I was relieved to find out VA’s rejection had nothing to do with the merits of my case. The issue, then, seemed to be VA’s incompetence. As my attorney prepared my appeal, I settled into my role as a start-up executive director.
Urban Justice Center gave me and one of SWAN’s cofounders, Alison—a Harley-riding Army veteran, lesbian, and no-nonsense lawyer-in-training—a free desk to use while I scrounged around for start-up funding. I hustled my ass off, trying to find foundations that would support our unique brand: edgy, feminist, no-holds-barred, and led by women of color and queer women. We filed paperwork for incorporation, set up a website, and drafted issue papers on key topics related to women veterans, including military sexual trauma. Phone calls from service women in crisis started coming in. I was wearing several hats: crisis counselor, sister, mentor, pissed-off ally.
In 2009, we had received our first sizable grant from a major social justice foundation and were invited to testify before Congress. That summer, seven of us, all veterans, headed to Washington with our legal adviser in tow. Jules, Eli, and a couple of others who had helped create SWAN flew all the way from California to join us. It was possibly the most diverse group of women the national security world had ever seen: Brown and Black, white, straight and queer, buzz cuts and ponytails, some in pantsuits and others in traditional indigenous garb. We walked through the halls of Congress, and folks stared, thunderstruck, unable to place us in any box.
I had been invited to speak at a roundtable devoted to the needs of women veterans. Some of the older women there represented the nation’s largest veterans service organizations (VSOs). They wore the old-school military hats Marines referred to as piss cutters that, from above, looked like the tip of a penis. Some of these women were auxiliary members, a disturbing title for a subordinate class of women veterans inside the world of VSOs. Their leaders—all men—had literally transplanted the military’s segregation of women into a civilian environment.
The chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs was warm and inviting, like a favorite uncle who always had your back. Democrat Bob Filner was no stranger to women’s issues. The news that he was a serial predator wouldn’t break for another three years after a slew of women, veterans included, came forward and accused him of sexual harassment, ending his career in politics. All I knew then was that Congressman Filner was the gracious gentleman from California.
No one said anything all that memorable until a recently discharged Army officer spoke. Dawn Halfaker was a West Point graduate who had lost an arm while serving in Iraq. She shared how some folks at VA assumed she’d lost her arm in a civilian accident rather than in combat. Several of us gasped. Dawn was highlighting what many women knew as an average day at the VA: employees there still assumed most of us were merely wives or caretakers of male veterans.
When it was my turn to give testimony, I shared our clients’ horror stories about navigating the VA: one woman veteran was subjected to a peeping tom during an inpatient psychiatric stay, and another who survived military rape had to endure a gynecological exam by a male doctor without the presence of a female staff member. I shared my own painful experiences using the Manhattan VA Medical Center. I talked about the vast shortage of doctors and counselors, and the broken VA claims system. I painted a dire picture of women veterans’ health care and benefits. When I was done talking, I felt hot and I was shaking.
Congressman Filner paused. Something had shifted in the room. He looked at me with what appeared to be genuine concern.
“Ms. Bhagwati, we have a lot of work to do, don’t we?”
“Yes, Sir, you do.”
My exchange with Filner was my first interaction with a sophisticated performer—and professional misogynist—in Washington. I had no idea just how much performances by powerful folks like him would shape my next few years of activism.
• • •
One afternoon in 2009, I remember flipping on cable news and watching the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), Terry O’Neill, debate a decorated Army general about pregnancy regulations for service women deployed overseas. The general had issued a radical new order criminalizing pregnancy during deployments in Iraq. Four outraged female senators fired off letters to Army leadership, leading to a prompt revocation of the order.
O’Neill was a person of enormous influence in the world of women’s rights, but she could not relate to the personnel issues here. Threatening to send pregnant women to jail was all kinds of wrong. Still, becoming pregnant in a war zone was no small matter. Beneath all of this kerfuffle was sexism in the military—far too many men believed that women got pregnant just to avoid difficult assignments, including deployments. Pitting the general against NOW meant that these underlying matters would never be discussed in a constructive way. Neither spoke the other’s language.
During these times, cable news sorely needed experts to present a feminist military perspective. SWAN carefully strategized talking points and put out press releases to the media. Within weeks, our phone was ringing off the hook.
• • •
Ten years before Tarana Burke’s #MeToo was picked up by dozens of Hollywood’s leading white women, we had our work cut out for us. Americans didn’t understand that harassment and assault were pervasive in the military. We had to change the narrative.
Public education was an uphill battle. There was so little coverage on service women to begin with. Women simply hadn’t been included in mainstream media discussions about the military. When we were included, the press tended to infantilize women, or typecast us as victims.
In 2011, I spent a long, frustrating morning with a leading national security reporter, giving him detailed background about how and why sexual assault was occurring in the military.
He took the DOD’s platitudes about having “zero tolerance” for sexual violence as fact, even though the DOD itself could not explain what it was doing, if anything, to stop sexual assault. When I pushed back, he responded by victim blaming—one soldier got raped because she put her weapon down, or another woman’s case wasn’t prosecuted because she was in a relationship with a superior, and so on. The man knew nothing about how power and gender functioned in the military. His tepid piece ended up being one of the first big national stories on military sexual assault in ages.
Stories on women in combat were no better. Reporters tended to portray deployed women as children or sidekicks. Why was it so difficult to simply treat service women as soldiers? Nothing irritated me quite as much as the New York Times’ headline “For Female Marines, Tea Comes with Bullets.” It featured doe-eyed Marines barely fitting into their uniforms, patrolling in Helmand Province. Much was made of their ability to have tea with their Afghan female counterparts. Less was made of their ability to pull triggers and kill bad guys.
At times, it seemed that we were rewriting the entire American perspective on military service. Hero narratives in the press were typical. Civilian reporters covering military issues—most of them men, but not all—often reminded me of unpopular teens trying to get attention from the jocks. I sometimes sensed their hero worship was an unconscious way for them to get over their guilt or regret for not having worn the uniform themselves. It was rare to find reporters who created narratives that challenged the archetype of soldier as hero, or allowed soldiers to be as complicated as they were in real life. Service members were, after all, ultimately human, and therefore fallible. For journalists not to treat them as such was not helpful to anyone.
In the worst moments in the office, SWAN felt like Central Casting for the press. I spent ages wrestling with reporters, encouraging them to broaden their warped casting criteria for various stories, appealing to their better angels. They wanted drama that was so artificial they should have made most of their calls to Hollywood.
War porn and victim porn were everything. Combat veterans had to be straight off the battlefield, so their turmoil would be graphic enough for the camera. And survivors of sexual violence had to
have been assaulted brutally (as if there were any other way). Television news producers dug into the details of a woman’s assault like surgeons without anesthesia, often rejecting the veteran’s interview for the final piece in the end, leaving her feeling betrayed for the umpteenth time.
Homelessness was a hot topic. Older veterans had no chance in hell of being cast. Younger veterans had to look like models. And race mattered. (Didn’t race always matter?) The press wanted white princesses, like Jessica Lynch. And the Jessica Lynches of the world—young, white, and blond—were either sexually objectified or treated as the downtrodden darlings of America instead of as human beings with unique and multilayered experiences.
I quickly became a mama bear around our veterans. If a woman wanted to speak to the press, we would support her. But we wouldn’t pass her on to a reporter without ample preparation for what to expect. Often that wasn’t enough.
The nonprofit organizing landscape was similarly fraught with gender land mines. Early on in SWAN’s life, we organized a roundtable of homeless women veterans in New York City. Many veterans faced obstacles in attending like transportation costs and child care, so we had taken care of MetroCards, lunch, and babysitting. Word got out to the larger community about our project. One morning we received a mysterious care package from an organization that gave gifts to soldiers. My assistant, Brittany, opened it up eagerly. She called me over. I approached the large box and peered inside.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Below a stack of child-size paper and polyester American flags, I found an endless supply of lipstick, eye goop, makeup remover, and many sticks and powders I simply could not identify. I was neck deep in judgment, and I had my reasons. It was generous of these folks to send the care package, but this stuff was about as helpful to homeless veterans as teddy bears were to soldiers patrolling the streets of Baghdad. If someone showed me the science that proved that eye shadow cured post-traumatic stress or that lip gloss would get a homeless woman and her kid into permanent housing, I would be willing to change my tune. (The women appreciated the makeup. Their kids loved the tiny flags. But none of them were under any illusions. When our meeting was over, they still went back to shelters.)
Most Americans had very little idea what women veterans faced when returning home from service. One day I received an odd invitation to attend New York City Fashion Week, the annual event that summoned the world’s glitterati. “Fatigues to Fabulous” was meant to honor women veterans. The title of the show made me grimace, but I was curious, so I attended with a colleague.
Before a boozed-up crowd of fashion reporters and fans, three service women made dramatic stage entrances, each with a powerful story about deploying to the Middle East or surviving sexual assault. They’d been given that infamous American television treatment: the makeover. Stomping in power heels and magazine-cover hairdos, they looked ready for the Oscars, inspiring oohs and aahs. And then, just like that, it was over. My colleague wondered if the women got to keep their dresses and heels. I sure as hell hoped so.
I later read a blog post about the event by the designer Donna Karan entitled “A Woman’s Greatest Strength.” She wrote, “While I can’t pretend to fully understand [a returning woman veteran’s] psyche, I would think she needs to return to what made her strong in the first place—her womanhood. She needs to re-engage the feminine. Dress like a woman, feel like a woman, express herself as a woman.” I shuddered while I read this aloud to our helpline caseworker back at the office. She’d seen more of her fair share of destruction as an explosive ordnance disposal technician in Afghanistan. She rolled her eyes while I busted out laughing, asking her, “You mean when you got home from war the first thing you needed wasn’t your femininity?”
• • •
If there was one enormous gift of doing this work, it was organizing with brilliant, passionate women who did not take no for an answer. Those of us who created SWAN had a sense early on that what we were doing was uncharted territory. While other veterans organizations tiptoed around the rights of queer Americans to serve, or the wide prevalence of sexual violence in uniform, SWAN was outspoken and unapologetic. The women who were drawn to work with us were fierce feminists—both uniformed women who did not find support in the veterans organizations that dotted the DC landscape and civilian women who thought what we were doing was cutting-edge and game-changing. Building a team that would not take misogyny lying down was the antidote to the daily sexism we faced from the veterans community.
The veterans organizing landscape was mostly male and white, and fiercely uninviting to women. Our activism challenged bro-ish culture to the core. Men resisted change at all ranks and generations of service. At veterans gatherings, their handshakes with women like me were limp, their eye contact either nonexistent or filled with condescension. Some of these bros had become celebrity veterans, concerned with branding their images and increasing their followers on social media. In offering these guys regular spots on cable news, the media did not help in creating space for a diverse array of veteran voices.
Dan Choi was the first veteran SWAN held to task for sexism. It was not an easy decision, holding your brother-in-arms publicly accountable for some stupid thing he said about women, especially when he was a gay veteran of color. Dan was a West Point grad, Arabic linguist, and infantryman. He was articulate, authentic, and charismatic, and quickly became the LGBTQ movement’s poster boy for repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT). In 2010, Dan was on the cover of the Village Voice in a story titled (in pink) “Bad Lieutenant.” Dan was portrayed as a sexually liberated, narcissistic playboy and political provocateur. In one moment, infuriated that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had failed to move the DADT repeal amendment forward, he lashed out: “Harry Reid is a pussy,” he said, “and he’ll be bleeding once a month.”
Back at the office, our staff and board were incensed. I was mostly disappointed; Dan was of Korean descent, and so few of us with Asian backgrounds were doing this kind of work. SWAN’s conundrum was hardly new to so-called progressive movement making. Women were often thrown under the bus in the fight for men’s advancement, as women of color were for white women’s. Most of the queer advocates we knew (they were almost exclusively male and white) wanted to give Dan a pass for his sexist comments. They weren’t even willing to call him out on it privately, or try to get him to issue a genuine apology. Disrespecting women was not their concern.
After much discussion and reflection, SWAN wrote an open letter to Dan cosigned by three other national LGBTQ social justice organizations:
Dear Dan,
Comments denigrating women’s bodies, or suggesting that simply being a woman is abhorrent, are unacceptable . . . As a direct result of misogynistic language, a hostile work environment for service women—both heterosexual and lesbian—is allowed to thrive. Hate crimes, sexual harassment, lesbian baiting, gay bashing, and sexual assault have flourished. Adopting and promulgating hate-filled speech against women only serves to increase the danger that service women and LGBTQ service members face on a daily basis.
Dan was furious with us, but he eventually acknowledged his mistake and, years later, apologized profusely. Even more to his credit, it seemed he was on the verge of acknowledging deep wounds from his military service. Substance abuse was one way Dan coped with his pain, and eventually he had to leave the limelight to take care of himself. All of this took enormous guts and grace.
• • •
In lots of ways, it was easier to take on the head of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America for mistreating women. IAVA was the nation’s largest and most savvy nonprofit representing Iraq- and Afghanistan-era veterans. For better or worse, it had influence on every corner of the veterans world, thanks to its ambitious young leader, Paul Rieckhoff, a former Army officer, banker, and football coach who had turned his interest in helping veterans into what appeared to be a media and fund-raising empire. Most veterans grumbled privately about Paul
’s infamous ego and tendency to hang out with Hollywood celebrities, but few challenged him on anything, because of his far-reaching influence over politicians, news networks, and funders.
When Paul had signed a contract with Miller beer, the org got a lot of pushback from outraged veterans who had struggled with substance abuse. But even I was caught off-guard when IAVA decided to host an outreach event in the city at Hooters, the big-boobs, beer-and-wings chain restaurant that entertained its customers with “female sex appeal.”IV
“Wait. There’s a Hooters in Manhattan?” I spurted when my colleague Alison first told me the news. As a courtesy to Paul, I decided to reach out over email.
Just saw that IAVA is hosting an event at Hooters in NYC. What gives? There are other venues to host a veterans gathering, no? Decisions like this serve to isolate, harass, and further traumatize women veterans. Please tell me this is a mistake.
His response was disappointing.
No, there is no other choice of venue for this event. Hooters has a history of supporting a number of vets groups . . . [and it’s] a chance for us to reach more vets (of both genders).
I chuckled at his parentheticals and sighed at the rest, leaving him with this, and an opportunity to reverse course:
A relationship with Hooters means you’re promoting sexism and disrespecting women, particularly those who serve. Lots of extremely sexist people and organizations support veterans charities, but it doesn’t mean veterans orgs should support them. Women make up 15% of the military. Our PTSD disproportionately stems from sexual harassment and sexual assault while serving. You’re not helping any women by promoting Hooters. You’re not helping any men, either, for that matter.
Preparing for the worst, I spoke to our staff to get everyone’s input, and consulted with some legendary feminist mentors. IAVA was far too big an influencer for us to stay silent. We started making phone calls. Second-wave feminists and millennial bloggers stood by, ready to launch a multipronged social media campaign.
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