When GI Jane has her monthly pain

Someone asked me about my thought about women in their period while on a mission with military “elite” units.  Obviously I’m not a woman so my comment is going to be more on the military side of things.  I imagine that many within such units have reservation about combat units being no longer exclusively all-male.  Here’s my thoughts.

 It seems there are many scenarios in which women on their period can pose a risk during an elite forces’ missions.  Here I’m assuming you are referring to Special Operation Forces or conventional forces with a history of seeing themselves as exclusive and unique.  Since the question seem focused on Special Operation Forces I’ll narrow down my examples to Special Operation Forces.

I’m thinking about problems that would arise in training even before a real world mission.  What we think of as elite units are typically light infantry in the bigger picture of things; by light infantry I mean all your ground firepower is what you can carry with you as a person. It’s a paradox that light infantry carry much more weight than their counterpart in heavy infantry units.  For light infantry units mortars and 50 Cals are the big stuff and a nightmare to carry around.  For heavy infantry with their mechanized fighting vehicles organic to the unit itself they will of course be able to brings with them “heavier” weapons to the fight and more of them too. So its no surprise that SOF units and other elite conventional forces usually have higher standards for hiking with very heavy packs.  Women in support units don’t carry the weight light infantry units carry. Actually most females in military hikes often slow down a support unit on required hikes because of body differences.  And that’s for training but imagine a woman on her period for days hiking with full combat weight to a fight with all the negative symptoms that comes with a period.

Besides direct action there’s reconnaissance or special reconnaissance missions deep behind enemy lines.  Let’s say its a two man sniper team.  I think of the story of Marine Scout Sniper Carlos Hatchcock crawling for days before he took his shot of a general deep behind enemy lines.  Think about staying still for days observing the enemy, peeing and pooping on yourself; its not a place to be changing pads.  Or say there’s a woman in a SEAL or Marine Recon team inserting into enemy territory by swimming.  Beach operations as a regular Marine itself can be a wet and dirty affair.  You get sands and water everywhere on your body, even in your private parts.  There’s a crass Marine saying about not having “sand in your clit” (excuse my language, just quoting the Marines) so can you imagine a female in period swimming in with that as a problem while she’s on her period doing a crazy swim in the ocean unto the beach in which every gear you own is horribly wet and become “sand cookies?”

Not all SOF missions are direct combat action or reconnaissance.  Green Berets have the role of training up other country’s forces or paramilitary forces including rebel groups; let’s say you have a women out in the jungles or Afghanistan where resupply is already a problem and now if somehow the logistics and supply guys in the rear with the gear forgets to include tampons.  That’s not a far fetched scenario. Or say you have a Special Forces units engaged in counterinsurgency, of winning hearts and mind against a known enemy embedded with the people in a hostile area that have a cultural taboo about ceremonial cleanliness and women on their periods contacting men.  One can imagine village tribal leaders wondering about why the women are always out in the open communicating with men, after all don’t they ever have their period?  If historically Green Berets are willing to be snake eaters, eat monkey brains to win the heart and minds of indigenous forces during the Vietnam War, can you imagine what the Left’s PC codes of having trans and women in Special Forces Group would do for unconventional warfare or counterinsurgency with a host that has traditional values?  It goes against the grain totally…

The concern is not limited to a woman being in an “elite” unit when she’s on her period; one should be equally concern when an operator get pregnant as well.  Even in noncombat units where females and males troops are integrated there’s a problem with females getting pregnant. We must not be naive to think we can throw young men and women together in units and we wouldn’t have personnel problems that affect a unit’s cohesion.  Imagine women with actual jobs in combat units who gets pregnant and have to take maternity leave. They will probably be gone for months and when they get back to their unit they have not been working on their skill sets necessary for combat. Some skill sets need constant exercise as a team together such as the dangerous job of practicing room clearing.  SEALS and Delta train with live fire exercise for these missions like crazy.  Imagine a women on the team leaving for six months and come back with a new rank because of her time and grade in the service.  She comes back without her skill set being  razor sharp but now are expected to take on more responsibilities fitting for her rank. Or say they don’t give her the responsibilities that is fitting for her new rank; it is going to upset the dynamic of the unit with confusion about the correspondence of rank and responsibilities. The female service member might feel discriminated because she’s not given the responsibilities fitting for her time and grade but she’s not accounting for her leave of absence.  Or say she does get the responsibilities of the new rank.  How would the other members of her unit feel?  How’s that for unit cohesion? It seems dangerous.

Some might reply that other countries have integrated females in combat units as a rebuttal to what I wrote.  Take Israel for instance.  But I think there’s more to the story than just a blanket statement that Israel allowing women and LGBT to serve in combat units without a further look.  This news article is insightful.  To this day Israel’s elite paratroopers, commandos and Golani Brigade are all male.  So you’re not going to find a Lesbian in those units.  Nor transgenders who are actually females.  Women infantryman is only limited to the mix gender Caracal battalion.  That’s one battalion among how many battalions of Infantry forces the IDF has?  It’s a drop in the bucket.  Even then the standards are lowered for this unit.  They modify the table of organization and equipment for the unit such as what weapons they carry, and modified lighter armor, etc for the women.  So far the battalion is limited to border security with Egypt rather than more violate border areas.  Border security is also not the same thing as being an infantry unit that is expected to be part of an expected ground force invasion which is expected of regular infantry. When you watch and read the order of battle for Israel’s military operations that involves incursion into territories you would note they are using the units I mentioned earlier that are all-male infantry.