General becomes feminist pinup
On reflection I am glad I didn’t serve in the ADF. I was in the AMF and a happy man in a man’s world with any number of men and woman supporting us line-regiment blokes.
Under the current ALP distraction the Army Chief seems to be playing a role supporting the feminist agenda of Julia Gillard.
General Morrison has becomes a pinup of Destroy the Joint, a FB page for seemingly very angry women who clearly do not like men. He wins praise from a bunch of women when he commands an Army made up mostly of men.
From The Australian
brothers sisters umm….soldiers;
But Lieutenant-General David Morrison has also won praise from feminist groups for campaigning for the Australian Defence Force to treat women with respect.
The praise across social media for the father-of-three included observations that he should be deployed to train the nation’s politicians on leadership and gender issues before the federal election.
I actually think that last statement is a bad reference for a man commanding an infantry based Army. The Army don’t treat women with disrespect. Sometimes individual soldiers do cross the line driven by alcohol and testosterone but, I would suggest, a whole lot less than in the rest of the community. The Army is about Infantry. They couldn’t operate without all the other Arms and Services but these others are there to support us in what we do.The role of Infantry is to seek out and close with the enemy, to kill or capture him, to seize and hold ground and to repel attack, by day or night, regardless of season, weather or terrain.
Nothing more, nothing less. No manouvre room for feminists there. The role does not include the rider “whilst observing politically correct interpretations as seen by armchair warriors”. There is no mention of celibacy nor behaving like a paragon of virtue when on leave. Soldiers, warriors, by the nature of their testosterone driven employment are not, as a rule, the most gentle and introverted members of society. I read often enough that the Army is supposed to be representative of the culture of the country. Not really. We wouldn’t want a bunch of hippies, Greenies, human rights activists, artists, gentle souls, whistle blowers, ideological warriors or beaurocrats serving in the platoons of a battalion. Nothing would ever get done. We need to weed out a good part of the society from whence we choose soldiers to make sure we end up with soldiers prepared to fight so that the rest of society can exist happily in their little worlds. The men we end up with are men writ large. Which is why, over my long career in the military, I didn’t demand my troops be angels. I did demand toughness – both physical and mental, a high level of skills and a comittment to the country expressed at it’s prime level – comittment to the unit. Where am I going with this? Well I think the General is being a bit harsh on his troops. Three guys out of about 50,000 have transgressed. The were on leave drinking and having sex – so far so good. They then filmed the deeds and transmitted them, apparently through defence means. If the are guilty of the last two acts then charge them, front them to a court and if the court so decides then dismiss them. If the women involved didn’t know about the transmission then the charges against the perps should reflect that. I read no mention that the sex wasn’t consensual and as the accusations are months old I’m inclined to say charge them all with an offence or shut up. That’s it. The General has said told the Army that anyone not willing to work with women and accept them as equals, then “There is no place for you amongst this band of brothers and sisters. There is certainly no place for them among theseHis frontal attack on discrimination also includes help for enlisted men who become enlisted women.
Soldiers who switch gender are being helped stay in the Army under Lieutenant General David Morrison’s campaign to rout all forms of discrimination in the military.
There currently are 10 Army members who have transferred gender while still in uniform, and have received the support of their most senior officer, General Morrison.
Two of them are women who now live as men, and eight are men who now identify as women.
Shudder. So the Army is now a social experiment. Dwarfs, hermaphrodites, Drag Queens….roll up, we’ll take you all! The case has morphed from soldiers on leave having consensual sex and filming it then distributing the film, which may or may not be consensual, to the Army being accused of not accepting women as equals. There are only a few soldiers stood down and has the case has been around since at least April then the rest of the media’s so called ‘hundreds’ are most probably recipients of emails or have viewed the clips. I understand these types of transgressions are happening daily among all walks of life but few if any get such media space. I have no issues with soldiers, or officers (and I wish the media would learn the difference) drinking on leave, fornicating, or indeed filming the deed and I have no problems with putting the deed up on the internet if that is what floats your boat, providing both parties are in agreement. I wouldn’t film and transmit myself but I’ve long known forcing your own moral standards on others simply doesn’t work. If it ain’t illegal its legal. If it is illegal then charge them and get on with it and don’t try and feminise the Army while you’re doing it. It is apparent to me that Defence Minister Smith has a bunch of these type of revelations and I expect him to drip feed them as a distraction from the ALP’s disasters over the next ninety days and I can’t help but think that Chief of Army is helping him to do it. In my time I was taught by my combat experienced superiors, to never, ever abuse soldiers in front of their peers nor NCOs in front of the soldiers. Always take them aside. General Morrison has publicly abused everyone in the Army from Major General down with his ‘feminise or get out message’ The entire world bloody knows. It is an in-house matter and the international dissemination of the General’s spray to the troops has brought the Australian Army into disrepute. A situation occasioned by it’s commander, no less! Poor form in my opinion.
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Not really. We wouldn’t want a bunch of hippies, Greenies, human rights activists, artists, gentle souls, whistle blowers, ideological warriors or beaurocrats serving in the platoons of a battalion.
Really Kev? I reckon I had all of these in my unit at one time or another.
You can’t have it both ways – either the general population of 20 years olds was good enough to be conscripted by your mates in the Coalition some years ago or we weren’t.
In a democracy the military should be drawn from the general population and hence will reflect the values of the general population. There has been a quantum shift in attitudes about gender since you left the AMF. There can never be a gap between these values and the behavior of serving soldiers.
As to references to objecting to diversity in the ranks – if back then Nashos, as a group reflecting the diversity of the community we were drawn from, were good enough to fight in your man’s army, and in the case of hundreds, die in your man’s army, you will need to tell me what’s changed to hold your apparent view that the serving members of the military should be some kind of elite group who aren’t subject to the same rules in their occupational behavior as everyone else.
In the end, death is the final fellowship, and in military conflict it takes no account of sexual orientation, race, colour or creed.
Bruce Dawe put it well –
All day, day after day, they’re bringing them home,
they’re picking them up, those they can find, and bringing them home,
they’re bringing them in, piled on the hulls of Grants, in trucks, in convoys,
they’re zipping them up in green plastic bags,they’re tagging them now in Saigon,
in the mortuary coolness they’re giving them names,
they’re rolling them out of the deep freeze lockers on the tarmac at Tan Son Nhut
the noble jets are whining like hounds,
they are bringing them home curly heads, kinky hairs, crew cuts, balding noncoms
they’re high, now high and higher, over the land, the steaming chow mein
their shadows are tracing the blue curve of the Pacific with sorrowful quick fingers,
heading south, heading east,
home, home, home and the coasts swing upward, the old ridiculous curvatures of earth,
the knuckled hill, the mangrove swamps, the desert emptiness…
in their sterile housing they tilt towards these like skierstaxiing in,
on the long runways, the howl of their homecoming rises surrounding them like their last moments (the mash, the splendour)
then fading at length as they move on to small towns where dogs
in the frozen sunset raise muzzles in mute salute,
and on to cities in whose wide web of suburbs telegrams tremble like leaves from a wintering tree
and the spider grief swings in his bitter geometry
they’re bring them home, now, too late, too early.
I was actually talking about today’s recruiting of regular soldiers. I have no question about the value of the NSM during the Vietnam war but from a regular army’s perspective they were citizen soldiers and not selected from the group of young males that make up today’s Army. I had a hippy digger in my section – he did all that was asked of him and I liked him but his later life suggested he wouldn’t have cut it as a Reg and god forbid I would ever have to command a rifle company of 178 etcs;)
1738???…….That horse you’re astride must be 32 hands high and you must be tired of reaching over your shoulder to remove all those knives buried in your back. This wasn’t an attack by Kev on conscripts. You should know that back in the good old days the army employed methods in training that moulded men from all walks of life into soldiers who proved the equal of the regulars and some were promoted over the regular soldiers because of their aptitude for the job. Once they were trained up they were no longer civvies, either labourers or teachers or tradies…..they were soldiers. That’s right Cav. The groups that Kev mentions he’d prefer not to have in his platoon, even the conscripts preferred not to have to rely on and in many cases after recruit training those who couldn’t adapt (unlike you 173????) were shunted sideways into corps that could utilise them. Not much wastage with manpower in those days was there. What Kev is pointing out is that recruiting standards have softened, training has softened and from all appearances selection criteria has been dumbed down so that the numbers can be lifted…..heaven forbid conscription being re-introduced hey wit. With the lowering of standards a good many of the necessary attributes of infantry men/women are starting to slip by the wayside. Civilian attitudes to needs and “rights” cannot in some instances assist the good order of administration in a military environment. Sad to say it began with conscripts in your day with complaining families and some members causing the reduction of what was seen as bastardisation (you know getting the non-conformists to conform). Now I hear you can just walk away if you don’t like what you signed up for. By the way I am/was a conscript by definition but my marble wasn’t drawn from the barrel. Two years was enough, but I don’t grumble about it and I haven’t heard a bad word from my mates concerning their service. Get on with your life Ted.
A soldier is a soldier.
In any group there are the clowns, the wingers, the loud, the quiet, the leader; and the followers.
Nashos was no different.
My 25 years in the Reserves showed the same – soldiers are soldiers – oh and we had a lot of women in the Reserves. Many were better soldiers than men – boy were they focused!
No no no, Cav – wingers are in football teams.
And at least one whinger uses a number for identification.
Bob & Harry, much as I love an intelligent repartee, I don’t know why you bother with it. He is a degenerate at best. A total anal freak and has been brainwashed into thinking, sorry take that back fucktards don’t think, but all he can remember is a number after 40 freaking years. After reading his self obsessed blog, I think his greatest aspiration is to gain mention on the Queens honors list. Ignore the self centered prick, the more you go back at him, the more we have to put up with him. Ignore him and eventually he will go away.
He is a degenerate at best
fucktards
self centered prick
There there – feel better now?
I couldn’t give a proverbial about the name-calling – it’s indicative of a chronic lack of reasoning ability. The abuse, particularly as it refers to my tag, is taken as complimentary.
It shows that my comments generate sufficient confusion in closed minds to create a reaction.
From that statement I take it you think you are merely a catalyst generating subject matter for intelligent conversation into which you have absolutely no rational input.
“provoke a reaction, stimulate discussion” the utter bullshit lines rolled out by idiots and bullshit artists when they are called out as liars.
Throw in a few lines on your supposed moral/intellectual superiority and you tick all the boxes for a mentally deficient poseur. but then you did, didn’t you.
That’s what I meant about him being a self centered prick Bob. I had a couple of goes at reading his blog, he’s a big I am. But then most so called teachers are like that. Remember Don Tate?? Don’t give him any space and he’ll go back under his rock.