USS Wyoming

FOUR U.S. NAVY SAILORS have been sentenced to prison for secretly recording videos on cell phones of female crew members in the shower. One petty officer received a prison term of two years and a dishonorable discharge. Another received a term of 18 months and a bad-conduct discharge, reports the Associated Press. Two others were given relatively minor sentences and several other crew members of the USS Wyoming await court martials.

So let’s get this straight.

The Navy deliberately creates conditions in which young, healthy men and young, healthy women are confined together in extremely close quarters in the middle of the sea. Then when the men show interest in the women as women, their careers are destroyed. They are not simply reprimanded for doing something improper, and of course it was improper, but their careers are demolished.

Such incidences must create a chill. There must be constant tension on coed ships. And for what military purpose? None. While the Navy severely penalizes men for minor male pranks, it relies on one thing above all else for its very existence — masculinity.

— Comments —

Mrs. T. writes:

I agree that confining young, healthy men and women in extremely close quarters for long durations of time is a problem waiting to happen. However, what these men did was deliberately sneaky. It violated the women’s sense of privacy. If it happened to me, I would have been horrified and ashamed that the video was passed around for all to see. And after all Shoemaker, the videographer, had to crawl into a tight crawl space to obtain footage. That is plain creepy. While it’s true they shouldn’t have their careers dismantled, Shoemaker is a husband with two young children. In that instance, I believe he should be held to a higher standard.

Laura writes:

Agreed.

It was a serious violation of privacy and decency. It was an aggressive act.

But this is a submarine. I blame the Navy first for creating temptations and the occasions for sin.

Much worse are the extramarital affairs. The Navy is supposed to protect families not destroy them. No administrative code, no penalties, can prevent romances from happening when men and women are put in close quarters. But that’s just so obvious and everyone knows it.

Laura adds:

When a woman becomes a soldier or sailor, she is assenting to participation in military culture, which generally does not afford much privacy or protection from crudeness and mean pranks. Don’t sailors see each other naked all the time? I would guess that sailors play pranks on each other fairly often. Are they sentenced to jail for two years and discharged from the Navy because they seriously embarrass another sailor? I’m not saying that they should not have been penalized, but, wow, this just seems so overboard. That’s not my real concern though. I don’t know all the details of this case. The real issue is that women are even on these ships.

Mrs. T. writes:

The Navy is certainly responsible for creating a tempting atmosphere. And for what? I can’t believe that they are so ignorant of basic human nature. So who is it all for? The PR gods?

There is no regard for marriage as a sacrament. It is maddening.

Mrs. T. adds:

I meant “PC gods” not “PR gods.”

Laura writes:

But they are PR gods too. It’s all a Public Relations stunt.

Paul C. writes:

You are on the right track with your comment about pranks.  I would go further.  If women are equal, this was nothing.  If a fellow sailor had photographed me taking a shower and showed it to everyone (which did not happen based on the facts given), I could not have cared less.  If women want equality, they need to play by the same rules, which is anything goes.

After wrestling practice in high school we would race down naked three fifteen-foot floors to the showers and race back up naked, with towels around our necks.  Our coach, a Catholic Brother, in my second or third year told us once to use our towels because we had acquired a female teacher.  But we ignored his urging because practice did not end until 4:30 or 5:00.  Nobody was around.  We knew he was just going on record, following orders.

Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:

There is likely an additional twist in this story.  The brave new armed forces have not only insisted on putting women in intimate proximity with men in situations like those of a close-quarters submarine; they have also vigorously promoted homosexuals into the ranks.  The situation in the submarine service is thus very likely much more distorted than men-plus-women.  It is likely to be ordinary men plus women plus homosexuals – of both sexes.  The ordinary men know that the two other categories are privileged and that they are condemned in advance.  So how do young heterosexual men deal with an environment in which they are the explicitly non-privileged group, vulnerable to entrapment and arbitrary punishment?  How do they affirm their normality and their dignity?  They cannot.  The morale-deficit of the submarine service must be great.

There has been a good deal of speculation on the Internet lately about a war between China, the U.S.A., and the U.S.A.’s Asian allies, over the South China Sea, with special attention to the Spratly Islands.  China is building military installations in the Spratly Islands, the only purpose of which is aggressive.  A TV advertisement has been running on the cable-channels, pretty much every fifteen minutes, sponsored by U.S. Navy Recruiting.  It concludes on a map of the South China Sea with the Spratly Islands, conspicuously labeled, in the center of the picture.  Who has ever heard of the Spratly Islands?  But now, the U.S. Government wants people to know the name, “Spratly Islands.”

When the China-U.S.A. war over freedom of passage in the South China Sea begins, how ready for combat will the American forces be?  The U.S. Navy’s submarine force will be essential to the action?  What in God’s name has the Left imposed on America’s armed forces?  In time of war, submarines may be targeted by enemy weapons, and that is lethal enough.  What good is it to the effectiveness of the U.S. military to shatter the ranks in the name of “diversity,” but disrupting the order of sexual nature for the sole purpose of humiliating the opponents of liberalism?  The same logic applies to all areas of military endeavor.  The purpose of an army or a navy or an air force is to smash things so frighteningly that the enemy surrenders.  The purpose of an army or a navy or an air force is not to flout the order of nature.

Eric writes:

Well, filming women in the shower is sort of creepy. But what would a “normal” approach look like in that environment? Can you even ask a submate on a date? I assume regulations prohibit it, and the cramped and crowded environment precludes any intimacy. Men in the presence of women, who are denied healthy avenues to relationships, will pursue unhealthy ones.

What on earth does a normal, Navy-sanctioned heterosexual relationship on a submarine look like?

Mr. WF writes:

In a different time this would have been seen as boys being boys.  Remember the shower scene in MASH with “hot lips” being the target of all male practical joke?

Why does the Navy feel women are needed on nuclear submarines?  Do they serve some purpose other than to demonstrate that the liberal government can do as they wish with our national security?  The submarine service has been mainly an all-male fraternity with close bonds between the crew and officers.

I am sure Obama feels they need to demoralize the service with woman being treated as privileged crew.

Certainly no officer would treat these women as they do the male crew, risking his entire career on some slip of the tongue or miscalculation on what he is expected to do with them.

The navy specifically designated that the women had to use the same facilities as the men including sleeping quarters knowing this would be an ever present temptation. And what would happen if after the cruise some woman claims she was raped? With an overwhelming male crew how would this woman get a fair trial.

Pan Dora writes:

Eric writes: What on earth does a normal, Navy-sanctioned heterosexual relationship on a submarine look like?

Well if you are a married individual my guess it would be writing letters home to the husband/wife, as adultery is against the UCMJ.

Laura writes:

Right.

But not everyone on a ship is married. Furthermore, placing men and women in these conditions, is creating a temptation for adultery, as has happened numerous times already in the coed military. It’s one thing for adultery to be against the rules, it’s another thing for adultery to be against the rules when the Navy actually encourages adultery. That’s just plain hypocrisy.

Buck writes:

I sent the AP story to a USNA grad, a now retired Navy Captain, and to his nephew who is recently assigned to a nuclear submarine on the west coast.

The Captain writes:

In general, I agree with the court findings.

The JAG prosecutor seemed overzealous, but he is a USNA grad and submarine qualified officer, I have no reason to think he was on a witch hunt. … and I know about Navy witch hunts, being a “victim” of Tailhook.

That the midshipmen did not testify does not surprise me, but Marsh saying they could not be identified because they were videoed from the waist down is disingenuous.

Punishments for sharing the videos and failing to report the videos, given the case particulars, seem witch hunt like, but not out of line.

Perhaps the crimes (and punishments) would have been different on a college campus; the crimes being the same, but the material impact less severe. On a Navy submarine, they are not only beneath the dignity and respect that sailors must afford their fellow sailors, but prejudicial to good order and discipline.

From the nephew:

I have been following this news piece for a while now (being in the submarine traning pipeline when it happened, and currently on a submarine), however I’m am not in the legal field and can only speak from a moral point of view.

My thoughts are that the recording of and sharing of images or videos of female service members is a crime that warrants a punishment, however in my belief the navy would have reacted differently if the victim had been male. In that preferential treatment of women is where I find problems with the Navy’s reaction, either the sexes are equal or they are not, and the Navy must make and hold a stand on the issue. Equality is not a matter of convenience, it is either there or it is not.

Laura writes:

I doubt you will find anyone who thinks the alleged offenses were acceptable.

But two years in prison and a dishonorable discharge seems an extremely excessive punishment. And, again, there should be no opportunity to film naked women on a military submarine. Shame on the captain for not recognizing that.

Paul C. writes:

I am shocked you think, “I doubt you will find anyone who thinks the alleged offenses were acceptable.” My post said it was acceptable in other words. I still think it is acceptable. Maybe one could get nuanced about disciplining submariners for pranking, but that is as far as it goes in my view. Either military women must be treated equally or not. I don’t see a middle ground in the military.

But I have seen no reasoned arguments why this silliness should have resulted in anything but KP. I am not even sure KP was merited. I don’t know how silly submariners are allowed to be. The officers who have commented think the incident was significant, but they don’t explain why. If you post anything from this e-mail, it should be, “Why do the former or present officers think this deserved punishment beyond a scolding or KP?” My bet is that they have bought into the idea of blatant sexual discrimination in the military and hidden under newspeak: discrimination is nondiscrimination.

Of course, I think the whole idea of women in combat roles is stupid and the result of the hushed-up need caused by our lazy, cowardly culture.

Laura writes:

Okay, you think it was acceptable behavior.

I think the men should have resisted this behavior, even if it meant violating the standards of equality imposed on them, out of simple decency.

Please follow and like us: