And 3 years later in 2017 there are drugs and sex problems.
> Nine service personnel on a nuclear submarine have been discharged from the Royal Navy after testing positive for drugs.
> The revelations come after claims earlier this month of inappropriate sexual relationships among some of those on board HMS Vigilant, one of four Vanguard Class submarines which maintain the UK's nuclear deterrent and is armed with Trident missiles.
> The submarine has recently been embroiled in controversy over allegations of an onboard relationship between a male and female.
Sigh. For women to be the prominent factor of stress when working in a f*king nuclear submarine, you'd have to have serious communication issues with the opposite gender…
Just in case anyone else hasn't heard of "Opindia" before (the second link):
> OpIndia is an Indian right-wing news website that frequently publishes misinformation. Founded in December 2014, the website has published fake news and Islamophobic commentary on many occasions. OpIndia is dedicated to criticism of what it considers "liberal media", and to support of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Hindutva ideology. According to University of Maryland researchers, OpIndia has shamed journalists it deems opposed to the BJP, and has alleged media bias against Hindus and the BJP. In 2019, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) rejected OpIndia's application to be certified as a fact checker. IFCN-certified fact checkers identified 25 fake news stories and 14 misreported stories published by OpIndia from January 2018 to June 2020.
Here's the Daily Mail, also right-wing, but notable for being Britain's highest circulation paid newspaper (and has female-majority readership):
> Bullying, misogyny and sexual harassment on Royal Navy submarines EXPOSED: Whistleblowers including trailblazing female officer reveal 'crush depth rape list' of women, stolen underwear and claims of assault
They're not wrong. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has been very vocal about its ideological descent into left-wing populism. He's used words like "propaganda." I used to moderate the Men's Rights page. Eventually I was blocked by some senior moderators (who also heavily moderated the Feminism page, incidentally). You can go and review the difference between those pages yourself.
The Men's Rights page now includes criticism of the movement in the summary section. Note how that is entirely absent in the Feminism page. Over the years they've stripped more and more useful information out of the Men's Rights page. Especially anything which portrays the movement in a positive light. Almost anything without a citation, for example. While this is technically within Wikipedia's rules, this level of scrutiny isn't applied to the Feminism page. Not even close. Take a look at the section for suicide on the Men's Rights page:
> Studies have also found an over-representation of women in attempted or incomplete suicides and men in complete suicides.
I mean, what the fuck? On a page for men's issues like suicide, the person who moderates the Feminism page added stuff about attempted suicide for women. Many other sections contain a similar tone of, "but women also..."
The real cheery on top is the byline at the very top of the article directing people elsewhere with a hyperlink. Because how dare you research a movement which isn't pro-feminist:
> Not to be confused with the pro-feminist Men's liberation movement.
You'll note no similar byline on the Feminism page, directing people to pro men's rights feminist movements.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Over the years I've heard from dozens of people who have experienced similar issues, and have either been blocked, banned, or constructively cut out of moderating the pages they've been passionate about for so many years. ALL of them cite the same reason: ideology. Wikipedia long ago abandoned truth. Ideological compliance is now baked into the complex moderation structure. You would be horrified to learn how much is deleted and suppressed now. Just take a look through the moderation logs of any politically contentious pages for a seriously eye opening experience.
Years ago I did a bit of speleology so I'm not afraid of confined spaces but as a male I'd be scared to spend time on a submarine in cramped conditions and in mixed company. I reckon I'd be under constant stress in case I accidentally said something out of place unlike in all-male work environments I've worked in the past where banter and certain types of comment pass without thought.
The nature and politics of the times has to make this such a volatile work environment especially when one can't 'go home' during off hours.
I've also worked in mixed company. Decades ago, I worked in a somewhat crowded building of some hundreds of people. My office was small and in an isolated part of the building and I shared it with three young attractive women who were part of my staff. Whilst I also had male staff they worked in other sections of the building.
Working with these women in close quarters was very different to working in an all-male environment which I had been used to previously. I enjoyed their company and we got along well together, and I was always well behaved and there were no complaints about my behavior. In fact, as their superior, they'd gang up and bully me—they ruled the office, not me.
Times have changed, there's absolutely no way I would accept working in that situation today as it'd be just too risky. Similarly, I wouldn't expect my employer to allow me to work for eight hours per day under such risky conditions.
Sure, women have rights to equality and I'd never deny them that right, but it seems to me that mixed company on a submarine is an 'explosive' environment and it's inevitable there will be trouble. (A group of males locked up and isolated without sex for three months but still in the tempting presence of women isn't natural.)
One has to feel some sympathy for all of those submariners.
It's interesting that just today The Guardian is running a story praising a new women only living space in London[1], a city where 81% of homeless, rough sleepers are men[2].
This chimes with the view that gender segregation is only seen as a bad thing when it's male only spaces.
Am struggling to see a connection between impoverished rough sleepers and a single expensive apartment development in genteel New Barnet having a covenant that its tenants must be women. I guess women wouldn't have to stretch credulity quite so far to show how male only spaces and defaults impact them...
The problem and hypocrisy is that saying "only men allowed" will get you tarred and feathered, while saying "only women allowed" will get you showered with praise about how courageous and bold you are.
Even if this was true (and it isn't: the UK has loads of male only accommodation from homeless shelters to its most prestigious boarding schools and the Grauniad will happily gush about men's groups[1] too), it has nothing to do with the intellectual dishonesty of linking the homelessness problem to gender segregation in an expensive retirement community in New Barnet.
Eton (1440-), Harrow (1572), Radley (1847) are all prestige "public" (for very rich well connected 'public') boys-only schools; the jewels in a crown of many more [1] that serve as introductions to a sea of men only clubs that still exist aplenty.
With examples of an exclusive to women apartment building, many exclusive to male schools and clubs the only thing demonstrating gender openess in England here is homelessness - which might be dominated by men but still admits women to wander sans roof on the streets.
It seems significant that your allowed "male only spaces" are only for rich elite; whilst the objection was against lauding the provision of housing that excludes men (given the number of men without accommodation far exceeds the number of women in that situation).
How does the uber-elite having men-only spaces make it OK to exclude men from housing opportunities.
This often seems the case to me, the ruling classes (and the very wealthy) do something and because this group is dominated by men then all men, no matter their station nor their moral objections to this groups actions, get tarred with that brush.
Then we get "it's fine to exclude men from housing because this group [of HNW, rich, uber-elite] have no housing problems".
It's almost like discrimination on irrelevant characteristics is wrong.
The female only senior citizen housing project disingenuously linked to homelessness is also for wealthy elites.
Nobody with the slightest bit of understanding honestly believes that there is a single man without access to accommodation that would be able to move off the streets if only a owner-occupied new build development in New Barnet was open to men purchasing a flat there.
On the other hand, there are a large number of hostel beds (much larger than the New Barnet project celebrated for its uniqueness) potentially accessible to London's homeless which are reserved specifically for men
> I reckon I'd be under constant stress in case I accidentally said something out of place unlike in all-male work environments I've worked in the past where banter and certain types of comment pass without thought.
Using banter for high-stress situations is quite a British thing. There's a story I was told about British troops during WWII in wet rat ridden trenches, cold and low on rations, having banter to keep morale high - much to the Americans surprise.
I can't liken my situation to theirs (thank goodness), but in a tough spot I was in male only company and we openly discussed who we would eat first, who we would keep around for company, etc.
> Times have changed, there's absolutely no way I would accept working in that situation today as it'd be just too risky. Similarly, I wouldn't expect my employer to allow me to work for eight hours per day under such risky conditions.
Unfortunately this rings true.
> Sure, women have rights to equality and I'd never deny them that right, but it seems to me that mixed company on a submarine is an 'explosive' environment and it's inevitable there will be trouble. (A group of males locked up and isolated without sex for three months but still in the tempting presence of women isn't natural.)
Not just that, but if an allegation is made (which is much more likely in this situation) then it's almost impossible to deal with. You can't isolate people from one another, you can't do any real investigation - it just sucks.
It's okay saying "believe all women", but I know at least two women now that have used claims of sexual assault because they had cheated on partners and got caught. The accused had the claims dropped against them, but lost their jobs and lives as a result.
>Using banter for high-stress situations is quite a British thing. There's a story I was told about British troops during WWII in wet rat ridden trenches, cold and low on rations, having banter to keep morale high - much to the Americans surprise.
I've been reading and watching videos on European cultures. Many say in European cultures small talk is not a thing. I know UK is not Europe in that sense but are geographically. Things like the "German stare" where they don't talk but stare at people. But actually now that I think about it supposedly on UK subways talking is taboo. Someone from the US or Canada would be trying to make small talk in lines/queues for anything.
A Finnish friend once told me a joke from his country, that went something like this: Two old childhood friends meet for the first time in many years at a bar. They both order drinks and sit in silence for several minutes drinking. One of them says, "So, how has your life been?" The other says "Are we here to talk or to drink?"
European cultures are quite a broad range, from Sicilian to Finnish and Basque to Serbian. Percentage wise and excluding Russia and Turkey, I'd wager that small talk on average is common in European cultures (so every other country apart from Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, maaybe Netherlands?)
Yes that's why I find it amazing. Such range and diversity of cultures yet any time I read up on any place in Europe it seems that many countries are like the others not big on small talk. I agree it's generalizing and from thin data but who knows it may be true or somewhat accurate.
> can depth crush rape list be categorised as banter?
I imagine from your perspective there is never an acceptable time when such things can be thought, let alone uttered. I understand this, but it's only afforded to idealists.
There is a different perspective where you have a large group of people that are experiencing a mixture of extreme emotions (fear, loneliness, anger, regret, etc) and are unable to express them. Sometimes the more extreme the situation, the more extreme the distraction needed.
When I was discussing eating my friends - there was no serious plan in place. We had zero intentions of eating each other, and we had never before or never will eat another human (depending on how food inflation goes /s). It was an extreme distraction that broke the ice in a high-stress environment that just got everybody talking. It kept morale up, it did its job.
Thanks for sharing this fascinating take on how you experience the world. Personally, as a man, I have never found the need to worry about any of the issues you highlight when interacting with other genders. I wonder what makes our experiences so different?
It's not an intrinsic worry and I trust myself implicitly to behave well and I always have. The problem is the changed political climate where one has to be constantly aware of what one says or to not touch or bump someone accidentally. This stops people acting naturally, especially in some types of work environments. Same I reckon would go for male schoolteachers, I often wonder how they manage these days when there's a magnifying glass on evey movement they make.
I've been accused of groping a woman at staff party when I hadnt. Other colleagues knew my married male manager was having an affair with this single mum and was at it in a room with all the coats. I was asked to go get a coat by a colleague that knew what was going on and I walked in on them so walked straight back out.
Monday morning to save face, she accused me of groping her and spread it around the company. I left shortly after that incident, it became untenable to stay on.
Women have reputations to uphold, so will often lie to maintain them, laws are in their favour.
What hilbert42 says is very relatable to me even if it never got so bad for me.
I can't stress enough how everything is different "when one can't 'go home' during off hours". I used to be an enlisted sailor, then an officer. It's sometimes hard to have a few minutes alone in an entire day (night included), especially on smaller or older ships. After a few months any small thing can become a very nasty fight very fast. The word "microagression" suddenly makes a lot of sense. I once got into a fight because some guy thought I had slightly moved his towel that was in front of my bunk. This man had been at sea on the ship for more than 6 month, I had joined mid-tour a month before.
I've seen a male-only boat (there were one or two female officers, which was accepted because of the bathroom configuration) get one female enlisted sailor, a talented and very professional young woman. Everything changed in one day. Though submariners are often a bit more mature than others, managing a mixed crew on a small ship is very different.
Remember the average age on a military ship is rarely above 25.
Sexual harassment is not the hardest, since everyone is with everyone 24/7, most cases are very clear cut. I've seen a few very nasty cases (sexual predator that went undetected for months or year, a guy that wasn't reported despite a suspected rape attempt and went on to assault someone on his next ship under my command, a false rape claim) but it's mostly straightforward to handle. A lot of officers don't close their doors when doing personal review or other one-to-one interviews and conversations with female sailors but the paranoia mostly stops there.
Dealing with "regular" harassment, rumours, jealousy etc is way less simple with a mixed crew, regardless of the personal qualities of the people. And of course your management style has to be adapted. When you have more than a few (young) women in a team, you have to lead differently. (Women over 40 are rarely on the "bad" side (when there is a clear one) of those problems).
I've seen quite a few of those cases. Sometimes, we've been successful in stopping them before harm gets done, sometimes someone's life was ruined for months or years or people had to be transferred because trust had been broken too deep and some people couldn't work together anymore. And a few cases with legal proceedings (harassment lawsuit etc), but never handled one myself.
On a personal note I (male) have had to share a two beds room with a female for a few months. We didn't sleep a lot, and often not at the same time, never had any problems. It was a male-only boat with less than five women.
Hope this gives you an impression of what it can be like.
Could be perhaps generation difference. Many things today considered to be sexism used to be normal fun a few decades ago and perhaps older people can slip into the old behavior if not careful.
I'm personally not worried about working in a mixed team, no matter how small the office is. I just keep things professional ... and that's it.
Having said that, conditions in a submarine might be different, and office experience might not be applicable.
The dynamic is completely different in mixed company. It used to be common for men and women to attend different universities. In fact, learning outcomes tend to be better in single sex education [0] and its not really surprising - everyone is more productive and focused. What’s surprising is how we don't realize the effectiveness of single sex education despite research, common sense, and tradition all pointing towards its effectiveness.
That study simply looks at the differences between students at single- and mixed-sex schools. There are so many confounders I doubt it can be used to say something meaningful purely about the effects of sex separation. They do (try to) control for some confounders but they are all related to the students' individual backgrounds and none of them related to e.g. the school or the teachers. And the schools are all Catholic.
As a graduate of an all-male school, I think the issue you raise is the right one. Our education was second to none, but many years later we openly joke about the social adjustment we went through in college (and later) to compensate for having been in that environment in our formative years
"What’s surprising is how we don't realize the effectiveness of single sex education despite research"
Whether this is true or not, which I doubt except perhaps at the very edges, I am very glad I went to a coeducational school. I ha no female sibling at home so being at school and mixing with girls made me comfortable to be around them.
> I reckon I'd be under constant stress in case I accidentally said something out of place unlike in all-male work environments I've worked in the past where banter and certain types of comment pass without thought.
As a male, I can assure you that the types of comments that you think “pass without thought” isn't considered desirable by all of your fellow male colleagues either. Sure they won't necessarily complaint about it publicly, but they'll still see you in a negative way.
Maybe you should accept that you're not a teenager anymore and that there are things that you shouldn't be saying out loud in a professional environment just because you think it's funny, it's not.
> As a male, I can assure you that the types of comments that you think “pass without thought” isn't considered desirable by all of your fellow male colleagues either. Sure they won't necessarily complaint about it publicly, but they'll still see you in a negative way.
You seem to have missed his point. It isn't whether his comments are considered desirable. He doesn't care, and neither do I. It is whether comments are raised to HR, management, or for personal lawsuits. This is potentially career ending. Part of living in a society with free speech is that we sometimes say things which hurt others people's feelings. We accept this because the alternative is self-imposed segregation. Which is, again, what they are pointing out. In the office today I am very careful never to be alone in a room with a woman. I don't "banter" with women because I am worried that one of my comments, however harmless in intent, will be perceived poorly. This means my dynamic with male colleagues is different because I trust they will not attempt to end my career over a misunderstanding.
The idea that the receiver is the sole interpreter and judge of intent is in my opinion unfair and unreasonable. The receiver can interpret utterance in a great many ways to which only imagination is the limit.
> t is whether comments are raised to HR, management, or for personal lawsuits. This is potentially career ending.
In some imaginary world maybe, but in practice we have many people with mountains of documented misbehavior still being in charge, so we definitely don't live in that world. First of all, very few women report even blatant misbehavior like groping, forced kisses or even rape, and then there are even fewer HR department that react properly when such reports are raised. The risk of a misunderstanding ending your career is basically null. The risk of ending a woman's career when she reports misconducts is much, much higher.
> Part of living in a society with free speech is that we sometimes say things which hurt others people's feelings.
Insulting your boss will almost always lead to you being fired, threatening a cop will get you legal troubles. Free speech is not absolute, and was never supposed to be.
> In the office today I am very careful never to be alone in a room with a woman. I don't "banter" with women because I am worried that one of my comments, however harmless in intent, will be perceived poorly.
Then you have a problem when communicating with women, and you should probably spend more time around them to learn. Yes at the beginning this will likely
mean that you'd need to weight all your words to avoid saying something inappropriate, but at the end of the day, you'd have learned how to behave
> This means my dynamic with male colleagues is different because I trust they will not attempt to end my career over a misunderstanding.
That's a pretty bad assessment, as men are much more likely to throw you under the bus at the first occasion than women, because rivalries are much more intense between people of the same sex. Being afraid of your women coworker because they could report you is as irrational as being afraid of your neighbors because they could murder your family.
Going for drinks after work with your male colleagues, but not the women, is most likely a net positive for your career. Very rarely is anybody fired for such an offense as not hanging out with women after work, but building a closer relationship with the other men you work with will pay dividends.
Maybe, but I don't see why that's my problem. Society has created a system by which my risk increases exponentially when I engage in friendly conversation with women. The rational response is to reduce exposure to that risk.
"isn't considered desirable by all of your fellow male colleagues either."
True, and I was one of them (and one of the few, but it never bothered me that much even if I didn't partake—as it was the cultural norm).
It's amazing how people read meanings into comment that was never said let alone meant as subtext. That 'teenager' reference I consider offensive because many of the things you presume I must have been saying I likely never thought let alone ever did say out loud.
You clearly aren't of the same generation as me, it's a shame we don't have hidden recordings of those times so you could fully appreciate how truly different they were to the present.
Moreover, even then, the ethos was very different depending on what part of society one was in. Such comment was from my experience more common in the military but it was still pretty much accepted the norm in 'polite' all-male company.
Granted, i am no submariner, but i wasted some time of my life in the early 00s in the german army.
We never had any problems with harassment or anything like that... for one, the women i met there were at least twice as tough as the men in the same unit and had an attitude that let you forget really fast they were from another gender. I never understood there could be any form of problem... though, perhaps the infantry just attracts other kinds of women than more "civilised" forms of duty.
IIRC the German fleet had been traumatized by a series of false sexual assault claims by one or two women in the late 90s. I don't remember the details but it was before women were allowed to serve in every position in 2000/2001.
First, I'd never think that let alone would I ever say it. If a woman wasn't mutually interested in having sex then all thoughts would be off. As for rape, I find the notion so abhorrent and disrespectful of the victim that if forced at gunpoint to commit the act it'd still be off because I'd be incapable of an erection.
The issues are with both innocent mistakes and of those of which one is not even aware of having made, and of the fact that if accused of sexual harassment or rape and even if found completely innocent—which is seemingly increasingly difficult to do—then some mud will still stick because that's the first thing people will remember whenever one's name is mentioned.
Fortunately, I've never been accused but I'm increasing aware of the possibility—just being male puts one in the risk zone.
You responded to a comment about that sort of bullying with a comment along the lines of "Working with women can be a minefield". It felt like a weird juxtaposition to me.
Personally, being falsely accused of rape is not something I've ever spent time worrying about because it's not happened to me, anyone I know, or - to my knowledge - any friends-of-friends.
The odd case is reported in the news from time to time - but who knows why particular stories get picked up by the media [0]. Paying attention to that stuff gives you distorted sense of how likely something is, by providing a bunch of bogus input to the brain's availability heuristic [1].
"You responded to a comment about that sort of bullying with a comment along the lines of "Working with women can be a minefield". It felt like a weird juxtaposition to me."
I did not use those words, this is the second post where I have had to correct wrongful assumptions about what I have said. Why is it that everyone
nowadays automatically makes the worst assumption about anything that's said? This is a very noticeable and nasty trend of recent decades that wasn't common when I was younger.
If I have to spell the obvious out in detail then I will. First, working in my office alone with three women wasn't the first time I had worked with women, there were others in that organization that I worked with and also in previous employment. Second, I was both friendly and behaved properly and professionally with the women in my office. Not only were they my friends but also my closest allies in the bureaucratic wars with other departments (they were part of my IT help desk team and they always had access to strategic information which they freely offered without pressure or bribes from me. We worked well as a team should.
Moreover, they were on a first name basis with my partner who would phone regularly and they would take great delight in talking to her about me behind my back. Being the only male in the office of course I was bullied but in the nicest sense. I was lucky that they all got along well together and all of them with me. Later, I was promoted and moved office, there I was alone this time with only two women both of whom I also got along well. However, that was over 25 years ago and whilst harassment issues were alive and well back then they were nothing like as acute or as corrosive as they are today—it seems that little else permeates the work environment or work culture to the extent this matter does. It's clear to me these unresolved and difficult submarine harassment matters are testament to the fact.
I have been lucky in that I have had a good professional relationships with all women I've worked with but I cannot say that about all the men.
Given the heightened state of the politics surrounding these issues nowadays I reckon I wouldn't be so lucky next time round even if I were to be even more professional than I have been previously.
Simply, had I need to repeat my time over today then I wouldn't repeat that exposure as a precautionary measure.
I apologise that I paraphrased your words poorly. I don't doubt you are well-intentioned and act professionally. Which is why I think you would have little to fear. And it's probably worth taking precautions, but not worth getting stressed about.
What I and perhaps others found a little off-putting is that you replied to a story about women being subjected to rape jokes and other bullying with the risks you think the modern "political climate" poses for men.
My point, perhaps irritably expressed, is that I think those risks are overblown. Certainly more so than the risks women face.
It's not about raping, wow you have a low opinion of men.
It's about the sexual tension, the emotions, jealousy, consensual pairing causing drama, etc.
And why is no one asking women if they even want to be in such a spot. I know I'd feel odd if the genders were reversed and it was a very female dominated space that was asking me to be one of the 10% of men quota.
That was a direct reference to the article linked by the grandparent of my original post, regarding bullying suffered by women serving on UK nuclear subs.
Someone responded to that with a comment I read as "yeah, working with women can be a minefield". Sorry if it seemed a bit out of the blue.
> It's about the sexual tension, the emotions, jealousy, consensual pairing causing drama, etc.
Surely this is just part of the human experience. Learning to deal with it is part of growing up. That's not to diminish the difficulty experienced by people going through this stuff, but what's the alternative?
Don't have women on submarines. I mean, that's the alternative whether it's palatable (for any number of reasons) or not. And, as someone in favor of having mixed teams in general, it's admittedly difficult for me to imagine the warfighting advantage of a mixed submarine crew.
Anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, reconnaissance, special operations support, land attack, and nuclear deterrence don't seem to have any particular characteristics where the presence of women on the crew would be advantageous. This is in contrast with something like civil affairs or certain types of special operations, where women bring new capabilities to the table. That said, the berthing in new boats is designed around mixed crews so clearly the horse left the barn a while ago, so it's beyond time to figure out how to make it work.
Ironically, such malicious interpretations of casual remarks are probably the sort of thing hilbert42 is worried about. Walking defensively on eggshells in the office is one thing, at least at the end of the day you can go home and breath easy, but sealed in a metal tube under the ocean, where you have to guard what you say at all times even in your sleep? No thanks, not for me.
It seems to be indicated in the subtext of your wording, even in this comment you stated "eggshells"/"breathe easy"; if your natural behavior does not align with your workplace policy wrt not devaluing someone of the opposite sex, then yes you should seek some behavior modification.
Edit; to address the original comment
>Similarly, I wouldn't expect my employer to allow me to work for eight hours per day under such risky conditions.
Is the implication "such risky conditions" = working with e.g. women?
Out of context quotes miss the point. His complaint was around perception not actually devaluation of people.
It’s clear how you should treat people in a 100% professional environment, but subs are an odd middle ground. It’s the same reason many people dislike going drinking with coworkers except extended across months.
Hell the article ends with her getting court marshaled for sending the subs location to her boyfriend in an email. Making such a mistake with classified material is normally easy to avoid, but on a sub everyone you’re talking to for months has clearance so it’s easy to stop thinking about it. Until whoops you’re facing criminal consequences.
> It seems to be indicated in the subtext of your wording, even in this comment you stated "eggshells"/"breathe easy"; if your natural behavior does not align with your workplace policy wrt not devaluing someone of the opposite sex, then yes you should seek some behavior modification.
I take it you aren’t familiar with autism - or what it’s like to be high-functioning on-the-spectrum then?
It has nothing to do with lizard brain whatsoever. If for some reason I had to take disciplinary action against one of those women and I had good and legitimate reason to do so then I would be at risk of retribution. The chances of me being believed would be negligible.
I have always been courteous to coworkers, especially women.
Your comment has just validified my point about today's politics. Decades ago no one would have thought in those terms let alone wrongly accused someone of them.
Just for clarification's sake, when I mentioned I'd be worried about accidentally saying something out of place I wasn't referring to me making sexual innuendos but rather that these days innocent comment is so easily assumed to be offensive or taken the wrong way.
It's why so many of us now simply say nothing, as it's safer to do so. Your hair-trigger assumption again proves my point.
I made a comment a couple days ago (which has since been flagged, go figure) about how the MeToo movement was and still is a disaster that just made interacting with women more problematic and far too much of a liability than it has to be.
I thank you for reaffirming my thoughts on it more eloquently than I ever could.
Due to the later time of your comment you may not have noticed but a comment in reply to mine was flagged and it meant my subsequent replies had to be removed or they would not make sense (I don't think I said anything in them that alone would have warranted removal).
I don't blame HN for this because such action stops the thread turning into a brawl where both sides become even more polarized and arguments get even more heated.
When I made my initial post I thought I was just making an observation on the story and I gave experiences which I would not repeat from my observations of cultural shifts of recent years. It certainly was not my intention to inflame and I didn't anticipate a large portion of these comments would have to be removed as a result.
Unfortunately, forums have to so act to keep some semblance of order. The tragedy is that issues such this topic—women working in traditional male roles such as the military, the Me Too movement, stuff about kids, veganism, etc.—can no longer be discussed in a rational manner seemingly anywhere in society without them flaring up into melees that have to be quashed to keep order.
Why in recent years many people have become so polarized and indignantly and or righteously argumentative about such issues is a complex matter and I don't think anyone fully understands why. There's little point me speculating about the reasons here except to say that there are many HN stories I choose not to comment on for reasons not out of fear they will be flagged but because it's clear to me that even if I put a
moderate and well-reasoned case they'll nevertheless draw comments that will likely result in them being flagged.
It's not that HN posters are any more rowdy than elsewhere—in fact, HN is one of the more civilized places on the Web—it's that I know such stories will draw attacks by virtue of the topics themselves. In these situations I prefer to self-censor and don't post because if I were to add anything meaningful to the conversation it would draw wrath and ire of many, and as I see no virtue in adding innocuous or irrelevant comment, it's better to remain silent—a point I've already made earlier.
"Why be EXTRA courteous to women? Already reveals you think of them as different."
Because that's the ways boys were taught by BOTH schools and their parents when I was a kid not only from our youngest age but also it was reinforced throughout highschool until we left. This was sacrosanct value of good behavior in our society until recently.
It's a damn shame that you and others like you are not old enough to have a sufficient sense of history to realize the problems and damage you are causing by accusing innocent people like me for having the normal views and values of my society's culture.
It is extremely upsetting and unfair that you make such allegations. I'm not responsible for society having turned its values upsidedown in recent years.
"There are tens, hundreds of thousands of others like you on the internet"
I've never mentioned this matter on the internet previously. And I do treat women equally both as colleagues at work and elsewhere and have always done so. The difference comes when someone is aggressive towards me. With a male I'll stand ground and argue back (but not physically), with a female I'll walk away. It's the prudent thing to do.
> With a male I'll stand ground and argue back (but not physically), with a female I'll walk away.
Could we continue digging into this in good faith?
If they're so aggressive that it's unprofessional, then neither men nor women should be doing it to you! You should not rise to their level, remain professional and calm, defend your position intellectually without aggression. Try to settle the dispute, or escalate to management if need be. But after, you can give feedback to either them, to their manager, or to HR to determine how you two can have a similar disagreement in the future without unprofessional aggression.
If it's just a tense disagreement of opinion and involves someone coming off aggressive, but remains professional, then why would you argue differently if it's a man or a woman?
I'm sure there is more nuance to your point, but to me this seems fairly binary: Each of these scenarios is gender-agnostic.
>If for some reason I had to take disciplinary action against one of those women and I had good and legitimate reason to do so then I would be at risk of retribution.
Tell me you don't have military experience without telling me you don't have military experience.
Better to say nothing and risk being thought a lizard brain than to say "A group of males locked up and isolated without sex for three months but still in the tempting presence of women isn't natural", and remove all doubt.
Perhaps so, but if I'm not stating facts then what else do we attribute the subsequent trouble to as outlined in those links?
What's worse risk of being shot as the messenger or saying nothing and letting situations get more out of hand? I've always preferred the former but as I've witnessed here many prefer to remain silent.
What you call "lizard brain" is actually normal human physiology and psychology. Expecting adult humans to behave as sexless victorian vulcans, cool creatures of pure rationality and suppressed emotion, is asking quite a lot. People can put on this kind of act for a time, but when the farce slips you shouldn't be surprised.
For better or worse, people on these ships are going to have sex (even when it's just men.. don't tell me you've never heard about sailors.)
Sex is normal - making rape lists and sexual harassment/abuse is not. There’s quite a bit of consensual middle-ground between “sexless Victorian vulcans” and outright sexual harassment/abuse and the latter shouldn’t be tolerated regardless of who it is.
The suggestion I responded to was that humans turn off their "lizard brain" and to stop thinking about their coworkers in any sort of sexual way. Obviously making "rape lists" is very far over the line and should not be tolerated (who said otherwise?!) but to ban people from even thinking about their coworkers in a sexual way is patently absurd. We're humans, you would have to chemically neuter people to accomplish that goal.
Fair enough. I agree turning off the lizard brain is impossible so if I misread your comment in this way I apologize. I was more referring to "people are going to have sex when working together, even when just men", which I agree with, but wanted to make the distinction between co-workers hooking up to what was referred to in the article, which wasn't clear to me from your comment.
>The watch officer and sonar operators are discussing an important philosophical question: would it be more painful to be struck by a whole tuna or a tin of tuna?
Of course the tin of tuna would hurt more. And, I know this is not the question, but being hit by a can of tuna is more probable haha.
But jokes aside, it seems all the monotony does get to them. And such discussions are necessary to maintain ones sanity. I would be a little conflicted if I had such a job. On one hand, the boring routine is the best case, because it means there are no active threats and thus no war. But then again, I'd be secretly looking forward to a bit of action - something to make me feel alive
You must mean a small tuna. A bluefin weighs up to 250kg / 550lb according to a quick search. Then again, if that hits you hard enough, it won’t hurt at all
Being hard and small, the tuna can can produce much more localised and sharp pain. If the whole tuna is dropped on your lower body from the third floor and turns it into mush it would also hurt though. But I still vote for tuna can.
I think about that sort of description when people talk about colonizing space, or mars or the moon. Would it even be ethical to bear children on such a colony who, not by choice, would have to live their lives confined to a cramped habitat that would probably feel a lot like living in a submarine?
I don't know about the ethics, but I'd argue that people still get born into terrible situations right here on earth. Think of all the children born in war-torn countries, into extreme poverty etc. Even in the midst of all this adversity, they will still find a reason to smile. And some will even make a huge impact in our world.
Also isn't there some concerns if child grown in lower gravity could even properly survive on Earth? That applies at least to Moon, Mars and in space. Venus could likely be adaptable, but that is otherwise so nasty place that we will colonize it last...
At least on a spaceship you have portholes, and ocasionally could even do EVA. And probably it is far easier to ensure the integrity of a hull designed to keep an 1 atm pressure differential than at 14
Even when you're not on duty you're still on a submarine.
This kind of thing doesn't give new meaning to the concept of work-life balance, it removes all meaning completely.
Other careers have an element of this which can be helpful to recognize the degree to which it just comes with the territory.
On the shore side of marine cargoes you often get a client's vessel in port to visit a number of facilities around-the-clock. Keeping up with all the transfers doesn't stop until the ship finally sails, so you can end up working some 36-hour days. Not the kind of job where you get to go home from work every single day.
On the sub they don't get to go home from work (or go anywhere else) every single month.
And then there's the truly more negative aspects than that.
there are things that happen in one's life that dramatically impact the rest of one's life from that point forward. when i was in school looking at college, i very nearly became a submariner. as it happens, i was third in the list, but they only took the top two. at the time, it was devastatingly disappointing. these oh so many years later with hindsight and all that, i'm no longer disappointed. i can't see how the divergence in lifestyles could not be any wider. i do still love to read some Tom Clancy and similar Navy scifi
I almost did the same thing in the US after graduating college. The signing bonus for nuclear power school was intriguingly large to me, and the job would have meant a steady source of income which I didn't have many prospects for at the time.
That's what I was trying for as well, via Annapolis. I like to say that the reason I got third was during the interview process, I went all goofy and could not remember the element Uranium. I just couldn't do it. They were trying to get it out of me with taunting questions "is it carbon? is it plutonium?" "No, but relevant isotopes are 235 and 239". They did acknowledge that I wasn't trying to BS my way through as I had already answered plenty of other questions. My brain just went night night.
However, in all honesty, it was the fact that I screwed off my senior year in literature class and dropped my GPA which I'm guessing had a much larger factor. Now I'm glad I didn't read any of those boring high school assigned books. It saved me in the end
i went to college for 3 semesters before dropping out because i couldn't afford it, and i didn't think going into debt with student loans was going to work. i took a part time job during the 2nd semester, and went full time hours during the summer. tried to schedule classes around work for the 3rd semester, but that didn't work well either. so i just decided to stop throwing money at school, and self-taught with a lot of OJT from some very cool engineers that seemed to enjoy some young kid appreciating their experience and knowledge.
Me, too, the bonus must be just enough for them to fill the ranks. They must send that brochure to every graduating electrical engineer. One of my uncles did that in the 1970-80s and ended up working at a nuclear power plant for the rest of his civilian career. It's a living, though the number/location of civilian jobs in the USA probably is not great.
That was what I was being sold. Do 20 years in the service, then retire with a pension at the age of 38. Do another 20 years in a civilian role, then retire with a second pension before turning 60. I didn't buy it.
I didn’t actually get to the point of applying but I also remember seriously considering that nuclear engineer offer back in college! It seemed like a sweet deal at the time.
looks like there is a newer version (more recent) following potential sub commanders for the royal navy called "Submarine School". 4 parts, all are on YT. there is even a US navy submariner among the potential captains!
There's some pretty good video on youtube showing what the galley looks like on a US submarine, and meal prep/cooking for one meal. They fit a lot of stuff in a very tight space.
obviously they have an interest in only filming the non-sensitive areas for public relations purposes...
I wondered why those Navy videos spend an inordinate amount of time showing how food is made and interviewing the chefs, it makes sense that is the least classified area and they aren't scared of bothering important stuff (not to downplay food).
Food has been historically one of the submarine fleet's strongest perks for seamen. Considering that it must be quite hard to live underwater for months at a time, with no outside contact with the world, the Navy really likes to play up how well you'll eat on your submerged cramped can.
Yeah but I'm a (casual) war nerd and I watch a ton of Navy videos, they interview the kitchen staff for a large portion of every warship video, not just submarines.
Navy coveralls are pretty thin. Submariners (except especially hot watchstanders like engineroom upper level) wear non-uniform sweaters and survival jackets because of how cold it can get due to heat loss to deep cold water. When submarines are in warm water, it’s not nearly as bad.
There is climate control and small heaters, but a submarine is not going to be designed with massive heaters in the HVAC system because it’s a waste of power, space, and a fire hazard. It’s safer and more efficient for people to wear jackets.
Under some conditions, ventilation needs to be secured. There are quite a lot of sources of water in the boat, and humidity and temperature can rise quickly when the fans go off. I remember it being annoyingly uncomfortable to sleep in port and at sea with the fans off.
The green coveralls worn by the guy going into the tube are heavier fabric and only worn when doing heavy cleaning, busting barnacles, painting, etc.
I've read a little bit about life on ships during the age of sail.
One common theme is that the enlisted men's lives are basically thought of much like the wooden planks: Not at all, and if so, only when it's affected the mission, in which case it's beaten back into shape. The sleeping quarters and conditions, the rations, the toilets, etc, all just terrible. Officers had it a smidge better at that time.
Navies are very traditional things. They do things like they always have. Mostly that's because the sea is so dangerous and these methods are tried and tested. But also, that's kinda just the way they are.
So, my null hypothesis is that modern navies, being very traditional, just don't really care all that much about enlisted men.
I would love to be told off here so I can update my priors. If any servicepersons are on HN and would liek to rip me a new one about life aboard a ship, please do!
I've been on modern sailships as well, and also read a bit about 17th and 18th century ships. My impressions are that (excluding galleys) life conditions on board had to be "good enough" and sailors (and soldiers) would openly complain when the small privileges of their category were not upheld, like bigger rations for gunners, alcohol distribution etc.
On a sailship where everything is ruled and organized, you can be okay with very little comfort. Of course modern ships are much better in terms of facilities (the privy's not much different sometimes but there are showers, clean bedding, better food - sometimes - etc), but a hammock with a rug in a room with 20 to 100 other people nearby, above and below must have felt pretty much the same.
There were also vast cultural differences between nations. The Royal Navy was known for the iron discipline and punishments partly because it was very easy to recruit sailors. Nations where Navy service was voluntary, or tied to a social corps were probably different.
Today, in an enduring peace context, there is a great focus on living conditions. Though it has gotten better for enlisted men (notably because automation means more space on a ship for bathrooms, larger rooms with less people etc), some regret the living conditions on older ships with more collective life. 50-men rooms were no strange thing on some big ships in the 2000s, I guess there are still ships like that (I've never been on a ship with a crew bigger than 250). Technology (cameras, alarms, fire detectors etc) also means there is less need for watch duty both at sea and in harbour. I've been sometimes among the ones arguing officers care too much for what the enlisted crew says, especially regarding their "generational need" for social media and hourly Internet access. After a week without smartphones nobody complains about Snapchat anymore.
You're right that there is less concern for enlisted crews. I'd say the points of scrutiny are their psychological well-being (they're often new in this, so more vulnerable to depression, bullying, excesses of various kinds etc), and of course identifying potential and convincing the most talented ones to stay and progress. The reasons for this realtive lack of concern can be:
- They're young, more adventurous and adaptable.
- They have it good: the pay is generous, especially for 18-year-olds (sometimes younger) with little to no qualifications. They have a lot of opportunities, being stationed on the other side of the world, going out in strange places and harbours (except for the US Navy, you have to get two truckloads of Marines to guard the place before you can order a drink at an African bar), and get to learn the job as they progress, especially for the technical ones.
- They can leave very quickly if they want. Petty officers, CPOs and offcers are held by longer contracts, that are often very hard to break unilaterally because of legal provisions specific to the military.
- The focus is on the Petty Officers. Petty Officers have qualifications (highschool, vocational school, sometimes college), and you invest a lot in them. They learn very technical, irreplaceable skills, they manage small teams from a very young age, and you want them to stay and progress. It can take up to 20 years to make a combat management system expert, a military SATCOM specialist. You can't get experienced ones on the job market (cruise missile specialists, ship turbine experts, etc) and you're often unable to compete on salary alone (IT and data specialists, nuclear technicians etc). Not to mention you really need them on the ships...
- There are less and less enlisted crews onboard. The ships are getting more technical, meaning the bulk of the crew is made of petty officers. The US Navy counts POs in the enlisted statistics, so I don't have the exact numbers.
I went as a contractor (fixing a port from PDP 11/44 -> SUN 5/110) on-board a UK nuclear sub back in the 90s, and had a contractor berth in the 'bomb shop'. I slept underneath the Tigerfish MK24 torpedoes, smelly and greasy, but i don't remember it being cold !!
Yes, it can be that hot; I cuddled nude with a TLAM in the Carribbean to stay cool. I think UK boats were built for colder waters; the ventilation couldn't keep up on the deck in the shallow, warm waters.
Things are certainly not made for comfort. In cool waters my blanket wasn't wide enough to protect me from accidentally touching the weapon in my sleep. They're a great heat sink and suck the heat out of you, whether you want it or not.
I'd guess possibly there are times (perhaps many hours at a time) when they have to "run silent" and turn off ventilation fans and heat pumps and keep other mechanical noise to an absolute minimum.
He might be sane now, but will he always be? How about each of the next 100 leaders? The terrifying thing is that it only takes one crazy/confused/suicidal leader to obliterate humanity. The risk in any given year is usually low, but everyone knows how small chances compound over time.
If a suicidally insane leader ordered a broad first strike nuclear attack, every officer and soldier involved with executing those orders would understand, individually, the retaliation they would create against themselves, their friends, and their families.
I’m not saying it’s perfect, and I agree that the world would be way safer if zero nuclear weapons were on standby status.
My point is just that the concept of deterrence is ultimately based on the self-interest of the many many people who make up a nation and its military forces. Not just a few leaders.
A soldier disobeying a direct order from a Russian dictator has a pretty grim life expectancy. Soldiers generally have a very limited and distorted view of whatever broader situation they are in, and any first strike would likely be couched in a lot of optimism and/or desperation.
An officer saying "You need to launch this missile immediately to save your homeland, and if you don't do it you'll be shot in the head as a traitor", is not a trivial thing to say no to.
Sure but the officer has to be willing too. And just like the soldier, they have friends and family sitting under the threat of retaliation. A suicidal leader can’t personally threaten to shoot everyone in the head to get their way.
People don’t usually need training to want to protect their friends and family.
If you think the military successfully trains that out of people, you’re not very familiar with the military. Defending friends and family is one of strongest motivations for conformance to military discipline.
MAD works because no one wants to be the first to push the button. And as long as no one pushes it first, no one needs to push it second either.
> I don't think Putin is insane. If he were we'd all be dead by now.
How do you know the next leader of Russia will also be rational? Or the leaders of all other nuclear armed nations that may retaliate against Russia's "rational" actions?
> Also: Suicidal people don't go to lengths to murder former threats to make a point, like he did today with the Wagner Group leadership.
If your days are numbered the consequences don't apply. In that case why not seek vengeance? Killing rivals is basically a hobby for Putin.
> How do you know the next leader of Russia will also be rational?
How do you know the next leader of the US will be? It's not like people get elected to the position, or appoint their subordinates based on their rationality.
That's the beauty of sovereign countries with enough nuclear weapons to kill the world, you don't.
Maybe we should look into this bilateral arms reduction thing.
This would be a more interesting statistic with the full stockpile amount. Now it seems misleading, as if the US and Russia don’t have vastly more nukes than the others.
We don't truly have MAD with someone who has a small amount of nuclear weapons. Specifically one of the reasons the US dropped out of the ABM treaty was because they argued that they should be able to defend against countries with a small amount of nuclear weapons.
It's also unlikely that everyone else launches their nukes during MAD, it's a doctrine that specifically applies to an attacker and a defender.
There's MAD and there's MAD. Nobody is going to invade NK, because even a few nukes make it a horrible idea, but I also don't consider NK launching it's weapons to be a fundamental, serious threat to global civilization.
The UK, France, China, and Israel are more than an order of magnitude under the US and Russia in their nuclear armament, and Pakistan, India, and NK are another order below them.
There's also the number actually in use - the UK has four nuclear submarines, one of which is always at sea, so can only ever really launch 1/4 of it's armament. The rest will be sitting somewhere when the big day comes, never to be used.
Funny how personalist most of the West suddenly becomes when things don't go their way, case in point the current government in Moscow. Nevermind that Putin is by far not the only highly placed Russian official that was of the opinion that this current war should take place, it all happened because he is an "insane" person, damn the system as a whole.
As a matter of fact that's also what happened with the Nazi white-washing just after WW2, it was all because Hitler and some of the guys around him were insane and blood-thirsty, ignore the system as a whole, ignore the Wehrmacht which was directly responsible for the death of millions of non-combatants on the Ostfront. That's how many of those high-placed Wehrmacht officials got cushy jobs in Western military structures not long after the war had ended, after all they weren't the "insane" ones.
Timothy Snyder's lectures on Ukrainian history in 2022 are very enlightening in this regard. He also stresses the need to discuss German imperialism in WWII, a topic that went out of focus after the invention (of the concept, for lack of a better word) of the Shoah and the coming to public awareness of all the horrors we know.
The "clean Wehrmacht" myth has also a history of its own, which I sometimes see as having to do with the political weight of veterans and their immediate families and Germany's progressive acceptance of democracy, in a cold war context.
While not good isn't that kind of an accepted risk for submarines? We don't have complete maps of the ocean floor. Features shift. IDK the specific circumstances so maybe it was incompetence but the British submarine fleet isn't alone in running boats aground.
Better than doing emergency blows directly underneath a civilian vessel. Especially damning was the emergency blow wasn't even necessary and was from show boating.
Had a job like this once, didn't last lol. If you grew up in a big family or with friends that are always around you would do fine I think. It is not for anyone that has any level of privacy expectations.
And here's the next article I found on the subject, from last year, looks like it's not going so well: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.opindia.com/2022/11/women-o...