My military experience – part 2 of 3

Below is part 2 in my series about my military experience.

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You’ve probably heard this before, but boot camp really is designed to “tear you down and build you back up.”  They take away all your privacy and nice clothes and make-up and adequate sleep time and make you do a lot of pointless yet difficult things, preferably when you’re so tired you can’t think or see straight.  They make the challenges, though, so you can pass if you try – they WANT you to pass – so it builds your confidence and makes you proud to be a soldier/sailor/airman.  Every single bit of it is a mind game – the mean drill instructors, the physical training, etc – and what they are looking for is not perfection, but sustained effort.  If you keep plugging away, keep trying to improve and learn everything, that is your job, and you should eventually get recognized for it.  That’s the ideal situation, anyway.  In boot camp, they can’t expose you to any real-life, dangerous, character-building situations, so they have to create artificial ones, which is why so much of it seems pointless.  The pointless stuff is actually good training for the military though, because a lot of what you’ll do in your real military job will be pointless, too.  (Heck, that’s even true for the civilian world.) 

A typical day at boot camp is long and exhausting.  You get up when it’s still dark and go to bed well past sunset. If I remember correctly, we usually only had 5-6 hours of sleep in our schedule.  In navy boot camp, we usually had to get up at 0300 or 0330.  Someone in the army told me once, that they hardly ever had to get up that early, but I didn’t believe them.  You get in uniform, march to chow (stand in line for 30-45 min, then get 15 minutes to eat) and shortly afterward march to physical training (PT) which is the usual round of calisthenics and running.  After PT, you march back to the barracks, shower (if you’re lucky – usually we weren’t allowed to shower after PT), and then march off to class, or to medical for one of your zillion shots or exams.  (You WILL get a gynecological exam at boot camp, even though you just had one at MEPS when you in-processed.) Usually in the evening you will be given an hour or three of free time for studying, squaring away your uniform, polishing boots, writing letters, preparing for some inspection, etc.  You are NOT allowed to go to bed before lights out.  People usually grab naps when they’re stuck waiting somewhere, if they have the privilege of sitting down while they are waiting.  A lot of people also seem to develop the talent of napping while standing up.  You will probably have some type of watch schedule, which means that you will miss a lot of sleep a few nights a month, because you’ll be watching the door making sure people don’t sneak out for cigarettes or a secret rendezvous with their one true love they met just yesterday in the chow hall (even though they shouldn’t have been talking).  Human beings are incredibly smelly and unattractive while going through boot camp – ESPECIALLY guys, because most guys don’t look good shaved bald – but a lot of people still manage to hook up anyway.  It’s pretty stupid, though – you’ll get in a lot of trouble if you get caught – it’s not worth it.  You’ll have plenty of opportunities for romance with handsome, patriotic, hormone-crazed young sailors or soldiers once you graduate boot camp, and you and they will have better access to hygiene products and attractive clothing then, too.

Regarding discrimination – you will probably very rarely, if ever, have any guy walk up to you and say, “You shouldn’t be here because you are a girl.”  Discrimination and/or harassment is no longer as open as that, because being THAT open about it can get a guy in trouble.  There are an infinite number of ways to get away with discrimination and harassment without breaking the rules, though, and I guarantee you will experience it at some point or another.  I’ve heard some boot camp sexual harassment stories that have genuinely scared me – and I’m talking about harassment from drill sergeants.  The anti-harassment rules are NOT set up to protect YOU, they are set up to protect the innocent until proven guilty – and since most sexual harassment situations boil down to “he said, she said,”  guess who the military is going to believe then?  If you make a complaint of sexual harassment against someone, and your complaint is dismissed, you are branded a serious troublemaker (that’s the polite language) and good luck trying to get any respect, professionally OR personally, after that.  I’m not saying, that you should never file a complaint if you are being discriminated against or harassed.  If you do file a complaint, htough, you will need an absolutely airtight case, WITH witnesses who are willing to go on record (most aren’t) and preferably with some kind of paper proof too, notes, e-mails, etc.  It is very, very difficult to fight harassment and discrimination in the military, especially if your harasser is higher-ranking than you.  The military rank structure is very rigid; it is based on the concept of unquestioned authority/unquestioning obedience (although of course it rarely works that way, thank God).  It is a structure that encourages cruel people to be even more cruel, generally without consequences. Most high-ranking people assume that most low-ranking people are out to get them.  Your chain of command will assume that too, and YOU will be guilty until proven innocent of such pettiness before your complaint could move forward. I’ll repeat here what they teach in our sexual harassment training – harassment is NOT about sex, it is about power.  You don’t have to be pretty or sexy to be harassed, you just have to look like an easy target.  Or, you could simply be the wrong subordinate in the wrong division under the wrong supervisor – every situation is different.

I place such emphasis on this very unpleasant aspect of the military because as a female, it will be a part of your life if you join.  You will not have the option of giving your two weeks notice, quitting, and walking away if you are stuck in a bad, irremediable situation.  If you are lucky, it will be little more than background noise most of the time, no worse than what you’d have to face in the civilian world anyway.  You’ll probably have a few friends you can unload on and who can help you cope with a lot of it.  Chances are, you will not experience worst-case-scenario harassment or discrimination (similar to what I experienced, that I touched on in my last letter).  I would guess, that most situations can be remedied to some extent or another, but you really have to be careful there.  Fixing almost all of these types of situations depends on the personalities and ranks of the people involved, not the rules.

Here is a specific, recent example that still makes my blood boil if I think about it too long.  Several weeks ago, I had the privilege of being in the classroom when one of my obnoxious classmates (I’ll call him B) said, during one of his endless complaining-about-everything tirades “All navy women are fat, ugly, and stupid.”  There were four other people in the class at the time, all male, including our instructor (the first link in our chain of command), and they all laughed.  I turned around and looked at B, obviously angry, and said, “I’m still here!”  His response was, “So, I don’t give a shit.”  Again, no one said anything.  Three of those other four guys were E-6s [note: I was an E-5 at the time] – one was my instructor, and one our class leader.  Now, if B had said, “All Navy Hispanics (or blacks, or Orientals, etc) are fat, ugly, and stupid,” he would have gotten into a lot of trouble real fast.

On the surface, this seems pretty straightforward – I make a complaint to my instructor’s supervisor, people would get slapped around a bit, and justice would be served.  Problem is, B is an incredibly obnoxious guy who never stops complaining, or fighting, once he gets started.  He’s already lost rank (from E-6 to E-5) for his inability to control himself, and if I had tried to complain about him, he just would have fought it tooth and nail, knowing he’s totally wrong, because he’s just stupid and hateful.  On the other hand, those other four people were really nice guys – and they would have gotten into trouble too.  These four guys respect me, and expect me to do like they do – just put up and shut up with B’s obnoxious behavior (even though his behavior, of course, is never directed at them – he treats them with respect).  Since the complaint would have been entirely female-related, then, the end result would have been (if any of them had been willing to corroborate my story), B and the other guys would have become martyrs for getting into trouble for something all the other guys in the navy consider to be a non-issue, and I would have gone from being a respected classmate, to Queen B!tch, for getting all those nice people in trouble.  (B, by the way, was at the time engaged to, and has since married, a Navy female.  It’s his second marriage – surprise!)  So, I haven’t officially complained.  This is the kind of stuff you will have to put up with – and the kind of decision you will have to face – as part of your ordinary military life as a female.  Hopefully it will not happen often.

“The military is a man’s job” is a load of crap.  No job in the military is so difficult that no woman could do it.  There are of course a few jobs that are so physically demanding that a lot of women couldn’t do them – but the vast majority of military jobs are gender-neutral in their requirements, because most of them require more brain than brawn.  There are a lot of women out there who are just as adventurous, patriotic, and/or energetic as men, and the military is a very good option for them.  Women have been good for the military – I believe their presence helps cut down on the macho crap, and puts more focus on the mission.  I don’t think any organization benefits from being all male or all female.

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Next and last installment in the series – productivity, commentary on the various services, travel, and advice about dealing with recruiters.

My E-5 ID (with important bits airbrushed out). The pink sticker was to identify me as stationed in Hawaii, so I could get military discounts and stuff that were intended only for Hawaii-based service members.

I look annoyed in the above picture because I had to give up my previous ID, which had a much better picture of me, because they messed up my SSN on it.  I was so happy with that previous picture, I didn’t check the really important information!