Posted on 04/01/2018 6:34:11 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Hard to get past the first couple of paragraphs.
“Hungry, hurting and smelly, they struggle to straighten one another’s uniforms, squaring their shoulders. To a person, they’re bawling. It’s gorgeous.”
“There’s no crying in baseball!”
Why Did the Marine Corps Fire Kate Germano? It’s Complicated.
BY: Aaron MacLean July 13, 2015
http://freebeacon.com/blog/why-did-the-marines-corps-fire-kate-germano-its-complicated/
No one seems to know what to make of the case of Lieutenant Colonel Kate Germano, who was the commanding officer of a female recruit training battalion at Parris Island until last month, when she was fired.
Though the New York Times wrote up the story today, in an amusingly slanted piece (more below) the best and most thorough report on the affair ran last week in the Marine Corps Times. Here’s the gist:
A Marine officer who led the service’s only all-female recruit battalion was fired amid complaints of a toxic leadership environment — but her supporters say she was only trying to make the unit better by holding women to tougher standards.
Lt. Col. Kate Germano, the former commanding officer of 4th Recruit Training Battalion at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina, was found to be “hostile, unprofessional and abusive,” according to a command investigation obtained by Marine Corps Times. She was relieved for cause on June 30 by Brig. Gen. Terry Williams, Parris Island’s commanding general.
Reading this, one might form the impression that Germano, however well-intentioned, was yet another officer relieved of duty for being abrasive—indeed, “hostile” and “abusive”—to those around her, and ultimately tiresome to her boss, with whom she had engaged in a series of bureaucratic dogfights regarding staffing levels, and against whom she reportedly filed an Equal Opportunity complaint.
But read on, and the plot thickens. Germano’s crusade had apparently been to eliminate disparities between male and female recruit performance at Parris Island, within reason. For example, there was a gap between male and female performance on the rifle range, for which there seemed to be no explanation other than low expectations. All, including the men who fired her, concede that she made major progress in fixing this. And there’s more. According to a command investigation obtained by the Marine Corps Times‘ Hope Hodge Seck, “Germano also ‘reinforced gender bias and stereotypes’ in the minds of her Marines by telling them on several occasions that male Marines would not take orders from them and would see them as inferior if they could not meet men’s physical standards, the investigation found.”
What does one make of that? On the one hand, advocates for women in the military should be pleased that there is an aggressive leader out there who refuses to accept low standards. On the other hand, apparently her drive for raising standards upset the female Marines who worked for her, and who then trashed her in a command climate survey. Germano’s supporters point out that it is possible to take the online survey more than once, and argue that a “vocal minority” of Marines working for Germano were able to undermine her leadership.
But wait, there’s more!
Allegations that Germano took a “victim-blaming” approach to sexual assault prevention stem from a January brief to officers. Witnesses said she implied that sexual assault is “100 percent preventable” and that “by drinking, you are putting yourself in a position to be sexually assaulted.” One attendee said she would not feel comfortable reporting an assault following the brief because she felt it would not be taken seriously.
The investigation found that Germano’s personal viewpoints on the issue of sexual assault revealed no malice or bad intent. But, the investigating officer found, her poor choice of words and focus on accountability left room for misinterpretation and left some Marines feeling less safe.
This case has prompted some discussion about whether or not Germano’s aggressiveness would be criticized if it were coming from a male officer. Maybe. But one thing I know for a fact is that no male Marine officer, absent some sort of career death wish, would ever utter the words Germano reportedly did regarding sexual assault. Suggesting that female Marines could exercise some agency in matters of sexual assault rather than be helpless victims provided her enemies at Parris Island with a mile-wide advantage.
Also relevant to the story, though not reported anywhere else that I have seen, is that Germano served on the Board of Inquiry for a Marine officer who was accused and, in 2013, acquitted by a court-martial of sexual assault while teaching at the Naval Academy. Though acquitted of the more serious charge, the officer, Major Mark Thompson, was found guilty of lesser charges, including conduct unbecoming. He was processed for discharge from the Marine Corps—until the administrative board with authority over the manner, of which Germano was a member, refused to comply, citing insufficient evidence that any crime had occurred, despite the outcome of the court-martial. (I taught at the Naval Academy at the time, and know Thompson.) The board’s decision cannot have endeared Germano to the Marine Corps’ senior leaders.
Publications on both the left and right have been trying to appropriate this complicated tale into supporting evidence for their own ideological campaigns. The New York Times write up today is uncomplicatedly pro-Germano, and presents her as a crusader for women’s integration, kneecapped by a sexist Marine Corps. It takes a swing at the fact that Marine Corps recruit training is segregated by gender, quoting the ever-present Greg Jacobs of the Service Women’s Action Network saying that such a system is “archaic.” Feel free to read about what gender integrated recruit training in the Army can look like, and then judge for yourself what the Marine Corps ought to do.
But the Times faces a problem. How can Germano be a warrior for women’s rights and social justice in the military if she holds such offensive and retrograde opinions on sexual assault, as the investigation into her conduct argues? No worries: the Times has a solution. It just doesn’t mention this part of the story at all.
So why was Germano fired? Was she too much of a progressive crusader? Or too conservative in her blunt opinions, especially about sexual assault? This story is more complicated than a simple morality play wherein sexist bosses grow tired of an abrasive female subordinate. It appears that Germano’s aggressiveness, not to say her political incorrectness, made her vulnerable to female subordinates who didn’t care for her style, and who then campaigned for Germano’s removal on the grounds that she insulted them over poor physical performance, and made them feel “less safe.” Germano’s bosses, already exasperated by her refusal to shut up and color on a wide array of issues, no doubt felt they were doing the Right Thing by relieving her.
Germano’s sin seems to be that she was pursuing actual respect for—and self-respect by—women in the Marine Corps, and not the fictitious appearance of equality that both her bosses, and some of her subordinates, appear to prefer.
You can ignore the facts and try all day long, but a Camry isn’t going to make it on a rocky Jeep trail.
http://freebeacon.com/blog/why-did-the-marines-corps-fire-kate-germano-its-complicated/
The sole purpose of the military, irrespective of the Branch of Military Service, is to kill people and break things!
ANY action taken that degrades the ability of ANY Branch to do so endangers OUR COUNTRY AND EACH AN EVERY ONE OF US!
Women in the combat arms and women in combat ships and aircraft endangers all of us and detracts FRom our Military’s ability to kill people and break things!
Keep in mind the people who make these asinine decisions to “socially engineer” the Military DO NOT HAVE TO SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTIONS! INDEED, THEY ARE FAR REMOVED FROM THE FRONT LINES AND HAVE NO IDEA OF THE DAMAGE THEY HAVE CAUSED AND ARE CAUSING TO OUR MILITARY!
Why, you ask, do they not know?
How many Generals or Admirals or folks who want to be a General or an Admiral are willing to put their career on the line by opposing these tone deaf, unknowing, unaccountable, agenda driven politicians who had no practical or real military experience?
Spurned politicians ARE SORE LOSERS!
Just ask those military folks who came into contact with former Congresswoman Patsy Schroeder and the DACOWITS CROWD in the 1990s!
Actually she was fired for NOT going along with the lower standards for women
and for being “mean” to some of the women recruits.
Her superiors fired her for NOT going along with the Obama/Roy Mabus “special standards for women” military.
Detailed article here:
Future Locker Room? d;^)
But seriously, seems like the lady was trying to be a dose of reality in a pool of delusion. The "delusionaries" don't like that. Anything but that nasty 'ol truth stuff.
It's hypocritical to allow a women's professional basketball league and a women's PGA and it's hypocritical to allow women's collegiate basketball teams, etc.
Men are for shooting rifles
Women are for having kids
Guns up.
That’s not true. Man y women have boxed with Floyd Mayweather. Not willingly, but they have boxed...
My argument was not aimed at Lieutenant Colonel Germano - it was aimed at the FReaking politicians and REMFs who make decisions that put women into combat roles in the first place.
I read both the NYT and Aaron Maclean’s article. Maclean, a former Marine, makes more sense than the NYT boob.
Col. Germano was attempting to follow her orders: “A good Marine goes where he (she, in this case) is ordered and does the best job he/she can.”
She probably had some rough edges and was not sympatico with her boss and the Social Justice Warriors; she was trying to turn out “combat ready” Marine WOMEN, an impossible task, IMHO, and one that should NEVER have been attempted.
Absent the combat requirement, there is no reason to strive for “equality of outcome” between the men and women in Marine boot camp. Women and men would be trained for different roles in the Corps, and Col. Germano would have taken a different approach to her command.
As would any sentient officer!
LOL!
A leathery Marine Gunner (Warrant Officer) was overheard saying, just before his class (we called them “Dante Podge” classes) in how to behave around women and minorities convened that “Outta the rack, they are out of their rate!”
It took the instructors about 15 minutes to gain control of the class!
“The sole purpose of the military, irrespective of the Branch of Military Service, is to kill people and break things!”
Isn’t that like saying: “The sole purpose of firearms, irrespective of type, is to kill people and break things!”?
The Israelis do have a choice. It’s true they initially used women in combat, but found the experience problematic. For decades there were no females in front line units, but in recent years feminists in the Knesset pushed for change. The IDF has been slow to change but politicians are forcing their hand.
Ha, I think you have dated yourself. We called them BAMs when I was in (6Jan1959-31Dec1962). Most of them where.
Semper Fi
Do or Die
IDF Admits Problems with Women in Combat
Surprise, surprise: female combat soldiers suffer injuries during training at twice the rate of males.
30/07/15
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/198853
After at least 15 years of hyping the idea of women in combat units, the IDF is admitting that women suffer injuries at a much higher rate than men during combat training – despite the fact that training requirements for women in combat are considerably less demanding than for men.
According to a report in the IDF’s Bamahane magazine, a large scale study was conducted among female combat soldiers in the Karakal infantry unit, the Artillery Corps and the Field Intelligence Corps, between the years 2012-13.
The study indicated that a full 46% of the female soldiers suffered injuries during their initial period of training, as opposed to 25% among the men. One third of the women in the study were injured more than once.
The injuries included torn ligaments, sprains, knee pain, back pain and stress fractures. The latter were much more common in women, afflicting only 2% of men but 8% of the women. “Most stress fractures appear in weeks 4-6 of the training period, and mainly in the field and warfare weeks,” an officer explained to Bamahane.
“The bone density of female combat soldiers is lower than that of men, and that is why they suffer more injuries,” said the officer. “The fat percentage in women is 70% to 100% greater than men’s and that is why they are slower than them, and consume more energy during activity. At the same time, their muscle density is 33% less than the men’s and their ability to carry weights is lower.”
The study found that the injury rate for female soldiers in Karakal is 40%, and in the Artillery Corps it reaches a whopping 70%. Knee pain among female combat soldiers is three times more common than among males, and tears in knee ligaments are also more common in women.
Women drop out of the combat track for medical reasons at rates that are 2 to 5 times those of men’s.
Despite all this evidence, the IDF is making an effort to combat physiological nature and reduce women’s injury rates. This is being done because of a recent decision to double the number of women in combat, in order to try and make up for the shortage in men, whose period of service has been rather inexplicably shortened, from 36 months to just 32.
Starting in November of 2015, therefore, every female combat soldier will undergo medical examinations and blood tests before she enlists, rather than afterward. How this will reduce injury rates is not clear from the report.
The IDF will also change the training exercises and diet to “fit” them to women. Presumably, training for women will be made even less demanding than it is now.
Obvious you didn’t finish the article. The man was a woman.
“The bone density of female combat soldiers is lower than that of men, and that is why they suffer more injuries,” said the officer. “The fat percentage in women is 70% to 100% greater than men’s and that is why they are slower than them, and consume more energy during activity. At the same time, their muscle density is 33% less than the men’s and their ability to carry weights is lower.”
30/07/15
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/198853
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.