Staff Sgt. Bitch

Two pieces, companions to one another, that appeared in the New York Times yesterday had me getting choked up as I read them on the train on the way to work. Steven Lee Myers and Lizette Alvarez deserve accolades for doing fine reporting that manages to avoid the pitfalls of on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand truth-ignoring journalism that we see 95% of the rest of the time from the mainstream media. Because, you see, in the world there are more than opinions. There are more than partisan political platforms. On every single salient political and social issue of our day, there are actual facts. I always thought the job of reporters was to suss out those facts, and compare the facts to the words and opinions coming out of the mouths of the relevant players. But I've gotten used to not getting that, which I why I was truly shocked to see Alvarez and Myers use both their pieces to advance truth.

Here's Myers' piece. It looks like Alvarez and Myers were working together on a piece, with Myers contributed reporting from Baghdad, but they came up with so much good stuff that they wrote two pieces, which is awesome; the pieces are very similar in topic. I loved this part:

Staff Sgt. Patricia F. Bradford, 27, a psychological operations soldier, said that slights, subtle and not, were common, and some were easier to brush off than others. Women are still viewed derisively at times in the confined, occasionally tense space of an outpost like Warhorse.

"You’re a bitch, a slut or a dyke — or you’re married, but even if you’re married, you’re still probably one of the three," Sergeant Bradford said.

At the same time, she and other female soldiers cope with the slights, showing a disarming brashness.

"I think being a staff sergeant — and a bitch — helps deflect those things," she added.

First, it's awesome that that quote got printed. And it's a stunning quote: a succinct, evocative demonstration of what it's like to be a woman not just in the military, but in any male-dominated environment and, to a slightly lesser extent, the world.

But Myers doesn't just take Bradford's word for it about what it's like to be a woman in the military.

Sexual harassment in a still-predominantly male institution remains a problem. So does sexual assault. Both are underreported, soldiers and officers here say, because the rigidity of the military chain of command can make accusations uncomfortable and even risky for victims living in close quarters with the men they accuse.

This is not presented as someone's opinion. Myers is reporting this as fact. It's not a particularly controversial fact, but it's a fact, and it's a fact a lot of people would rather deny, explain away, or blame anyone else besides the institution itself. I really like how Myers presents this as a challenge, but doesn't do it in a way that implicates victims, that names victims, or presents it as some kind of cautionary tale. No, the piece is much more focused on how bad-ass the women he talks to are, how competent, comfortable, and professional they are in the military environment. Myers' piece also does powerful work to dismantle the notion that women, and by extension and analogy gays and lesbians, are "disruptive" to the military effort:

At the outset of the war, the introduction of women into outposts like Warhorse raised fears not just of abuse or harassment, but also of sex and pregnancy. The worst of those fears, officers say, have not materialized.

In fact, sex in America’s war zones is fairly common, soldiers say, and has not generally proved disruptive.

You really have to read the whole thing. It's brilliantly written, the quotes from the women he interviews are gold, and it's peppered with bold statements of fact about how preconceived ideas about women in the military were just wrong. I heart this piece so much.

Here's Alvarez' piece, which focuses a little more on the attending policy issues surrounding women in the military. She breaks open the notion that women don't serve in combat, and discovers that women are actually serving in "ground combat" despite the prohibitions against it, simply because 1) they are needed there; 2) there is no "front line" in Iraq. Since everything is the front line, restricting women from serving in ground combat--i.e. any environment where they have to shoot at people, would mean that qualified women would be staying home while posts were vacant.

"Iraq has advanced the cause of full integration for women in the Army by leaps and bounds," said Peter R. Mansoor, a retired Army colonel who served as executive officer to Gen. David H. Petraeus while he was the top American commander in Iraq. "They have earned the confidence and respect of male colleagues."

Their success, widely known in the military, remains largely hidden from public view. In part, this is because their most challenging work is often the result of a quiet circumvention of military policy.

I find it very telling and curious that the men who command the military have no problem with, in fact, herald the full integration of the military, but the men who make military policy in Washington and the vocal constituents who elect them into office seem to have a problem with it. And not only are women just as good as men at performing all sorts of military and combat tasks, they are specifically needed in these wars because of their gender:

Nonetheless, as soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, women have done nearly as much in battle as their male counterparts: patrolled streets with machine guns, served as gunners on vehicles, disposed of explosives, and driven trucks down bomb-ridden roads. They have proved indispensable in their ability to interact with and search Iraqi and Afghan women for weapons, a job men cannot do for cultural reasons. The Marine Corps has created revolving units — “lionesses” — dedicated to just this task.

A small number of women have even conducted raids, engaging the enemy directly in total disregard of existing policies.

Again, you have to read the whole thing. I'm strongly resisting just excerpting massive portions of both articles, because they're both that good. It's incredibly heartening to read, in this year that has felt toxic with sexism, that the most macho, lionized men of the country, the ones who are held up as the ideals of masculinity, are willing to go on record in the nation's premiere newspaper and trumpet the notion of women's equality as truth.