Defense secretary’s latest interposition resulted in all-male, overwhelmingly white picks for promotion to admiralty
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, stripped nine navy officers including women and Black service members from a promotion list last month, according to a person familiar with the matter, resulting in an all-male, overwhelmingly white slate of 22 advancing as nominees to become one-star admirals.
Hegseth’s unusual intervention violated promotion rules designed to be merit-based and apolitical, the New York Times said on Tuesday, and extended the Trump administration’s push to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the military.
The original promotion list included three women and two Black officers in addition to the two who remained, the newspaper said.
If you’re wondering why the navy can’t figure out how to serve a hot meal on a boat anymore, this is why.
A large number of women officers were relegated to the logistics divisions. Because promotions were heavily favored towards combat veterans, and women were regularly prevented from participating in combat roles, logistics and back-office administration became the de facto “women’s branches”. Famously, the first woman 4-star general came up through Army Logistics. You’ll find women officers all through inventory, engineering, comms, and medical roles.
When Hegseth starts purging women from these officers’ corps, what he is effectively doing is Male-centric DEI in woman-dominated fields. And the end result is a much lower quality of officer with lackluster experience and more skills at kissing ass than doing the fucking job.
I mean part of the reason… The navy is just constantly shooting themselves in the foot constantly. The biggest being with their obsession with promoting commanders based on things like opstempo and deployment to dwell ratios.
Even when the US isn’t in a war opstempo of the US Navy is so demanding that no one wants to join the navy anymore, and the fleets are falling apart from lack of maintenance or ramming into each other from sailors being overworked and undertrained.
And thats all without bringing up the history of graft in the Navy. I mean, Lord knows how many people getting promoted now we’re around when Fat Leonard was throwing prostitutes and sacks of money at any officer sailing in the south Pacific.
I’m guessing that’s exactly what he wants
FAFO I guess.
It sounds suspiciously like you’re saying that men don’t know how to cook…
Edit: Downvotes aren’t changing my opinion that this person is saying that women are a requirement for a hot meal and that I feel like that’s sexist. In fact they’re really just confusing me more than anything else.
Not sure if troll or… But gonna assume you just can’t consider consequences.
They are saying that taking people who know what they are doing and have been trained for a role and then you replace them with idiots who just got out of boot and haven’t been trained to make mess for thousands of people, then its gonna be trouble.
So, yes, a random group of men, without any preparation or training to do so, cannot cook for thousands of people.
You did not need to explain it to me. My problem is with pointlessly gendering things. Replacing experienced people with unexperienced people is always going to be a problem regardless of what gender those people are. So starting the comment by saying this is why hot meals can’t be served just makes it sound like the commentor is being sexist.
Hot meals are a part of logistics. They were saying due to sexism in the military, women had been relegated to those roles for years, and now you have a field dominated by women. Pete, not promoting those women with all the experience results in men with less experience in that role being in charge of logistics work.
The pointless gendering is coming from Hegseth and what the army had already been doing prior. They are explaining why Hegseths new policy is leading to poorer performance in those areas because of the pointless gendering. It doesn’t matter what gender the people coming in are, it matters why the people were there before and are being removed, which was due to the previous pointless gendering.
I disagree, because this person specifically started with pointing out hot meals before talking about Logistics. Literally, they could have left the first sentence off and it would have sounded way less sexist.
Someone took the time to explain that removing people who have experience in logistics and cooking (typically women) will result in lower quality of those services. Then they explain Pete is the one pointlessly gendering things. And all you say is “nuh-uh I still think I’m right and everyone else is wrong” and then also say you refuse to change your opinion lol.
YOU are the only one looking at this as some reverse sexism thing for misinterpreting the original idea that removing people who are experienced will result in lower quality, and refusing to acknowledge the possiblity that you may have misinterpreted the message.
Did you really just explain it to me again??? So you just didn’t even read my posts then?
For the record saying something sounds like something else isn’t misinterpreting anything it’s a fucking opinion. Please keep that in mind, you are getting butt hurt over some random Internet person‘s opinion… And if I was the only one looking at it that way I wouldn’t be the only person down voting them or up voting me. Just because an opinion is in the minority doesn’t make it invalid, and just because an opinion is in the majority doesn’t make it valid.
It didn’t seem like you were understanding the original idea. And idk you’re the one swearing and using aggressive language so it really seems like you’re just butt hurt you got called out. And again you get defensive lol. Well, it doesn’t matter what you say or do I still think you’re wrong and I’m right and if you’re upset just remember it’s only an opinion :D
I think the fact that literally everyone else here read it as it was intended to be read and is trying to explain it to you might suggest that you probably did indeed misinterpret something. No one else thought this person was implying women belong in the kitchen… you are bringing something personal into this.
Literally? If that were true then I would be the only person up voting me or down voting them.
Of course I am, it’s my personal opinion, and I’ve already said I don’t like things being pointlessly gendered which is also an opinion. But saying that no one else thought that is just being obtuse.
I’m not sure repeating “well it’s my opinion” is helping.
Flat earthers, anti-vax, and moon landing deniers also have opinions… but they’re wrong… there’s like 3 other people commenting the same stuff trying to explain it, all being pretty civil too. I haven’t seen any comments (maybe one popped up while I was writing this) backing up your opinion which is why they are saying nobody else really thought that but you.
It is sexist that women have been forced into (or staying in) logistics. It is sexist that leak hegseth is purging women in the military. It is not sexist to realize the direct consequence of the combination of these two actions. I do think the experience matters a ton, not that they are women in particular. It is important to analyze both of these in the context of sexist decisions because it can be a driving force of the failure on the logistics side.
Logistics has little to do with hot meals, one is vitally important to the military, the other makes it sound like you’re saying women belong in the kitchen.
It’s more about the nature of a purge. If you were trying to put the best people for the roles in those roles prior to a purge, then a purge is going to leave you with worse people for the jobs, or at the very least, less experienced people doing those jobs.
It might have been sexism behind the reason women dominated those roles before the purge, but it’s normal for quality to drop after a political purge.
Same thing happened with the Nazis after Hitler did some rounds of purges in the Wermacht upper echelon after that assassination attempt with the bomb that injured him and discovering the plot for a military coup in its background. The purges really didn’t help their war efforts when they were already struggling.
Yes, I don’t disagree with this assessment. My problem is with talking about the decreasing quality of logistics by relating hot meals to the presence of women.
The hot meals is one of the most prevalent stories us civilians have access to, I dont think it ruins the point or felt sexist imo.
Sure but that’s not what they said; this person very specifically said women being removed is the reason hot meals are not being served. I’m happy for you that it didn’t feel sexist to you, but it did to me, and I felt like that needed to be pointed out.