Unbecoming

by Anuradha Bhagwati

  At the eleventh hour, Paul canceled the Hooters event, and I called off the cavalry, though not before Paul made it clear over the phone that we were being overly sensitive. He told me, “You know, not all women agree with you that this is an issue.”

  Where the fuck do I begin with this guy? I thought. I schooled him about the disturbing group dynamics that occurred in male-dominated institutions; the fact that one woman could freely support something that was clearly not in another woman’s best interest; the fact that service women tolerated so much sexism to begin with that we sometimes forgot a world could even exist where we wouldn’t have to put up with men’s groping hands or salacious comments. Still, he didn’t seem to understand that the most obvious reason to never host an organizational event at Hooters was the fact that this infamous establishment objectified women.

  Much to his annoyance, SWAN continued to challenge Paul over the years. When Paul’s ego got too big for his britches, or his sexism too much to swallow, I was more than happy to tweet at him about how far from grace he was: #Hooters.

  • • •

  If I was conscious of the negative influence of men veterans on the health and welfare of women veterans, I was extremely cautious when Greg approached me at home one day, asking if it would be okay to volunteer with SWAN. He’d observed me for a couple of years in my activist role. I was reenergized and inspired about life again. Meanwhile, he was working a corporate management job in New York City that was making him miserable. I thought hard about the idea of working together again. I didn’t know what it would be like to have a man working in a women’s organization, particularly with his Marine infantry background.

  I consulted my board. They were huge fans of bringing him on. Greg had a knack for language, valuable military experience, and a sharp mind that would be perfect for policy work. They were only concerned that all that time with Greg would be hard on me, and maybe put a strain on our relationship. It was compassionate for them to consider this. I naively figured I could handle it.

  Greg ended up being so good at policy analysis that when we finally had enough money to hire someone to be SWAN’s policy liaison with our Washington counterparts, SWAN hired Greg. Whether or not I liked it, the conservative dudes and good-old-boy veterans in DC didn’t say no to him the way they felt free saying no to women veterans. Nor could they dismiss his personal analysis of the mistreatment of service women, or his belief that women should have full access to combat assignments. It was hard to hire talent with this combination of military knowledge and experience. And Greg was willing to work for half what his counterparts were asking for.

  • • •

  SWAN was uniquely positioned to influence sexual assault policy. The Pentagon had never dealt with organized resistance from veterans on this issue. It’s not that individual women hadn’t tried, but victims were up against a tidal wave of Pentagon pushback and civilian refusal to believe how bad things really were.

  A few years earlier, in the wake of an assault scandal at the Air Force Academy, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had established the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. SAPRO was now a strange beast, headed up by a civilian woman, Kaye Whitley, whose overly casual, relaxed temperament was completely unsuited to dealing with serious crimes, institutional negligence, and mass trauma.

  Our relationship with SAPRO was tenuous from the start. When we realized SAPRO’s public awareness campaigns included classics from rape mythology, we spoke out. One day, while sifting through their website, we came across an official poster broadcasting the message “Ask Her When She’s Sober,” implying that a sexual predator was just a misunderstood guy who’d harmlessly slept with a drunk woman. What people needed to know was that predators often deliberately used alcohol as a tool to undermine the wits, memory, and trustworthiness of their victims. This poster insulted the idea of consent.

  There were other disturbing examples of how uninformed the Pentagon was about sexual violence, such as the distribution of rape whistles to women serving overseas. The women are frail rescue narrative was bad enough, but we also didn’t understand the logistics of this solution. The whole scenario, particularly in a war zone, seemed preposterous.

  And yet we were intrigued. We called one of the contractors supplying the military with said whistles. The company happily sent us a free shipment. We tore into a box filled with pink plastic whistles, with logos from each of the service branches.

  “I feel safer already, don’t you?” someone chuckled.

  I attached my pink Marine Corps whistle to my key chain to remind me of what we were up against. We were, after all, whistleblowers to the bone.

  * * *

  I. Yoga postures, or poses, typically associated with contemporary yoga practice, particularly in the West.

  II. Ahimsa is the yogic concept of not doing harm; it is sometimes translated as nonviolence.

  III. “Two spirited” in Native American traditions refers to embodying the spirit of both genders in one body. It is an older, more encompassing, and less literal term than LGBTQ.

  IV. www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/so-you-wanna-be-hooters-girl.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Civilian Invasion

  I was a relentless activist, but the truth was, I was sometimes a reluctant veteran. Combining the two roles felt awkward at best. Something in my body felt off when I was among military people. I was extremely comfortable in front of cameras and crowds, thanks to months of commanding Marines in the open air, without a microphone or script. If I had any timidity left, I knew how to mask it effectively. But finding courage was not the point. This was not impostor syndrome. I knew I could do this, if I really wanted to. But something in me felt misplaced.

  I wanted to be a veteran, but my fight-flight-freeze instincts were on high alert, and it was impossible to feel safe. It seemed I belonged nowhere in this community, least of all the places where combat veterans were drinking alcohol or chest thumping so hard that they rarely quieted down enough to see what I had in common with them, or they with me. Sometimes women who’d served in combat were more vicious with me than with their male counterparts. That always hurt the most.

  Doing the work of helping veterans required showing up in some places I didn’t want to be. In 2010, SWAN decided to march in the NYC Veterans Day parade. I had a good reason to show up. A young Marine whom I had guided over our help line through a harrowing sexual assault investigation came with her mother to march with us. Deb’s presence was incentive enough for me to face my fears about the event.

  SWAN designed a banner on behalf of sexual trauma survivors. I wondered how it would be received by the crowd. We also created a banner for LaVena Johnson, a young Black private first class whom the Army had officially declared a victim of suicide. Her father believed LaVena had been murdered by a fellow service member, and was spending most of his time and resources to prove this. It was hard not to think racism played a part in the way the Army was treating his daughter’s case.

  Our new office was right off the parade route in Manhattan. I headed down early to get a preview of the crowd. Tanks were parked on one side of the street. Beyond the armored vehicles, I saw a bunch of young women laughing as they spun around on their heels and modeled for men taking photos on the sidewalk.

  This seemed odd, so I looked closer. The women wore tight red sequined shirts and white miniskirts. They were all legs and cleavage, blow-dried hair, and crimson lips. Above them on an enormous parade float I saw the three-lettered logo that I’d seen at dozens of airports around the world: USO. They’d been hired to entertain the troops. As I let this sink in, it occurred to me that barely a single woman veteran was in the crowds lining up on the parade route. And yet here were enough USO showgirls to man the turrets on every Humvee on Fifth Avenue.

  In the crisp morning air we passed out glazed doughnuts and steaming cups of coffee and chatted with neighbors. We had reluctantly decided to march alongside another women veterans o
rganization, run by Genevieve Chase, a career Army reservist and Purple Heart recipient. I was still getting over SWAN’s first meeting with Genevieve when she looked straight into the eyes of rape survivors in our group and announced that military sexual trauma wasn’t as bad as we said it was. Her assertion was all bluster, passed on to her from generations of military voices.

  I would discover after years of advocacy that this I’m-no-victim attitude was extremely common among women veterans. I recognized it because the Marines had tried it on me, too. But it wasn’t right. Instead of confronting the men who held us down—a solution to discrimination that was risky or doomed from the start—many women lashed out at one another, particularly those whom the system considered weak, hoping to gain a stronger foothold for climbing up the ladder.

  Undermining the work of your fellow women veterans was rooted in self-hatred and jealousy, typical of every marginalized population. I acknowledged my own deep envy of Genevieve’s combat creds. I hadn’t served in a war zone, and it was still eating away at me. I spent a lot of energy worrying about what I hadn’t done instead of remembering what I had done and was actually doing now. I had to face my insecurity head-on and talk it down. The self-hating Marine in me was like a child who never felt good enough. I had to remind myself of my inherent worth, and that service to one’s nation was not restricted to the battlefield. That there were, in fact, different kinds of battlefields. Different kinds of bravery. And plenty of honorable ways to serve.

  Women like Genevieve felt uncomfortable and resentful of our work, the way it allegedly highlighted them as victims, rather than warriors. No service woman wanted to look weak in uniform. Genevieve didn’t, and neither did I. SWAN was trying to create a new narrative, that one could be both a warrior and a victim of abuse at the same time. One did not negate the other. In the military, this was a radical notion.

  I detested the world of infighting and pettiness among women that was created over limited media space and funding for our work. So even if she didn’t value SWAN’s work, we agreed to walk with Genevieve. It was no small compromise on my part. She’d rallied together a contingent of color-coordinated, red-scarved women carrying guidons so large and patriotic I felt besieged and slightly nauseous. I badly wanted to get this parade over with.

  I’d worn my black leather combat boots from OCS with a baseball hat, jeans, and a vegan leather jacket. The boots were as thin and worn as a chapati, but I’d polished them to Baughman’s standards the night before, and somehow they made me feel safer in this mess of posturing, loud noises, and throngs of thousands squeezed together on the avenue. As I stood on the sidewalk among uniforms, getting ready for the parade to start, my client’s mother appeared out of nowhere, with flushed cheeks and anxious curly hair.

  “Anu, Deb needs you. She saw a group of Marines and she’s freaking out.”

  Oh fuck, I thought, imagining Deb curled up on some street corner, triggered by memories of her rape. A platoon of manly Marines in their dress blues looking all handsome and intimidating was the last thing she needed to see. I found Deb on the sidewalk, all twenty years of her, crying in power heels that were going to destroy her feet on this long parade route. Uniformed Marines stood behind her under the traffic light, yukking it up and waiting for their platoon sergeant to call them to attention. Hell, even I was triggered looking at those devil dogs. I pulled Deb closer to the storefronts lining Fifth Avenue, so we could get shelter from the crowds on the street.

  “Deb, talk to me.”

  She was a mess of tears, memories, and sentences that started but didn’t finish. Poor kid. This parade may have been too much for her, and too soon.

  “You don’t have to do this. Wanna go upstairs to the office? I’ll go upstairs with you.”

  Deb was a tough cookie. She was playing Marine. She looked at me and tried like hell to convince me she was good to march.

  “I’m okay, Anu. I wanna do this. I need to do this.” Tears were dripping down her cheeks. She was still shaking.

  “Okay, Deb, okay. I’ll support whatever you want to do.”

  There was no time to discuss Deb’s options. Before she could catch her breath, or I could say much else, I noticed a camera and two male bodies erupting from the crowd behind Deb. A gigantic lens was suddenly focused on our faces. I looked more closely at Deb and saw a microphone glued to one of her ears. I had no idea she was being recorded. When had she consented to that?

  We had agreed to let Kirby Dick, an award-winning filmmaker, follow us around that day. Dick had exposed sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, earning an Oscar nomination, and examined the homophobia of closeted gay politicians, still a favorite among LGBTQ activists. Military sexual assault was his next target, and since we were deep into exposing the issue, we’d become his go-to resource early on. If I had known the tactics he would use on this day, I never would have agreed to work with him.

  I stood on Fifth Avenue, inches from Deb, with Dick’s camera in our faces, as things got quiet in my head. I was outraged, and felt my heart pounding. Were these people serious? In what world was this the right time for a close-up, when a young woman was having post-traumatic flashbacks in front of tens of thousands of people? This may be how award-winning filmmakers got their awards, but this was not how decent people behaved. This was also not how human beings healed.

  I was having a hard time recognizing Deb’s agency here. She was barely out of her teens, and her Marine career had been violently cut short. She was on shaky ground back home, and I didn’t think the public eye was the best place for her to recover. She had told me with unnerving enthusiasm that Kirby’s movie would make her a reality star. She had notions about sharing her story so that other women wouldn’t go through the hell she went through as a rape survivor. It was noble of her. It was kind and courageous. And still, I sensed that this public staging of a traumatic episode was not helping her, or anyone. But I had no right to tell her not to do this—it wasn’t my choice. It was hers.

  I felt ashamed to be standing there. I resisted the overwhelming urge to smack Dick’s camera to the ground and stick a Marine Corps boot up his ass. I got in close and tried to whisper to Deb. I didn’t want any part of this right now. I certainly did not consent to this circus. And I did not know how to stop it, much like I did not know how to stop the men I’d met in the Marines. I did not know what to say. I did not know if I had a right to say anything at all.

  Thankfully, the parade was about to start. Thinking about Deb’s welfare took my mind off the terror I felt walking uptown. As the parade began, onlookers cheered for the enormous floats, the armored vehicles, large formations of dress-blued Marines and soldiers in desert camouflage uniforms marching in unison. As we passed behind them all—Genevieve’s red scarves and SWAN’s somber banners, a few dozen women and supporters putting on smiles and managing nerves—the raucous crowd grew quiet.

  It was a long walk up Fifth Avenue. We pressed on. I had so much anxiety from taking in the silent onlookers on both sides of the street that my jaw hurt. Five hours later, it was over. Deb’s feet had survived. And I had avoided a panic attack. I took her to Applebee’s in midtown for a free Veterans Day meal, trying to play it cool the whole time.

  It was the last time I spoke with Deb. She did not become a reality television star. While crowd footage from the parade was included in Dick’s film, all Deb’s scenes were cut from The Invisible War, the documentary that would eventually be nominated for an Academy Award. Deb was devastated. Her mother wrote to me later that year, telling me they never should have trusted those filmmakers.

  • • •

  I do not share these stories to tear people down. And I would like to believe that anyone is capable of learning. Dick and other activists like him are not my intended audience, although if they wish to understand and repair their approach to working with vulnerable or exploited populations, I hope that humility guides them. My primary motivation in sharing my experiences is in making sure women, and fu
ture movement makers, know about the dynamics that are present when our lives become interesting to people who have some combination of power, access, money, or impressive résumés, particularly those not from our communities.

  We need to protect ourselves, and each other, from making choices that do not benefit us. We must be patient and more discriminating in whom we choose to work with. Better yet, we must organize ourselves rather than allowing ourselves to be organized by outside parties. When people tell our stories for us, we often lose control of the narrative, and too often, we never get it back. Many veterans are still recovering from the harm done by various outsiders who have exploited their stories or intruded upon their lives. I write for their healing as much as for my own.

  In 2011, when Dick was wrapping up his film, most civilians didn’t understand our world. With only 1 percent of Americans serving in the military, this was no surprise. The work to build that bridge with funders, reporters, and fellow activists was taxing. It was easy to become disillusioned. Some folks took the time to learn about us. The ones who became allies we could trust and rely on were humble. They elevated veteran voices and let us steer policy. They asked a lot of questions. They didn’t rush to conclusions. They didn’t pretend they understood. We had the final word on what to say and how to say it.

  The folks whom we had issues with wanted our time, our trauma, and credit for the organizing we did. Authenticity had no bearing on their choices. They tended to have prizes or reelections on their minds. It’s painful to write about—in some ways, more painful than any experiences I had in the Marines or with my family. I think part of the reason it hit me so hard is because I had partially bought the hype about the nation caring for our veterans. With slogans like Support Your Troops; corporate red, white, and blue advertisements on every television channel; and a couple of national holidays that come with three- or four-day barbecue weekends, it’s hard not to get swept up in the notion that America cares. But on the ground, reality looks different, and often ugly.