Shoot Like a Girl

by Mary Jennings Hegar

  TEN

  Back home in Austin, Texas, I took on a consulting job for a hospital system. I had just married Brandon, and together we bought a beautiful house on half an acre. I was still coming to terms with the end of my flying career, however. I was trying to leave all thoughts of the military behind me as fond memories, but I would soon be pulled back in. In a thinly veiled attempt to bond with me—which I was thrilled about—my eldest stepdaughter, who was twelve at the time, told me she wanted to be a Marine one day. I was secretly over the moon at the thought of her picking a goal that would keep her out of trouble in her youth, just like mine did. I joked with her that she had better start doing some push-up training if she wanted to be a Marine, and we both dropped into front-leaning rest, giggling as we did our push-ups.

  A few weeks later, she came to me in tears.

  “Why did you let me think I could be a Marine?” she asked, clearly thinking I had made a fool of her.

  I was at a loss. What could she possibly mean?

  “My mom told me that I can’t be a Marine because that’s a boy’s job.”

  That was it. I had really had it with people like this. I had spent my whole life putting up with people treating me like serving your country was a boy’s job, whether it was because of their own insecurity or just plain ignorance.

  I couldn’t believe that this little girl would grow up in the same type of world as I had, twenty-five years earlier. I thought about the enormous impact my dad had had on me by the very nature of the fact that he never acted like my dream of a flying career was something that wasn’t “for girls.” It was a shame she wasn’t getting the same support, so I decided to change that.

  I took a deep breath as I considered my options for a response. It was so hard, but I never wanted to let the kids see my disapproval of their mother. That kind of conflict wasn’t in their best interest. I also felt they deserved the best possible role model, and I wanted my stepdaughter to feel the way I did, the way David had made me feel, that you could do anything you wanted if you worked hard enough.

  “Well, she’s wrong. I know lots of female Marines.”

  Her face lit up.

  “Cool!” she cried. “I’m gonna go play Xbox now.”

  If only she knew how much Xbox she’d play as a Marine.

  Seeing her face light up like that when I informed her she could be a Marine made me realize what I needed to do next. It wasn’t enough that I was the best I could be at my job. It wasn’t enough that I was a living, breathing example of what women were capable of. I had to find a way to contribute more to changing the conversation about this. I had lived it. I was already speaking and writing about it, but nothing had changed. Nothing would change unless we started fighting a little harder. Now, there was something I was good at.

  —

  I wouldn’t believe it if I’d seen it in a movie, but it’s true: The timing of that conversation was meant to be, and the very next day, on July 24, 2012, I would get my chance to do something about it. I received a phone call from the American Civil Liberties Union from a woman named Ariela Migdal, an attorney on the Women’s Rights Project team in the ACLU. They were looking into filing a lawsuit and were talking to women who had served in combat about being plaintiffs. Someone had passed my name on to them as an example of what women were capable of in combat and notified them that I had been denied the chance to compete for the job of Special Tactics Officer just because of my gender.

  Without hesitation I agreed to take part in the lawsuit. I knew the case would likely cause a media frenzy, and there could be some very vocal opponents—including people I’d served with. There was a good chance my own service would be dragged through the mud, as they tried to discredit me. But all I could think about was my stepdaughter’s crestfallen face, how angry and confused she was when she had to confront that first taste of discrimination. I thought of my teacher in high school, Mr. Dewey, and the betrayal I’d felt when I’d realized he was making a judgment about me based solely on my gender. I had the overwhelming urge to show my daughter that you didn’t have to roll over and take this kind of treatment. Even though it might get ugly, I knew I was in.

  Over the next few weeks, I would meet my fellow plaintiffs and do some media training. I called my squadron in California to give them a heads-up so they wouldn’t be taken by surprise when they saw the news. Mat Wenthe had taken over as commander, and I was excited for the excuse to catch up with him.

  “Hey, MJ! How’s Austin treating you?” he asked when I called him.

  “Pretty good. You know, eating barbecue, suing the Secretary of Defense, listening to some live music . . . the usual.”

  “Heh, heh, yeah . . .” He stopped, realizing he wasn’t getting the joke. “Wait, what?”

  I took a calming breath to settle my nerves. I wasn’t afraid of getting into trouble as much as I was terrified that my actions would be met with disapproval and, even worse, isolation from the men and women I had bled with in Afghanistan.

  “Well, here’s the deal.” I laid out the lawsuit and my reasons for partnering with the ACLU on it. He didn’t say a word. He just listened quietly. He finally spoke once I stopped filling the awkward silences.

  “But I don’t understand. Do you feel like we’ve ever held you back? I mean, you were right there with us in the shit . . . That’s about as tip of the spear as you can get.”

  “No!” I said, realizing he wasn’t about to hurt my feelings—instead it seemed like I had hurt his. “It’s not you guys. This isn’t about how I was treated or the policies of the unit. It’s not even about air combat at all. Did you know that women are technically barred from ground combat?”

  He thought about that for a second.

  “Well, no . . . yeah . . . I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I’ve never really thought about it before.”

  Exactly. Neither had I. Why would we have? In our world, men and women were pretty seamlessly integrated already, so for most of us it wasn’t a big deal.

  I went on to reassure him I had felt nothing but support from the unit, but that this was something I felt strongly I had to do. He ended the conversation in typical Mat fashion.

  “Well, I was roommates with the guy who won on the first season of The Amazing Race, so you’ll be the second most famous person I know, I guess.”

  I smiled, a little choked up at how supportive he was being, and I started to let myself hope that the majority of the others might feel the same way. I hung up and went back to preparing for the media frenzy, nostalgic for the camaraderie of war fighters.

  Just over four months after our first conversation on the phone, on November 27, 2012, we filed our suit against the Secretary of Defense under the name Hegar, et al. v. Panetta. The press conference we held in San Francisco that day would be the beginning of a years-long firestorm of media attention and debate.

  There were so many arguments that flared up after we lit the match, it’s hard to even remember them all. Some were more ridiculous than others. One of the many arguments that ensued was over whether or not civilians (i.e., the ACLU) should be dictating such things to the military. I found this hilarious for many reasons.

  First of all, the Ground Combat Exclusion Policy was a civilian-issued order in the first place. It was put in place in 1994 by then Secretary of Defense William Perry in response to the outrage over lifting the ban on females in combat cockpits. That move, so many years ago, had been met with doomsday predictions of overly emotional women ruining the Air Force with their periods, babies, and breast milk—but of course had long since been validated as the right thing to do.

  Since the field has been opened to females, women have proven to be some of the best pilots in every branch. Women have been awarded medals and given command positions. They’ve shown resilience as prisoners of war, served as instructors, and done everything their male counterparts do without the p
redicted downfall of the American way of life.

  Furthermore, at the most basic level, one of the things that distinguishes us from military dictatorships is that civilians have always been the ones telling the military what to do. It’s one of the core elements of our history and Constitution.

  The incontrovertible fact was that this current policy banning women from being in combat was not good for the military. The commanders in the field fighting the actual wars had their hands tied by this policy. Not only could women not compete for certain jobs, but the women that our commanders needed in the field could not be “assigned” to the units who faced direct ground combat. The policy was so out of touch with the actual reality on the ground that loopholes and end runs around the policy were common. Women were constantly being “attached” to these units, then rotated out after a number of days to ensure their status remained “temporary.”

  Women are needed on the front lines for a variety of reasons, and that’s the bottom line. Either they are the best person for that particular job (say, a unit’s top marksman) or they have to do a job that only a woman can do (e.g., patting down female attendees at the fragile council meetings with local warlords). Whatever the reason, women were needed on the front lines, and commanders were constantly having to tap-dance to get them out there.

  One of the things that builds a team up and prepares them for the rigors of war is the training they experience together. The years I flew with my crew, the training we had all attended, solidified us as a team. We faced the same training standards and the same challenges, which created a bond that enabled us to implicitly trust one another with our lives, to depend on the person sitting next to us to watch our back when the shit hit the fan. The way things were set up for the ground forces, these women were being “attached” without the benefit of joint training or the chance to earn the trust of their comrades. They were almost being set up to fail, despite the fact that people on the front lines so desperately needed them to succeed.

  The suit wasn’t designed to force anything on the military. It was designed to untie the hands of the commanders in order to allow them to select and train the best teams for the job at hand without regard to gender. While there are some misogynistic people left who find the idea of strong female warriors threatening, the reality is that this change is supported by the vast majority of the people actually fighting the wars.

  The decision makers on the front lines who have served with women in this capacity and seen what they can do want this change. Of the people opposed to this move inside the military, I have yet to meet one who has had any actual experience serving with women. For the most part, their experience is limited to imagining their sister or spouse at war, many of whom are not suited for the battlefield and probably have little in common with the women who have spent years of their lives training for combat.

  In my experience, changing the minds of people whose opinions aren’t based on actual facts tends to be the hardest, because their beliefs are rooted in their prejudices as opposed to reality. For some people, it didn’t matter what facts were presented or what accomplishments women achieved. Nothing would ever make them budge from their stubborn position. So I knew we had to be prepared to settle in for a long, hard-fought battle.

  But on the morning of January 23, 2013, I was at the office when I received a surprise phone call from Mat Wenthe, my squadron commander who had been so supportive about the lawsuit. I was working at my desk, trying to keep my voice down so as not to disturb the others in the cubicle maze around me.

  “Congratulations, MJ!” he exclaimed.

  “On what?” I whispered as I continued my work. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “You did it!” he shouted in my ear.

  Then he informed me that Secretary Panetta had just lifted the unconstitutional policy in a historic press conference with his Joint Chiefs of Staff. He did this, in part, due to our suit. But the most gratifying thing about this event was that he also did this in response to a unanimous request signed by all of his Joint Chiefs. Word had filtered up from the front lines, and the brass had heard their commanders loud and clear. The policy was bad for our military and was hurting our war efforts. Period. This wasn’t about political correctness. It was well past time to rescind it.

  “WOO-HOOOO!” I jumped up and yelled. Little office worker gopher heads popped up all around me with their mouths open.

  “That’s awesome!” I cried.

  Mat couldn’t believe I didn’t know it already, but he was happy to be the one to deliver the news. We would still have an uphill battle ensuring no one else put the discriminatory policy back into practice, but this was an enormous first step.

  Before rescinding the policy, the default was that combat jobs were closed to women. You had to obtain an exception to get one to open. Now, by default, everything was suddenly open. With the policy lifted, the Secretary gave the branches three years to study which jobs, if any, would remain closed. Each branch would have to show substantial evidence and submit specific requests if they wanted to keep any jobs closed. All of a sudden, women all over the country had thousands of jobs open to them that, for years, they had been barred from even considering.

  —

  My elation over our progress was short-lived, though, as I began to hear politicians threaten to legislate the restrictions back into place. I hoped it was bravado for their constituents, but I couldn’t afford to take that chance. We had come too far. I knew it would be my job to impact the national conversation and get in front of the politicians somehow.

  One of my friends who had also been making great strides toward opening up combat jobs for women asked me if I would join up with her and a few others on founding an organization called the Combat Integration Initiative that was based in Washington, DC. I jumped at the chance to work with her, and together we partnered with the well-established organization Women in International Security to work to ensure that our nation’s leaders didn’t take a step backward and that our military leaders were required to order full integration with no exceptions.

  There were so many people doing so much great work, and I was thrilled to be a drop in the bucket of progress. I took several trips out to DC from Austin, and I spoke on panels all across the country alongside people like Shoshana Johnson (America’s first female African-American POW) and Colonel Martha McSally (one of the first female fighter pilots and the first woman to command a fighter squadron in combat, now a representative from Arizona). I was honored and humbled by the men and women I met, worked, and collaborated with on this historic wave of change sweeping through our military. I met people from the UN who spoke about Security Council resolutions calling for more women in militaries around the world, citing the science behind the impact they have on peacekeeping missions and adherence to the laws of armed conflict. It was an exciting time, and I was elated to be contributing.

  On June 26, 2013, I arranged a “Storm the Hill” day. It took several weeks to organize, but we pulled it off. A dozen or so of the women of the Combat Integration Initiative spent a full day meeting with congressmen and -women, senators, and the staffers of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. Some of the meetings that day got a little heated as we discussed the finer points at the root of the controversy.

  During one of the meetings that day, an older representative mentioned that he was concerned that the already high rate of military sexual assault would rise. I thought back to my own attack at the hands of Dr. Adams. This politician had no idea what he was talking about. It wasn’t about how many women we put in combat. Men and women were being assaulted regardless of where they were stationed. I was pissed at this absurd line of inquiry and decided to go full shock and awe on him.

  “Have you ever sexually assaulted anyone?” I asked him.

  “No, of course not!” he spat out, completely flustered.

  “Is that because you’
ve never had the opportunity? You’ve never been alone with a woman in an isolated area?” I asked.

  “No, of course that’s not why,” he replied, clearly unhappy with the direction this was heading.

  “Exactly,” I replied. “You’ve never done that because you haven’t grown up in a culture where it’s acceptable and even condoned to treat women—or other men for that matter—as items issued for your exploitation. You haven’t been taught that you can do whatever you want.” I paused, wondering whether I should go on. Now or never, I thought.

  “It’s not acceptable in civilized society to treat people that way, and that’s the problem the military is facing. It’s not a problem of keeping potential victims from being alone and isolated with potential predators, but reversing the predator culture that currently exists.”

  I stopped, sensing he had no desire to issue a rebuttal. There are people who think that this culture is fine given the ugly nature of war. But I and so many of my fellow servicemen and servicewomen had proven that you could be a tough combat warrior without being a sociopath.

  Male, female, it didn’t matter. We were cogs in a machine, ordered not to speak up or talk back, and the result of that, unfortunately, can be tragic for the individuals involved.

  The representative, wisely, seemed to either find that answer acceptable or he didn’t want to risk another, similar exchange, so he moved on to his next concern. I nodded as I listened intently, giving no indication that the conversation and the memory of my own attack had rattled me a bit. I took a deep breath to address his next question and pushed the bile down back into my stomach. This was way too important to too many people for me to throw in the towel now.