Diversity Thursday

As someone who has supported women fully serving in all places they are physically qualified to do so since the 1980s, the latest developments on women in the service have been sad to watch. 

We have moved beyond a fact-based system of opportunity, in to a minstrel show of feminist theory and socio-political agenda pushing. It is insulting to the outstanding women serving today, attempts to deny their natural femininity, and promotes the political over the intellectual.

Here's a little I&W on what is happening next.

I'm not going to Fisk this for you - I want you to take the effort to Easter Egg hunt all on your own.

Here's what we have to start - new terms.

Of course we need new terms, as they help hide what we are actually talking about; a wholesale adoption of what is most kindly described as low-grade, 2nd tier undergrad gender-studies sociological theory. But, I'm doing your job for you.

Take some time and learn your updated newspeak, words and phrases like "Enriched culture" and "richness of solutions."

Evidently we do not have a rich culture if we don't have an artificially managed quota system for women. We all know how such systems are managed and metrics gained - quotas and discrimination against unprotected classes.

Then again, as we move through the Jenner-Dolezal era where evidently you can self-identify as any sex/gender ethnic group you want, maybe this will be easier to manage with just a few keystrokes.

That wouldn't work for the usual rent seeking, victimhood pimping, and grievance mongering cadres, they will always move goals and methods in order to secure their jobs and support their political masters' agendas.

Fleet Synch - Sailor of 2025 - Final by CDR Salamander

The "science" behind this socio-polical movement is so weak, lame and illogical, that it makes otherwise smart and mature people speak and produce such tortured prose as if they have had a stroke.

Here, sadly, is the the VCNO, who is starting to behave in a manner that only validates her critics. Behold!

"We celebrate the idea that women and men should share the burden of citizenship on the battlefield as well as have equal rights to vote, to run for public office, to shape the direction and laws of our countries. We are afforded the opportunity to make our visions happen and our voices heard with matched enthusiasm. We are granted uniform expectations. Equality and civic engagement are germane to our role and entitlement as citizens.

However, equality and gender integration are areas where numbers and percentages matter. Sheer numbers of women can mean all the difference between a culture of acceptance or an environment of prejudice. The magnitude and impact of what you can "make happen" becomes mightily constrained if your voice is lost because it is the sole feminine sound in the office, in the government or in leadership.

Once you attain a certain size of cohort, you reach a point where challenges diminish. Some refer to this threshold of presence as critical mass. Once you reach this level, issues like tokenism and stereotypes, that are filters for communication and understanding, start to fall away. There are enough women to build shared and common experiences with men. Both sexes become accustomed to working as a team and equally depending upon each other. Our natural contexts make significant differences in how women can contribute to security in their communities or defense. What remains constant is that women are capable of greatness. Women have the same obligations to employ their talents for the good of mankind."

As a wise men mentioned to me last night, there is a kernel of truth in a pile of gobbledygook - but it is the gobbledygook that is dominating.

That truth though, stands apart from others that need to be part of the discussion; truths that show many highly educated professional women, like Mrs. Salamander, will make a decision that they want more out of life than to just be what men are - they have found a spouse who they want to try to have a full life with in their manner, and that involves having more than one kid, raising that kid themselves, and to be a full partner in creating a steady, secure, and supported household.

You cannot have it all ... and that should be OK. 

Evidently, that isn't OK for some who, from a distance, seem to be resentful that others have chosen different paths in life. They seem to want to cast dispersions on those who took that different path. Either that, are they are in a deep hole of science denial; men and women are biologically different. Conceiving a your first child after 30 is much more difficult than in your 20s - and there is nothing wrong with those who recognize that fact and act accordingly.

You can always work 60-hr weeks later in life, you cannot have children, raise children, and work 60-hr weeks at the same time. Well, you can, but you will use most of your income paying others to raise your children. What little time you see your children, you will be tired, distracted, and inattentive. Oh, and your spouse who is also working 60-hr weeks - what about that?

Maybe you will be like two friends of ours who did make it work - their husbands left active duty and are full time fathers. Good luck finding more men like that. Do that, you can make the VCNO happy.

As for the VCNO, a little unsolicited advice: just be the best VCNO you can be - our Fleet desperately needs one. Be a VCNO that just happens to be a woman - don't be seen as a woman VCNO. Whoever is advising you to be seen as the later more than the former is not doing you or our Navy any good.

Hat tip P.