Winter Soldier (19 page)

I attended basic training in 2000 and went through Advanced Individual Training (AIT) from November 29, 2000, until March 1, 2001. During AIT, after the Supreme Court ended the Florida recount in Bush v. Gore, a male E7 teacher, during his introduction of the class for that day, stated that he was glad that Bush was going to be president because now we won’t have all these fags in the army.

I did not report the incident because I felt it would single me out and cause repercussions. I felt as though I would easily fit the stereotype of a lesbian physically and I was in a specialty that was heavily male. I heard the word “fag” used on a daily basis by other soldiers while in uniform. In basic training I helped a straight soldier report to our drill sergeant another female recruit constantly calling her a “dyke” due mostly to what I suspect was her short hair. The woman had a boyfriend at home so I felt helping her to report the name-calling was safe for her and necessary because the label “dyke” can cause someone to be kicked out of the military. I believe the drill sergeant told the offending woman to “cut it out.” The incident later in AIT did not hold the same level of safety, as I was vulnerable both as a lesbian myself and as a lower rank of the E7.

For myself harassment meant verbal harassment. When I removed my battle dress uniform top in hot environments I would often hear a comment about my body such as “where you been hiding them puppies” in reference to my breasts. Since I generally liked the soldier who said it I said nothing to him, not wanting to ruin our working relationship.

Male soldiers also tried to do my job for me. I was the smallest soldier and would have male soldiers politely take a wrench from me and do the job I was preparing to do. While they did so as a gesture of being nice, it gave the impression that women are weak and unable to do their jobs. Many times I had to argue politely to let me do my job and if they wanted to help me out I would be sure to ask for it in the case something proved beyond my capacity. On the flip side of that, being smaller allowed me to access to certain areas larger males could not. I felt capable as a mechanic even if my physical strength did not always match the larger males, something I made up for in devising ways to use my brain instead of strength alone.

There was at one time a clock in the shop with a photo of a topless woman. Instead of reporting it as a workplace violation I just took care of the problem myself by applying a healthy coating of Never-Seez grease as a bikini top.

We were expected to clean up in the bathrooms of the shop. In the women’s room there was not proper soap for cleaning automotive dirt from one’s hands. I had to knock on the men’s room and use their soap and washbasin. It took nearly three years to get usable soap. At the time I was the only female mechanic but there was a few other women who also used that bathroom, such as supply and armorers. The women’s room itself was not a safe haven for women, though, as men often used that bathroom when they wanted to take a shit, as it were. When a male was in my bathroom I had to go all the way to the front of our armory or just wait outside and give the male dirty looks on his way out.

In my unit all briefings relating to sexism were treated as a joke and never attended by all members of the unit as most people found ways to avoid briefings in general or have a friend sign them in even if they were not present. Briefings on sexual orientation—“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”—were treated as through the briefer was embarrassed to give them. In both cases the briefing was not given in a serious manner.

Being a member of the National Guard and lesbian on 9/11 is what initially led me to begin to question my involvement in the military and the military’s involvement in the world. If on 9/11 I did not have the freedom to hug my girlfriend goodbye before we left as a unit for New York City then what freedom was I protecting? What freedom could we offer to the world if we treat it so restrictively based on who a person falls in love with?

I had one friend in the Guard in another company of my unit (Geoff Millard) who knew of my sexuality so we always hung out. This caused the rumor that I was a dominatrix and that Geoff and I were sleeping together. I let that exist due to the safety net of heterosexuality it offered. In the military men and women are nearly never allowed to be just friends, they are almost always assumed to be “fucking.” In reality in my experience most people breaking military regulations in regards to sexual regulations are straight. I saw multiple instances of adultery between fellow soldiers who had husbands and wives at home.

Before I joined the military I was out in high school and was often known as the gay girl in a very positive way, despite being in the South. After I left the military in 2005 I continued to censor myself in regards to me being a lesbian and only recently have begun to speak out publicly about it. While I never hid my sexuality after leaving the military, I rarely went out of my way in new situations to mention it. It has been very liberating to begin to break that lasting effect of my military career. I also have felt poorly about my response to being in a position to help learn with and educate men and women about the power and effects of sexism. It wasn’t until after I left the military I fully learned about this myself and have vowed to not make the same mistakes in IVAW or life in general.

I have many thoughts and feelings on my service, some positive, some negative, and some indifferent. Yet, as a female in the military, I have encountered my fair share of inappropriate, unprofessional, and discriminatory acts.

I’m a friendly and confident person; I like to make friends and talk with others. Shortly after I joined I started to make friends, but my friendliness was misinterpreted as promiscuity. There were false rumors of me sleeping with a married man. I learned my lesson, and I kept to myself. But then I was labeled as rude, mean, snooty, or a witch or the “B-word.” I joined the military to defend my country and not my integrity and self-worth.

There needs to be more respect and professionalism in the training field. I was disrespected by an ROTC soldier during a summer assignment when he inappropriately patted me down during a training exercise. I was playing a role of the enemy, and he grabbed my chest with both hands and patted me down inappropriately, and he walked away laughing like it was a joke. He just laughed with his buddies, like, “Oh, look at her, she really enjoyed that.” Like it was no problem. This happens more than you think and it needs to be addressed.

I was assigned to an engineering unit as a heavy equipment operator. When it came to assigning equipment, my sergeant stated that he was going to advocate for me to be assigned as an excavator because I showed skill and confidence. My sergeant was a civilian excavator operator as well, so coming from him this was quite a compliment. Still, I did not get my promised equipment. My sergeant was told he was only advocating for me because he had a crush on me. This led me to think one of two things: Did he really have a crush on me and I wasn’t a good operator? Or do the higher-ranking NCOs not believe that a woman could be as good as this experienced operator reports?

Just shy of three years in the service, I was selected to go to Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC), sergeant leadership training. I had worked very hard to get this opportunity. I even left college mid-semester for two weeks to attend. I was under the assumption that I’d be promoted as soon as the sergeant slot opened up. Shortly after completing the course, I volunteered to go to Iraq early and deployed with a unit that was not my own.

While sitting in the desert, I filled out the paperwork to be promoted and I sent it in, only to find out that I couldn’t be promoted while deployed with another unit. However, it was okay for them to promote a male sergeant who had barely been in our unit for six months and had volunteered to go to Iraq as I did.

Once I came back, I resubmitted the paperwork for the promotion once again. I was finally promoted in October 2005, three years after completing PLDC. Once I was in a leadership position, it was difficult to gain the respect I deserved. On my last mission, I was the only female. The mission became difficult after I reminded a lower-ranked male soldier what appropriate conduct was when speaking to a sergeant; he did not respond well, and the rest of the mission was difficult.

When I was deployed in Iraq with another unit, I was one of four women in the company. We all felt our section leader had some sort of resentment toward us. There were many opportunities to assist other units, platoons with missions going outside the wire. I mentioned I wanted to join a few of these missions, yet I was immediately turned down due to my lack of time in Iraq. Yet there were men there just as long as I was or less, and they were allowed to go on these missions, so I really don’t understand how that worked. He did, however, make a nice attempt to even the playing field when he volunteered me to do patrolling with other platoons on Sunday, and Sunday was our only day off.

Overall, I’ve learned how to overcome and succeed in the military despite the unnecessary obstacles. I feel women in the military should be judged on an individual basis on performance alone. The stereotyping and the blatant disregard of the many issues we must deal with must end, no matter how large or small the issue. We work among men doing just as men do. We deserve the same respect.

I enlisted in the Illinois National Guard when I was seventeen. It’s hard to be a veteran of the war and a woman because I feel a lot of the time my experience gets boiled down to what I experience as a woman, and I don’t get to talk about some of the things that I experienced as a soldier. But I’m gonna keep it to the issues of sexism, homophobia, and racism today, which I think are tools that we use to justify our degrading behavior toward the other, the enemy.

In this process of dehumanization, every veteran knows the first person to become dehumanized is the soldier themselves. They’re all used from day one to break people down. I mean, if my mother only knew that I would be hearing drill sergeants say to males right next to me in basic training, “Does your ‘P-word’ hurt? Do you need a tampon?” If my mother only knew.

I’m gonna talk more about how encompassing and pervasive the sexist climate was during my tour in Iraq. In my unit, rank structure was used to coerce women into sexual relationships. The incident that set the tone for the whole deployment took place while we were still stateside, waiting to go to the Middle East in Fort Riley, Kansas. We were told in class that according to the Rules of Engagement we should shoot anyone that we felt threatened by. We were told that we should be threatened by men and women because they could be hiding explosives under their long black robes and burkas. We should be threatened by pregnant women because it probably wasn’t a baby they had in their belly but explosives. We should be threatened by children because they were used as bait to lure us into situations. I felt that all the things they told us were used as tools to either emasculate the male enemies or condemn femininity as evil and dangerous.

While we were having this class outside, one of our platoon sergeants was watching us from his room window, and he took pictures of all the young females and later taped them to our door, really creepy pictures. When I tried to complain about this, I was told he didn’t hurt us, nothing was wrong. Over time, we heard this again and again, “He’s not hurting you. You can’t complain about this. He’s married.” There’s always this idea that you’re gonna ruin someone’s career if you talk about stuff.