What Our Women’s Movement Could Learn from the U.S. Military
January 16, 2009
by Contributor
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Yes I said it, let me explain.
Growing up, I never had to share a room, share my toys, or sacrifice very much of anything for anyone else. Although I had many family members and friends in the military, no one can prepare you for the first morning of Basic Training when Reveille sounds at 4:30 am. I had no time to introduce myself to any of the women in the barracks the night before because the TI’s (Air Force version of a Drill Instructor) were busy ransacking our belongings, mocking our underwear, and screaming at us. Our newly formed Flight of fifty-two strangers in two-tiered bunks filling one large barracks woke up the next morning confused, frightened, and collectively thinking “oh crap, what am I doing here?”
Lesson One: Getting Downstairs and Into Formation
We had about two minutes to get our uniforms and boots on, try to shove our hair into a hat, use the toilet, and get downstairs into formation; all while being screamed at. This was an impossible task without helping each other. On about the third day we finally figured out that if we slept in everything except our boots, braided each other’s hair the night before, helped the sleepy heads fill their canteens, and didn’t use the latrine until after morning Physical Training, we could just about make it on time. Here was the key to this first lesson. If one woman was late, even just one, the entire Flight was considered late. By the way, late in the military means extra marching or jogging, with the distance depending on just how annoyed the TI is. The worst time to be late was on the way to “chow.” If your Flight was late to any meal, even if it was only one person’s fault, nobody ate.
Lesson Two: Completing PT Qualification as a Flight
One of the most difficult parts of Basic Training was PT (Physical Training.) Every part of Physical Training was done as a Flight. Each sit-up, push-up, and squat had to be executed with perfect synchronicity. Even the running was done as a Flight. The lesson on day one was that winning wasn’t the point. Every trainee who crossed the line ahead of the Flight got to run an extra mile. As a slow learner and a person who hates to “lose,” I ran several extra miles during the first week. In the following weeks we learned how to hold back the “leaders” while urging the stragglers onward. During the official final run we were told it would be timed individually, we could break from the Flight, and each person would either pass and graduate, or fail and be sent back to join a Flight still in training. Exhaustion, starvation, and injuries meant there were always some trainees who had difficulty keeping up. As a Flight we took turns carrying four women, who couldn’t keep up or were injured, across the finish line. We were proud to be one of the few women’s Flights with a 100% graduation rate, and one of the few Flights that year who could say “We never left a woman behind.”
Lesson Three: The Obstacle Course
The most difficult part of the Obstacle Course was figuring out how to adapt women’s bodies to obstacles designed for men. For example, crossing over a muddy pond on monkey-bars, that had rungs spread too far apart for most of the women to reach. The rules for crossing were simple: make it across without falling in the water, touch each rung, and no crawling across the tops of the bars. It always took about thirty seconds for the smartest and strongest women to come up with a plan. You see, they never said you couldn’t STAND in the water when it wasn’t your turn to cross, and they never said you couldn’t come back over AFTER you crossed. It took forty of us lined up in the water, bent forward at the waist with our hands on the backs of the woman in front of us, to make a nice flat platform the others could simply walk across touching the rungs for balance. When the first trainee got across, she took the place of the last woman in the line, who then took her turn to walk across our human bridge. We continued this pattern until every woman had “crossed” the monkey-bars, and we collapsed on the other side exhausted, muddy, wet, giggling, and damn satisfied.
Lesson Four: All of Us Have a Talent
Every woman had something to offer toward the success of the Flight. Some women were in great physical condition and could help others who were not. Many were smart, already educated, and could memorize the training manual to help everyone pass the tests. A handful were “the smugglers,” who helped us sneak extra food and candy back to the barracks. I can’t overstate the importance of those who were willing to share their letters from home with those who got none. Before Basic Training, I had never met a woman who truly had no family and was alone in the world. The mothers of other trainees, who adopted our “orphans” and wrote letters to strangers as if they were daughters, earned a special place in our hearts. Last but not least, I will be forever grateful to the small group of women with indomitable spirits, who cheered on the stragglers and kept our spirits up.
Lesson Five: The Rest of My Life
In spite of the U.S. Military’s flaws, there is one thing it has always done, and done well. It can build a “family” out of a group of complete strangers from widely varying backgrounds, ethnicities, and regions of the country. The lessons I learned in basic training, about what women can accomplish when they work together, have served me well and will be remembered for the rest of my life. Fifteen years after the experience, there are fifty-one women, spread out all over the world, that I would run to help at a moments notice, with simply the call, “I need you, please come.” Not having lived this experience, some of you may think I am being melodramatic, but any of those fifty-one women could ask anything of me, and I would have no further questions except, “Where and when do you want me?” So, if you are one of the women who have outrun our “Flight,” don’t forget to reach a hand back when you have the opportunity, and pull up a straggler or two. Someday YOU may need a woman to answer your call, “I need you, please come.”
Applying These Lessons to the Fourth Wave
If our Women’s Movement can apply these lessons to the goals we hope to accomplish, we cannot fail.
Lesson One: We must get women together and get organized, be disciplined, and make room for all who want to fight with us.
Lesson Two: We must be able to work together on all fronts and never be fractured by winners vs. losers, or issues like choice, and we must carry the torch for our fellow women when they tire or lose hope.
Lesson Three: We are smart, we are strong, and there is nothing we cannot accomplish together.
Lesson Four: Every single one of us has something to offer this Movement. Whether you can write, have computer skills, can go to demonstrations and protest sexism, can organize a local chapter, would do research and compile statistics, or help women who are victims of domestic violence go clothes shopping and prepare for job interviews. We ALL have a talent to offer.
Lesson Five: Solidarity among women is crucial to our future. We were all heartbroken last year watching women sit silently as other women were raked over the coals of misogyny. We must be willing to stand up together at any time for any woman who needs our voices to drown out sexism. None of us can do this alone, but together we are unstoppable!
Very inspiring Thia.
Amen Thia.
Women of this country need to learn to work together. This is an important aspect of our work together here.
Wonderful, Thia, thanks!
I got all misty reading this, Thia.
Imagine if we introduced variations of these team-building exercises to schools in order to promote gender integration.
(Before anyone says “girls soccer” – the “team building” we have now – team sports – is very much about winners and losers, rewarding the strong and punishing the weak, and “us” vs. “them.” Sure, there is great solidarity among teammates and its healthy and terrific fun, but that doesn’t build solidarity with those who aren’t on the team – yet are still part of the community. Worse yet, team sports separates girls and boys into two separate universes that barely acknowledge the existence of the other.)
Your essay is proof positive that there are smart ways to build community and convey the importance of interdependence. I think the entire country would benefit from your example.
Nina,
I played team sports growing up and now coach team sports.
IMO, playing team sports is the most important thing that we can have our daughters do as they grow up. As part of a team concept, girls learn to count on each other. The interaction of my 6th grade girls is much different that the hurtful behaviors that Rachel Simmons described in her book “Odd Girl Out”. Team sports instill life lessons that girls carry on to the grown up world of working together that are not naturally taught otherwise. I attribute my success on Wall Street to knowing the rules of engagement that boys get naturally through their interractions, but that girls get only through team sports.
As far as winning and losing, another important life lesson is to do BOTH with dignity and grace. As much as we want to protect our daughters, life comes with its ups and downs, and team sports prepares them for both.
Equity on all fronts and clearly the military is on par with other elements of our society/culture. The US military recently pinned the 4th star on a woman and that’s as high as one can go. In the political arena, no woman has risen above Cabinet level, Senator and Governor – no VP or Presidency. What would the response be and what action would be taken if a couple of junior, male Officers had a card board cut-out of some woman General and were groping her and took pictures of it and put it on the net? That’s a critical question here and contrast it with what happened to the punk who groped the cut-out of our Secretary of State. There would heavy retribution in the case of the former so in some respects, the military is further along in matters of gender equity. Women are carrying rifles in Iraq and Afghanistan and more than one woman has been the machine gunner on an armored vehicle. Imagine that! There are some people who actually want to kill Americans and there are some women who will take direct action to prevent that. So much for nuturing in the kitchen, eh? I think the best lesson NA and affiliate organizations can glean from the military is one of appropriate aggression, not assertion, aggression. Women for some reason persist in punching above the belt when they are being kicked below the belt. Surely to god this is not a genetic predisposition.
F***, Thia, this made me cry. I’m forwarding this to five women I know – and I’m available for the New Agenda’s work any day
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Wonderful piece, Thia. You really hit the nail on the head.
Women definitely need to learn how to stick together, one for all and all for one, teamwork. In this culture we often grow up being taught the exact opposite. There is no good old girls network like men have. Instead, many of us learn that loyalty to other women is a bad thing. I remember just recently people insulting women by calling them vaginal voters. That kind of conditioning begins very early and can make it difficult for women to learn how to be a team.
I see it in basketball with the little girls. We have a a heck of a time trying to convince them that they are a team. When one player shines, it’s not a personal attack on you, it’s not that she thinks too highly of herself, when she shines you all shine. Pass the darn ball and work together, LOL!
I was one of the first women to attend an all male college. If we hadn’t stuck together and helped each other along, I don’t think we could have made it through that first year. There were important lessons for us there that made all of us stronger and better women. Kind of like a year long Upward Bound experience.
Dear Amy,
I do sound like I’m downplaying the benefits of girls sports, which is wrong. I think its very important and very beneficial.
However, I don’t think it builds the kind of interdependence Thia is talking about, and which I am lauding. On a competitive sports team – and correct me if I’m wrong – if you are a weak player, you are either benched or dropped from the team entirely. Yes, girls are encouraged to do their best, to win, and to work as a team towards winning – but there are definitely winners and losers, both within the team and in the league.
There’s nothing wrong with that per se, particularly since that is the way many adult life situations are structured. On the other hand, I believe the “winner” / “loser” mentality is behind some of the cruelty some people show to impoverished and/or vulnerable people in this country. Winners win; losers lose: anything else is just muddle-headed mollycoddling.
In Thia’s story, every woman is important, even women who would be considered “losers” in the world of competitive sports (or academia):
“Every woman had something to offer toward the success of the Flight. Some women were in great physical condition and could help others who were not. Many were smart, already educated, and could memorize the training manual to help everyone pass the tests. A handful were “the smugglers,” who helped us sneak extra food and candy back to the barracks.”
In some ways, sports is the great leveler – girls of all races, gender identities, and walks of life compete on an equal playing field with the same set of rules. In other ways, it substitutes one set of hierarchies for another – girls who can help the team achieve its goal — winning — are more valuable than others. In Thia’s example, the community has found a role for everyone, even those who are traditionally considered “weak” players, because the goal is not so much winning as it is making sure everyone in the community reaches a certain level of achievement. If one member of the community can’t reach that level, the community fails; In team sports, the failed member of the community is excluded.
Well, if nothing else, I think we can tell which of us played sports in high school and which of us wangled an exemption from gym for three years in a row.
Wonderful and compelling. I loved reading this. Great way to mine personal experience for useful techniques.
Regarding the sports discussion, I never “got” Title IX, until this last election. I saw the effect of it on Sarah Palin. Two striking things about her: she’s competitive and she “pulls up stragglers,” as Thia suggested we do. She was never ashamed of ambition or defending feminism and other women. My theory is that this may be directly related to her experience as an athlete. The fostering of competition cannot be overstated, which is something else I didn’t understand Pre-Palin.
Thia,
This piece is outstanding. You’ve taken a personal experience and expanded its meaning. Your writing is exceptional. You have a real gift. Thank you for this piece. It offers a very interesting and unique perspective. I will copy and save it and forward it to many I know.
Do I understand this post to be holding up the ,military women ethic as admirable and something for which we should strive? I’ve known many women like this, being one of the generation that lived through war years, and the ’50s, and they always struck me as very self-congratulatory that what they achieved was personal, and held themselves above other women, in fact were contemptuous of all things womanly, generally admired only men and the male way. They were the women who scorned single mothers, women who didn’t meet their high, exclusionist, classist and racist standards.
I do admit they had some admirable qualities, but not enough for me to want to emulate them.
Nina: The problem with co-ed sports at a young age is the very real difference in maturity between boys and girls. My daughters school had co-ed soccer. After watching one game where the over energetic but airheaded boys could not understand the concept of playing your position and not attacking your team mate who was clearly marked with your uniform just so you personally could have the ball, my husband pulled my daughter out and put her on an all girls team who were at least 3 years ahead of the co-ed team in skill. In fact my husband would use the 5th grade girls to scrimmage the 7th grade boys and the girls usually won. Boys develop slowly emotionally and intellectually and they grow later. My daughter was full grown at 14, My son was still growing at 21. Co-ed sports can be social but are really not very rewarding sports wise for either sex.
Thia, This is damn inspiring. Now to get personal: I
have a good friend who is an Airforce (ex) wife. They are there for all there ex-military friends, just as you say, reunions every year or more for the ex-Vietnam pilots.
However, she is a huge example. If you have to go to the hospital, chemo, any medical issue, she is THERE, asking if she can take you, sit with you, be there. What can she do. I thanked her profusely one time, as I had a scary medical issue. She said, “no way, that’s what we women do.”
No, we don’t, and we should.
I’ve had coed kid’s teams and I agree. It’s not that the boys are “airheaded”, LOL, it’s that they disrespect the girls. What looks like acting like a dork is actually the inability to view girls as equals. So the boys will refuse to stay in their positions, they’ll take the ball away from their own team mates, they goof off, they show off, and you wonder what the heck is wrong with them.
I had some success talking to the boys about it once, but it was an uphill battle because they had parents telling them not to let the girls take the ball away or don’t let the girls make you look bad out there, etc, etc.
This is the kind of constant social conditioning that we are all subjected to and that is why it can be so difficult for women to really build the kind of team work that Thia wrote about.
All teary now… Thanks, Thia. This was an excellent article, optimistic and inspiring!
Thia, this piece is such a blessing and inspiration. The lesson that particularly resonates for me is lesson four. We all have unique gifts. Not all of us will contribute the same thing in the same way, and that’s a strength. If we all encourage each other to develop and use what is special to each of us, what a grand toolbox we’ll have.
Great article Thia!!! Where do I sign up?
My husband was in the military – so I understand fully the concept of not leaving anyone behind and if one falls – we all fall or go without. The 6th lesson needs to be written and it should say that we need a well defined goal(s) and work to achieve that. We have discussed several so far:
1. Identify sexism
2. Increase representation in public office
What else (I don’t always get to read these blogs so I know I missed quite a lot)
Preach it Sister!!!
I am currently typing a comment on The Confluence, and I thought of something to say here. The military really does not care if you are pro-choice or pro-life. Taking a stance on the issue is more significant in the world of politics. Maybe that explains why the military is ahead of politicians when it comes to equality.
As long as women remain in “a house divided against itself” we will always fail. This is piece is a great reminder of that.
Thanks to all who liked the article!
By the time I was done writing it and remembering I wanted to re-enlist.
SantaFeK- Great point about military spouses. They bond and develop a similar team and cooperative spirit when they are stationed together. When I was stationed in Panama they had a whole greeting network set up to help new arrivals adjust. They cleaned your housing before you arrived, brought food every night for a week until your belongings were delivered, handed out maps of the safest places to shop off-base, the husbands of the enlisted women helped unload goods and move furniture, and on and on. They were their own little military unit!
any kind of sports is good for team building. I played baseball almost every day with the neighborhood boys as a child. the only girl interested, but also skilled enough to be invited to play. didn’t care much for school sports. too political. it was a good lesson in working in a male dominated professions both in the military & as a civilian. I found it was a bit more work to get women to function as a team in the Navy, but once a few us led by example more women followed. We had every female in our division qualified to stand electrical watches on the ship (which the males failed to do).
we also functioned as an all female watch section at every section rotation. we found a way to perform all the heavy physical work quickly & w/o injury. very good electrical safety record too.
“What would the response be and what action would be taken if a couple of junior, male Officers had a card board cut-out of some woman General and were groping her and took pictures of it and put it on the net?”
Um, pardon me…don’t mean to dispel the mood here, but it wasn’t that long ago that the military was covering for their men who had real live women run real live groping gauntlets.
The military has a rape mentality ingrained in it, and I believe that is why Thia said “hear me out” when she posed this unusual parallel from which we can learn.
Nothing would’ve happened to young men groping cardboard in the military. Women are lucky if they, instead of the fellow military rapists they report, aren’t dismissed.
Hey, samantha’smom…long time no see!
I’ve got a little different take here: It’s what the Military could learn from us as a Woman’s movement.
Might I remind you of rape in the military, of torture training, where mock rape takes place. Where techiniques of sexual humilation are used, and mental anguish. We only need to look at Gitmo.
I can only speak from my experience in the military. The sexual harassment and abuse prevention and treatment programs in the military were far better than at any company I have worked for in the civilian world. I never experienced any kind of abuse and was treated as a fellow soldier, nothing more and nothing less. When I was serving, a complaint of sexual abuse automatically resulted in confinement to the barracks and disciplinary leave until the complaint was investigated. Who in the civilian world does that? I said “let me explain” because I am painfully aware of how the media has distorted some people’s opinions of the military. I would hope that if we have learned nothing else in the last year, we at least learned that the media can’t be trusted to report the truth when they have an agenda.
Great information, Thia. I was blown away by the creativity of your Flight and touched by the heart demonstrated by all. Nothing that men have said and done this past year has hurt as much as the betrayal of women by fellow women.
We need to change the attitude amongst women.
Thia,
We are sisters-in-arms, my friend. I wasn’t in your Flight, but I was a proud Air Force enlistee in 1976 — the year that women could finally attend the Academy. I’m so glad you wrote about these lessons and that they seem to be as true today as they were in 1976. I’ll never forget those women with whom I shared good times and bad and that our most-despised TI was one of the most beloved women in our lives when we graduated. It takes a special woman, indeed, to show you just how much strength is really in you.
I’ve sent your piece to some of my friends with the additional message that I plan to work this year to address the stunning sexism and misogyny directed at ALL women. My distress over it was nearly inconsolable. I worked so hard and was in the trenches in the 70s to ensure equal rights for my sisters — at a time when few remember it was okay to openly discriminate against women on issues of pay (“You have a husband who supports you, right?”), promotion (“Ed here has a family to support and he needs the money.”), salary increases (“Yeah, you saved our butts on that contract this year but Bob has been in the department longer than you.”), sexual harassment (“She shouldn’t have dressed like that in the first place; she was “asking” for it.”), fair housing (“Why should a single woman want to take on the burden of home ownership”), women’s sports–this is seriously true (“Women shouldn’t run a marathon, their uterus will fall out.”). Trust me on this — this barely scratches the surface of life in the 70s. I cringe at the thought of what will happen to blacks now that they are finally “equal.”
I think it was a quote from Harriet Tubman who, when asked about her role in the underground railway and fighting for the freedom of slaves said: “We could have saved more people if we could have convinced them that they were slaves.”
Her quote sums up what I fell right now about our young(er) sisters. It’s been damn hard, if not impossible, to convince them of their situation. How do we go about doing that?
Woodhull,
Thanks for paving the way for me! Isn’t it funny how you love your TI by the time it is all over? I’ll always be grateful to mine for showing me how much faster, smarter, and tougher I could be than I ever thought possible. As to your last question…
“It’s been damn hard, if not impossible, to convince them of their situation. How do we go about doing that?”
We can only educate the ones who are willing to listen, encourage them to spread the word, and continue to pave the way for future generations as yours did for mine!
Check out the grassroots section of our website and see if you are interested in joining or leading as a Team Captain!
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