‘Like taking back our ability to vote:’ Pete Hegseth’s comments about women in the military met with outrage

Women veterans, service members and advocacy groups are outraged by recent remarks from Donald Trump’s pick to lead the nation’s military branches, a veteran and former Fox News host who does not want women serving in combat.

Pete Hegseth, who Trump has nominated to be the next secretary of defense, has been widely derided for a lack of qualifications to lead the country’s largest federal agency and its 3 million service members and civilian staff members.

In a recent podcast appearance, Hegseth said the nation’s military “should not have women in combat roles” and that men are “more capable” in those positions. He told right-wing media personality Ben Shapiro earlier this year that women are “life-givers, not life-takers,” who could be “medics or helicopter pilots or whatever.”

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“But they create all sorts of variables and complications that have nothing to do with being anti-women and everything to do with having the most effective military,” he said.

“Where do you think I lost my legs? In a bar fight?” said Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, a former Army National Guard member who was among the first women to fly combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Duckworth, who lost her legs in 2004 after a rocket-propelled grenade struck her helicopter, told CNN that Hegseth’s comments show “how out of touch he is with the nature of modern warfare, if he thinks that we can keep women behind some sort of imaginary line, which is not the way warfare is today.”

Joanna “JoJo” Sweatt, a Marine Corps veteran and the national organizing director for progressive veterans advocacy group Common Defense, told The Hill that Hegseth’s dismissal of women’s service records “signals a dangerous regression to a culture that undervalues and undermines our voices, service, and sacrifices.”

“Hegseth’s stance disregards the progress made toward a more inclusive military that reflects the diversity of the country it defends,” she said.

The Defense Department opened all combat roles to women in 2016. Women now make up roughly 17 percent of the nation’s active-duty forces and more than 21 percent of the selected reserve, according to the Pentagon. In 2022, as the overall number of service members dropped by 2.7 percent from the previous year, the percentage of women service members had increased.

Revoking women’s rights in the military “would be like taking back our ability to vote,” one current Army colonel told NBC News, speaking anonymously out of fear of retaliation.

“I don’t even know how to express the disgust,” she said about Hegseth’s remarks. “I’m trained the same way. I take the same oath. I execute the same orders that are given to me as my male counterparts.”

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In his books, Hegseth has claimed that “America’s white sons and daughters” are leaving the military because of so-called “woke” ideology that is too “effeminate” and promotes diversity initiatives to the detriment of the nation’s military readiness.

“Everybody knows between bone density and lung capacity and muscle strength, men and women are just different,” Hegseth said on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast.

Allison Jaslow, chief executive of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told The 19th that “women could run circles around some of the men.”

“During my time in the military, I’ve had some male colleagues really freaking disappoint me,” she said. “I reject the notion [that men are categorically better] altogether, and I think some people with strongly held beliefs will look at one example and label all the rest of us. … It’s just one of those things where I’m like, ‘Tell me to my face.’”

Veterans advocates and civil rights groups have been sounding the alarm after Hegseth’s nomination, pointing to regressive comments about women and LGBT+ people serving the military, as well as a track record of anti-Islam rhetoric and statements suggesting his support for deploying troops against other Americans.

Days after his nomination, it was revealed that Hegseth was accused of sexual misconduct in 2017, and that he reached a settlement to prevent her from filing a lawsuit against him.

“Pete Hegseth is wholly unqualified to head the Department of Defense and hold the lives of troops in his hands,” said Retired Army major general Paul Eaton, chair of VoteVets. “Nothing more needs to be said.”