everybody so how many people do you
think how many women do you think fought
in our most recent wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan numbers 12 somebody said now
a hundred try like 400,000 okay how many
of you can name one woman who fought in
Iraq and Afghanistan you see one hand
maybe two or three lights are bright
it’s surprising to me how few people
know the stories of women have fought in
Iraq and Afghanistan
maybe people remember Jessica Lynch
that’s the only one that anyone ever
registers now let me give you a few
names of male soldiers Chris Kyle no
that guy America we brought the book
American sniper that was made in a movie
by Clint Eastwood what about marcus
luttrell who wrote the book lone
survivor that was also made into a
hugely successful movie or beau Bergdahl
who was featured in serial the serial
podcast recently or say a guy named Eric
Greitens is our governor Jason Kander
who ran against him David Petraeus I
could go on and on I mean you guys know
these guys right well why do you know
them and not the women who fought in
Iraq one reason is that we have a
certain myth for what a soldier’s
supposed to be
that’s in part created by Hollywood that
is and I’ve defined that myth as being
white male stoic and heroic that
certainly fits Chris Kyle here’s another
sort of definition of that myth that
comes from a Missouri born writer Rick
åkesson Rick åkesson wrote I had long
believed that the extravagant stress of
combat is a great revealer of character
disclosing a man’s elemental traits in
the way a prism refracts light to reveal
the
spectrum from book called in the company
of soldiers that was mostly about David
Petraeus there’s some interesting things
about this quote first of all I was a
reporter in Iraq and it was my
experience that combat was not a great
revealer of character it was a destroyer
of character it did not reveal your
inner prison was the thing that you
wanted to avoid if you possibly could
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 myth
they don’t come to join the military
because they want to become a man in 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 treat women who were
in the military particularly during the
2003 to 2015 let’s say and I’m gonna
tell you some stories about that based
on the women who I interviewed for my
novel too good lieutenant which has a
lead female character Jen McDonough I
met in Iraq in 2006 Jen was a captain of
a support company she her job was to go
outside the wire and retrieve vehicles
that have been hit by IEDs or had had a
you know driven into a canal or gotten
broken right but going outside the wire
I mean outside this enclosure of these
very large bases that we had into the
Iraqi countryside which was in 2006 very
dangerous
there were IDs all over the roads these
could go off whenever you when you
whenever you drove by the time that I
was embedded with lost 20 soldiers over
a period of four months so Jen would go
out driving this thing called a Hercules
which is a vehicle that I think is
really cool and it’s a size of a tank
and it could tow an m1 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 not just desert
trying to retrieve a thing called a
buffalo it’s a big big vehicle like a
phone truck and she hooked up the cable
that you can see and to the back axle
the Buffalo started towing the axle came
off
then her Hercules got stuck in the mud
of this field she called in another
Hercules tried to tried to tow it out
again that Hercules got stuck she called
in a quick reaction force of the
infantry guys the really tough guys they
came in they were gonna rescue her they
got stuck she her soldiers were trolling
the area two of them stepped on a
500-pound bomb they were blown straight
up in the air miraculously survived she
met have act him out one of her Humvees
was hit by an iid flipped over badly
injured the gunner who was standing in a
on top of it
he had to be medevacked out she called
in a floating bridge there was like this
muddy field then the canal then a paved
road and he had to get all the vehicles
over to the Pedro’s who needed a bridge
called Ana bridge the guy the guy who
brought the bridge drove into the canal
they had to get another bridge it was a
five day mission okay she was under fire
for most of it it turned out this field
was heavily mined she got all of these
things out of this field didn’t lose a
single soldier after telling me this
story which takes her like an hour to
tell so we didn’t have time for the
whole thing
she said to me the hardest thing about
being in Iraq is that I don’t have
anyone to talk to what does she mean by
that what she meant was there were no
women in her battalion which was an
infantry battalion she’d been attached
to it there were no women in a in a
equal or higher authority position to
her she couldn’t talk to people express
doubt or concern or fear that she could
do the right thing to anyone below her
and she had no one above her that she
could talk to and the reason she didn’t
feel like she could talk to the male
officers was it she felt like she went
in and expressed a doubt or fear or
concern or wanted reassurance in any way
they would just say that’s just a woman
woman can’t do this job they see her as
a category not a person another example
would be Angela fiddle who oh there’s
the inside of the Hercules by the way
which is
so very cool Angela fiddle who was
graduate of UMKC and she was a former
sergeant in Iraq and here’s how she
describes her greeting when she went to
Fort Hood for the first time Fort Hood
there was a saying that used to hear a
lot there’s only three kinds of women in
the army
[Music]
bitches and lesbians
I’ve been asked which one I want that’s
not an easy thing to have happen to you
when you walk into your workplace
environment another example of this
would be Stacy Moore who was a major
when I met her but she was a lieutenant
in Iraq you ran convoys she had a
platoon sergeant who wouldn’t fit caught
carry out her order so platoon sergeants
very important person for a lieutenant
he’s the person who’s the conduit
between the lieutenant and the enlisted
soldiers in that platoon tun sergeant
has to carry out through the tenants
orders but he didn’t and he also would
sort of follow her around looming over
her in the office like a certain
presidential candidate did during the
debates with a female candidate while
back she couldn’t get him to stop this
so what she did was wrestle him pin him
get his head between her knees and start
pulling on his ears until he said that
he would do what she 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 of the stoic heroic male soldier
right that is why we don’t see these
movies but it also means that there are
things that we can learn from women in
the military they have a special place
in a special role they are outsiders to
that structure and because they’re
outsiders to that male-dominated
structure 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
are
not necessarily but most male soldiers
that the 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
are 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 based in Kansas City with a
couple professors from kayuu and they
studied over a hundred Special Forces
troops men and women talking to them
about what it was like to integrate
women into a male-dominated
organizational structure like that their
findings were very similar to my own I
mean there was one woman who said my
first you know deployment was terrible I
was treated like an inhuman I’d be
sitting there you know eating dinner
with my food right in front of me and
somebody would knock it to the ground
and say pick it up bitch if you’re the
only woman in that environment there’s
that’s a difficult situation to deal
with that kind of overt aggression I
don’t think I’m trying to give these
examples I don’t think you understand
how overt that aggression was one of the
study had several interesting
conclusions one was that women when they
got army training could 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
broken vehicles from outside the wire
they also discovered however that
confidence in and of itself and training
was not enough to overcome structural
obstacles that your organization put in
your way what are examples of those
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 Gen McDonough in 2006 what
she was doing was not defined as combat
every job that 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 support troops
didn’t have
quote combat rules but that’s only a
definition right because support troops
given the story I just told you we’re
engaged in combat okay that’s a
structural impediment to advancement
labels my 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 or the
civilian affairs officer it’s always the
female medic or 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
many times do we say hey look at that
female cop or that female surgeon or
female newscaster or female presidential
candidate right by putting that modifier
there we emphasize the fact that the
structure that that person is in is a
part of is gendered away from them right
it’s for a different gender than them
also those kinds of stereotypes lead to
differences in the way that jobs get
assigned for instance Angela fiddle wood
was trained to do all kinds of stuff
that was typically male job oriented
like you know mechanical stuff unloading
heavy stuff whatever she when she ever
she would volunteer for a job that was
male that would be given instead
somebody she’ll be passed over to be
given to a guy it 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 in the
army and it exists in civilian life as
well right
the final thing that’s important to
remember is that that the study found
was that the women like Jen McDonough
Stacy Moore whose picture you can see an
Angela fiddle instead of blaming or
understanding that that their work
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 good enough I didn’t try hard
enough
right what we need to do is turn our
gaze from the individual whose
being disadvantaged by the structure
that they’re in to the structure itself
okay how do we do that I would say we do
it through narrative I’m biased because
I’m a person who makes narratives but
almost all the women that I spoke with
not almost all all of the women that I
spoke with who were in the military when
I was interviewing people for the good
lieutenant said we want stories about us
why doesn’t anybody make a movie about
us
why doesn’t anybody write books about us
how come nobody knows about us we have a
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 the larger public when
they experience those narratives have
empathy for the kinds of problems that
I’m talking about right and this kind of
empathy is universal the individual
who’s in a structure that disadvantages
them isn’t just something that happens
in the military it happens all across
our country in the world right and those
narratives teach us how to escape that
and secondly the the studies suggested
that women who were in an organization
like that need to talk to each other
right so when they conducted these
interviews Oh female soldier would say
hey this happened to me another won’t
say oh that happened to me two and a
third would say yeah I had that happen
right and then they would realize though
it wasn’t their fault this problem it
was a problem that was common and part
of their structure okay
the good news is that these women who
fought in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003
and on have changed the military and if
they can change the military then any
organization can be changed okay women
are allowed in combat roles now as of
December 2015 that’s because of the way
these women performed and fought in the
field during the years before that Jen
McDonough is now a lieutenant colonel
that means she’s a battalion commander
that means that she will be there for
some young female lieutenant to talk to
in the future Stacy Moore his that was
rose to the rank of major and is now at
the RAND Corporation
Angella fiddle got her degree from UMKC
got a law degree from kayuu and is now a
practicing lawyer these women are going
to change the way that we think about
the military and they’re 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 would
be Tammy Duckworth who lost both of her
legs in the helicopter crash in Iraq and
is now just recently was elected to the
Senate in Illinois you should look her
up 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 call 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 Moore
and give her the last word it’s not
necessary for us to be able to interact
with females and female civilians I
think it’s important for us to show
cultures who are perhaps a less
accepting of women in leadership roles
or accepting of women participating in
civil society to show them that women
are able to do these things it’s a way
for us to kind of exercise and soft
diplomatic powers and show the people
that were working with that our nation
is strong because we use all of the
talents of all of our people thank you
very much
[Applause]
think how many women do you think fought
in our most recent wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan numbers 12 somebody said now
a hundred try like 400,000 okay how many
of you can name one woman who fought in
Iraq and Afghanistan you see one hand
maybe two or three lights are bright
it’s surprising to me how few people
know the stories of women have fought in
Iraq and Afghanistan
maybe people remember Jessica Lynch
that’s the only one that anyone ever
registers now let me give you a few
names of male soldiers Chris Kyle no
that guy America we brought the book
American sniper that was made in a movie
by Clint Eastwood what about marcus
luttrell who wrote the book lone
survivor that was also made into a
hugely successful movie or beau Bergdahl
who was featured in serial the serial
podcast recently or say a guy named Eric
Greitens is our governor Jason Kander
who ran against him David Petraeus I
could go on and on I mean you guys know
these guys right well why do you know
them and not the women who fought in
Iraq one reason is that we have a
certain myth for what a soldier’s
supposed to be
that’s in part created by Hollywood that
is and I’ve defined that myth as being
white male stoic and heroic that
certainly fits Chris Kyle here’s another
sort of definition of that myth that
comes from a Missouri born writer Rick
åkesson Rick åkesson wrote I had long
believed that the extravagant stress of
combat is a great revealer of character
disclosing a man’s elemental traits in
the way a prism refracts light to reveal
the
spectrum from book called in the company
of soldiers that was mostly about David
Petraeus there’s some interesting things
about this quote first of all I was a
reporter in Iraq and it was my
experience that combat was not a great
revealer of character it was a destroyer
of character it did not reveal your
inner prison was the thing that you
wanted to avoid if you possibly could
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 myth
they don’t come to join the military
because they want to become a man in 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 treat women who were
in the military particularly during the
2003 to 2015 let’s say and I’m gonna
tell you some stories about that based
on the women who I interviewed for my
novel too good lieutenant which has a
lead female character Jen McDonough I
met in Iraq in 2006 Jen was a captain of
a support company she her job was to go
outside the wire and retrieve vehicles
that have been hit by IEDs or had had a
you know driven into a canal or gotten
broken right but going outside the wire
I mean outside this enclosure of these
very large bases that we had into the
Iraqi countryside which was in 2006 very
dangerous
there were IDs all over the roads these
could go off whenever you when you
whenever you drove by the time that I
was embedded with lost 20 soldiers over
a period of four months so Jen would go
out driving this thing called a Hercules
which is a vehicle that I think is
really cool and it’s a size of a tank
and it could tow an m1 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 not just desert
trying to retrieve a thing called a
buffalo it’s a big big vehicle like a
phone truck and she hooked up the cable
that you can see and to the back axle
the Buffalo started towing the axle came
off
then her Hercules got stuck in the mud
of this field she called in another
Hercules tried to tried to tow it out
again that Hercules got stuck she called
in a quick reaction force of the
infantry guys the really tough guys they
came in they were gonna rescue her they
got stuck she her soldiers were trolling
the area two of them stepped on a
500-pound bomb they were blown straight
up in the air miraculously survived she
met have act him out one of her Humvees
was hit by an iid flipped over badly
injured the gunner who was standing in a
on top of it
he had to be medevacked out she called
in a floating bridge there was like this
muddy field then the canal then a paved
road and he had to get all the vehicles
over to the Pedro’s who needed a bridge
called Ana bridge the guy the guy who
brought the bridge drove into the canal
they had to get another bridge it was a
five day mission okay she was under fire
for most of it it turned out this field
was heavily mined she got all of these
things out of this field didn’t lose a
single soldier after telling me this
story which takes her like an hour to
tell so we didn’t have time for the
whole thing
she said to me the hardest thing about
being in Iraq is that I don’t have
anyone to talk to what does she mean by
that what she meant was there were no
women in her battalion which was an
infantry battalion she’d been attached
to it there were no women in a in a
equal or higher authority position to
her she couldn’t talk to people express
doubt or concern or fear that she could
do the right thing to anyone below her
and she had no one above her that she
could talk to and the reason she didn’t
feel like she could talk to the male
officers was it she felt like she went
in and expressed a doubt or fear or
concern or wanted reassurance in any way
they would just say that’s just a woman
woman can’t do this job they see her as
a category not a person another example
would be Angela fiddle who oh there’s
the inside of the Hercules by the way
which is
so very cool Angela fiddle who was
graduate of UMKC and she was a former
sergeant in Iraq and here’s how she
describes her greeting when she went to
Fort Hood for the first time Fort Hood
there was a saying that used to hear a
lot there’s only three kinds of women in
the army
[Music]
bitches and lesbians
I’ve been asked which one I want that’s
not an easy thing to have happen to you
when you walk into your workplace
environment another example of this
would be Stacy Moore who was a major
when I met her but she was a lieutenant
in Iraq you ran convoys she had a
platoon sergeant who wouldn’t fit caught
carry out her order so platoon sergeants
very important person for a lieutenant
he’s the person who’s the conduit
between the lieutenant and the enlisted
soldiers in that platoon tun sergeant
has to carry out through the tenants
orders but he didn’t and he also would
sort of follow her around looming over
her in the office like a certain
presidential candidate did during the
debates with a female candidate while
back she couldn’t get him to stop this
so what she did was wrestle him pin him
get his head between her knees and start
pulling on his ears until he said that
he would do what she 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 of the stoic heroic male soldier
right that is why we don’t see these
movies but it also means that there are
things that we can learn from women in
the military they have a special place
in a special role they are outsiders to
that structure and because they’re
outsiders to that male-dominated
structure 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
are
not necessarily but most male soldiers
that the 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
are 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 based in Kansas City with a
couple professors from kayuu and they
studied over a hundred Special Forces
troops men and women talking to them
about what it was like to integrate
women into a male-dominated
organizational structure like that their
findings were very similar to my own I
mean there was one woman who said my
first you know deployment was terrible I
was treated like an inhuman I’d be
sitting there you know eating dinner
with my food right in front of me and
somebody would knock it to the ground
and say pick it up bitch if you’re the
only woman in that environment there’s
that’s a difficult situation to deal
with that kind of overt aggression I
don’t think I’m trying to give these
examples I don’t think you understand
how overt that aggression was one of the
study had several interesting
conclusions one was that women when they
got army training could 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
broken vehicles from outside the wire
they also discovered however that
confidence in and of itself and training
was not enough to overcome structural
obstacles that your organization put in
your way what are examples of those
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 Gen McDonough in 2006 what
she was doing was not defined as combat
every job that 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 support troops
didn’t have
quote combat rules but that’s only a
definition right because support troops
given the story I just told you we’re
engaged in combat okay that’s a
structural impediment to advancement
labels my 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 or the
civilian affairs officer it’s always the
female medic or 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
many times do we say hey look at that
female cop or that female surgeon or
female newscaster or female presidential
candidate right by putting that modifier
there we emphasize the fact that the
structure that that person is in is a
part of is gendered away from them right
it’s for a different gender than them
also those kinds of stereotypes lead to
differences in the way that jobs get
assigned for instance Angela fiddle wood
was trained to do all kinds of stuff
that was typically male job oriented
like you know mechanical stuff unloading
heavy stuff whatever she when she ever
she would volunteer for a job that was
male that would be given instead
somebody she’ll be passed over to be
given to a guy it 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 in the
army and it exists in civilian life as
well right
the final thing that’s important to
remember is that that the study found
was that the women like Jen McDonough
Stacy Moore whose picture you can see an
Angela fiddle instead of blaming or
understanding that that their work
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 good enough I didn’t try hard
enough
right what we need to do is turn our
gaze from the individual whose
being disadvantaged by the structure
that they’re in to the structure itself
okay how do we do that I would say we do
it through narrative I’m biased because
I’m a person who makes narratives but
almost all the women that I spoke with
not almost all all of the women that I
spoke with who were in the military when
I was interviewing people for the good
lieutenant said we want stories about us
why doesn’t anybody make a movie about
us
why doesn’t anybody write books about us
how come nobody knows about us we have a
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 the larger public when
they experience those narratives have
empathy for the kinds of problems that
I’m talking about right and this kind of
empathy is universal the individual
who’s in a structure that disadvantages
them isn’t just something that happens
in the military it happens all across
our country in the world right and those
narratives teach us how to escape that
and secondly the the studies suggested
that women who were in an organization
like that need to talk to each other
right so when they conducted these
interviews Oh female soldier would say
hey this happened to me another won’t
say oh that happened to me two and a
third would say yeah I had that happen
right and then they would realize though
it wasn’t their fault this problem it
was a problem that was common and part
of their structure okay
the good news is that these women who
fought in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003
and on have changed the military and if
they can change the military then any
organization can be changed okay women
are allowed in combat roles now as of
December 2015 that’s because of the way
these women performed and fought in the
field during the years before that Jen
McDonough is now a lieutenant colonel
that means she’s a battalion commander
that means that she will be there for
some young female lieutenant to talk to
in the future Stacy Moore his that was
rose to the rank of major and is now at
the RAND Corporation
Angella fiddle got her degree from UMKC
got a law degree from kayuu and is now a
practicing lawyer these women are going
to change the way that we think about
the military and they’re 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 would
be Tammy Duckworth who lost both of her
legs in the helicopter crash in Iraq and
is now just recently was elected to the
Senate in Illinois you should look her
up 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 call 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 Moore
and give her the last word it’s not
necessary for us to be able to interact
with females and female civilians I
think it’s important for us to show
cultures who are perhaps a less
accepting of women in leadership roles
or accepting of women participating in
civil society to show them that women
are able to do these things it’s a way
for us to kind of exercise and soft
diplomatic powers and show the people
that were working with that our nation
is strong because we use all of the
talents of all of our people thank you
very much
[Applause]
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