It’s also a problem I’ve noticed with some of the female soldiers in my unit. I recently nominate a few to something and the first thing they asked was if it was te cause they were women. No. It’s because they were two of our stronger members given what was being asked for. Not sure I was able to convince them of that despite my best efforts.
If you've read the internet lately, do you wonder why that was their first question?
I will speak from experience on 'the bling' -- we DID have quotas for "women" on the last round of Jubliee ~ IIRC around 2012ish (time flies and all that jazz). Due to my position at the time, I got to participate in boards after initial nominations. I had already made my wishes very, very clear, that I wanted a non-positive number of people to submit my name as I disagreed with the 'criteria', the quotas and would refuse it anyway. I'm a red head, they laughed but knew I was serious. So if one did work very hard to get where they were (IMO, I did work very hard to get where I was), but happened to also be female then the 'doubt' about meriting them was always and will always be there.
That's why I'm totally dead set against gimmes and commemoratives: either give them to everyone or give them to no one.
YOU may know why you nominated your deserving females, but assumptions are always made by those who don't know her from Adam or know her history. The doubt will always be there for anyone who observe her medals because quotas as to sex were built in to the criteria. It's a crying shame.
The 'woke' system itself made to certain to ensure that 'doubt' happens. And, I am also quite certain that some deserving males did not get one because the male:female ratio in the particular Unit was skewed (hello Army!) so that most women serving in that Unit did get one. They ain't all the most "awesome" workers. Pendulums and all that.
Opinions may vary. I'm OK with that. Just understand that we women make our decisions -to go with our initials or "Vern" instead of our feminine first names - oft times - precisely because of our sex and self-protectionism ... in my case not because of the males I worked with and for but because of those males who just can't get over that bridge of "sex" - oftentimes the very same ones who profess about sex "not mattering". The ones who really don't care about sex are the ones who don't bring it up and certainly don't bitch about it. The guys I worked with knew I worked my ass off. They're who I give a shit about.
Because I joined the RegF in the 80s and just retired within the last year, oh the stories I could tell. Ones like my Operation Honour violation about that medal above when I told my 17 fellow MWOs in the room and the RSM (all males BTW) at the unit I was at that I had enough medals, that my rack was bigger than my chest and that didn't want another until the CAF bought me a chest to pin it on like they would buy for others. Of course, that was before Operation Honour ... but I'm still waiting for that chest.
YMMV. IMO. BTDT. Be done with the gimmes.
Edited because I can't friggin type today.
The driver is probably a rarity these days. Many trucks are converting to automatics (air-shifted manuals). In my early CF years I got my ON AZ over leave one summer almost as a lark, but good for appreciating heavy equipment. Learning rig was a late-80s International 9300 with Cummins Big Cam 855 and a Fuller 13-speed. It gave me an appreciation of seeing guys like in the video, doing the work in near-seamless perfection.
