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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-09-05
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvLkNjAPAHE
erratic are so how many people do you think how many women do you think fought in our most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan numbers twelve somebody said now hundred try like four hundred thousand okay how many do you can name one woman fought in Iraq and Afghanistan the one hand maybe two or three lights bright surprising to me how few people know the stories of
women if on Iraq and Afghanistan %HESITATION maybe people remember Jessica Lynch that's the only one that anyone ever registers %HESITATION now let me give you a few names of male soldiers Chris Kyle home know that guy Merrick he wrote the book American sniper that was made a movie by Clint Eastwood what about Marcus Luttrell who %HESITATION wrote the book lone survivor that was also made into
a hugely successful movie or Bowe Bergdahl who was featured in serial the serial podcast Reese or %HESITATION say a guy named Eric writings our governor Jason cantor who ran against him %HESITATION David Petraeus I can go on and on I mean you guys know these guys right why do you know them and not the women who fought in Iraq one reason is that we have a
certain myths for what a soldier supposed to be that's in part created by Hollywood that is I've defined that myth is being white male stoic and her relic it certainly fits Chris Kyle and here's another sort of definition of that myth are that comes from a the Missouri born writer %HESITATION Rick acticin reduction wrote I had long believed at the extravagant stress of combat is a
great group revealer of character disclosing a man's elemental traits in the way a prism refracts light to reveal the inner spectrum from the cold in the company of soldiers that was mostly about David Petraeus with some interesting things about this quote first of all I was a reporter in Iraq and is my experience that %HESITATION com that was not a great revealer of character was a
destroyer of character it did not reveal your inner prison was a thing that you want to avoid if you possibly can secondly it's a man's elemental traits one of the reasons that you don't hear stories about women from Hollywood is because they don't fit into this mess they don't come to join the military because they want to become a man a certain sense but also because
if Hollywood were to tell the stories of women who were in the military they would also have to tell the story of how men like Chris Kyle three women who were in the military particularly during the two thousand three to %HESITATION and I'm gonna tell you some stories about that based on the women who I interviewed for my novel the good lieutenant which has of the
female character John McDonough I met in Iraq in two thousand six Jan was the captain of US support company %HESITATION she her job was to go outside the wire and retrieve vehicles that have been hit by IEDs or had had it you know driven to what can our gotten broken right arm we're going outside the wire mean outside this enclosure of these very large bases that
we had %HESITATION into the Iraqi countryside which was in two thousand six very dangerous there were ideas all over the roads on these can go off interview when you at whatever you drove by the time that I was embedded with lost twenty soldiers over a period of four months %HESITATION so Jen would go out driving this thing called Hercules which is vehicle it I think is
really cool arm and it's that size of a tank and it could tow in M. one tank back to back to base she told me a story one time about going out to a muddy field it does rain in Iraq it's desert and are trying to retrieve a thing called a buffalo big big vehicle like a phone truck and she hooked up the the cable that
you can see the back axle the buffalo started telling the axle came on then her Hercules got stuck in the mud of this field %HESITATION she called in another Hercules tried it tried it tell out again that Hercules got stuck she called in a quick reaction force of the infantry guys that really tough guys they came in they were gonna rescue where they got stuck %HESITATION
she her soldiers were trolling the area to them stepped on a five hundred pound bomb they were blown straight up in the air miraculously survived she medivac them out whatever Humvees was hit by an IED flipped over badly injured the gunner who was standing in on top of it %HESITATION he editing that act out you called in a floating bridge there was like this muddy field
in the can now then a paved road in here to get all the vehicles over the paper it's a need to bridge call in a bridge to guide the guy who brought the bridge drove into the canal that I get another bridge was a five day mission okay she was under fire for most of it turned out the steel was heavily mined she got all of
these things out of this field didn't lose a single soldier after telling me the story which takes her like an hour to tell so we have time for the whole thing a she said to me the hardest thing about being in Iraq is that I don't have anyone to what does she mean by that what she meant was there were no women in her time which
is an infantry battalion been attached to it there were no women in it enough equal or higher authority position her she couldn't talk to people expressing doubt or concern or fear that she could do the right thing to anyone below her and she had no one above her that you could talk to the reason she didn't like to talk to the mail officers with it she
felt she went in and expressed doubt fear or concern or wanted reassurance in anyway they would you say are that's just a woman women can't do this job they fear is a category not a person %HESITATION another example would be as the fiddle who are of there's the inside of the Hercules by the way which is %HESITATION Angela fiddle %HESITATION who's graduated the MKC %HESITATION and
%HESITATION she was %HESITATION %HESITATION former Surgeon around and here's how she describes her greeting when she went to Fort Hood the first time or had there is a saying that his hairline there's only three kinds of women in the army and bitches slut some lesbians I've been asked which one I will it's not an easy thing to have happen to you when you walk in your
workplace of another example of this %HESITATION would be Stacey Moore who was a major I when I met her but she was a lieutenant Iraq Iran convoys she had a platoon sergeant who wouldn't pick cock carry out her order substance are just very important person %HESITATION for lieutenant he's the person is the conduit between lieutenant in the enlisted soldiers in that tune to sergeant has to
carry out the tenets orders but he didn't and also what sort of follow her around looming over her in the office like a certain presidential candidate did during the debates %HESITATION with a female candidate while back you couldn't get him to stop this so what she did was Russell him PNM it is head between her knees and start pulling on his ears until he said that
he would do what you said or what she wanted that is not a normal workplace environment okay so you know and it doesn't fit into the Hollywood narrative myth stoic relic male soldiers that is why we don't see these movies arm but it's also means that there are things that we can learn from women in the military they have a special place in a special rule
they are outsiders to that structure and because they're outsiders to that male dominated structure %HESITATION they have to learn about it better than the men right they have to learn how to fit in they have to learn all the rules all the regulations and they also know unlike male soldiers that were not not necessarily but most male soldiers that did the structure can be wrong because
it treats them wrong right and that gives them a better chance to teach their soldiers how to do right it also gives them empathy for other people who were outsiders to that structure most specifically Iraqis okay now how does this apply to civilian life well there was a study done by the women's foundation %HESITATION based in Kansas city with a couple professors from Kay you and
they studied all over a hundred special forces men and women talking to them about what it was like to integrate women into a male dominated organizations that %HESITATION their findings were very similar to my own I mean there was one woman who said my first %HESITATION you know deployment terrible of three like in in human I'd be sitting there are you know eating dinner with my
food right for me and so he would not get to the ground and say pick pitch if you're the only woman in that environment there's the difficult situation deal with that kind of overt aggression I don't think I don't I'm trying to get how over at that address one of the study had several interesting %HESITATION exclusions one was that women when they got army training to
do all the jobs that they needed to do and the training gave them confidence right I can do this I know I can do this I know I can run the Hercules I know I can go out on missions and retrieve a broken vehicles from outside the wire they also discovered however that confidence in and of itself in training was not enough to overcome structural obstacles
that your organization putting your way what are examples of the structural obstacles well for instance one of the ways you get promoted in the army is to have combat service okay when I spoke to John McDonough two thousand six what she was doing was not the Honda every job every woman had in the army at that time even though many were killed and injured was not
defined as combat combat roles were only infantry and combat engineers a poor troops didn't have quote combat roles but that's only a definition right to support troops given the storage twenty were engaged in that's a structural impediment to advancement labels talk is an example of this problem what can we learn from female soldiers right one of the study participants said it's always female something it's never
the medic for the civilian affairs officer it's always the female medic with the female civilian affairs officer how many times do we in our daily lives in America right now in civilian society do the same thing how may times do we say Hey look at that female cop with a female surgeon were female newscaster or female presidential candidate right by putting that modifier there we emphasize
the fact that the structure that that person is it is a part of is gender away from them right it's for a different gender than also those kinds of stereotypes lead to differences in the way that %HESITATION %HESITATION jobs get assigned for instance Angela fiddle would was trained to do all kinds of stuff that was typically male job or it is like you know mechanical stuff
unloading heavy stuff whatever she would shiver should volunteer for a job that was male that would be given instead somebody should be passed over to be given to a guy who would be thought to be able to do a better job even if she was trained for the job even if she was better than the guy they gave it to or even higher ranking that kind
of stereotyping exists all the time the army and exists in civilian life as well right the final thing %HESITATION that's important to remember is that the study found was that the women like John McDonough Stacey more trees you can see and Angela fill stead of blaming or understanding that that there were problems came from structural issues with the organization they were and they tended to internalize
that and say it's my fault I didn't work hard enough I wasn't I harden right what we need to do is turn our gaze from the individual who is being disadvantaged by the structure that they're into the structure okay how do we do that I would say we do it through narrative highest the person makes narratives but almost all of the women that I spoke with
not not almost all all of the women I spoke with who were in the military was interviewing people to get a tan said we want stories about us why doesn't anybody make a movie about us what is anybody write books about us how come nobody knows about us we have this very special story that we want people to know about the reason that they want that
story out there in part is they want to be represented like anybody else does but because of the larger public when they experience those narratives have empathy for the kind problems that talking right and this kind of empathy is universal the individual who's in a structure the disadvantages them isn't just something that happens in the military it happens all across or country in the world right
and those narratives teach us how to escape that and secondly the the study suggested that women who work in an organization like that need to talk to each other right so when they conducted these interviews %HESITATION our female soldier would say Hey this happen to me in other words it will happen two and a third right and then they would realize it wasn't their fault this
problem a problem that was common in part of their structure okay the good news is that these women have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan two thousand three change the military they can change the military than any organization okay women are allowed in combat rules now as of December twenty fifth that's because of the way these women perform and fought in the field during the years before
that Jen McDonough is now a lieutenant colonel that mean she's a battalion commander that means that she will be there for some young female lieutenants talk to in the future Stacey more arm if that was rose to the rank of major and is now at the rand corporation %HESITATION Angela fiddle got a degree from UK seed got a law degree from Kay you is now practicing
lawyer these women are going to change the way that we think about the military and are also going to be leaders in the military in business and in politics in the future and because of their experience as outsiders inside a structure they're gonna have more empathy for people who are in that same position another good example be Tammy Duckworth who lost both of her legs in
a helicopter crash in Iraq and is now just recently was elected to the Senate she looked around I hope that you will take time to learn about the experiences of these women you'll seek out their narratives maybe you'll even called Hollywood and ask them to make a movie about them one of these days if this video works I am now going to let you hear from
Stacy more and give her the last word there is not there for us to be able to interact with email I didn't you know William I think it's important for us show cultures or perhaps a little accepting of women in the boulder accepting of women just kidding civil society to show them that women are able to do these things it's a way for us to carry
