Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, July 6, 1976. First women at Anapolis. Not nothing the anniversary.

Lex Anteinternet: Tuesday, July 6, 1976. First women at Anapolis.: The first women to do so entered the United States Naval Academy. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II began a "Bicentennial tour" of se...

We ran this a few days ago.

And now we see this article:

The Naval Academy enrolled women 50 years ago. It’s not celebrating.

It's no secret that Pete Hegseth is hostile to women in combat (one of the very few things I agree with Pete about), but that's not the same thing as not noting this milestone, which is pretty darned close to saying that women don't have a place in the Navy.

Well, actually, it's exactly the same thing as saying women don't have a place in the Navy.

Women have been in the Navy since March 21, 1917, as we noted on the anniversary of that occurrence:

Loretta Perfectus Walsh becomes the first female sailor in the United States Navy

Incorporating women into the Navy has been sort of a peculiar problem in some ways, and those ways are heavily biological, although honesty compels us to note that it's not as problematic now as it once was, or would be suspected as being.  

Approximately 75% of all sailors are assigned to sea-intensive ratings  rather than shore duty ones.  Only about 19% to 20% of the active fleet is deployed or underway at any one time, however.  About 20% of the Navy's manpower if female, with that figure applying to both the enlisted and officers.  There are instances you can find of ships that end up with a problematic number of female sailors pregnant, but on average only 0.7% to 1.5% of a female crew find that to be the case.  

Not that there are not problems.*  Having young men and young women in that level of close proximity is going to cause problems.  Again, I'm not in favor of women in combat and while I don't think of the Navy all that much, about any ship at sea can be a combat vessel in some fashion.  

The Navy changed its billeting policy in 2024 in order to allow pregnant female sailors to find land billets more easily than it had previously, so the Navy, in pre Hegseth Department of Defense it was moving towards being more accomodating.

So what's going on here?

I don't know, but it's part of a sub silentio drift in the DoD.  If the Hegseth run DoD just wants women out, or out of some roles, it can move in that directly openly.  Instead, it's been sort of just being hostile to them, of which this is one example.

And its not just female sailors, or servicemembers.  It's being silently hostile to minorities as well.  People who normally would have been promoted to senior positions are not being if they're women, or black, etc.  A portrait of a legendary senior black Air Force officer was removed from display without explanation.  

Without explanation, it has the appearance of a harassment campaign to quietly discourage women and blacks from joining the service.

And I have to wonder, to some degree, if the DoD is trying to make it through November before it takes a formal step of eliminating women from all combat roles.  It can't eliminate blacks from the service, of course, but it's also allowing Evangelical Protestant campaigning in the service, which is hostile to various religions, including various Christian religions.  At some point that has the effect of telling Catholic Hispanics and African Methodist blacks maybe they aren't welcome, or at least that they don't want to hang around with a bunch of troops who look and act like Confederate Partisan Rangers.

Or maybe it's not that extreme.  Be that as it may, the treatment of women in this fashion is hard to ignore.

Footnotes

*In recent years the bigger problem has been with the Department of the Navy's female Marines, who had to be expressly told to wear shirts while doing PT overseas.  Their omission of shirts clearly wasn't because it was just hot where they were.

Tuesday, July 6, 1976. First women at Anapolis.

The first women to do so entered the United States Naval Academy.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II began a "Bicentennial tour" of several locations in the original thirteen states.  As with much associated with Queen Elizabeth, her tour was a huge success.

South Africa ceased requiring black students to be instructed in the Afrikaans language, which itself is a variant of Dutch.

Soyuz 21 was launched into orbit.

Last edition:

Sunday, July 4, 1976. The Bicentennial.

Labels: 1970s, 1976, American Bicentennial, Argentina, Commandos, Growing up in the 1970s, Israeli Defense Force, Operation Thunderbolt, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Terrorism, Uganda (Entebbe), Wyoming (Casper)

End Athletic Admissions to Military Academies — Minding The Campus

End Athletic Admissions to Military Academies — Minding The Campus: Secretary Peter Hegseth’s first order to the Department of Defense promised “a focus on lethality, meritocracy, accountability, standards, and readiness.” To the extent that the Service Academies—West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, the Coast Guard Academy, and the Merchant Marine Academy—take this directive seriously, they should end athletic admissions. Such a move would change […]

In Memoriam. Jimmy Carter.

James "Jimmy" Carter died on December 29. He was, of course, the 39th President of the United States.

I'm late to noting his passing and therefore everyone has already read tributes to him.  Even Donald Trump, to my surprise, lauded him and indicated he'd attend his funeral. Carter did, it might be noted, feel that the early criticism of Trump was unfair.  I don't know what he thought about Trump later.

I've listed to a lot of the audio obits and read a few, and what I'll note is that, as so often, they approach being hagiography and tend to omit somethings that should be of real interest.

I'll start with the biggest.  Carter was a failure as a President.  Coming into office with an American public sick of inflation (sound familiar?) and disgusted with the Republicans due to Watergate (sound unfamiliar?), and also fatigued by the Vietnam War, he really didn't accomplish much.  He proved incapable of tackling inflation, which would fall to Reagan, and the US military, probably not surprisingly, lapsed into a weakened state, which Reagan also would address.  

While he was not a success as a President, he was one in life, however.

Carter, it was often noted, was from a peanut farm in Georgia.  What's oddly less often mentioned is that he was a Naval Academy graduate and a submariner.  To enter the submarine service you must be an engineer and a genius.  He was both.  He may be the smartest man to occupy the office since the Second World War. 

He was certainly the most moral.

He was a dedicated Baptist Christian, which nobody could rationally doubt.  The degree of his devotion was such that its almost surprising that he was elected, particularly as he gave an interview to Playboy during the height of its influence, noting how deeply Christian he was.  After he lost his bid for reelection, he devoted his remaining long life to public service, often to the poor.

Like the law, politics is an occupation that frequently initiates people into compromising their morals and attracts a certain percentage of people who are willing to do so.  And power, as is so often noted, corrupts.  Carter was unique in that he was a deeply moral man and the office did not change him.

Thursday, March 23, 1922. The loss of the H2, the nomination of Holley

Babe Ruth, March 23, 1922.

The HMS H42, a British submarine, was lost near Gibraltar when she surfaced in the path of a destroyer by accident during torpedo run drills.  In spite of its best efforts, the destroyer sliced her in half, and she went down with all hands.

Emile Treville Holley was nominated to the United States Naval Academy, making him the first black nominee to the academy since 1871.  He did not attend, however, as it became clear the all white student body would not accept him, something that would repeat the experience of nominees from 1873 through 1875.

Holley went on to enroll at Middlebury College in Vermont and went on to become a college professor.

WEY went on the air in Wichita, making it the first station in Kansas to do so.

June 2, 1921. Riding the tiger.

The United States Naval Academy's Class of 1921 graduated on this day.  Dignitaries included President Harding and Gen. Lejeune.

The class was the last of the Great War accelerated classes to graduate and, given the date of its graduation, those who remained in the service were right at the twenty year mark, when military retirement was first changed to allow for retirement at that age in an effort to encourage the retirement of older officers as the US built up its military for World War Two.  Not surprisingly, therefore, this class saw a significant number of combat losses due to World War Two, although it also saw a surprisingly large number of losses due to interwar accidents as well.  

The disastrous violence in Tulsa hit the news everywhere on this day in 21.  

The IRA emerged victorious from one of the numerous raids that were a feature of the Anglo Irish War, a guerilla campaign that saw more raiding than Customshouse burnings.  In this instance, the Royal Irish Constabulary suffered 8 killed and 16 surrendered.

On the same day J. C. Leyendecker's Life magazine illustration featured a comely lady wearing what we'd call a bikini top, sitting on tigers.  Ostensibly an animal trainer, the riding the tiger and salaciously depicted female figure seems now like a sign of the oncoming, and long range, times.

The United States Naval Academy Class of 1917 Graduates.

And two months early.

The looming war caused the Naval Academy to graduate its class of 1917 on this date, in anticipation of the increased need for Naval officers.