"Effective immediately, the Command Security Manager will now be known as the Command Security Personager."
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While clearly in (dystopian) jest, I'd like to think the need for self-preservation outweighs the need to (metaphorically) burn bras to make a point. If it's a choice between fighting the enemy, or fighting sharks, I'm choosing the enemy every time; much higher probability of success*.I can see it now, World War 3, a destroyer is about to go into combat and the CO calls for crew to man battle stations. All female crew refuse to man stations out of being discriminated against and claim "they won't 'man' anything." As a result, the Tactical Conning Officer isn't there, nor the DCA and half the Sonar Techs and GM's. Boat takes a torpedo, all hands lost. Clearly SECNAV has foresight to this problem
Funny thing - there was a discussion I heard somewhere a few years back about the origins of the word "man," especially as a verb, and the phrase "all hands" was linked to it. If you think about it, in any romance language the word for hand at starts or sounds like "man-." So when we say "man your post" the phrase has more to do with you occupying your post and it has little to do with the gender. In this case, the hyper-feminist argument can be easily diffused with knowledge, rather than the doomed-to-fail "tradition" defense. Discussions on wikipedia are actually pretty robust.I can see it now, World War 3, a destroyer is about to go into combat and the CO calls for crew to man battle stations. All female crew refuse to man stations out of being discriminated against and claim "they won't 'man' anything." As a result, the Tactical Conning Officer isn't there, nor the DCA and half the Sonar Techs and GM's. Boat takes a torpedo, all hands lost. Clearly SECNAV has foresight to this problem
This.
I feel bad for them. No one joins the military to see their career go this way.
