Being a female soldier isn't all it's cracked up to be, in fact you're lucky to get out of it without some type of scars.
It seemed simple, join the military and you could have a chance at proving yourself outside of some gender stereotype. In basic training, at least one of the drill sergeants was sleeping with a female soldier in our company. When we got to AIT and she threatened to expose what he was doing to the trainees, she ended up going AWOL for fear of repercussions. AIT wasn't much different, a supply NCO who took advantage of the female soldiers in training because of rank and position and using it against them. When a female soldier was raped in AIT, I was there... the soldier was another AIT soldier whose family was well off and it somehow disappeared. The female soldier who cut her wrists and left a trail of blood through our barracks. The female soldier who ran her car into one of the barriers... This is the initial training that female soldiers live and then they get to their first unit.
Fort Hood was a nightmare. It started with a unit not fully formed and unit leadership that seemed to be half-assed. A captain that thought it was acceptable to put his fingers in places they didn't belong and then tried to further it. I was only a PFC, then again so was another soldier that disappeared not that long ago from Fort Hood. No investigations were launched because I didn't speak up. During deployment, two other captains and a SFC spent a little too much time following my activities, but even when mentioned to my senior NCOs, it was laughed off as a joke and ended there. After 15 months, we came back home.
Then it was AIT again to reclass. Somehow I thought if I got away from other female soldiers, I would be seen as less of one. Instead I ended up being physically assaulted by another soldier, one who was supposed to be a friend. During the time at AIT, the MSG and CSM who were supposed to be my senior leadership at Fort Hood insisted on ongoing threats if I continued to try to get transferred out of the unit to be with my husband who was now stationed in Germany.
Germany was my hope at a new start... only to be my downfall. Before I even fully got into the unit there were two SSGs that had a target on me. Everyday was living with berating and belittling about how I was never going to be good enough. I was a new soldier to the MOS and doing my best to learn, but nothing was ever good enough for these two. When deployment came, there was points I couldn't work on aircraft because of the pain meds for my back and one particular SSG would come up just to put me down in front of my soldiers. When I tried to explain I couldn't touch the aircraft because of the meds I was on, he would lock me up in front of my soldiers and yell and scream at me.
Then I was sent back early.... it was enough for me to be on pain meds, but that wasn't a good enough reason for me to not work on the aircraft accordingly to some SSGs. Had I worked on those aircraft and something happened, those lives would have rested on me. I spent ten days at Landstuhl before heading back to my home unit.
Rear detachment 1SG would be my next step. With taking care of soldiers on rear D, came the soldiers who came back early to ETS. A friend of my husband and I's got in a bad situation one night after he came back from deployment early to prepare for ETS. After picking him up, he took advantage of the situation and apparently long suppressed feelings and after attempting to sexually assault me, I kicked him out.
By that point in time, my MEB had started for my back and head injury from my first deployment. Even though my command was supportive of keeping me in, I was broken and just done fighting. I was done trying...
Being a female soldier seems grand, but at what cost... I spent six years trying to prove myself to people that didn't deserve it. I lost more than just my back and head in the process of service, I lost my ability to sleep soundly and to not feel like someone was always watching me. I lost my ability to be me and it's taken a long time to get back to that somewhat. I guess I fight to be seen as a veteran because it goes so far beyond the time in uniform or the deployments, it's still the 'right' that some think rank gives them and the uphill battle that we are still fighting to be seen as equals.
