THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 26, 1995 TAG: 9501260003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Op Ed
SOURCE: Suzanne Fields
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Sometimes a serious idea gets lost in colorful language. So the Speaker of the House has stepped in it again, talking about the differences for men and women in combat.
In a spontaneous aside, answering a question in one of his videotaped lectures for ``Renewing American Civilization,'' Newt Gingrich once again talked off the top of his fluffy gray head. ``Men,'' he said, ``are both biologically stronger and they don't get pregnant.'' No problem with that. But he couldn't stop there: Women are also more prone to infections if they have to stay in a ditch (foxhole?) for 30 days, whereas men are like ``little piglets,'' and like to roll around in the ditch.
Besides, men are ``biologically driven to go and hunt giraffe.''
Such remarks in a classroom would evoke only chuckles or frowns from students who know better than to take verbal issue with the professor if they want a good grade. But Newt made these remarks after he was elected Speaker of the House. Rep. Pat Schroeder of Colorado, a Democrat and passionate advocate of sending other women into combat, engaged the joke on the floor of the House. She doesn't know any men who hunt giraffes, and she has seen the men in her family in ditches - husband, son, uncle and father - and they didn't look like little piglets to her.
This exchange provoked as many sound bites by the pundits of the television talk shows as debate over whether the United States should make a $40-billion rescue of the staggering Mexican economy.
That's too bad. If the Speaker wants to start a serious debate about the differences of men and women in the armed services there's lots of serious stuff to consider. He shouldn't limit it to piglet pleasure and giraffe hunts.
For example, he might take a look at the cover story in the Navy Times: ``For a couple of centuries, fraternization was the word used to describe improper friendships between the two classes of male seafarers - officers and sailors,'' write Patrick Pexton and John Burlage. ``Today it describes much more. And it usually refers to sex.''
There are more than 9,000 women serving at sea, and the Navy Times reports, many of these women trade sexual favors for easier ship duties, usually with a male petty officer who is her immediate supervisor. So prevalent are the sexcapades aboard ship that the sailors call it ``the Game.''
Most vulnerable as game in ``the Game'' are the rookies - young women straight from boot camp, who learn quickly that their supervisors will take care of them if they take care of them. Instead of chipping rust and paint off the deck, they'll get inside jobs and better ratings. At first the women think they're special, only to learn that their names are passed around to others. It's difficult - though in the present climate not impossible - to cry harassment after a woman has had consensual sex.
The Navy, still in shock after Tailhook, is presently investigating two shipboard sex cases that are less sensational but perhaps more troubling because they are emblematic of the coed problem. A female seaman recruit aboard the fleet oiler USS Cimarron charged a sailor with rape, and this has opened up an investigation of the Cimarron. This in turn exposes fraternization between a male command master chief and a female chief, and sex between junior enlisted females and senior males.
John Hagan, a master chief petty officer, sizes it up with the insight that we ought to be getting from the chief of naval operations. Men and women at sea, he says, might present the Navy with ``the greatest long-term challenge, because it requires us to recognize that they're going counter to some very fundamental urges and desires.''
Only yesterday the challenge was the enemy, not an intimate friend.
MEMO: Ms. Fields' column is distributed by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate,
Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.
by CNB