It Has Nothing To Do With The War. Really.

According to data obtained by the Associated Press, the number of officers forced out of the Army due to misconduct has more than tripled in the past three years.  In the meantime, the number of enlistees who left the Army under similar circumstances has nearly doubled.

Increases in both categories, though not quite as dramatic, were also reported in the Navy and Air Force.  

I am writing about this issue because some of those officers and enlisted personnel resigned, whether on their own accord or under duress, after being charged with sexual assualt.

General Ray Odierno, the Army's top officer, admitted that his branch of the Armed Forces sometimes "overlooked character issues" as it struggled to recruit as many men and women as it needed to fight twelve years of war on two different fronts.  Because of those difficulties, many soldiers and officers were repeatedly re-deployed, which may have pushed some whose stability and sanity were already questionable over the edge.

While General Odierno couched his criticisms in bureaucratic language, as people in positions like his are wont to do, he was at least more forthright than Army General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  He insisted, "It is not the war that caused this". 

Oh, really?

So you mean to tell us that war doesn't hype up a military culture based on male domination enforced by violence?  Or that the promotions many female enlistees and officers have earned couldn't have stirred up the resentment of male recruits with borderline personalities?

I also can't help but to feel that in our invasion of Iraq, and our attempt to do the same in Afghanistan, our "enemies"--which is to say, anyone who is or seems as if he or she could be from those countries or any that surround them--have been demonized and even dehumanized in ways that our foes in previous wars never were.  Some of that had to do with the events of 11 September 2011, to be sure. But I think there's also some pure-and-simple bigotry at play:  Germans, Russians and even Japanese never seemed to evoke the visceral hatred too many of my compatriots express at the mere thought of someone who's Middle Eastern or Muslim.

And, of course, when you look closely at racism--or, for that matter, any other form of bigotry--the object of one's hatred is always seen as someone to be sexually subjugated. That is the reason why racism and other kinds of hatred are so intertwined with sexism, homophobia and transphobia.  It's also the reason why there are women--particularly in the ranks of officers--who have behaved just as badly as men:  They know that to survive in such an atmosphere of male domination and repression, the have to behave like such men. 

In brief, as long as there is war--especially if the same people are deployed over and over again to fight it--some of those people will turn on each other.  And, in an atmosphere of brutality and domination, sex will be one of the weapons.

After 9.11: Riding Without The Guys

Now, two days after the anniversary of 9.11, I'm thinking about how that day changed my cycling life.  I'm not going to talk about how it changed my life because that's way beyond the scope of this blog, much less this post.

None of the cycling partners I had at that time in my life are cycling partners now.  In fact, most of them dropped out of my life, or I dropped out of theirs, not long after that time. 

I'm thinking in particular of someone we used to call "Crazy Ray."  I met him back when I was an active off-roader; later, he, a few other guys and I did road rides.  

He always seemed to be riding the line between physical courage and insanity.  One of the things I prized most about my pre-transition life was his respect.  When we pedaled through the trails--and sometimes off the trails--in the Catskills and in Pennsylvania and Vermont, I didn't do all of the jumps or other stunts he did.  And I didn't barrel down hills with the abandon he did.  But I was in really good shape in those days, and I could keep up with him in every other aspect of our rides.  None of the other guys in our "crew" could say that--not even the ones who were a decade or more younger.  He noticed that.

But, he once told me, the real reason he respected me was that I wasn't a "bikehead." And, he said, he admired the fact that I have the sort of education and do the kind of work I do.  That, I thought, was interesting, as he seemed satisfied with his work, and was certainly earning a lot more money than I was.  But, he said,  there were a lot of things he wished he learned, but felt he couldn't.  I suspected that he had a reading or other kind of learning disability; I offered to help him if only to figure out what kind of help he would need and whether I could give it, or refer him to someone who could.  He said he would take me up on it, but he never did.

I think that he felt a bit insecure, not only around me, but around his girlfriend, who was working on a PhD in, if I remember correctly, sociology.  I know that he felt insecure around some of her friends and colleagues, whom he met at parties.   I told him he shouldn't; he actually sustained thought and expressed himself well.  "But," he said, "I know I can do better."

I'm sure he could have done "better."  Maybe he has. I haven't heard from him since about two weeks after 9.11.   

We had our last phone conversation in the early hours of one morning that was, as I recall, chilly for the time of year.  Actually, he called me and cried.  That wasn't like him.  "Ray, whatever it is, you know I'm cool with it."

"It's not like that, he sobbed."  I heard other voices, and machines, in the background.

"Where are you?"

"I'm at the World Trade Center."

"What are you doing there?"

He explained that he'd gone there to help with the rescue and recovery.  His metalworking skills, which he gained from his work as a plumber, were needed.  So, as soon as it was possible to ride his bike there--a couple of days after the planes hit the towers--he went to help.  That was more than a week before our phone conversation; he had been at the site around-the-clock ever since.  And, as you can imagine, he had gotten almost no sleep during those long nights.

"Why don't you go home, see your girl?"

"I can't.  They need me."

"But you've been there nonstop.  Nobody can ask more of you than you've already done."

"Yeah, but..."

"But nothing. You can't take care of anybody else if you don't take care of you."

"All right.  Maybe tomorrow I'll go home, for the day."

"Would you like for me to bring you anything?"

"No, Sarah will do that for me.  But thanks..."  He was crying again.

I never heard from him again.  Nor did I hear from any of the rest of our "crew."  I know that at least one other was working at the World Trade Center site in those days after the attack.  

That fall and into the winter (which was one of the mildest I can recall), I rode, almost always by myself.  I didn't mind that; actually, I was trying to make sense of a few things--or, more accurately, some things made perfect sense and I was trying to deal with them.  

Most of them related in one way or another to the gender transition I would undertake.  Tammy realized that I was headed for it and there was no way to stop it; when I offered to live the rest of my life as Nick, she said, "No, you can't do it just for me. In fact, you can't do it at all."  

9.11 didn't cause me to re-evaluate my life or undertake my transition.  However, less than two months before that day, I had the experience that caused me to realize that I could no longer live in this world as a man.  I had always known myself as female, but I spent more than forty years trying to live otherwise.  Just a few weeks before 9.11, I realized that I simply could no longer pretend.    And, just after 9.11, I found myself thinking about the people who died that day, and how many of them had unrealized dreams and unfulfilled lives of one sort or another.  I realized that had I been in one of those towers, I would have had the "M" on my death certificate.

And so I embarked upon my transition.  However, the transition didn't entail only what I did consciously and willfully.  It also involved those parts of my life from which I passed, or that passed from me.  And it, like 9.11, would change my cycling life as well as the rest of my life.

Acting Like It's 9/10

I called Mom and Dad last night to wish them a happy anniversary.  My father asked whether I was going to the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center.  I said I was thinking about it.  But not long after talking to him, I decided against it.  For one thing, I didn't lose anyone that day nine years ago.  So I really didn't know what I could offer anyone by being there.  Some might say "solidarity," but  I'm not so sure that I am capable of even that.  Empathy, perhaps, at least to some degree:  I have endured grief, however different it may be from theirs.  Then again, anyone of my age who's lived anything resembling a real life could say the same thing.


And, truth be told, it looked as if the World Trade Center was going to be an arena for the battle between those who don't want to see a mosque built there and those who see building it as a matter of liberty.  In the former camp are some lunatic pastor who threatened to tell his congregation to burn copies of the Qu'ran.  Just what the world needs right now...


But even more disturbing, to me, are those who would profit from such a fight, which further victimizes the victims' families to the point that they can be nothing but victims when they are prompted to talk about their victimization by members of the media horde--and, worse, when politicians are using the victimhood of the victims' families to further their own careers, or to revive moribund campaigns.  Now, I'm not a fan of politicians generally, but I see them as particularly grotesque when they show up in just the place and time that will allow them to benefit from other people's grief.


And their speeches--they're never about the people.  They're about some abstraction or another.  Actually, that's not quite accurate.  When something is abstract, some people have more or less clear ideas of what it is, or at least what it represents.  But if you ask most people what "liberty," "terror" or "triumph" mean, they probably couldn't even begin to hazard a guest.  It's not that all of those people are stupid.  They simply are hearing what they've heard all of their lives and repeating it.


Lots of people get through life that way.  And they "get along" with others to the degree that they simply relay what they hear.  That's what allows them to talk about a "war on terrorism" and to think that "fighting" it has something to do with "liberty," "justice" or  being an "American."


Mind you, they are saying things that meant something at one time, and probably still have meaning.  But they no longer have any idea of what those meanings are.  "Muslim" thus becomes a nationality or ethnicity rather than a religion and "radical" means whatever doesn't like or agree with you.


And, in that schemata, someone's identity becomes his or her destiny, and having a capacity for something means being an automaton that can't help but to do whatever it is one has the capacity for doing.  Thus, if you do a good job of teaching a class, they think you're "born to" be an academic, and they try to tell you that they "can't see" you "doing anything else"--provided, of course, that your doing that thing doesn't challenge them in any way.  Likewise, if you care about something that you believe in more than your life itself, you are automatically seen as someone who will die--and cause others to die--for your beliefs.


What I've just described not only precludes any ability to actually think (as opposed to simply making intellectual gestures), it also prevents empathy.  And, even children who don't know the word "empathy" can see its absence when some authority figure is "talking at" them.


That is exactly what I feel every day on my regular job.  There, I am seen as someone who is bound to act in certain ways because I have undergone a gender transition and the surgery.  I really try to be something more than that, but I am given a hard time because I don't fit into notions they have about transsexual people.


And they are the ones who tell you that they're not treating you with prejudice against who you are, and would have you believe that none of their colleagues are, either.  Some of them go to great lengths to make you believe that they understand how you feel--that they "understand" you--whatever that means to them.


In other words, they do exactly what I didn't want to do today:  to display unearned emotions and to appropriate your right to be heard.  And, after silencing you, they'll use you for their purposes--whether you're a tennis player, trannie,  or someone else.  Those purposes are always encoded in some vaguely abstract term:  As the people who act is if it's 9/10, or if they want time to revert to that date,  talk about "liberty" and "war"s against "terrorism" and such, education administrators act as they do in the name of eliminating "disruptions" and doing things "for your own good."  Those administrators no more know you than those who want to "bring back America" know a Muslim or a "terrorist." 


In brief, there is nothing more cynical--and there are very few things I detest more--than exploiting someone's victimhood and grief.

What Did I Teach Today?

During this Winter Recess at the college, I am teaching a business writing class. There are fourteen students. Two took other classes with me during the fall and another was in a class of mine two years ago. Then there's another student who, while he has never taken a class with me, seems as if he's one of my students. And I'm not the only faculty member who feels that way about him. Now, as he's about to embark on his final semester at the college, I'm actually teaching him.

So far I'm liking the class: It's small, the students seem receptive and the course will be an intense experience. I know that because I've taught winter session and short summer session courses. Each lasts about three and a half weeks, so every day is like a week of the regular semester.

Anyway...Today we were discussing some of the "do's and don't's" of writing a cover letter for a job application. Somehow the subject of whether to mention church memberships came up. I told students they should mention such things in a resume or cover letter only if they're relevant to the position or the organization. The same thing for organizations that have to do with race, ethnicity or politics: You don't mention them unless they have to do with the requirements of the job or organization. "And they're not allowed to ask about those things in an interview," I said.

A few jaws slackened. I could tell that one woman had been asked about such things during an interview; the others came from other countries where laws against such questioning don't exist. I turned to one student, a Bengali woman, and said, "You don't want to announce that you're Muslim unless you're applying for a job in a mosque."

"A lot of people assume that I'm one," responded a male Hindu student from India. Then I talked a bit about some of the things that happened in the days just after 9/11/01, when people were harassed and beaten because someone thought they were Muslim or Middle Eastern. That happened to a taxi driver just three blocks from where I was living at the time: A group of men surrounded his cab when he stopped for a traffic light, pulled him out of the car, and beat him on the pavement. As it turned out, the driver was a Filipino Catholic, if I remember correctly.

"So there's really prejudice out there," commented one student, who works in the college's day care center.

"Yes," I said.

"What do you think, prof?" a young man wondered.

"I know it exists because I've experienced it firsthand."

I could hear that same man breathing. Everyone in the class stared at me. I figured that at least half of that class knew my story, so I told them about the time I went to an old supervisor of mine, who had become the department chair in another college, to ask about working there. It was just before the beginning of the semester, and the department was hiring adjuncts to teach a few newly-opened sections.

When that department chair was a coordinator at the college in which I used to teach, I had nothing but excellent reviews and he praised my work and professionalism. However, when I saw him again, about a year after I'd started living full-time as a woman, he somehow recalled that "there were problems" with me. He said I was "erratic" and that there had been complaints about me.

"Well, I never heard about them then. Why are you bringing them up now? And, as coordinator, you wouldn't have dealt with them."

"And your reviews were very inconsistent."

"Who told you that?"

"I can't talk about that."

When I finished telling the story, I could feel the eyes upon me. Then, one of the students I had last semester said, "Well, at least we have you here."

For a moment, I couldn't say anything. Then, after the student who works in the day care center gave me a "thumbs-up," I implored the students to remember, if nothing else, that trying to "fit in" or imitate those who have power does not work if you do not have the privilege they have. "All you can do is to be your absolute best self, whatever that is. Know what you are, and be the best of that you can be."

Don't ask me where that came from, much less whether it was the right thing to tell them. But, really, it was all I could say. I'm not sure what, if anything, I taught the students in that exchange. But it was all I could offer before we got on to the business of the rest of the day's class session.