Why You?

The answer is –I don’t know. I can only speculate and give you my personal opinions and experiences.

The question is –why you (as in me)? How come I was the one getting all this harassment?

Disclaimer: I can only speak for what I know that was over 20 years ago. I only hope great strides have been made in the military towards unbiased treatment of women serving in our Armed Forces and that there is a greater recognition and intolerance for sexual harassment. Back in the 80’s the understanding of sexual harassment was in its infancy. The military had strict policies against such harassment and even training however; what a 2010 mindset thinks sexual harassment is and what a 1980’s mindset thought sexual harassment was is a great chasm.

I’m probably the only military blog you happen to be reading so . . . I’m sure other women in the Army have their own stories to tell too. I wasn’t the only one with these type of experiences but I was (one of) the only ones telling –that’s the biggest difference.

First of all, neither men nor women had a clear-cut understanding of what sexual harassment was. People thought unless a sexual act was being offered, asked for or committed, it wasn’t harassment. The word “sexual” refers to gender, as much as anything else. I don’t think that was clear even to me because whereas many of these things bothered me, I'm not sure I fully understood my rights.

Secondly, as in the case of my shower experiences, once a female told on the males she was considered a baby, a tattle tale, a stupid girl who can’t cut it in the Army. So women were less likely to say anything because they didn’t want to endure more harassment or be looked at as being weak. Unfortunately, other women would get upset too when one woman decided to take a stand or “make a case”, as was my experience with my roommates. They didn’t want me to ruffle the feathers, make trouble and most importantly, they did not want to be “guilty by association” in the eyes of the other males. That’s what my one “ring leader” roommate was trying to do –separate herself from “my kind” –the weak cry-baby.

Sadly, this isn't all harassment I endured in the entirety of my military career --it’s just not worth going into all of it --but I suspect if these were my experiences and from other things I heard and saw, sexual harassment was a fierce roaring fire in the military back then. Like I said, I have no knowledge of what things are like now.

Part of my hesitation of even bringing any of this up was I was worried how it would be perceived. As the PLDC saga continues, you will see that even when reporting these things I was met with the reaction that I had brought it on myself or communicated in some way (spoken, body language, etc) that I wanted to be treated as such --that certainly was not the case.

But all this is essential to the story at hand so --I had to tell it.

Tomorrow, back to PLDC.