"Welcome to the United States Navy, ladies," I remember the Company Commander, the Navy's equivalent to a Drill Sargent, screaming at about 3:30 in the morning, after I had less than 2 hours of sleep. The screaming CCs, the banging on the tin garbage cans, and the counting off. Four months later, I was in Millington, Tennessee for A school, the Navy-Marine Corps version of technical training. About 2 weeks after arriving, the Senior Chief in charge of our barracks had about 10 of us in her office. All of those in her office were slightly older than the average recruit. About 80% were straight out of high school, but some of us were 20 to 30 years old. I was part of the later. She asked us what we had joined the Navy for. Our answers varied: College money, see the world, get out of a small town, challenge ourselves, serve our country, the usual answers that any of us give. She took a long pause, mainly for effect. "Well," she said. "Each of you have your reasons, but you all got a little more than you bargained for. In the United States Navy, you are either a bitch, a dyke or a whore. You choose now, or someone will choose for you." She went on to explain that whatever we were named, by choice or not, would follow us through our career in the military. Over the time I served, I can honestly state that this was the case. While the civilian world doesn't directly translate, the military is a reflection of the United States as a whole. There is nowhere else that is made up exclusively of Americans or people that are from the territories. There is also nowhere else that you have agreed to sign away your Constitutional rights. When we join the military, we accept that for the duration of our lives we can still be under orders, and we also accept that we have no formal legal recourse if we are mistreated in the military. If the women that have served suffered sexual harassment or assault while serving, there is no civil lawsuit against the employer. There is only what the command, the Commanding Officer, the Officers we serve with, and the Senior Enlisted do to protect the rights of the women in their charge. So I am loathe to find out that a Command Master Chief (highest enlisted rank in a command) has been dismissed because of sexual harassment and that the Commanding Officer of the Blue Angels, the most recognized unit in the Navy, has been taken to Admiral's Mast, lost his command, ruined his career, by allowing a sexually charged atmosphere to exist. Twenty, yes 20, years after Tailhook we have not made a real dent in the male chauvinism in the military, and as I said, since we are the reflection of the United States as a whole, what does it say about us as a country?
After the rants of a crazed young man, I would like to believe that we don't tolerate this and he was a "one off", but only weeks later we are facing a military that is breaking down. I have heard all of the arguments of why women don't belong in combat. I'll be blunt. I've watched grown, trained men break down, freeze, literally poop their pants at the face of what we are trained to do. I've watched women, straight women--not just the stereotypical butch lesbian, that have leapt up and let the training take over. Did their jobs without a second thought about their safety, completely focused on the mission and taking care of their brothers and sisters in arms. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether we belong or don't. We can do the job. We have higher standards and when those standards are upheld, we are the greatest military in the world. So why do some in the military still have a problem acknowledging that women can serve and should be treated with the respect their predecessors have earned? Well, it's simple: We are a reflection--we are the mirror of the best, the worst, and everything in between that the United States has to offer.
Years ago, a friend asked me in a conference call, a sidebar discussion while waiting for the meeting to start, what I thought about a situation another co-worker had experienced. He asked the other guy to describe the situation. Let's call the guy Ted (not his actual name). Ted's son was a varsity wrestler at a high school ranked in the Top 10 in his state. His son was a ranked wrestler in his weight class and the school had recently participated in an invitation only competition. The top 3 schools in wrestling in the state had been invited. In his son's weight class, a young female competitor was wrestling for one of the other schools. She was also a varsity letterman and was one of the top 3 wrestlers in the state in their weight class. His son had forfeited his match to her because he had refused to wrestle her. The coach from the team, the family of the young woman, her teammates, became irate with his son, their coach, their team and him and his wife that his son refused to wrestle her. She was top ranked. He was apparently the first to refuse. Her teammates had accused his son of being afraid to lose to a girl. He and his wife were proud of him. The other friend, let's call him Tom (he reads this blog so he'll know who he actually is), Tom asked me what I thought. I said that Ted might not want my opinion. Ted said that he did because from his point of view I was the only one that might be able to explain to him why this young woman, her team, her coach and her parents were so upset. So I asked why did his son refuse? Ted explained that he refused because of the positions that they get into while wrestling, where he had to put his hands, and that he felt it wasn't right. His son had felt that because she was a girl he might have to put his hands in places that he didn't want to. So I asked him to clarify what I already knew: The competitor with the lower center of gravity has the natural upper hand (women by nature have a lower center of gravity than men), the weight classes are pretty tight so the girl and his son were relatively close in size, and the smaller competitor often has a natural upper hand also. She was ranked higher than his son in the state rankings in their weight class? Yes. She was wrestling for the top coach in the state? Yes. She was wrestling for a higher ranked team than his own son's team? Yes. She was a varsity letterman? Yes. I sighed. And the only reason, I asked, was because his son was uncomfortable with where he might put his hands? Yes.
Well, I said, she had put herself there to compete. She was a varsity letterman for one of the top teams in the state and was higher ranked than his son. Her coach was the best in the state so he wasn't going to just hand out a varsity letter to just anyone--male or female. Just because his son was uncomfortable didn't mean that she shouldn't compete. By his actions, the actions that Ted was so proud of, he had said that a girl didn't belong because he was uncomfortable, not because she was uncomfortable. She had put herself there, her parents had agreed, her coach had agreed, she had earned the respect of her team, she was obviously a fierce competitor and because his son had deemed that she shouldn't be there he had refused to compete with her. He had decided that his discomfort over-weighed the respect she had already earned. I couldn't tell him what I would tell his son, but if it were my son, I would have told him that you don't turn down the best because it happens to be in a female package. It was male chauvinism at its worst. A woman should not be told no because it's going to make a man uncomfortable; she should be able to choose whether she wants to be there like any boy/man could. He chose to compete and she chose to compete. He had insulted her coach's ability to choose a letterman, he had insulted her team that depended on her record as much as they do everyone on their team, and worst yet, he had insulted her because of where he, he I emphasized, was worried about where he (again emphasized) might put his hands. This is the biggest problem in our society. This is the problem with our military, and with our society as a whole still.
What is? People, men and women, defining women for all women. No one tells a man no because he's a man. We tell girls they can't play football, they can't wrestle, they can't serve in the military, they cannot serve in combat. We tell our boys that girls are less, more fragile, and we instill in them that women are still less than they are. Then we wonder and scream at the boy who refuses to wrestle our top ranked varsity letterman daughter. We wonder why women still hate on each other so much, yet we teach our daughters to self loathe and thus to loathe each other. We flash sexually charged 18 year olds naked on a wrecking ball and wonder why our daughters are so devalued, why they only think of themselves in the simplest sexual object formats. We have taught them that is the majority of their self worth. It's not that they can compete. We tell them they can't all the time by our own words. It's not that their minds, their brains, their ability to converse, their ability to think quickly on their feet, their ability to contribute to a team. No, it's their manipulative skills and sexuality that is valued. Girls, heck women, hate on the other girl that they perceive as smarter, prettier, or more affable simply because we have continued to devalue girls. We allow our sons to devalue women, then wonder why women are sick of it. We haven't changed that women in a male setting often think the only thing that they have to offer is sexual content. I'll be blunt again. I'm an educated, smart, attractive woman. Not because I am all those things to everyone that I come across but because I was taught to believe in myself in spite of what society has told me over the years. My grandfather taught me that I was equal to a man. My Grams wanted that for women, and yet of my grandfather's 3 granddaughters, I was the only one he instilled that in. While I believe women can instill it partially, I truly believe that the only ones that can make sure that girls believe it to their cores are the fathers and grandfathers. It's all fine and dandy for a woman, the mother, the grandmother to tell girls they are equal, but only when a man tells his daughter or granddaughter and backs it up with his actions does that little girl, eventually woman, believe it no matter what other men tell her.
The United States military instills that belief in these young women. Tries to anyway. So they become indoctrinated into a world that tells them they are equal, but then brow beats them as our society does. Three months of boot camp cannot change years and years of societal woe, especially not when the leadership, a Commanding Officer, the Officers and Senior Enlisted themselves still harbor those beliefs, those tendencies and allow the behavior to continue. Women serving is not the problem. Men who serve and served that believe that women are inherently less are the problem. Just because we as a society continue to view women as lesser doesn't mean that women are. A man should probably be writing this. Men like that don't respect that view coming from a woman. They often don't want to hear it from other men either, but truth is that a lot of men even when they believe women are the greatest, can be equal, fail to instill that in their own sons and more importantly in their daughters. No man wants his daughter to be treated as less of a person simply because she's a girl or woman. Yet, we brow beat girls in society to think of themselves as sexual objects. And, in an ironic twist, sometimes even when we teach our daughters to ensure they are treated with respect we still encourage them to be housewives, dependent on someone else, and wonder why every women has at some point in her life questioned her own self worth. How do you think seeing pictures day in and day out of men's genitals, naked women, and being told if they want to be equal to a man that means that they need to tolerate sexually charged comments? Equal to a man doesn't mean that at all. Yet, appallingly, it still apparently is happening in the United States Navy. While the military doesn't directly translate to most civilian workforce environments, consider that it's a cross section, a 2% sample of the United States population, from all the corners that this country has to offer. The military is a small reflection of our country--the good and sadly in this case, the bad. Isn't it time that the men that want their daughters, granddaughters to be treated with respect and equally start telling those girls that they can, they are and never to accept less? The irony is that without that male reinforcement it's hard for a woman to turn on the male chauvinist and tell him that he's wrong. The cross sectional sample is screaming it.
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