I was elated, but part of me deep inside was torn. There was no way for Shaye or Kristen to know the weight or significance of their accomplishments. In finishing Ranger School, they had enabled a collective emotional catharsis for an entire community of women veterans, over several generations of sacrifice. They had done what we always knew women could do, if only given the opportunity. I wish I’d had that chance. I thought of every woman who’d survived rape, sexual harassment, and discrimination over the years. I wondered if other women’s emotional landscape felt as complex and layered as mine today.
Army leadership held a major press conference to introduce Kristen and Shaye to the world. Army played every move like master political campaigners; the women, still buzz-cut and ruddy, looking every bit like GI Jane, sat alongside several of their male peers, who spoke in surprisingly genuine terms about their original skepticism over the women’s presence and their changing opinions as the women proved themselves, time and time again, occasionally outperforming the men. These were no feminist icons (of course, they were, obviously, but how the Army spun this was of less concern to me than that these women were truly part of the team). These officers were just like the guys.
This was a far cry from the Marine Corps’ efforts to hide its female infantry grads from public view. Some of the Marine Corps’ most senior leaders were publicly expressing their discontent with female integration, while Army leaders were embracing it in their own branch. It was like night and day.
Army’s senior leadership had ensured every step of the way that the women would be treated just like the men, without either special treatment or special abuse. Meanwhile, the Marine Corps was still fighting the Pentagon to keep boot camp segregated. There was no way Marine women were going to succeed at the same rate as Army women. They just were not being trained on the same level playing field. Doubts about their competency and potential would always exist.
In 2016, Captain Kristen Griest became the Army’s first female infantry officer.
* * *
I. Mike’s influence on civil rights law and policy is extensive and far-reaching, but his most well-known case to date is his students’ federal case challenging President Trump’s executive order banning Muslims from entering the United States (https://law.yale.edu/system/files/documents/pdf/Clinics/1-_complaint.pdf).
II. In 2017 a bipartisan group of senators finally introduced legislation to change this VA motto to be more inclusive of women. We have yet to see if such a law will pass in the current political climate.
III. Hegar ran as a Democrat for Congress in Texas in 2018.
CHAPTER 16
Our Last Best Hope
I first met Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in 2010 at the New York City Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Center—“The Center” to locals. She was the guest speaker at an event to support Dan Choi and the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” A brand-new senator who’d been appointed to replace Hillary Clinton, Gillibrand came from a progun, upstate background, and liberals wondered if she was really one of them. Gillibrand was establishing both her progressive and national security credibility by advocating for a repeal of the military’s gay ban.
I attended with my colleague Alison from SWAN. Aside from Dan and the two of us, it was a mostly civilian crowd, and almost entirely gay, male, and white, as many LGBTQ political events were. I knew this crowd didn’t know the ins and outs of what Dan was talking about, or what I was going to ask, but I stood up to ask Gillibrand a question.
“Senator, what are you doing to prevent sexual assault and harassment in the military?”
The room shifted and settled as the men looked to see who I was. The senator was polite, but she deferred. She suggested we reach out to a couple of her Senate colleagues who had experience working on sexual and domestic violence. Later, Alison and I approached the senator to chat in more detail. In photographs of the encounter, Gillibrand’s face looks typically porcelain—composed, not a worry in the world. I, on the other hand, appear so pained that my head is tilted on its axis and my face is cracking with the look of someone extremely disappointed.
A few years later, Gillibrand ended up being our biggest congressional ally on military sexual violence. We worked closely and relentlessly, crafting a bill and talking points for her signature issue on the Hill, part of a coordinated feminist and defense platform that would prepare her to run for president someday.
People often ask what I think of Senator Gillibrand. Feminists want me to gush. But she does not do it for me. Most politicians don’t. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t vote for her, all the way into the White House. Unlike Speier, with her fire and brimstone, or Braley, with his legal acumen and passion, Gillibrand needed convincing to take on our issue. The woman is a politician to the bone. What makes her so damn convincing is that unlike some of her counterparts, she does not come across as calculating in person, though behind closed doors she is as cautious as they come. She is neither cold nor heartless. She is approachable and gracious. But the woman will not move until she’s ready to win something. And then you better get the hell out of her way.
Gillibrand was carefully, strategically bucking the system as much as she was entrenched in it. I had every idea what it was like to be a woman in a male-dominated institution, but watching women in the Senate was never boring, because there was so much power and influence at stake. She was playing a game that had been played for ages. Surrounded by celebrity senators like John McCain, Gillibrand was one of a tiny handful of women on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Her staff was keeping an eye on areas that the senator could make her own while keeping things friendly with her male and Republican peers. She was unwilling to challenge combat exclusion. That was too radical. Might have made her seem antimilitary. In the end, after careful consideration, she took up military sexual violence with a vengeance.
We’d laid the legislative and moral groundwork for her bill. Survivors were pouring forth, and members of the media were painting a picture so dire that politicians would look like beasts for not taking action. Trying to avoid the land mines present in Speier’s earlier bill, SWAN helped Gillibrand’s staff write language for a Senate bill that was legally sound. Gillibrand did her homework. She was smart. And she could sell the hell out of an issue. She introduced the bill, the Military Justice Improvement Act, and hit the ground running.
In 2013, Gillibrand invited us to testify before the Senate. I hadn’t seen her face-to-face in several years, since that time at The Center. The hall was filled with large men wearing dark suits. SAPRO generals, JAG leadership, and legal aides. Twenty-five-year-old staffers. And us, four veterans testifying about the horrors of military sexual violence. Two of us women of color. One of us male. More than one of us queer. SWAN had a lot to do with the makeup of that panel. We recommended people who we thought would make a real difference. And representation mattered when everyone dealing with the lives of service members seemed to be old, white, straight, and male.
Before it all went live, we were standing at the front of the room, settling in. The senator was upon me before I noticed her, shaking my hand, thanking me. I will never forget that it took me a minute to realize who she was. Gillibrand was short and unassuming. Cool as always. I’d met her before, and yet among all these large-chested men, it still seemed like she was in the wrong room. I hated that I thought that.
Gillibrand’s first hearing was on the cover of every major paper the next morning. Military leadership was defensive and alarmed. Republicans didn’t want to appear like they were ganging up on the military. Being in the majority, they took over, attempting to squash Gillibrand’s momentum in the media. A few months later, the full Senate Armed Services Committee convened another hearing on military sexual assault. The entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, the keepers of our current wars and the president’s key military advisers, were summoned before the committee with their chief legal advisers: the Army, Navy, and Air Force Judge Advocate Generals (JAGs) and the Marine Corps St
aff Judge Advocate.
The Joint Chiefs and the JAGs stretching from one end of the congressional hearing room to the other was a fucking spectacle. With the exception of Navy JAG Nanette DeRenzi, every one of them was an older white man weighed down by the bling on his collar and stacks of colored ribbons on his chest. Each had served decades in the military. Their testimony, mostly the same old bluster about zero tolerance, barely made a dent. The sight of them was intimidating, the intent to bully and defend the system palpable, the audacity to suggest they were doing enough cruel. We barely needed a rebuttal.
It wasn’t my first time dealing with the military’s top leadership. The Lackland Air Force scandal put our calls for reform in the news big time, but the Air Force secretary and his generals treated SWAN with cautious friendliness, rather than contempt. The Marine Corps was a different institution altogether. But I already knew that.
My few limited encounters with Marine leaders shook me to the core. The Marine Corps systematically avoided SWAN, including our emails, phone calls, and good faith attempts to build bridges and find common ground. The three-star Judge Advocate Generals of the Army, Navy, and Air Force—all of whom were testifying before the Senate on this day—had graciously attended our second conference on military sexual violence. But the Marine Corps staff judge advocate hadn’t even gotten a lance corporal to respond to our invitation. When I ran into him at a hearing he’d been called to attend, he told me, “You know, a lot of things have changed since you left the Corps.” He had some nerve. Whatever had changed had changed in spite of the Corps’ resistance and because of our activism. And judging from an obscene number of stories now breaking in the press every month about sexual assault cover-ups and scandals, a lot still needed changing.
I’d had one opportunity to meet with the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps and blew it royally. General Joseph Dunford had agreed to sit down with me to talk about the issues Marine women were facing in uniform. His aide cold-called me one day, putting Dunford on the phone as I sat on an Amtrak train headed to Washington.
I already knew what this conversation was about. I’d foolishly given an unscheduled interview early one Saturday morning to a rabble-rousing reporter, and it had just hit the press. I’d spoken to him about the sexual assault scandal at Lackland Air Force Base, where a dozen military training instructors had allegedly assaulted or abused over thirty recruits. We’d just had a constructive meeting with the four-star general in charge of Air Force education and training, General Rice, about how to change the culture of the military. And I’d mentioned we were about to meet with Dunford to discuss the same. It sounded as though we had the Corps in our hands. Worse than that, it sounded like I couldn’t keep a secret.
Dunford got straight to the point: “I read the news clip.”
“Oh?” Oh fuck, I thought.
“Ms. Bhagwati. What exactly do you think you’re meeting with me about?” No Marine general wanted to be referred to in the press without having been briefed on it first by half a dozen subordinates.
I attempted to suppress my nerves and defuse the situation. I tried to dazzle him with what we were doing to improve women’s integration and reduce sexual assault and harassment. He was unfazed.
“Well, I don’t think I need to meet you. We already have enough input from Marines on these issues.” I was picturing the kind of input the second most powerful Marine on earth was getting from subordinates twelve rungs beneath him about what it was like to be a woman in the Corps.
“Well, Sir, it looks like the Marine Corps could use some extra insight—we hear from Marines all the time about what they’re facing inside. You’re not always going to hear the full story when there’s so much fear and stigma about reporting.”
“Ms. Bhagwati.” His tone had shifted. “Are you a Ma-rine, or are you just representing this organization of yours?”
I paused in disbelief. Dunford was testing my loyalty to the Corps. He wanted to know if I still bled Marine.
“Uh, Sir, I’m both.” It seemed to be a better response than, “Are you fucking serious?”
“Mm-hmm. Well. I think we have all the information we need.”
The future chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had made up his mind. I never met him face-to-face. Just like that, he’d made me feel like I wasn’t good enough for the Corps, and I would never be good enough for the Corps. When the Marines United Internet scandal broke four years later, exposing just how broken the Marine Corps was, I thought of Dunford. He needed guidance in those earlier years, when there was still hope of shifting course. But Marines never looked outside their box for help.
When the Joint Chiefs were done with their dog and pony show before the Senate, I pushed my way through a stack of uniformed officers to get to the commandant of the Marine Corps, James Amos. He looked at me the way I was used to being looked at by Marine officers. He didn’t know who the fuck I was and couldn’t have cared less. I pushed past his aide and his Staff Judge Advocate and placed a business card in his hand.
“I’m testifying on the next panel, Sir. We represent a lot of survivors. I hope you listen.” Amos said nothing. Didn’t even crack a smile. And then his eyes fell on my lapel, where I was wearing a shiny eagle, globe, and anchor, a sign that I’d worn the same uniform he was wearing now.
“Semper fi, Marine.” He nodded at me and walked away with his entourage.
Jesus fucking Christ, I thought. That’s all anyone ever gets from these dudes, isn’t it.
It felt like I had the whole weight of the world on my shoulders in this hearing, which Republicans had essentially thrown as a bone to Senator Gillibrand after their show of force with the generals. I ignored the allotted time I was given, going over by three minutes. No senator was going to stop me. I probably would have kept on speaking even if they had. I was pissed off by all of that unholy brass. I spoke directly to the camera, just in case anyone retraumatized by the generals was still listening.
“If you are a survivor, I want you to know that I believe you.”
Gillibrand did not let the Joint Chiefs circus deter her. She was a workhorse, putting together a bipartisan group of supporters for the bill that eventually included Tea Party poster boys and 2016 presidential candidates Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. No senator with a heart or sense of survival wanted to support a system that was allowing women and men to get raped and letting serial sexual predators run free. When Hillary Clinton got on record supporting the bill, we knew we were making waves. Military sexual assault was now officially a bipartisan presidential campaign issue.
SWAN joined forces with VVA and IAVA and tried to educate dozens of civilian organizations that had entered the fray in a sudden burst of enthusiasm for Gillibrand’s bill, so we could keep the heat on Congress.
The core message of the Military Justice Improvement Act was that command influence undermined victims’ chances of accessing justice. Ninety percent of sexual assaults were not reported. In fact, 62 percent of those who reported assault experienced retaliation. Prosecutions of sex crimes rarely occurred, let alone convictions of predators. What made the military system unique was the way in which military justice was integrated into the chain of command. Military commanders—who were not attorneys or judges, but who were given the authority of those roles—had legal discretion to determine whether or not cases were prosecuted. As I’d seen in the Corps, commanders often refused to prosecute the predators in their units, either overlooking the crimes, transferring predators to other units, or punishing the victims who reported.
Trying to remove the chain of command’s authority over certain crimes was a delicate thing, because there were many offenses that we thought could still be taken care of by commanders in-house, like your average DUI or marijuana charge, cases that I remember handling myself as a junior commander. We were simply trying to shift authority in one regard—making sure commanders were not allowed to adjudicate felony offenses, like sex crimes and murder—not burn the whole military ju
dicial system to the ground. There was inherent bias—and an enormous amount of comparative disadvantage—in a military boss, who was not an attorney, being able to determine the legal outcome in a case in which both the accused and the accuser belonged to his unit. It made no sense in today’s world. It only made sense in a military that no longer existed, when courts-martial were literally convened on the battlefield while muskets were firing, and the functions of commander, judge, and jury had to be combined into one role for expedience.
As the winter holidays were approaching, we were five votes shy of the sixty that were going to get this bill through the Senate, onward to the House—that was another nightmare, but one that would lessen if the Senate could get behind this—and finally over to President Obama. I got a call from Senator Gillibrand one day, asking for a suggested change to the bill. She thought that if we made this purely a sex crimes bill, she might have a shot at getting a couple of senators to switch their votes. But she didn’t want to move without our blessing.
We had given a lot of thought to this matter and had consulted with a handful of leading civil rights attorneys, military minds, and legal organizations. I was primarily concerned with what was in the best interest of service women.
The problem with a sex crimes–only bill was establishing a precedent for “pink courts” in the military. The term referred to the notion of gendered courts, something we were convinced would further segregate service women in an already hostile and sexist environment. Although men made up just over half of total victims, sex crimes were disproportionately affecting service women, and siphoning these cases to special (pink) courts while everything else was being adjudicated in the normal military justice system seemed absurd. It was the entire system, after all, that was broken. And commander bias was a factor in all cases, not just sexual assault.
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