{"id":17441,"date":"2012-05-02T00:30:09","date_gmt":"2012-05-02T03:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=17441"},"modified":"2013-10-30T19:59:30","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T22:59:30","slug":"navy-to-field-test-gender-neutral-uniforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/02\/navy-to-field-test-gender-neutral-uniforms\/","title":{"rendered":"Navy to Field Test Gender Neutral Uniforms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Juan Garcia, an assistant to the Secretary of the Navy for manpower, says Secretary Ray Mabus wants a service where opportunities are &#8220;gender blind.&#8221;\u00a0 To that end, the Navy is floating the idea of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.navytimes.com\/news\/2012\/04\/navy-unisex-cover-gender-blind-fleet-042212w\/\">ending gender-specific hats<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIt\u2019s a small thing, but separate covers was in some ways emblematic of a two-tiered sea service force,\u201d Garcia said in an April 10 interview, speaking about Mabus. \u201cHe wanted to take a look across the force&#8230;to send a signal that our Navy &#8230; reward[s] and keep[s] the best talent, regardless of gender.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Unisex uniforms are nothing new.\u00a0 In fact, the Air Force recently <!--more-->responded to decades of complaints from females about improperly fitting utility uniforms by doing the opposite thing as the Navy:\u00a0 specifically <a href=\"http:\/\/www.malmstrom.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123068782\">creating a female-fit version<\/a> of the battle uniform.\u00a0 The Army is reportedly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aolnews.com\/2011\/04\/22\/new-combat-uniform-for-female-army-troops-in-the-works\/\">doing the same thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The US military can make its troops where whatever they want.\u00a0 The timing, however &#8212; with groups of women <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/2012\/03\/military-womens-lawsuit-rape-assault-030612w\/\">suing the military<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/2012\/04\/ap-military-service-academies-sued-assault-responses-042012\/\">service academies<\/a>, charges of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.navytimes.com\/news\/2012\/04\/navy-bahrain-bash-commodore-david-geisler-040812w\/\">sexual impropriety<\/a> so seemingly common, as well as the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/20\/dadt-ambiguity-calls-for-protections-continue-with-repeal\/\">repeal of the ban on homosexuals<\/a> in the service &#8212; has led to some criticism.<\/p>\n<p>The first question out the chute was typical of every debate about gender in the military: when is the physical fitness test going to become &#8220;gender blind?&#8221;\u00a0 The next was\u00a0whether women would have to cut their hair like the men wearing the same hats&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Juan Garcia, an assistant to the Secretary of the Navy for manpower, says Secretary Ray Mabus wants a service where opportunities are &#8220;gender blind.&#8221;\u00a0 To that end, the Navy is floating the idea of ending gender-specific hats. \u201cIt\u2019s a small thing, but separate covers was in some ways emblematic of a two-tiered sea service force,\u201d Garcia said in an April [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[134,219,1225,442,3185,2,36,2574,1170,3186],"class_list":["post-17441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-air-force","tag-dadt","tag-gender","tag-homosexual","tag-juan-garcia","tag-military","tag-navy","tag-ray-mabus","tag-uniform","tag-unisex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17441\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}