Posted on Sep 8, 2015
Women in Combat Hampered by Band-of-Brother Myth, Author Says. Do you think this is true?
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Stars and Stripes | Sep 06, 2015 | by Wyatt Olson
U.S. military branches have four months to meet the Pentagon’s deadline for opening all front-line combat positions to women, unless a service seeks exception to the policy before Oct. 1. Much of the debate swirling around the coming change has focused on the physical standards women will be held to in those positions.
After two female soldiers made history by earning their Ranger Tabs recently, a top Ranger School official took to Facebook to dispel rumors that standards had been lowered for the women.
Arguments over physical standards distract from a more fundamental issue about women in combat, says author Megan MacKenzie in “Beyond the Band of Brothers: The U.S. Military and the Myth that Women Can’t Fight,” published this month.
“I think the debates around physical standards can stop us from having a discussion about military culture,” said MacKenzie, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney’s Department of Government and International Relations.
MacKenzie, who spent five years researching women in the military in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Australia, interviewing male and female soldiers and key policymakers, is slated as a keynote speaker in October at the Association of the United States Army’s annual national meeting in Washington, D.C.
“I think women are showing they can do the job. Physical capability is not the issue; it’s men’s acceptance of women that’s the issue,”she said. “That’s a cultural problem, not a physical problem at all, and that’s going to be the last hang-up in terms of integration.”
At the heart of that cultural attitude, she argues, is the band-of-brothers “myth” — a phrase made famous by Shakespeare’s Henry V, who rallied his outnumbered troops on the eve of battle with a speech that included the line, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”
The term reached its modern zenith with the historian Stephen Ambrose’s 1992 book “Band of Brothers,” recounting Airborne soldiers’ experiences during World War II in Europe, which later became an HBO miniseries.
The band-of-brothers myth, MacKenzie contends, is not that a group of male warfighters can develop a close bond, but that the nation’s security rests upon such exclusive masculine camaraderie. This all-male bonding is often cast as “mysterious” and “indescribable,” and thus all-male units “are seen as elite as a result of their social bonds and physical superiority,” MacKenzie says in the book.
The band-of-brothers myth “shapes our understanding of what men and women can, and should do, in war,” she wrote.
The formal exclusion of American women from combat has always been about men, not women, with an evolving set of rules, guidelines, and ideas primarily used to validate the all-male combat unit as “elite, essential, and exceptional,” she wrote.
Women are often seen as “potential spoilers” of the band-of-brothers military culture, she wrote.
It was during the post-Vietnam War years that the military and popular culture embraced in tandem the band-of-brothers narrative as military thinkers — and moviemakers — began assessing U.S. shortcomings in that conflict, she said.
“Military morale was at a low point,” MacKenzie said. “You started to hear that part of the failure in Vietnam was a result of cohesion, that we needed stronger cohesion.”
Troop cohesion, “largely defined as men’s ability to trust each other and form social bonds,” became synonymous with combat effectiveness after Vietnam, “which by definition excluded women from cohesion,” she wrote.
MacKenzie’s book is in part a response to a body of writings by former military officers who have argued that placing women in combat roles would be detrimental to the military and national security.
In “Co-Ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn’t Fight the Nation’s Wars,” long-time critic of integration Kingsley Browne wrote that “for very fundamental reasons women do not evoke in men the same feelings of comradeship and ‘followership’ that men do.”
Robert L. Maginnis, author of “Deadly Consequences: How Cowards are Pushing Women into Combat,” told Stars and Stripes that MacKenzie’s argument “attempts to wrap feminist theories and ideologies around military realities that she knows little about.”
“She does not appear to understand cohesion,” he said. “Survival and mission accomplishment for ground combatants, based on significant combat evidence, depends on physical strength, and male advantages in physiology are an important aspect here,” he said.
Cohesion, Maginnis said, does not depend on the “exclusion” of women. “That’s a boilerplate feminist theory, which is an anti-male philosophy believing that men are hopeless misogynists and there are no differences between men and women that matter,” he said.
MacKenzie acknowledges differences between the sexes but objects to them being cited as evidence of women’s inferiority for combat positions.
“It’s starting to get old,” she said. “We keep going back to women and men are different but ignoring that warfare is also different and physical standards also potentially need to be adapted. Most militaries around the world are adapting the physical standards because war has changed so much. Just basing standards around measuring the fitness of an average 23-year-old male doesn’t tell us much about whether someone can be a combat soldier.”
Debate over physical standards also ignores that in recent years many women have been in de facto combat positions, particularly those who were in cultural support teams attached to Special Forces and Ranger teams in Afghanistan, she said. Many received combat-action badges. Some were wounded. Two died during direct-action raids.
The continuing focus on physical standards “tends to reinforce this idea that women can get into combat roles as long as they don’t change the military at all,” MacKenzie said.
“I think that’s interesting in the sense that where there’s a potential for women to enhance these roles, we kind of assume that women, if they do change anything in the military, it’s always for the worse,” she said.
With the military in the throes of a sexual assault epidemic, full combat integration for women could change the culture for the better, she said.
“We can still honor the military culture, but to try to say that there’s no room for change and women can’t make any change to the military, I think, is unfortunate,” she said.
U.S. military branches have four months to meet the Pentagon’s deadline for opening all front-line combat positions to women, unless a service seeks exception to the policy before Oct. 1. Much of the debate swirling around the coming change has focused on the physical standards women will be held to in those positions.
After two female soldiers made history by earning their Ranger Tabs recently, a top Ranger School official took to Facebook to dispel rumors that standards had been lowered for the women.
Arguments over physical standards distract from a more fundamental issue about women in combat, says author Megan MacKenzie in “Beyond the Band of Brothers: The U.S. Military and the Myth that Women Can’t Fight,” published this month.
“I think the debates around physical standards can stop us from having a discussion about military culture,” said MacKenzie, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney’s Department of Government and International Relations.
MacKenzie, who spent five years researching women in the military in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Australia, interviewing male and female soldiers and key policymakers, is slated as a keynote speaker in October at the Association of the United States Army’s annual national meeting in Washington, D.C.
“I think women are showing they can do the job. Physical capability is not the issue; it’s men’s acceptance of women that’s the issue,”she said. “That’s a cultural problem, not a physical problem at all, and that’s going to be the last hang-up in terms of integration.”
At the heart of that cultural attitude, she argues, is the band-of-brothers “myth” — a phrase made famous by Shakespeare’s Henry V, who rallied his outnumbered troops on the eve of battle with a speech that included the line, “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”
The term reached its modern zenith with the historian Stephen Ambrose’s 1992 book “Band of Brothers,” recounting Airborne soldiers’ experiences during World War II in Europe, which later became an HBO miniseries.
The band-of-brothers myth, MacKenzie contends, is not that a group of male warfighters can develop a close bond, but that the nation’s security rests upon such exclusive masculine camaraderie. This all-male bonding is often cast as “mysterious” and “indescribable,” and thus all-male units “are seen as elite as a result of their social bonds and physical superiority,” MacKenzie says in the book.
The band-of-brothers myth “shapes our understanding of what men and women can, and should do, in war,” she wrote.
The formal exclusion of American women from combat has always been about men, not women, with an evolving set of rules, guidelines, and ideas primarily used to validate the all-male combat unit as “elite, essential, and exceptional,” she wrote.
Women are often seen as “potential spoilers” of the band-of-brothers military culture, she wrote.
It was during the post-Vietnam War years that the military and popular culture embraced in tandem the band-of-brothers narrative as military thinkers — and moviemakers — began assessing U.S. shortcomings in that conflict, she said.
“Military morale was at a low point,” MacKenzie said. “You started to hear that part of the failure in Vietnam was a result of cohesion, that we needed stronger cohesion.”
Troop cohesion, “largely defined as men’s ability to trust each other and form social bonds,” became synonymous with combat effectiveness after Vietnam, “which by definition excluded women from cohesion,” she wrote.
MacKenzie’s book is in part a response to a body of writings by former military officers who have argued that placing women in combat roles would be detrimental to the military and national security.
In “Co-Ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn’t Fight the Nation’s Wars,” long-time critic of integration Kingsley Browne wrote that “for very fundamental reasons women do not evoke in men the same feelings of comradeship and ‘followership’ that men do.”
Robert L. Maginnis, author of “Deadly Consequences: How Cowards are Pushing Women into Combat,” told Stars and Stripes that MacKenzie’s argument “attempts to wrap feminist theories and ideologies around military realities that she knows little about.”
“She does not appear to understand cohesion,” he said. “Survival and mission accomplishment for ground combatants, based on significant combat evidence, depends on physical strength, and male advantages in physiology are an important aspect here,” he said.
Cohesion, Maginnis said, does not depend on the “exclusion” of women. “That’s a boilerplate feminist theory, which is an anti-male philosophy believing that men are hopeless misogynists and there are no differences between men and women that matter,” he said.
MacKenzie acknowledges differences between the sexes but objects to them being cited as evidence of women’s inferiority for combat positions.
“It’s starting to get old,” she said. “We keep going back to women and men are different but ignoring that warfare is also different and physical standards also potentially need to be adapted. Most militaries around the world are adapting the physical standards because war has changed so much. Just basing standards around measuring the fitness of an average 23-year-old male doesn’t tell us much about whether someone can be a combat soldier.”
Debate over physical standards also ignores that in recent years many women have been in de facto combat positions, particularly those who were in cultural support teams attached to Special Forces and Ranger teams in Afghanistan, she said. Many received combat-action badges. Some were wounded. Two died during direct-action raids.
The continuing focus on physical standards “tends to reinforce this idea that women can get into combat roles as long as they don’t change the military at all,” MacKenzie said.
“I think that’s interesting in the sense that where there’s a potential for women to enhance these roles, we kind of assume that women, if they do change anything in the military, it’s always for the worse,” she said.
With the military in the throes of a sexual assault epidemic, full combat integration for women could change the culture for the better, she said.
“We can still honor the military culture, but to try to say that there’s no room for change and women can’t make any change to the military, I think, is unfortunate,” she said.
Women in the Military
Combat
Pentagon
Posted >1 y ago
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It is both insulting and inappropriate to insult the bond that I and many, many other combat infantrymen feel toward those we fought, bled and sometimes held our brothers as they died. How dare you refer to that experience as a 'myth'. You want to cast aside a tradition that has existed since the formation of the Army, have at it. But, I'll be damned if you will diminish here, or anywhere else within my hearing the Band of Brothers of my 1st Infantry Division wihtout comment.
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SGT (Join to see)
You're correct CW3 Jim Norris. Being a band of brothers is not a myth, it is very real. There is a bond that will always be there. We died and cried for each other and that is something that is sacred. Thank you for your comment.
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SGT Philip Roncari
Outstanding ! And may I include my Band of Brothers from the 4th Infantry Division
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So change it to band of Co-ed myth. If a woman can hack it, and I know a few women that are tougher than a lot of men I know, let them go for it. I wouldn't want somebody telling me I couldn't be something because it was a field that traditionally only women dominated.
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SGT (Join to see)
Women can achieve what a man can if they apply themselves. Look at professional weight lifting. Some women can lift more than some men. They trained just as hard if not harder than a man, to accomplish their dreams. I think the subject of women in the combat, up front on the line, is becoming a moot subject. I take offense at men harassing women who want to do they same things as men. Give it up guys! The women have been serving in the military in combat roles forever.
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McKenzie seems to take a lot for granted. It's quite something to me that he can talk about a 'myth' of male bonding while ignoring that the most notable roles women have played in combat were in actual myths. Further, I find it amusing that men would create a myth that has, for pretty much all of human existence, has led to us being killed, wounded, traumatized and broken in our millions while women were largely safe.
No, this isn't about men, it's about basic biology. Our species, as such, is no different from any other animal from a biological perspective; our purpose is to perpetuate ourselves via reproduction. Our societies, which, to paraphrase Socrates, our individuals writ large against the sky, are the same. All of civilization is built around creating a stable environment conducive to bringing about children and raising them into productive, contributing adults. Our biological differences informed things like combat which is why the idea of combat being a male profession is virtually universal across time, geography and culture.
Broadly speaking, men are taller, heavier and a higher proportion of their body mass is muscle which leads men, in general, to be stronger than women, even when a man and woman of the same weight are compared. As such, women are less physically capable of performing the tasks of combat. For example, I was branch detailed through Field Artillery and I question the ability of women to physically be able to load a 155mm howitzer, especially over time as in a FPF situation. Even better, would anybody here, man or woman, that was under attack and had to call in an FPF get a warm & fuzzy if you knew that the entire gun crew of the battery assigned to you were women?
More importantly, from a group survival perspective, men are FAR, FAR more expendable than women in general and young men especially when compared to young women be that group a family, town, clan/tribe, nation or our entire species. Again, biology is behind this; under 'ideal' conditions, a man could easily father more children in a month than a woman could bear in her entire life. As a group, our survival is more impaired by the loss of 1 woman than 100 men, at least in terms of continuing our group's existence into the future by having children.
Whether its instinctual or realized, even at the subconscious level, men know this. During WWII, the Soviets used co-ed units and these suffered appalling casualties. Some of this was from the women not being up to the task but a lot more of it derived from the men taking too many risks to try and protect the women. So much so was this the case that Stalin discontinued the practice citing unacceptable casualty rates. I'm going to repeat that as it bears repeating; women in combat roles led to such high casualties that they were unacceptable to Josef Stalin.
Nor do I believe that the 'if you can do the job you should be allowed regardless of gender' argument will stand up for very long. I give it less than a year before the social engineers are concluding that there's just not enough women in combat roles to suit them. Then you'll see the standards watered down, either directly via gender-specific requirements or just lowered across the board. This cannot help but decrease combat effectiveness, increase casualties and hurt us badly in the long run.
I don't think that it takes a very high level of intelligence or investment in time and thought to see what I've discussed above. Sadly, we live in a culture that conflates equality of rights and before the law to mean equality of outcome and sameness of circumstance peddled by most of the influential in the media, politics and academia. This is simply not true and it will result in a lot of wasted money at best, a lot of flag-draped caskets of KIAs that need not have been at worst. We're going to be spilling a lot of blood on the altar of political correctness, diversity uber alles and stupidity before this is through and it's pathetic.
No, this isn't about men, it's about basic biology. Our species, as such, is no different from any other animal from a biological perspective; our purpose is to perpetuate ourselves via reproduction. Our societies, which, to paraphrase Socrates, our individuals writ large against the sky, are the same. All of civilization is built around creating a stable environment conducive to bringing about children and raising them into productive, contributing adults. Our biological differences informed things like combat which is why the idea of combat being a male profession is virtually universal across time, geography and culture.
Broadly speaking, men are taller, heavier and a higher proportion of their body mass is muscle which leads men, in general, to be stronger than women, even when a man and woman of the same weight are compared. As such, women are less physically capable of performing the tasks of combat. For example, I was branch detailed through Field Artillery and I question the ability of women to physically be able to load a 155mm howitzer, especially over time as in a FPF situation. Even better, would anybody here, man or woman, that was under attack and had to call in an FPF get a warm & fuzzy if you knew that the entire gun crew of the battery assigned to you were women?
More importantly, from a group survival perspective, men are FAR, FAR more expendable than women in general and young men especially when compared to young women be that group a family, town, clan/tribe, nation or our entire species. Again, biology is behind this; under 'ideal' conditions, a man could easily father more children in a month than a woman could bear in her entire life. As a group, our survival is more impaired by the loss of 1 woman than 100 men, at least in terms of continuing our group's existence into the future by having children.
Whether its instinctual or realized, even at the subconscious level, men know this. During WWII, the Soviets used co-ed units and these suffered appalling casualties. Some of this was from the women not being up to the task but a lot more of it derived from the men taking too many risks to try and protect the women. So much so was this the case that Stalin discontinued the practice citing unacceptable casualty rates. I'm going to repeat that as it bears repeating; women in combat roles led to such high casualties that they were unacceptable to Josef Stalin.
Nor do I believe that the 'if you can do the job you should be allowed regardless of gender' argument will stand up for very long. I give it less than a year before the social engineers are concluding that there's just not enough women in combat roles to suit them. Then you'll see the standards watered down, either directly via gender-specific requirements or just lowered across the board. This cannot help but decrease combat effectiveness, increase casualties and hurt us badly in the long run.
I don't think that it takes a very high level of intelligence or investment in time and thought to see what I've discussed above. Sadly, we live in a culture that conflates equality of rights and before the law to mean equality of outcome and sameness of circumstance peddled by most of the influential in the media, politics and academia. This is simply not true and it will result in a lot of wasted money at best, a lot of flag-draped caskets of KIAs that need not have been at worst. We're going to be spilling a lot of blood on the altar of political correctness, diversity uber alles and stupidity before this is through and it's pathetic.
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