Like what? Which MOS's would be likely to spend the amount of time you were suggesting (1 day a week or 5 months a year) sleeping with each other or so close to each other that they would be essentially cuddled up to their buddy?
infantry. during our MEU workup I spent three days a week at home sleeping with my wife, and four days a week in the field sleeping with either Jimmy or Nate.... when we were back in Lejeune; which was only one to two weeks out of the month. But the MEU workup was pretty stupid crazy for field time.
I talked to my husband. He told me that they never slept that close to each other unless it was in separate sleeping bags and they weren't naked. And no one I know has slept the way you are talking for the period of time you are talking about.
you were the one who brought up sleeping naked. I only reversed it to ask if you were willing to impose on the females what you were apparently willing to impose on the males. and I have definitely shared sleeping bags and racks; as well as generally tight spaces. link up and double the willy-p and both of you get beneath it. but then, it pretty much
always pissed on us. west coast experiences may vary. :shrug:
And even if there are a few who do, there would almost definitely be better arrangements that could be made. How would they deal with an odd number of people if you are sharing bags, triple up?
what, ya'll don't hot-rack in the navy? someone's got night watch. :shrug: or someone get's screwed. Again, it depends on the weather, terrain, if anything else is available, etc. If they will let you get in the trucks guys will sleep in the trucks (a stretcher in the back of a high back? heaven.).
And still, you haven't told me how it would be more comfortable to wake up in that position next to a guy that you believe is completely straight who has morning wood? That wouldn't affect team relations?
no. that would be hilarious because you can make fun of him for being homo for you, and he can make fun of you by saying no, it's just still hard from you sucking on it the night before. and so on. It's funny and (frankly) bonding
until someone might mean it. Me tea-bagging my buddy would be very different from me putting my penis on
your face, because the potential implications are different.
No, I'm pretty sure I didn't. Although around post 365 you mentioned ordering women to strip down and sleep with a guy. I consider stripping down an order to get naked or at least into skivvies.
i guess I was thinking skivvies and we fell into nudity. nudity is a shower/tick/general life business; skivvies are for sleeping.
No, I'm not. You just aren't understanding what I am saying.
The reasons that we separate men and women from each other is not just due to sexual attraction. That does play a part in it, but it is not the only reason.
sexuality, the tension, potential attraction, desire for privacy from, and all things thereunto pertaining absolutely
is the reason why we separate men from women. sending a gay guy into a shower full of dudes is no different from sending me into a shower full of women.
There are also the physical differences between men and women that put most women at a disadvantage if they were to be sexually assaulted by most men, especially in private
this isn't a problem - we can just say "oh well that's against regulations and those who rape can be punished", right? so we don't need to worry about whether or not we are increasing the likelihood of problems - because we can always just wave it away with "discipline, professionalism, that guy will be punished...." etc. right?
There may be individual disadvantages between two men, but it isn't going to be normal. Men and women don't share spaces now, and we have problems with sexual assault and even rape of female military members. I haven't heard of an attempted rape or sexual assault of a man by another man except for stories told
:shrug: I have - happened
bad in our sister battalion when I was a boot (involving penetration not just with a penis, but also with a broom handle - they handled it under "hazing"), and I watched one dude hold another down and put his penis (through silkies) into him on a field ex. Laughed and said it was a joke... but the dude was definitely getting up and ready for the task. Guy A was married, though, and he's straight, so it's a joke, and Dude B can laugh about it later... very different situation from Guy A being gay, and maybe meaning it, in which case either the unit falls apart, Guy A goes to jail, or Guy B beats him half to death with an entrenching tool. But that
wasn't the situation, so instead it was
hilarious. Sexually hazing each other was just part of life in the grunts - from bearing tests to just generally seeking to make each other as awkward as possible.
:lol: The "no balls" game? Don't ever play a grunt or a former grunt. Remember the Massa scandal where Rahmbo had come over in the nekkid in the Congressional Gym to make him feel uncomfortable and get a psychological advantage? Bad Move - the proper response to that is to move even closer, put your hand on the guy, and move it slowly up and down his arm. but you can't
do that any more because now we are going to start putting barriers between ourselves in the grunts.
No. I knew women and men in the military who were gay. They were open about it. If anyone would have turned them in for being gay, first, my COC would have laughed at the person, especially if they tried to claim it was a violation of their religious beliefs to live with someone who is gay, and second, they would have told them to get a life and suck it up because they were not going to shortchange us on something like that.
precisely. in the military, your religion comes second to mission considerations. hence, it doesn't matter if your faith tells you not to shower with gays or bunk with members of the other sex - if you get told to do it, you're going to do it.
The only time people were kicked out under DADT in my department were because it made it out of our COC with some concrete proof that they were gay (police report of incident, signed statement through medical).
exactly. it's not like people were being hounded persecuted under DADT.
If the situation required it, yes. Because I have been ordered to get naked in front of a man before.
I'll admit, that surprises me. In the Marines if I told a female subordinate to strip down and
meant it, my ass would be standing tall in front of the man asap.
In fact, most of the gyno docs on the ship were male. Almost every female on my ship got their paps done by male doctors.
wait - just docs? or a supervisor?
If you're worried about the guy checking you for ticks being gay and assaulting you when you get naked for this check, just make sure he checks you first
I'm not worried about sexual assualt. You will probably get isolated incidents of it - but it won't be a trend. I'm worried about the loss of unit cohesion, and what that inevitably means for combat efficiency.
He is less likely to consider sexually assaulting you (or anyone else for that matter) more important than making sure he doesn't have ticks in some nasty place and I highly doubt you or anyone else would check him after a sexual assault attempt.
eh, tick checks are generally done in public. 2nd squad before you sit on your packs strip down and check your buddy.
Congress makes all of our policies, including whether men and women share berthing spaces.
I have no idea if congress dictates berthing rules or not. My bet would be it's a command function.
But we had military personnel who wanted the change as well.
yes we did - specifically the Navy polled in favor of it, the Air Force polled closer to 50/50, and
the combat units polled heavily against it:
Nearly 7 of every 10 Marines in combat roles say repealing the policy that prohibits gays and lesbians from serving openly would harm their unit's effectiveness...
Gay men are not women and we do not just separate men and women due to sexual attraction issues alone.
gay men are not women, but gay men remain gay men, and pretending that they aren't just leaves you closing your eyes to the problems that
will arise just as surely if you started putting females in these units, just as surely if you started sending males into female showers.
The vast majority of sailors are able to not have sex on a ship
eh, only because the males so outnumber the females.
There are some cases of sex aboard ship, but it isn't something that happens a lot
huh. we must have just been particularly good at talking ya'll out of your pants then. The CO of our ship went down for screwing a crewmember, who it later turned out was also screwing two pilots and another enlisted guy.
Most people can control their sexual urges for quite some time, considering that we are deployed for 6 months at a time.
you must work with supermen, because the only thing that ever "controlled" our single guys (and, sadly, not a few of our married ones) during deployments was the lack of
access. when we were on the boat guys were doing sailors, and when we pulled into port guys were doing
everything.
Are you saying that the vast majority of soldiers/marines can't control those urges for the same amount of time?
i'm saying that the vast majority of soldiers/Marines are 18-22 years old, and we shouldn't pretend that they aren't.
Not only that, DADT being in place or not would not make any difference on whether a person could control their sexual urges. It is just one rule, and there are many other rules that could still get a person in trouble if they are caught having sex in country.
:lamo exactly. given that
those rules haven't made a
lick of difference, it hardly seems logical to suppose that one more will.
So how many deaths on the battlefield are caused by people who are forced to work alongside Muslims? Or blacks? Or Jews? Or Satanists?
no idea. generally these things aren't going to create the same social tension that sexuality will: I've served with all of those other than satanists, and I can't recall offhand a single issue arising - the close cohesion and culture of the grunts means I have more in common with any one of those guys than I do with a civilian WASP. but sexuality is very different from religion or ethnicity.
Or guys who date other guys' sisters/daughters?
we had a near miss with a guy dating another's ex-wife; suffice to say one guy got moved to a different platoon and another had his weapon taken away from him for a time.
These are all things that I could easily see other people not wanting to work with someone else over.
other than the wife thing, nah.
In fact, I had a girl in boot camp who became hostile toward me when she found out I was dating a black guy.
well that's probably because she didn't see the two of you as part of a single whole. Anderson married a black chick and nobody cared that she was black - we thought it was funny that she was a stripper, and so we had alot of fun telling him that she was going to suck off and **** off a bunch of other dudes while he was deployed (she did), take all of his money (she did) and then dump him (she did). Most of us were near as close or closer with each other as we were with our "respective others".
We expect all those people who would have issues with these things to put those issues aside to do their jobs.
yes, we expect discipline and professionalism. but - as the rape discussion earlier points out - we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that we can regulate it into perfection.
