navy's decided it's cool......What are your thoughts?

41 comments:

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
(((Thought Criminal))) said...

::groan::

MathewK said...

Women have been serving in Australia's Navy for quite a while now without any problems from what i can tell. So long as they can do the job just as well as their male counterparts, i don't think it's a big deal.

We don't allow them on the front lines though.

Anonymous said...

Z honey, a suggestion for a title change has been submitted on the proper form!!! LOL!!!

HAM

Brooke said...

Really? It's not as if space is exactly abundant on a sub, which will make separate barracks nearly impossible.

It might not be right to 'discriminate,' but in reality there are just some things that don't work.

I agree with Beamish. GROAN.

***LOL, HAM!***

Right Truth said...

Recipe for disaster. You will see more pregnancies, those women will have to be removed from the sub because they will not be able to do their jobs, they may get discharged (which might be something some of them wanted in the first place). Who knows.

It is one thing to have men and women serving in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where their jobs and sleeping arrangements are separated. But there is NO separation on a sub.

Debbie
Right Truth
http://www.righttruth.typepad.com

WomanHonorThyself said...

sorry..against this strongly..sigh

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

I was groaning at the first comment.

Last time I was in San Diego I toured a sub (the USS Kansas City) and I gotta say, if inducing claustrophobia is your thing, sub life is for you. I know I wouldn't be able to stand it. It's not like you can pop outside for fresh air, or even a smoke. And living in 20 cubic feet of space with five other people regardless of what sex they are is not exactly a selling point either.

Submariners are a special breed.
Did you know submarine sailors are trained to tread water for as long as the rest of their lifes?

Z said...

But, the title was so innocently written!
:-)

I'm taking it off, I expected a jab or two but not quite the Anonymous comment (tho it had some cute points!), which IS coming off....
So, those of you who wonder what some of the commenters mean....sorry, see what happens if you don't get to geeeeZ early enough (heh heh)?

Z said...

I'm hoping Elbro has time to comment, I know he's REALLY busy these days...(by the way, he thought my title was pretty darned clever :-)
He told me last night that submarines are so tight that seamen (wait, will they have to refer to them as seaPEOPLE now? Ugh) have to take turns sleeping on what I believe he said were called RACKS.

This is another priggish comment by your friend Z, but it almost feels like we're defeminizing women as fast as we can in America....man, if ANYTHING reduces them to "just another body", this is it.

MK...I think submarine duty's very very different than just serving in the navy, don't you?

Anonymous said...

My uncle was a submariner during WWII and I honestly have been amazed that he came out of the service "sane". Modern submarines aren't nearly as tight of quarters as they were back then. Imagine going deep enough to avoid enemy depth charges and listening to the ship creak and goan and smelling fumes for as long as it takes to escape the enemy.

Those were truly the days that tried men's courage and mental health I believe. My uncle always said that it was God and prayer that got him through it.

HAM

Z said...

HAM and Beamish, I've had MRIs on the head, which I'm sure others here have had, too...thirty minutes in those tight quarters took about 294798234987234897 "the Lord is my shepherds" to get ME through! Especially in France, where they just shove you in and give you a "button de Panique" in case you flip out..which I NEVER DID, which was a minor miracle since I tend to get claustrophobia even in bad traffic!

I'd last about 3 minutes as the sub was going under and be yelling GET ME OUT OF HERE!

Ham, your uncle and his comrades were amazing people...absolutely AMAZING.
Let's face it, we'd be glad "fumes" were ALL we were smelling when you consider how close a sub is :-)

Anonymous said...

It would spoil yet another good Navy joke.

Anonymous said...

You'd have to call them subamarinettes. Either that sea cows, because this idea has been dreamt up by limp-wristed social engineers who are obviously full of bull.

The worry over seamen spilling semen in tight quarters is risible, however, because the great majority of these sea cows will undoubtedly be descended form The Daughters of Bilitis.

Whatever conflicts arise are bound to come from one set of legitimate antlers being challenged by antlers that exist only in the realm of wishful thinking.

~ FreeThinke

JINGOIST said...

Bad idea. I was on surface combatants for the better part of 5years, and we had enough trouble dealing with a few out of control gay guys. One of them worked for me, he was a VERY nice guy, but a real flamer. He had trouble because he blatantly stared at the guys in the showers. I had to keep some of them from float-testing his dumb ass in the North Atlantic!

It caused TROUBLE!

Put two-sided attractions all over a sub and watch that trouble get multiplied by 10. Families ashore would be broken apart by the busload! The busted families would destroy morale.

Bad idea !!!

Z said...

Jingo, thanks for that input...
MOST gays probably mind their own business but there are always those who spoil it for them. And for the straight guys.
Let's face it, with "don't ask, don't tell", people probably didn't have to ask too often.

If we just started erring on the thoughtful, OBVIOUS side like we used to in America, we'd all be better off.

I had the same feeling you did about busting up homes, etc. The very idea of men and women away from home in such tight quarters seems so unhealthy and ridiculous it's hard to believe Gates is for this...or anybody else.

JINGOIST said...

Allow me to clarify my last statement by saying that not all of the gay guys I knew on my two ships were out of control queens.
At least three of them were VERY professional, courteous, and thoughtful about the "shower situation." I knew who they were because my wife and I had two roomates sharing the rent who hung out with them.

IOW, they weren't "meat gazers."

The Navy bathrooms on board a destroyer are cramped as hell, so you'd like to trust that the other guys just want to shower and move out.

Look, it is what it is...

JINGOIST said...

Z you wrote:

"If we just started erring on the thoughtful, OBVIOUS side like we used to in America, we'd all be better off.

I had the same feeling you did about busting up homes, etc. The very idea of men and women away from home in such tight quarters seems so unhealthy and ridiculous."

You're absolutely right! The military is NO place for this sort of social experimentation.

What's the purpose of the military? To kill people and break and/or incinerate their stuff!

Does going co-ed on subs and surface combatants further that goal?

Hell no!

Z said...

Jingo, you say "What's the purpose of the military? To kill people and break and/or incinerate their stuff!

Does going co-ed on subs and surface combatants further that goal?"

EXCELLENT point..and something that's apparently lost in our PC world.

Re; gays, I absolutely believe you're right..as I said earlier, only a few ruin it for many, sadly....as was mentioned either here or on another post, nutty gays are no more predominant or nutty than any other group but people tend to pile it on when gays are acting badly.

There just can't BE a good reason to have women on subs...
But, I'm so old fashioned, I don't believe they should be deployed, either. So shoot me. :0)

Anonymous said...

This is just another example of out of control political correctness.

It seems to me, especially in the military, there's one important question: "Is this going to improve our effort towards the success of our mission"?

Not to mention how much it would cost to retrofit submarines just so they can say "see, we include women. Well, whoop de doo!

The military should be the one place that doesn't yield to pc. This is just another stupid cave to the "feel good" idiots who wouldn't know a submarine from a rowboat.

Pris

Trekkie4Ever said...

I firmly believe that it is a recipe for disaster. Women and men who are NOT married should not be living in such close quarters.

The Navy subs are sometimes out at sea for months and months, it's just not wise. Not to mention women need privacy for personal reasons.

The Vegas Art Guy said...

Man I am not sure about this...

Z said...

I've been thinking...if our American armed services could CONSIDER Mirandizing a terrorist enemy, this shouldn't be QUITE such a shock.

Where the HECK is America anymore?
I think of the old black/white war films and how patriotic those people were, how they'd go through anything to help their comrades win for America......how kids jumped into the waters of France seeing German guns aimed at them and their friends dying in front of them! I know they didn't have much choice, but man, my commanding officer would have had to pry my fingers from the side of the boat to get me to swim!

I've been to Normandy twice and it's rows and rows of crosses and Stars of David...all kids who died too young in service to their country. Did they die to :

-find our soldiers giving rights to our enemies?
-deny a gay man his right to show his love of country by fighting, too?
-have to push 1 for English?
-know their grandchildren would be utterly indoctrinated by their teachers to hate capitalism and embrace socialism?
-know that kids would get better schooling at home than in American public schools?
-think that their great grandchildren would be going into such debt they'd never recover?
-think that illegals would get more percs than citizens of this country?


we could all go on and I'm sorry I got on this tangent, but...this was such a great country and there are FAR FAR FAR FAR more pressing and impressive mistakes we're making, things we've got to fix, that I shouldn't be railing like this about my post subject, but this stupid women in subs is such a dumb idea to me that you've got to imagine that would be on the above list, too!?

thanks for your patience :-)

JINGOIST said...

It's called "inducing the hazard" isn't it Leticia?

Z said...

Jingo, they'll be 'inducing' BIRTHS 9 months after this nightmare goes into effect :-)

christian soldier said...

You think that women ought to be serving on submarines?...

NO!---
C-CS

JINGOIST said...

Great rant Z! Sorry to oversimplify, but as you know, America has been under internal attack since the mid to late 60's.
We had our own "Cultural Revolution", but without killing 55million peasants.

Ironically, many of the leaders of this American "Cultural Revolution" were followers of the evil Chairman Mao.

Anonymous said...

PART ONE

The America of the libertarian Founders has been under attack since we let Abraham Lincoln get away with what he did -- but let's not argue that right now. Lincoln has been enshrined in our thoughts as a secular saint, and attacking him isn't considered "cool." Nevertheless, Lincoln was one of the great Mass Murderers in history as 635K killed, and countless millions maimed, widowed, orphaned, impoverished and rendered homeless will attest. And certainly he was America's first dictator.

Anyway, the Industrial Revolution did a lot to screw up the vision of the Founders who lived in an agrarian society and could not foresee the evil side effects of the Machine Age -- dark satanic mills, seven-day work weeks, 12-hour workdays, the company store, children chained to machines, workers locked in burning sweatshops in lower Manhattan, unsafe working conditions everywhere, wretched housing, coolie wages, etc.

Teddy Roosevelt, an early "Progressive," usurped a lot of dictatorial power not sanctioned by the constitution, but he got away with it, because he was popular, and because most of what he did served good purposes, but that was the beginning of the political thinking that believes and acts on the notion that "the ends justify the means."

Then came Woodrow Wilson -- another "Progressive" usurper -- who hoodwinked us into getting involved in WWI and whose disastrous post-war policies made it possible -- almost inevitable -- for Hitler to rise to power in Deutschland. Wilson also gave us the Income Tax and The Federal Reserve both of which greatly expanded the strength and scope of Centralized Power in ways the Founders would have abhorred. Wilson's accursed League of Nations gave us the overt birth of the Internationalist Movement. This ultimately led to Nuremberg and the establishment of the UN Charter -- a document conceived and written by avowed Marxists -- that has all but eaten our guts out today. We've never won a war since WWII, because we stupidly signed an agreement we regard as binding that effectively forbids us to prosecute a war with TRIUMPH as our goal

So, our freedoms, our rights, and our fundamental founding principles been eroded away by the machinations of "Progressives" (i.e. Marxists, Communists, Socialists, Liberals -- whatever) for well over a hundred years. (continued)

~ FreeThinke

Anonymous said...

PART TWO

Most sensible conservatives know that ALL the various "rights" and "liberation" movements have taken legitimate grievances and twisted them around to suit a ruthless agenda that seeks elimination of the middle class, the destruction of Christianity, the destruction of any right to individual property ownership, the destruction of any honest view of our history, the complete disrespect for traditional values and mores, etc.

All of this leads inevitably to absolute, dictatorial control of our lives by power-mad, hate-driven leftists.

I imagine you and most others here would be astonished at the vast number of gay and bisexual men who have served this country honorably and very bravely in every war we've ever fought. Before leftist intellectual aggression took over our universities -- back in the 1920's and 30's -- no one ever dreamt of asking or telling.

I believe the Gay Liberation Movement is no such thing. Like everything else that comes from the Left it is one of a large number of seditious, quasi-legitimate, pseudo-benevolent efforts that covers an agenda seeking to disrupt, confuse, cripple, defame and ultimately destroy every element of our society.

One you get Prancing Pansies having Pride Parades and vociferously demanding and the SUING for their "rights" to go into battle wearing wearing pink tutus, lipstick and earrings as well as the "right" to ogle whomever they please -- and they WILL -- mark my words -- there won't be anything left of the US Military.

That said, I've never known any guy who wasn't curious about the relative size and strength of other guys' pee-pees. - FINIS

~ FreeThinke

Z said...

FT, thank you for these comments...
As you know, I have often said that GAY LIBERATION has set back gays in this country 100 years. For every 'pansy', as you put it, there are many Brookes Brothers-suited gay stock brokers, and soldiers for that matter, who live dignified lives.

You make such sense in all you say...thanks very much.

Anonymous said...

Not being American, my understanding of American history isn't as complete as it should be. But interesting that you call Abraham Lincoln an American dictator, FT. Would you say that was an inner drive within the man, or that circumstances into which he was thrust being the American President led him to act in that manner. All governments and leaders assume greater power in times of war. And Lincoln faced a civil war.

Some have said that he knew within himself (or had received some forewarning) that he would be killed in office. Was his assassination the work of a single individual, Booth, or were others involved? I'd lean toward the latter — but I'm always looking for more enlightenment. Anyway he did pay the ultimate price — the first of several Presidential assassinations before WW I and Woodrow Wilson.

Waylon

Anonymous said...

Speaking of Lincoln — how weird is this? Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of Abraham Lincoln and some odd twists of history and fate ... a witness to history, I guess.

http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/presidents_and_first_ladies/89601

I draw no conclusions from this, except that it's stranger than fiction.

Waylon

Anonymous said...

Lincoln CREATED the Civil War -- FORCED it into being. He was one of our first ACTIVISTS -- after the Founding Fathers, of course.


Odd how the the Republican Party started out as a party of ACTIVIST REFORM. It was the "Progressive" party early one, and the D'Rats were the conservatives.

My my my how times change identities!

I'm anti-interventionist, anti-busybody, and above all anti any form of SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS.

We should all tend to out OWN knitting and leave others the hell alone.


~ FreeThinke

Z said...

FT..is that a mixed metaphor? (smile)

Anonymous said...

No, no, & NO!!! Sorry, I know I'm very proudly politically incorrect, but good sense (if there's any left) says this is not a good idea. There's no room for an ob/gyn clinic. Of course, Ellen Degeneres would be o.k., along with Rosie.

Anonymous said...

OOOPS! Forgot to sign that last Anon. 'Ellen'
Mea culpa!

Ellen

Z said...

Ellen, good point...Apparently, women BECOME men in these situations or nobody'd be even remotely considering this stupid idea, huh?! :-)

Anonymous said...

You know, Z, I think it is certainly an imperfect sentence.

Maybe what I should have said was "we should all tend to our own knitting and let others drop as many stitches as they will, and unravel and then redo their imperfect work till they learn to get it right."

But doesn't that sound awkward and a bit silly?

Probably should have left knitting out of it altogether, since I don't know a thing about it.

I just want people to learn how to mind their own business and stop trying to control others -- except when parenting or teaching, of course.

~ FreeThinke.

Z said...

FT...you sound offended. My remark was, I guess, a feeble attempt at a 'clever' joke...Yes, your paragraph is awkward and a bit silly...you needn't have taken my remark quite so to heart.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps "Don't ask, don't tell," should be changed to Don't look; don't touch?

There's something hopelessly adolescent -- foolishly insecure really -- in people who are preoccupied with non-issues of this sort.

If merely being looked at is enough to set you off, there's something seriously wrong with your psyche. It's part of the culture of gaining POWER by claiming to be "OFFENDED."

Guys are always elbowing each other and making lewd cracks while they're ogling tits and ass, and they think that's just fine and dandy. Some girls don't like it anymore than these self-styled he-men like being admired by faggots.

ALL this stuff is horse manure. GET OVER IT, GROW UP, and obsess on something that might improve your mind.

Z said...

"Anon"..you think guys laughing about women's T&A is on a par with guys not wanting OTHER guys to ogle THEM while they're naked in a shower?! REALLY?