And I'm telling you that I look around my boat, and either two cases are true:
1) I have the most fat, out of shape crew in the entire submarine force OR
2) The laws of average have taken effect and the average submariner is not going to be able to handle a 280 lb person by himself.
Mind you, this is 280 lbs...that's someone who already weighs over 200 lbs before he put his gear on, ie he is also fat and out of shape, since most submariners are under 6'.
Also, DC training has you leave the down person in the compartment and fight the fire. The EMAT team gets him out later, AFTER you put out the fire that's threatening the other 119 people on board and a multi-billion dollar warship. No female ERS watch is going to have to evacuate ERLL by herself during a fire. She's going to be grabbing the nearest fire extinguisher to put agent on the fire as trained.
How often have you heard the line "fitness doesn't have anything to do with how well I can do my job?" Simple biology doesn't automatically make you stronger. You still have to do exercise to gain strength. Your argument is the classical, sexist "women can't do this because they are inherently weaker," except that you are vastly over-estimating the amount of physical strength it takes to conduct damage control efforts and you're using an example that is contrary to submarine fire fighting doctrine anyway.
Okay, you have a point there. Completely destroyed my argument, in fact; I'd gotten too fixated on the being able to haul someone out of the compartment thing and neglected the actual DC manual requirements. Forgive me, it's been a while since I've looked at the thing. And the 280-pounds thing was just an extreme, we had some pretty big guys on my boat. I would agree that most people aren't at that weight.
And I agree, simple biology doesn't make you stronger. I know there are women out there who can bench more than I can. But it also turns around and says that the physiological makeup between men and women are different in the terms of peak cardiovascular capacity, muscle strength, etc. Putting in the time to work out and get in shape matters, but biology still has a final word for both ease of gaining strength and final peak strength potential. I don't think I'm being too sexist here when I'm stating facts.
And no, most DC efforts do not take that much physical strength. Some do; I believe my other example was hauling a submersible pump. No, I don't remember exactly how much it weighed, but it was a good forty, fifty pounds? Could you check on that for me when you get a chance? Or any of the other tasks onboard which require, in the end, brute physical strength. If a female sailor can meet those goals and satisfy those responsibilities, then there's nothing wrong with them standing the watch.
It's going back to - yes, I'm retreating here - the ability to do the job. I threw out a couple extreme examples, you shot'em down. That means they were bad examples, really, and I do admit that I'm overstating some things here.
It's very easy and common for some surface nuke to run off on a woman sailor bashing rant and I'm sure this is what you have heard. You would hear the obvious lines about them getting pregnant before deployments and hiding in their spaces away from everyone. You would also hear some stories about some being bad in general. Although, I also remember some guys who weren't worth the $1.75 a week they were getting paid. The sad part of the stereotype is the minority who work hard and do everything right. The VAST majority of the ones I served with did not finish their time and did the stuff that the stereotype said.I never understood the girls who dated around the department, especially on deployments. It's hard to explain this adequately without running off on a sexist opinionated tangent that wouldn't be appropriate for the forum...
As far as them not operating every valve in the plant, well that one is more difficult. I remember for certain evolutions having people cover for them, but we would have done the same for a smaller weaker guy(Who easily passed a PRT).We have some tough valves that were a tough job for some guys. We had two very short girls who couldn't reach or move some of the tougher valves and they required someone to constantly cover them. That's the reality of steaming a plant in that environment. You know what has to be done during a casualty and you usually know as a supervisory watchstander who will need the most help (either due to workload or capability). We had some guys who believed that they wouldn't receive help and therefore didn't feel the need to go sweat for them, that usually just slowed things down dramatically and ended up helping. I will say that despite it's issues, it has been working in for surface fleet and would have to work in the sub fleet. I don't think the two are different as some submariners would like to think. I know we usually end up fighting the same types of BS and most of the stories sound about the same. I would have done sub if I could go back and do it all over again for sure. This issue is one that will draw some strong opinions and I am trying to choose my words wisely, but I just don't think that you will ever see a way to keep everything fair. Fair varies from person to person......
I'd agree, most of the comments I've heard were woman sailor bashing rants, with the occasional positive comment. And I agree with you; there's no point in going off on that tangent.
But that still comes back to my main concern. We simply don't have the manning to be able to have people cover for them. There's 180 people on a boomer, 40 of whom are nukes when we're fully manned (we're usually not). A bare-bones, three-section underway watch means we have 5 ELTs, 12 MMs, 10 EMs, 7 ETs, and the EDMC. 35 nukes. And that's three-section on all watchstations, with the division chiefs and EDMC standing 4-section EWS, 4-section ERS with the LELT, and an underway ELT.
And if a casualty occurs, we can't afford anyone that's not pulling their full weight, or needs someone to back them up.
The reality of the situation on a submarine is that every watchstander has to be able to perform the IA's on that watch, because things are much more time-critical and sensitive. It's apples and oranges, as far as I can tell, when it comes to DC response. We lose the ER, we're screwed. A carrier loses an ER, they still have the ability to steam, etc. These are extremes, I agree, but that's what people are going to look at. On the day-to-day operational level, I don't think women will have any issue operating the plant. But in a casualty situation, when everything is on the line, we need people who can, without hesitation or need for backup, operate everything on that watchstation to fight the casualty.
And going back to what spekkio was saying, the vast majority of things can be handled without concern. It's the outliers that are problematic, and as I said previously, they're the ones that will matter when people are looking at the worst-case scenario.
