Women at West Point

 W. Edward Chynoweth 

W. Edward Chynoweth was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1946 and was a career Army officer. He left military service to practice law, and has served as a public prosecutor. He wrote Masquerade: The Feminist Illusion, University Press of America, Roman and Littlefield, Landham  MD.

Recent movies and television drama suggest that the American public are fans of science-fiction and the paranormal. If so, they need look no further than a scenario unfolding on the Hudson River at West Point involving probably the most important challenge facing the nation--how to deal with what George Gilder has called our “sexual constitution” so as to benefit from both the male and female human potential--and the family.

It all started with Public Law 94-106 of the 1976 Defense Appropriation Authorization Act, which innocently directed the military department secretaries to:

. . . take such action as may be necessary and appropriate to insure that (1) female individuals shall be eligible for appointment and admission to the service academy concerned--and (2) the academic and other relevant standards required for appointment, (admissions) training, graduation, and commissioning of female individuals shall be the same as those required for male individuals, except for those minimum essential adjustments in such standards required because of physiological differences between male and female individuals. (italics supplied)

With such ambitious tinkering, Congress took upon itself the role of Big Brother, actually presuming to change our sexual mores. When one recalls the Founders’ more modest intention:

. . . to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity . . .

one quails at the gargantuan appetite now indulged in by modern legislators. The inevitable results are appalling: the battle of the sexes exacerbated, sexual harmony shattered, a surfeit of weak men and disorderly women, and our former fine military academies essentially transformed into Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The American people have indulged one of the greatest flimflams of the 20th century.

As a result, those who created the mess, the politicians, now shuck it off on a dutiful Pentagon, who in turn come up with posturing “reports” so Congress people can claim “success” and “equality” for their female constituents, while earnest think tanks lecture quite ironically about “leadership.” At times it becomes downright laughable as female Congresspersons flog stoic army officers with complaints of rape and harassment even though Congresswoman Pat Schroeder [now retired] claimed military status for women because “the capture and rape of women takes place in war and peacetime in every comer of the globe”! (letter, May 5, 1990)

Inasmuch as it was Congress who over-stepped its rightful powers, only Congress can correct the mistake. Will its members see their error and earn their country’s esteem, or shall we continue with this bizarre masquerade? But to my story.

For me, the plot thickened in 1997 after I sent a compilation of research on the subject to the Superintendent of West Point, requesting his views, since, like all recent Superintendents, he invited comments. About six weeks later I received a brief letter from Colonel Patrick A. Toffler, U.S.M.A. Director of Policy, Planning, and Analysis, filling in for the Superintendent and responding essentially with the remark that “our views are different,” and little else.

This only underscored a point I had been making (after experience with previous Pentagon “responses”) that current co-ed policy is never defended objectively by the authorities, nor has it ever been. It has been placed off limits to rigorous scrutiny or debate in any scientific, scholarly or constitutional sense and thus an ideology without foundation has been foisted on us by the likes of DACOWITS (see below). Despite the ready availability of scholarly research, the Colonel’s letter merely echoes the usual close-order rubric of Pentagon mailings on the subject of women in uniform.

In rejecting my ample research as simply a matter of differing “views,” incidentally, Colonel Toffler makes the common mistake of conflating mere “views” with the weight of authority since time immemorial whether sociological, military, political, historical, biological, psychological, theological, or just plain common sense. In other words, the manner in which civilization has dealt with the delicate, crucial balance of the human sexes is not merely a matter of opinion but of history and long-proven tradition, with “traditionalist” here being defined as one who is concerned with the abiding truth of things. It deserves a better understanding by both the military and especially civilian legislators, not cursory dismissal.

With his letter, Col. Toffler enclosed as his apparent rebuttal a copy of a February, 1992, document entitled “The United States Military Academy Report on the Integration and Performance of Women at West Point--for the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS).” Needless to say, it is artfully and impressively compiled, especially to the uninitiated, or to DACOWITS for whom it is obviously created. In fact, I hope that I’m not the only one to remark that the report is a valiant staff effort to rationalize and justify one’s own program, a program that U.S.M.A. has labored to enforce because she has taken the job, much as if hoisting oneself by ones own bootstraps. Despite the Colonel’s claim, it is hardly being “objective” in the truest sense to push a program one patently “remains firmly committed to,” especially when reporting dutifully to the Women in the Service Committee. Oblivious to the need for appropriate sexual-damage control, it’s “damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” which happens to be more an epigram for dogged courage than for “objectivity.” As if to reinforce this weakness, far from analyzing the ample contrary literature and offering a bona fide critique or study, the Report merely dismisses such traditional treatment of the sexes as “dysfunctional,” which should discredit both the Report and the policy. (I shall repeat this theme.)

To the point of my story, the Academy Report offers an alarming brave-new-world account of an officious “development of a mixed-gender Corps of Cadets”: There was first a “Human Sexuality Committee” to set goals and administer a “Sexual Knowledge and Attitudes Test (SKAT),” and there were classes integrating such topics for new cadets in “Cadet Basic Training” and for sophomores in “Cadet Field Training.” A “broader, more systemic approach to addressing gender issues” led to “an integrated, four-year, sequential program” taught by the chain of command to help “educate and inform” members of the staff and faculty, the Academy called on the “Sex Information and Education Council of the United States” which led to “assessment, reflection, and preparation” followed by a “new initiative called the Program of Education for Leadership in a Mixed Gender Army (PELMA).” In keeping with the late-20th-century discovery of “sexual harassment,” the Department of the Army started requiring the Academy to “address sexual harassment through directed periods of instruction,” which resulted in a 

. . . series of initiatives (surveys and classes) commonly referred to as POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment). Feedback from cadets indicated that such classes were not well received.

Eventually, PELMA was “expanded to address racial, ethnic, and minority leadership issues about which young leaders in training should be well informed. (In effect, HRJEO and POSH initiatives were integrated into PELMA in 1989.)” Plainly, the New Army’s stouthearted efforts to explain itself remind one of Alice’s confession, “I can’t explain myself; I’m afraid, sir, because I’m not myself, you see.”

Instead of the traditional paradigm of “Duty, Honor, Country” in this Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, the Military Academy is now enslaved by the new-age race-sex-class imperative. Although West Point should have provided a bastion against every wind of mindless change, the Academy apparently succumbed to the fallacies of the radical 60s along with all the other “progressive” schools. She can enjoy only partial absolution, if any, from the fact that the military merely serves the civilian sector. Professor J. O. Tate puts it all quite vividly:

What has essentially happened since the 1960s in the academy (and in the nation) is the adoption, by the liberal establishment in America, of radical assumptions and language. The definition of education has gone by the board. Egalitarianism applied to education must have a grotesque result. (Chronicles, Sept. 1997)

Dr. Harold O. J. Brown also has noticed our “separation from history,” and:

. . . repudiation of all tradition. Some of us, the present editor included, have wondered how it was possible for one educational institution after another to turn its back on centuries of tradition within a few years in the l960s. The Ivy League men’s colleges all turned, almost in lock-step, to accept women; dormitories became “co-ed”; the national service academies became co-educational and soon gave exalted positions to female cadets; the last hold-outs, VMI and the Citadel, were reduced to conformity amid considerable public satisfaction, with regrets expressed only by a few traditionalists. . . . (it was) the last tyrannical standardization of the repudiation of tradition. . . . Even our terminology has changed: we hardly speak of good and bad, of beautiful and ugly, and even less of moral and immoral. Things and policies are “up to date” or “obsolete,” objects of art are “challenging” or “conventional,” actions and attitudes are “repressive” or “accepting.” (The Religion & Society Report, Aug. 2001; The Howard Center)

And for West Point, it’s no longer “Duty, Honor, Country” but “Be All You Can Be.” And it gets worse. The Academy Report goes on to mention that: 

. . . cadet reaction to PELMA was less than positive--(some males) did not accept the leadership’s perspective. In their view, the issue was gender, plain and simple. 

As if to demonstrate U.S.M.A.’s new loyalties to the race-sex crowd, in the face of such a reaction by a few forthright young males with real potential as true leaders of character, one most symptomatic passage is revealing:

About this time, it became evident that cadet men were not the only ones continuing to manifest dysfunctional attitudes toward women. Gen. Palmer addressed the entire staff and faculty at a periodic command update and challenged the audience to become more proactive in eliminating both intended and unintended insensitivity to all minorities.

“Dysfunctional attitudes toward women”? Because healthy young men find them more sexual than soldierly? And note that Gen. Palmer even lapses into the familiar error of equating women with “all minorities,” which is signally inept, especially since we’re all “minorities” in America although we’ve never been psychotic about it before. 

Apparently our “leaders of character” are stretching their idea of “the common defense” pretty far, even to the point of reprogramming human sexual behavior beyond the mere indoctrination of cadets as “officers and gentlemen,” which, as a practical matter, probably marked the limit of their powers.

The Report continues in this vein, describing the “Human Resources Council” and the commitment to “complete integration of a mixed-gender, multi-racial, and multi-ethnic military force,” “insensitivity,” etc.

Cadet reaction has been much more favorable. Initiatives continue to be worked and discussed for appropriate integration into the cadet’s four-year developmental experience.

Then, despite its own narrative to the contrary, the Report assures us that “it must be stressed that the process of gender integration has been evolutionary, not revolutionary,” reminding one of Humpty Dumpty’s imperious claim, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.” However, despite U.S.M.A.’s claim to the contrary, obviously the revolution did not leave the Corps unscathed.

Thus, in light of this one-sided Academy Report determined to prove 2 + 2 = 3, the Colonel’s offer of “more recent data” carries all the weight of a TASS report on a Soviet five-year plan. “There’s no question they can’t answer by simply ignoring it.”—a comment on socialists by Ludwig von Mises, Socialism. That the co-ed idea which the Pentagon fought in 1973 now is the Pentagon’s favorite cause reminds one of Ben Franklin’s advice on marriage: “Before marriage keep your eyes wide open; afterwards, half-shut.” The Pentagon with eyes wide open originally fought the idea but, after being outmaneuvered, now keeps its eyes not only half-shut but, under blinders. And the sad result? Fudging by military officers.

Despite the Report’s effort to quash it, the issue, as always (since Adam and Eve) is indeed “gender plain and simple.” Our planet boasts the two human sexes. Thank heaven for little girls! Although they staunchly adhere to the appearance of programming young men and women for androgyny, in the end the military academies can’t turn us back one iota from our God-given natures. (This subject is covered amply elsewhere, so I shall not belabor it here, except to remark that no less than the nation’s population-replacement rate is at stake. Another hint: one must start with the voices, physiologies and trace it back from there.) Curiously, the Colonel’s “unequivocal” letter defending women’s “courage and character” sends a different message from his famous testimony in the VMI case, describing double standards, sex-norming, comparable training, giving up the obstacle course and running in combat boots, etc. Oh what a tangled web! When, in direct contrast to the Colonel’s testimony, the Report itself declares that “gender-based differentiation is almost non-existent in the Academy and Military programs,” all credibility disappears. A nation that considers masculinity and femininity--manliness and womanliness--to be mere “attitudes” susceptible to change by Congress is doomed.

Perhaps this is why we now hear less of “Duty, Honor, Country” or “Follow Me!” and more of airy, hubristic solipsisms like ‘‘Be All You Can Be!” or “leaders of character who serve the common defense.” Such ad slogans (e.g. “share the wonder,” “we love to make you smile”) are OK for implant ads, PBS fund-raisers, or light beer commercials, but not for soldiering or military schools, even though run by the U.S. Government. Most military leaders in the past preferred to concentrate on how to outmaneuver and kill more of the enemy than on “being all they could be.” But then we’re not producing such leaders any more. One senses now a certain postmodern feminist standard. Unwittingly, some men seem so disenchanted with women that they consider it necessary to encourage them to “be all they can be,” as if women didn’t already command our all-powerful human life source, as Dr. Johnson reminded people in his time: “Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.” In effect, the motto “Be All You Can Be” is nothing but a rather crude ploy urging young women to prove their womanhood by being good soldiers, i.e., to be more like men!

Furthermore, despite U.S.M.A.’s trendy “outcome goal” to teach “an abiding commitment to live according to our national values,” the Academy Report itself makes such outlandish statements as “for the most part, women at the U.S.M.A. travel the same development path as men,” “they are not replacing better-qualified men,” or “they are achieving standards of excellence comparable to those of men by every measure of comparison”! When such nonsense conflicts with the testimony of her own officials, not to mention the great weight of actual evidence, we are justified in revising Disraeli”s remark to read, “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and Pentagon reports on women in the military.” In short, contrary to Colonel Toffler, our “national values” are totally alien to the grotesque concept known as “sexual integration.” The Pentagon would do well to study Alexis Carrell’s 1935 best seller, Man the Unknown, the scientific knowledge in which, to my knowledge, remains essentially uncontradicted. Carrell is quite certain that “between the two sexes there are irrevocable differences” and:

. . . woman differs profoundly from man. Every one of the cells of her body bears the mark of her sex . . . the same intellectual and physical training, and the same ambitions, should not be given to young girls as to young boys. (pp. 90, 92)

This is not input the Pentagon wants to hear.

What all this means is that the Academy, under the orders of the Pentagon and commissioned by Congress, has labored to erect a fully deterministic institution of “gender integration” or “sexual equality” in a direct, frontal assault on the very core of our indomitable sexual natures, our sexual constitution. This is being done without the full knowledge of the American people, yet when people quite rationally protest, the Academy peremptorily and autocratically dismisses their positions as dysfunctional! This means that in rejecting the age-old sexual division of labor, our national leadership considers all pre-1974 U.S. legislatures, Presidents, defense establishments (for 180 years), all the pivotal thinkers in history, the Bible, Jesus, the Founders, and even the Lord God Almighty Himself dysfunctional! Such two-faced revisionism makes a travesty of education, especially as it is contrived obsequiously to please DACOWITS in a flagrant abuse of power.

It all bears a striking resemblance to the plot of the Bridge on the River Kwai, in which a hapless British Colonel adapts to the realities of a demoralized POW camp by valiantly building a beautiful bridge for the enemy in order to keep his men busy and healthy, but is unable eventually to face ultimate reality when tactics require the destruction of the very bridge that has become his brainchild. But while the circumstances of war caused his dilemma of divided loyalties, the “bridge of gender integration” must be the sole responsibility of an inept U.S. Congress. If any, it is they who must stand accused of “dysfunctional attitudes.” The Pentagon trains soldiers for a profession geared to engineering, technology, strategy, and obedience, not the humanities. It is ill-equipped to resist the outlandish and pretentious project of dehumanizing society’s settled experience with the male and female of the species. The military dutifully took the job, much like the Kwai River colonel, and went all out to engineer a structure that would comply with mandated specifications, and as the realities set in, they proudly and irrationally defend their work at all costs, even to the extent of ignoring those more geared to our cultural heritage, or dismissing them as “dysfunctional.” And, of course, all this doesn’t even touch on the military’s main mission--overcoming an enemy in battle--which seems far afield from tampering with mother nature to effect “gender integration.”

This is not to say that soldiers cannot be scholarly or well versed in the humanities, but, as with much in life, it is a matter of appropriate priorities and wise focus. Technology, force, and skill rule the battlefield, not political philosophy, feminism, biology, or sociology. Contrary to the Academy Report, Congress’ mandate was revolutionary, when organic, evolutionary processes would have continued to serve us better under the direction of experienced military leaders acting in accordance with military principles. Although such leadership has traditionally been conservative (often too much so), the radical, feminist-inspired 1974 Stratton Bill marked the first time in history that Congress had interfered to such an extent with military policy, and the tortured machinations since then continue to demonstrate how wrong it was. Mesmerized by fear of the feminists, Congress forced the military to use a crepe myrtle when mighty oaks were at hand.

Interestingly, by its bungling, the U.S. Congress has managed to show that Oliver Goldsmith was quite wrong in his little rhyme from The Traveller,

How small, of all that human hearts endure,/ That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

Dr. Johnson came closer to the truth when he added the following lines (although they can’t save the other two):

Still to ourselves in every place consigned,/Our own felicity we make or find. –Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

Yes, Sex will remain the issue, “plain and simple,” and, as sure as the night turns into day, there will always be sexual interaction (though not integration!). That is the way God designed us and even the military cannot change it. Samplings from a standard old-time reading list and classic art offer wisdom reflecting “our national values” far more accurately than the U.S.M.A. Report. In any event, I believe even J. S. Mill would acknowledge that his idea of “sexual equality” did not encompass what we see today. That is, unless Congress starts setting our house in order by repealing its monstrous mandates of “gender integration.”      *

“The more laws, the less justice.” --Marcus Tullius Cicero