Women sailors should not be allowed to serve on submarines, the Navy is just asking for trouble by recent changes allowing them aboard. There are many reasons why this in general is not a good idea. A few points I will touch on are living conditions, birthing accommodations, and sexual harassment.
As a wife of a submariner I have heard first-hand some of the living conditions they endure during Missions. My husband was on a fast-attack for almost 6 years, where he experienced things like eating rotten food, going without showers, or having clean laundry. It does not matter if you are a man or woman those things are going to be tough on anyone. As a woman myself though, I know personally that going without showering is never a pleasant thing. …show more content…
As a matter of fact, the entire submarine is tight quarters leaving no room for expansions to accommodate women. I have seen the birthing on my husband’s old boat and it is pretty much an open hall with stalls on each side with six bunks in each stall. The bunks each have a curtain and that is the only thing giving any privacy. In the bunks are your bed and that is all there is room for, you cannot change or get dressed in there. On submarines, there are constant drills to keep everyone alert and ready for anything. You literally have to jump right out of bed and change right where you are in order to get to your station and man it. You can imagine how uncomfortable and inappropriate that will be for members of the opposite sex to have to do in front of each other. The head or bathrooms for those of you unfamiliar with the terminology, are usually set up in a similar way with either curtains or open stalls and urinals. So far the women have been placed secluded in officer quarters to prevent the mixing of the sexes. I however, do not know how long that will work as they add more and more women into the mix, they are going to need more space. There is already an overflow on some submarines that leaves submarines sharing bunks and having to sleep in opposite shifts. So, I do not see how they plan to make the accommodations to house the women in separate …show more content…
There is no way for the opposite sex to live in such tight spaces and not have any incidents. There are plenty of things that go on and should not, on surface ships and they have the space and the proper accommodations to help prevent these things from happening. Let us be honest, men are men and when they work together they use inappropriate language and references. You cannot take a group of men, that usually work around nothing but other men and throw in women and expect them not to offend anyone. It is going to put added stress and tension in the work place, when things need to be fluid. There is no room for error, there are countless numbers of things that can go wrong if someone doesn’t have their head in the game. The initial trials did not have any red flags but in my opinion, everyone is always on their best behavior when they are in a trial situation. I am sure they had Big Navy breathing down their necks making sure nothing bad was going to happen. You cannot use that for the basis of the entire integration. Since releasing information about their future plans for merging more females into the submarine fleet, there has been an incident involving male submariners filming and passing around video of female submariners changing in the showers. There have been seven charge sheets so far in the Navy investigation into 12 sailors accused of making and sharing the cellphone videos while aboard the USS