"The problems of women in combat..."

[Sumeri]

from a "female" combat vet.

westernjournalism.com/the-problems-of-women-in-combat-from-a-female-combat-vet/

Would you all please dissect this for me? There is so much fail in here (esp. the "got herself pregnant" part - last I checked it took an egg and a sperm to make that happen) and my tea party-esque stepson that just posted this on FB needs some good, feminist schooling.

[desertvixen]

Disclaimer: I am a female enlisted Soldier with almost fifteen years of service in. I have been deployed to a combat zone, I have not actually been in "real" combat (ie, firing at the enemy in danger of my life). Just FYI, neither have a lot of men in the military.

From the article:

Because most women wouldn’t even qualify to be in the military if they didn’t have separate standards. Men and women are different, but those pushing women into combat don’t want to admit that truth. They huff and puff about how women can do whatever men can do, but it just ain’t so. We’re built differently, and it doesn’t matter that one particular woman could best one particular man. The best woman is still no match for the best man, and most of the men she’d be fireman-carrying off the battlefield will be at least 100 lbs heavier than her with their gear on.

Women would have to work a lot harder to meet the male standard. This is true. It would require looking at training a little differently, and maybe get past the whole "females are weaker", as well as looking at ways to measure strength. I am not an expert on any of this, but do pull-ups really matter? The upper-body strength is the biggest issue - I have several female soldiers who can run with some of the best guys, but they also weigh like 120 pounds, so upper body strength = not so much.

The gear is another thing - they currently make it to fit men, and do we need to wear so much/such heavy stuff anyway?

Women are often great shooters but can’t run in 50-80 lbs of gear as long, hard, or fast as men.

This is true. Women also generally do better learning to shoot because they haven't been as exposed to it as men.

Military training is hard enough on men’s bodies; it’s harder on women’s.

I would agree that it is hard on both sexes. A lot of men take some joy in making it as difficult as they possibly can, but again, training is an issue that can always be looked at and improved. There has been a lot of this over the period that I have been in the military. One example is the fact that now Basic Training keeps people in tennis shoes longer, because so many people are not used to wearing hard, stiff shoes. I will disclose that I suffered from stress fractures in my initial training, not from the running, but from all the jumping. They've either healed or I just don't notice anymore.

And until women stop menstruating, there will always be an uphill battle for staying level and strong at all times. No one wants to talk about the fact that in the days before a woman’s cycle, she loses half her strength, to say nothing of the emotional ups and downs that affect judgment. And how would you like fighting through PMS symptoms while clearing a town or going through a firefight? Then there are the logistics of making all the accommodations for women in the field, from stopping the convoy to pee or because her cycle started to stripping down to get hosed off after having to go into combat with full MOP gear when there’s a biological threat.

To the bolded: I have never heard or experienced a loss of strength. Crabbiness, yes. A desire to lie down and eat chocolate, yes. That isn't always an option.

The emotional thing also strikes me as BS - you have to learn to combat it, or decide that you don't need a biological excuse to be a bitch.

Urination: They have setups for that (the Shenis, I believe? Never used one).

Period starting: I'm sorry, I have never stopped anything because my period started.

Stripping down: If women want to go into combat, they're probably not going to be all that modest about it. The boys can just learn to deal, or they can be men and act like adults. If they've never seen a pair of tits, they have bigger issues.

This is to say nothing of unit cohesion, which is imperative and paramount, especially in the combat fields. When preparing for battle, the last thing on your mind should be sex; but you put men and women in close quarters together, and human nature is what it is (this is also why the repeal of DADT is so damaging). It doesn’t matter what the rules are. The Navy proved that when they started allowing women on ship. What happened? They were having sex and getting pregnant, ruining unit cohesion (not to mention derailing the operations because they’d have to change course to get them off ship.)

The people who break the rule should be punished - both members. I am tired of this human nature argument - I'm sorry, in a field/deployed situation, the last thing on my mind is fucking one of the guys. Yes, pregnancy is an issue. I would not be opposed to enforced contraceptive use for military women, provided the servicewoman in general did not have physical issues with it, and as long as they provided options for type. I'm not a fan of the Depo shot (which would also eliminate some period issues) but I will wear my patch all day long.

Also, personal anecdote - the military women I work with right now are pretty much all on birth control - even the one out lesbian.

When I deployed, we’d hardly been in the country a few weeks before one of our females had to be sent home because she’d gotten pregnant (nice waste of training, not to mention taxpayer money that paid for it). That’s your military readiness? Our enemies are laughing – “Thanks for giving us another vulnerability, USA!â€

There is no need to punish all of us for a few women's actions. Plus, WHAT ABOUT THE GUY? However, often female soldiers bear the brunt of punishment for pregnancy because it's easy to tell who is pregnant, but you can't find out who the father is until post-birth, unless the guy confesses. A lot of them do not.

Then there are relationships. Whether it’s a consensual relationship, unwanted advances, or sexual assault, they all destroy unit cohesion.

They can. They do not have to, but they can. It means people have to act like adults.

Yet another little-discussed issue is that some female military members are leaving their kids behind to advance their careers by deploying. I know of one divorced Marine who left her two sons, one of them autistic, with their grandparents while she deployed. She was wounded on base (not on the front lines) and is a purple heart recipient. What if she’d been killed, leaving behind her special needs child? Glory was more important than motherhood. Another case in my own unit was a married female who became angry when they wouldn’t let both her and her husband deploy at the same time. Career advancement was the greater concern.

Okay, the author is projecting her issues and views here. Why is there no hand-wringing about all the men who leave their children behind? I don't believe that it hurts women any more than it hurts men, but it is less socially acceptable for men to admit it. And that is sad.

I have deployed, when my child was 2 years old. I was sad. She had a blast with my parents. I will deploy again this summer. She will have fun again. Is it hard? Yes. But this is my profession. This is what puts food on my table. Also, the military has better benefits than a lot of other places.

To the bolded: I call bullshit. It may not have been career advancement as much as it was wanting to reduce the amount of time they spent apart. I know several couples who have tried to go this route.

I understand the will to fight. I joined the Marines in the hopes of deploying because I believe that fighting jihadists is right. And I care about the women and children in Islamic countries where they are denied their rights, subjugated, mutilated, and murdered with impunity; and where children are molested and raped with impunity (not to mention defending our own freedom against these hate-filled terrorists who want to destroy freedom-loving countries like America.) Joining the Marines was one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life, and I’m glad I got to deploy. It not only allowed me to witness the war, but to witness the problems with women in combat.

Author's issues and "special" status, check.

Women have many wonderful strengths, and there is certainly a lot of work for women to do in the military.

Yes, there is. Especially in countries where there are a lot of cultural prohibitions.

We know, for example, that women are much more prone to certain types of infections. For a woman on patrol, setting up an ambush (or, as the infantry do, living in abandoned buildings with no running water), hygiene is a constant problem. A urinary tract infection can quickly become a kidney infection (debilitating in itself) and then kidney failure if left unchecked. Suddenly, a woman needs to be evacuated for a problem that has nothing to do with combat and to which men are not susceptible.

Baby wipes. Appropriate hygiene. Cranberry pills. Effective hydration.

And last time I checked, men could get both UTIs and kidney infections. In fact, I know several men who had to be evacuated from country because they were taking so many supplements and not drinking enough water, their kidneys couldn't keep up. Let's ban supplements....oh wait.

It costs approximately a million dollars per individual to get trained through bootcamp and to be made ready for deployment. Those are taxpayer dollars spent on someone who has to turn around and leave the combat zone to have a baby (for which our tax dollars also pay), having nothing to do with combat.

I firmly believe that those who get pregnant in a combat zone should be penalized. It's possible to go for a whole year without sex. I have some sympathy for someone who gets pregnant on R&R leave because now and then, contraceptives will fail. BTW, did you know the military won't pay for military women to have abortions?

In one TV interview, a woman suggested that if women are willing to take that risk, we should let them.

That person is right.

But the idea that men shouldn’t worry any more about women in battle goes against the very best primal male instinct. In every country from Canada to Israel where women are in combat (and in American units where women are in theater), the men will tell you they are more protective of the women. It’s different from men’s protection of each other, and it distracts from mission completion. The pro-WICs would have men thwart this wonderful and thoroughly ingrained instinct. A world in which men don’t feel a strong need to protect women when they’re in the most dangerous and hostile of environments would be a nightmare. We would rightly call those men brutes.

This is the men's issue, then. Plus, I love how we go from "men will protect women at all times" to the underlying "only if they deserve it".

That, and if this was really true, we would NOT have the rate of sexual assault that we do in the military. Somehow, once they start drinking, they turn into brutes. Or when we're in a dark area, walking to our area at night.

We’re also thwarting mothers’ nurturing instincts. Women are already training to kill and leaving their children to deploy, even when they are the sole caregiver (turning care over namely to grandparents). This sets a bad precedent and hurts children. There will always be war, and it’s bad enough for fathers to leave their children to fight necessarily; but to allow mothers to choose this path over motherhood is bad for everyone. There are many noble capacities in which women with children can fight for this country, such as administrative jobs stateside. We don’t need to deploy mothers to battle; we shouldn’t.

Again, BS. We join the military, we should be subject to the same chance of deployment as the men. What does she think this is, WW2?

A small handful of high-ranking females have instigated this policy change in order to advance their own careers. In this interview, Anu Bhagwati, a former Captain, complains about women not being able to be promoted to certain ranks, claims that women aren’t getting proper recognition for action in combat (a claim also made here), and claims that it’s harder for them to get combat-injury-related benefits from the VA.

There have been issues with this, and it is a VA issue.

The word “discriminate†has several meanings, including “to distinguish particular features, to be discerning; showing insight and understanding.†We should absolutely be discriminating in our criteria for war preparation, and the lives of our men in uniform depend on us taking an honest, discerning look at who adds to military readiness and who detracts from it. We should absolutely not open the combat units to the myriad problems we face already with women deploying to the theatre of war.

This is what makes me mad. There are women who could make the standard; there are men who cannot. So let's set a standard, and let people take their chances.

While I was waiting to do a random drug test in my unit on Thursday, we had this male officer who wouldn't shut up about how women cannot meet the standard, and we'll just have to lower the standard. This officer is also about 40 pounds over the Army's weight limit for his height/age, and it's not because he's a muscular guy. He is lazy and unmotivated and he is NOT MEETING THE STANDARD EITHER.

Let's try it out. DADT repeal hasn't broken anything. This likely will not either.

[jenny_islander]

Awesome dissection from somebody who's BTDT, thanks!

Having zero military experience myself, I just want to look at the illogic in one assertion. If we treat women just like men starting in boot and a higher percentage of women wash out for physical issues, this proves what, exactly? That the women who don't wash out are somehow less capable than the men who don't wash out?

Let's say that assorted anecdata I've heard over the years turn out to be correct. Let's say that given years of equal access to training, women turn out to dominate as rescue swimmers, snipers, and/or fighter pilots. (Better insulation, less tendency to get twitchy when still, and better average G-force tolerance, according to the anecdata.) Does that mean that we should treat men who meet the requirements for these specialties as less capable than women?

On a lighter note, I heard a comedy routine years ago about women Marines. The comedian pointed out that if PMS really does make women meaner and more volatile, the solution is obv. to make the women Marines bunk together so they synch up, hand them rifles, and send them in first!

[Three and Done]

desertvixen-

Thank you so very much for a well-written dissection of that BS.

:clap: :clap:

[Sumeri]

Thank you so much, desertvixen. Excellent. I was hoping to hear from a woman in service.

[Conuly]

If men really all did drop everything at the sight of a woman to protect then, logically, wouldn't the first nation to have an all-female army win? Wouldn't all the manly men on the other side immediately refuse to fight because of the risk of harming one of those oh-so-distracting women? Or are we supposed to believe our enemies aren't human?

[August]

If men really all did drop everything at the sight of a woman to protect then, logically, wouldn't the first nation to have an all-female army win? Wouldn't all the manly men on the other side immediately refuse to fight because of the risk of harming one of those oh-so-distracting women? Or are we supposed to believe our enemies aren't human?

Nope, easy to counter -just put the all male army in glasses, so no-one will hit them. But, you have to make sure the women army don't have glasses because presumably the protecting rule only works if you'd make a pass at them.

[desertvixen]

If we treat women just like men starting in boot and a higher percentage of women wash out for physical issues, this proves what, exactly? That the women who don't wash out are somehow less capable than the men who don't wash out?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Glad I could help out.

Conuly - Based on the article, I'm pretty sure she does see the current enemy as less than human.

[FaustianSlip]

I have not served in combat or anything, but I was in ROTC in college and participated heavily in Ranger Company, an extra ROTC class where you spend a lot of time learning small unit infantry tactics, crawling around in the mud and being cold, wet and miserable. I was one of two women in the company, and we did a thirty-six to forty-eight hour field exercise at the end of each semester. The gender thing was a complete non-issue. The only time it came up was when we were doing perimeter security in the middle of the night, and I had to pee. The rule was that you had to take your battle buddy with you if you went to the bathroom somewhere, and our Platoon Sergeant told me to wait until the other female got back so she could stand in, and I wouldn't have to pee in front of a guy. I didn't care, but whatever.

As luck would have it, our patrol base got "ambushed" before I got a chance to go. We dealt with that and then went on a lengthy road march. You know what I did about my bladder? I held it. It sucked, especially since the guy in front of me on our march would whip it out and take a piss off on the side of the road basically every time we took a knee, but I just sucked it up and dealt with it. Yes, it was uncomfortable. Everyone was uncomfortable. It was raining, cold, we were exhausted and our feet hurt. Shit happens. About ten hours later, we stopped for long enough for me to point out to our Platoon Sergeant that I still hadn't gone, and he let me go off and take care of business. At that point, I would have peed in front of a guy without giving it a second's thought, and this wasn't combat, it was just training. I really, really don't think most people are going to give a crap (pun intended) about most of those issues when you're forward deployed somewhere and under constant fire. There are bigger things to worry about. And if that is something that would bother you, you're not going to be trying to sign up for the infantry in the first place.

As far as the guys, my experience was that if you put out, were good at your job and could carry your own weight, they'd respect you and treat you the same as they would anyone else. We had more issues with guys in my unit trying to half-ass things and getting hammered than we ever did with women; most of the women could easily smoke the guys at PT. If someone really wants infantry and they have to do ten pullups to get it, they'll make it happen. Also, remember the women on subs thing? Everyone was freaking out. Oh, they'll get pregnant, it's too small a space, they'll be uncomfortable, they'll make the men uncomfortable, what about the bathrooms. I haven't heard a peep about those female officers they posted to subs- it sounds like it's been a complete non-issue. I suspect that once the men get over themselves, this will be much the same.

[Peas n carrots]

Thanks FS and DV? It's good to have the input of women who have military experience. I had an argument on Facebook with a guy I went to high school with (former Marine). He started out saying women couldn't hack it, but then got to the heart of it....women would require separate showers and latrines and doesn't want his taxpayer money going to those. He lost me after that....sounds like more of a personal problem. This guy also admitted he was never deployed overseas so no combat experience.

I then talked to a co-worker of mine who has been deployed twice to Afganistan. His quote "women are already in a combat situation in that theater, we might as well allow them the opportunity for combat training before deployment.". He went on to give several examples of women he had encountered who hacked it with them men. To him, he didn't care if they were male or female, as long as they met the standards that is all that matters.

[MamaJunebug]

My son who served in combat in OIF and who is very liberal politically had only this to say: "Some women can carry the gear and the weapons, some can't, and when I have to help somebody out routinely, that slows us both down."

Note that he wasn't talking about helping out a comrade who'd been injured, etc., but helping on a routine basis.

I think sometimes we forget that it's war, not an office or school or even domestic law enforcement environment that we're talking about.

One of my siblings worked in a coal-fired power plant. He was a great guy, very easy-going, but he said that when the union insisted that women be given the same maintenance jobs as men, it slowed everybody down. Several of the women who worked alongside him couldn't lift some of the tools nor perform the tasks, and he had to stop what he was doing to get it done for them.

I asked him if there weren't some men who were similarly lacking in upper-body strength on the job, and he said there simply weren't.

I'm 100% feminist but it seems to me that the basic truth of relative strength needs to be considered in some things. Feminism doesn't say we're the same, it says we're equal.

[Sumeri]

My son who served in combat in OIF and who is very liberal politically had only this to say: "Some women can carry the gear and the weapons, some can't, and when I have to help somebody out routinely, that slows us both down."

Note that he wasn't talking about helping out a comrade who'd been injured, etc., but helping on a routine basis.

I think sometimes we forget that it's war, not an office or school or even domestic law enforcement environment that we're talking about.

One of my siblings worked in a coal-fired power plant. He was a great guy, very easy-going, but he said that when the union insisted that women be given the same maintenance jobs as men, it slowed everybody down. Several of the women who worked alongside him couldn't lift some of the tools nor perform the tasks, and he had to stop what he was doing to get it done for them.

I asked him if there weren't some men who were similarly lacking in upper-body strength on the job, and he said there simply weren't.

I'm 100% feminist but it seems to me that the basic truth of relative strength needs to be considered in some things. Feminism doesn't say we're the same, it says we're equal.

I guess I don't understand this line of reasoning. There are standards for any job, and if a person cannot fulfill those standards than they shouldn't be considered for the job. Even while hiring waitstaff I need to specify that you need to be able to lift 50 pounds and stand for x amount of hours. Wouldn't that also be done in a coal plant - or the military? Because there are men who can't do these things, either.

[MamaJunebug]

I guess I don't understand this line of reasoning. There are standards for any job, and if a person cannot fulfill those standards than they shouldn't be considered for the job. Even while hiring waitstaff I need to specify that you need to be able to lift 50 pounds and stand for x amount of hours. Wouldn't that also be done in a coal plant - or the military? Because there are men who can't do these things, either.

One would think so, wouldn't one? The utility and the union evidently did not think through the insertion of women into the maintenance crew. I can't ask my brother at this point :( but it was never considered that a guy would bid on a mechanic's job without knowing he could do what was required. It was a weird deal all around with that company.

[Becket70]

I was surprised when my very liberal, former Marine brother-in-law came out against the idea of women in combat. He said he had no doubts that women would be up to the task but his concern was more in the area of a woman becoming a P.O.W. It could get uncomfortable for the nation depending on how she was treated. You just know that the minute something awful happened to a female soldier who was held captive (I leave it up to your imagination) Congress would react by saying women would no longer be allowed in combat. I understand his point of view but I still feel that something like that goes with the territory no matter the gender. Still, it is something to ponder.

[desertvixen]

My son who served in combat in OIF and who is very liberal politically had only this to say: "Some women can carry the gear and the weapons, some can't, and when I have to help somebody out routinely, that slows us both down."


Note that he wasn't talking about helping out a comrade who'd been injured, etc., but helping on a routine basis.

There would need to be a standard. A standard that says a soldier must be able to do X, lift X, carry X for Y distance, etc. That is what they're supposed to be looking at for the next three years. This standard might be the existing male standard. It might be an adjusted standard. But a standard, regardless of male or female. You meet it, welcome to combat. There are men who aren't cut out to be in combat either, but yet we never hear about them. They are there. Some of them are not cut out to be in combat because they've been in it - one of the soldiers I changed jobs with did so because he was 60% blind in one eye due to shrapnel.

Plus, the women who are agitating to go to combat? A lot of them CAN hack it. They are trying.

I think sometimes we forget that it's war, not an office or school or even domestic law enforcement environment that we're talking about.

I don't think any of the women who have been to the war forgot about it. It's hard to forget about it when you're waiting out a mortar strike. And that's the thing - combat is no longer confined to neat little areas of the battlefield. It happens everywhere. IEDs do not check for gender or whether you're "in combat". Women are being exposed to the same danger that the men are, and we're really okay with it for the most part. Yes, it sucks. Not getting to shower or wash your hair sucks. Peeing in the field, or in a porta-potty that is so dirty you would rather piss outdoors, or in what jokingly passes for "plumbing" in a lot of Iraq - a hole in the ground. Basin if you're lucky. I've seen them other places (the basins) but they were part of an actual bathroom with actual indoor plumbing and actual cleanliness.

I'm 100% feminist but it seems to me that the basic truth of relative strength needs to be considered in some things. Feminism doesn't say we're the same, it says we're equal.

We don't have to be the same as the men, but meet a standard. There's also been studies that show that women can be trained to a level that they could compete with the men, it would just require changes in how women are trained. To be honest, though, I think society would benefit from it being "okay" for women to be more physically strong, because now it's really not.

Also, in the case of honesty, I feel compelled to point out that I am not one of the women trying to get into combat. Maybe if they had made this change 10 years ago, but not now. I've got just about five years to go, and am small enough (5'3'', 140 ish) that the idea of carrying from a third to half of my body weight of stuff (body armor, ruck, gear, etc) is just not really on my list of things to do. But I have young female soldiers who aren't scared of the idea, and some of them are in a place where they could try. They deserve that chance.

[gardenvarietycitizen]

Have a standard. Exactly.

Also, you realize the whole "women are weaker than men" is about mass statistics and bell curves, right? The bell curves have maxes not very far apart, there is far more variation inside a sex than between sexes, and so it's absolutely not possible to assume that "any" man will automatically be stronger than "any" woman.

Hence, there needs to be standards. Fit the standards to the actual requirements of the job, and make them the same for BOTH sexes, and it's all good.

As for the people with terrible period issues, they probably know this fairly early on and should just count it as as a health issue, the same as those specific men with a bad back or needing to be on certain prescription drugs similarly aren't allowed to be in certain jobs for health reasons. But not EVERYONE with periods has hard periods, some of us lucky people never even get cramps.

[FaustianSlip]

This isn't saying that women are going to be men or be the same as men. It is saying that women will have the same opportunity as men to take a shot at the combat arms branches, and if they meet the standard, they're in. That's the very definition of feminism, IMHO. I personally know women who could probably meet the physical standards required for combat jobs. They were in my units in ROTC, and I worked with them when I worked in the railroad industry. Would they have wanted combat arms for themselves? Maybe, maybe not, but it should be their choice.

The simple fact is that the vast majority of men serve in non-combat roles. Fifty percent of men who test for the Ranger tab flunk out. I believe the number is even higher for SEAL training. No one extrapolates that to say that because these programs are extremely challenging and competitive (as they should be), no one should try out, men included. It's seen as a test of grit and determination, not simply one of physical strength. Go and watch the series that Discovery did a few years back on BUD/S training or an episode or two of Surviving the Cut, where people try out for elite military units. A lot of the guys who make it through aren't the physically strongest or the most built. They're in great shape, of course, but their selection into these elite units usually has more to do with their persistence and ability to perform under pressure than how many pull-ups or squat thrusts they can do. Are we saying that women are such delicate flowers that they shouldn't even be allowed to try out? Please.

As far as POW concerns, women have already been taken prisoner. So have men. Horrible things have happened to both. Women are raped pretty regularly in our society (both civilian and military) without being POWs, and I don't see any of these people wringing their hands over women in combat showing any similar concern about that. In fact, most of them have had little or nothing to say about the abysmal sexual assault statistics the military already has. Interesting that they don't give a shit about any of that, but the prospect of women in combat comes up, and suddenly they need to protect all of these precious ladyfolk. They'd be doing us a bigger favor by working on stopping the rapes that are actually happening instead of concern trolling about imaginary, potential rapes at the hands of some imaginary enemy that haven't happened yet.

The Israelis have had women in combat roles for years. Are we saying that they're somehow a weaker force, or that they can't be counted on to perform when it counts because their men might suddenly lose all semblance of sense and start running back to rescue women in trouble? The Kiwis have had all of their units open to both genders for years, as well. No woman has made it into the SAS yet, but they're allowed to give it a try, which is all anyone is asking for. There's also the fact that almost every elite unit adopts a "leave no man behind" philosophy, so in an ideal world, they'd be going back for anyone who's injured or in trouble, not just a woman.

[desertvixen]

As far as POW concerns, women have already been taken prisoner. So have men. Horrible things have happened to both. Women are raped pretty regularly in our society (both civilian and military) without being POWs, and I don't see any of these people wringing their hands over women in combat showing any similar concern about that. In fact, most of them have had little or nothing to say about the abysmal sexual assault statistics the military already has. Interesting that they don't give a shit about any of that, but the prospect of women in combat comes up, and suddenly they need to protect all of these precious ladyfolk. They'd be doing us a bigger favor by working on stopping the rapes that are actually happening instead of concern trolling about imaginary, potential rapes at the hands of some imaginary enemy that haven't happened yet.

This. That, and I made the mistake of getting the Army Times, and one of the first "reaction letters" was from a former E-4, now wife who was worried that women "wouldn't keep their legs shut".

[ThisOlGirl]

“I understand the will to fight. I joined the Marines in the hopes of deploying because I believe that fighting jihadists is right

I could be wrong but this sentence make me think she joined the Marine Corps to fight, she wasn't allowed to, and now she's mad because other women will be allowed to.