Questions you want answered (P&C Edition)

Please forgive my ignorance; I'm trying to parse 'leather pride' and 'rubber pride' during our pride week here. I understand those particular paraphelias can have extensive intersectionality with the gay community and perhaps that is the sole reason for their inclusion, or is there something in and of themselves that fits with pride? just that paraphelias are outside the socially accepted 'norm' and considered sexually deviant?

krev82 wrote:

Please forgive my ignorance; I'm trying to parse 'leather pride' and 'rubber pride' during our pride week here. I understand those particular paraphelias can have extensive intersectionality with the gay community and perhaps that is the sole reason for their inclusion, or is there something in and of themselves that fits with pride? just that paraphelias are outside the socially accepted 'norm' and considered sexually deviant?

When I see "leather pride", I assume kinksters, not leather-daddies (although of course, there can be both. Pride as an event isn't just about being gay and out anymore. For some folk, it's about being kinky and out, or trans and out, or and out.

Jonman wrote:
krev82 wrote:

Please forgive my ignorance; I'm trying to parse 'leather pride' and 'rubber pride' during our pride week here. I understand those particular paraphelias can have extensive intersectionality with the gay community and perhaps that is the sole reason for their inclusion, or is there something in and of themselves that fits with pride? just that paraphelias are outside the socially accepted 'norm' and considered sexually deviant?

When I see "leather pride", I assume kinksters, not leather-daddies (although of course, there can be both. Pride as an event isn't just about being gay and out anymore. For some folk, it's about being kinky and out, or trans and out, or and out.

Yeah, Jonman's basically got the right of it. It's taking pride in a part of your personality that you normally keep repressed, and to have a little fun walking about in your gear. Leather, rubber, pup play, etc., it's all its own thing at Pride because these people involved want to show they're not ashamed of having these fetishes/paraphilia.

Has the all-volunteer military model in the US resulted in a less ideologically diverse armed forces? Being from a military town and a military family, my experience has been that certain social and ideological groups opt in to the military in much larger numbers than others. With military personnel and their families typically segregated from the general population while living on bases and by forming exclusive social groups when not living on bases, it seems that the military has concentrated a particular ideology with few opportunities for other ideologies to penetrate.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Has the all-volunteer military model in the US resulted in a less ideologically diverse armed forces?

How can it not have?

By definition, an all-volunteer army is going to draw from a smaller pool of candidates than a drafted army (which pulls from the entire population, more or less), for no other reason than economics. The kind of salaries the military pays already isolates a socioeconomic sub-pool of candidates - those to whom that salary seems competitive. The upper-middle-class liberal college graduate with a six-figure offer from Google is unlikely to be looking at fatigues and thinking they'd look good in them, right?

I suspect, however, that there are other factors that drive the lack of ideological diversity in the armed services, and it's more a function of how the military interfaces with the public. Which I think
you allude to - the geographic ghettoization of the military and extended tours overseas (where you're separated from the country's cultural milieu, and living in a cultural bubble, surrounded by other military) are at least as likely to blame as the volunteer-nature.

It's also worth noting that every large organization develops it's own internal culture. Ever worked for the federal government or a huge company with tens of thousands of employees?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Has the all-volunteer military model in the US resulted in a less ideologically diverse armed forces? Being from a military town and a military family, my experience has been that certain social and ideological groups opt in to the military in much larger numbers than others. With military personnel and their families typically segregated from the general population while living on bases and by forming exclusive social groups when not living on bases, it seems that the military has concentrated a particular ideology with few opportunities for other ideologies to penetrate.

According to one study in 2004, military political ideologies were similar to that of the general population. However military leaders were more likely to be Republicans.

Participants in the Military Times survey, for example, tended to be white, older, and more senior in rank--that is, they were hardly a representative sampling of the armed services.
In addition to its ideological moderation, the Army is not as partisan as popularly portrayed. Whereas 65 percent of Americans think of themselves as either Republican or Democrat, according to the Annenberg survey, my study shows that only 43 percent of the military identifies with one of the two major political parties. Two out of three officers consider themselves either Republican or Democrat, but only 37 percent of enlisted personnel do so.

Also, a 2007 LA Times story found that Republican support in the military declined from 2004-2006:

Buried in the news last week was one of the most potentially significant stories of recent years. The Military Times released its annual poll of active-duty service members, and the results showed something virtually unprecedented: a one-year decline of 10 percentage points in the number of military personnel identifying themselves as Republicans. In the 2004 poll, the percentage of military respondents who characterized themselves as Republicans stood at 60%. By the end of 2005, that had dropped to 56%. And by the end of 2006, the percentage of military Republicans plummeted to 46%.

My theory is that military ideologies will fluctuate like they do among civilians and will largely depend on who is in charge during the successes and failures of our military involvement in foreign affairs. A bit more of a stretch given the lack of data, but I suspect you'd see individual bases having stronger partisan ideologies, which get smoothed over when you look at the military as a whole.

My personal experience has been that the military starts with a pretty decent ideological cross-section. Most recruits (and cadets) come from poor backgrounds, but there's plenty of that to go around and the military is one of the least racist organizations out there.

What ends up happening is that the people who stay in the military are the ones who are comfortable with an explicitly authoritarian lifestyle, and can either suppress their misgivings about how the military is being used or simply don't care. Those who object to being used as cannon fodder in pointless bloody conflicts tend to grow disillusioned and leave.

The chain of command grows increasingly political as you move up. Given that Republicans provide the most budget support, it's hardly surprising that senior military politicians gravitate in that direction - every large organization seeks to preserve and expand itself. As Chairman_Mao pointed out, that leaves you with the majority of troops being a pretty representative cross-section, and a senior leadership that leans conservative / authoritarian.

Thanks for the info, Mao. I'd really like to see how things have gone in the 9 years since.

Aetius wrote:

What ends up happening is that the people who stay in the military are the ones who are comfortable with an explicitly authoritarian lifestyle, and can either suppress their misgivings about how the military is being used or simply don't care.

You've forgotten the ones - a large percentage - who *approve* of the last few decades of military action we've taken, and would like to see more.

Robear wrote:
Aetius wrote:

What ends up happening is that the people who stay in the military are the ones who are comfortable with an explicitly authoritarian lifestyle, and can either suppress their misgivings about how the military is being used or simply don't care.

You've forgotten the ones - a large percentage - who *approve* of the last few decades of military action we've taken, and would like to see more.

Is there a source for this?

It at least holds with the ideas of self-selection and the Benjamin Franklin effect. If you disagreed with military use of force while you're there, there's a reasonable chance you'd at least want to leave. If you stayed and kept being a part of it, then the Franklin effect will likely make you start to feel you're doing the right thing.

wordsmythe wrote:

It at least holds with the ideas of self-selection and the Benjamin Franklin effect. If you disagreed with military use of force while you're there, there's a reasonable chance you'd at least want to leave. If you stayed and kept being a part of it, then the Franklin effect will likely make you start to feel you're doing the right thing.

While I can believe that people who stay in the military may be more inclined to agree with Clausewitz, I also believe it is a bit of a stretch to believe that a "large" number of people in the military since 2001 have been in favor of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, hence wanting to see a source.

I will further offer that Rumsfeld's policy was to effectively treat the National Guard and reserves as active duty soldiers (at least in my opinion).

Garrcia wrote:

Is there a source for this?

I spent much of the 90's working on military bases (Air Force and Army), and my brother has been an Army officer since about 1992, currently he's a Colonel. There are a *lot* of officers and NCOs who are gung ho about their mission and don't give a damn about civilian or diplomatic concerns. (Don't get me wrong, this is the attitude you *want* in many military jobs.)

But the idea that the military consists either of people who force down their disgust with the job, or people who don't have a moral center, leaves out the ones who *do* approve of the mission, often enthusiastically.

I'm kind of surprised that this would even be in question.

Robear wrote:
Garrcia wrote:

Is there a source for this?

I spent much of the 90's working on military bases (Air Force and Army), and my brother has been an Army officer since about 1992, currently he's a Colonel. There are a *lot* of officers and NCOs who are gung ho about their mission and don't give a damn about civilian or diplomatic concerns. (Don't get me wrong, this is the attitude you *want* in many military jobs.)

But the idea that the military consists either of people who force down their disgust with the job, or people who don't have a moral center, leaves out the ones who *do* approve of the mission, often enthusiastically.

I'm kind of surprised that this would even be in question.

That could be interpreted as being in the rubric of could be called "good soldiering".

And to be clear, I am not saying that the members of the US armed forces are either generally pro or con towards the policies since 9/11.

I am saying I believe it maybe more con than pro, but that is just my belief and would happily reconsider my opinion if some survey (or similar) information is presented.

Soldiers are generally discouraged from giving their political opinions in public, so I don't have a lot of confidence that there will even be surveys of that. (Not that they don't talk about it incessantly internally, of course.)