It took me 10 years after leaving the military to call myself a veteran.
It was an act of reclamation. My enlistment was defined by sexual harassment. More than a decade later, the thinking that caged me then still circulates: Women service members are worth less.
As a Marine, I hemorrhaged my own power. I stayed silent at rape jokes and language that made my skin burn. I worked out until I was a sliver of myself. I ate dinners of three multivitamin gummies and a lemon popped into my water bottle. To be more like the guys, I policed other girls, doubting and distrusting them.
Donald Trump’s choice for Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, seems to be riding out the waves of criticism generated in November when he said that women should not serve in combat roles because they are not as “capable” as men. He pivoted. He recently informed Fox News viewers of his newfound revelation that women in the military are “some of our greatest warriors.”
His initial statements, and his refusal to take responsibility for them, brought back what I heard every day as a Marine: The puerile sexualized teasing, the hard edge behind it and the language that normalized a culture that denigrated and distrusted women. Also familiar: the quick disavowment — “I didn’t mean it” — when called out on it.
When I first saw that the cover of my memoir incorporated red poppies, a flower traditionally associated with sacrifice and death on the battlefield, my blood flooded hot. I felt the ghost of an old shame, the feeling that my experience did not deserve the association.
I did what I normally do when I get these flashes of shame. I closed my computer, called my dog and ran into the snowy mountains above my cabin in Alaska until my head cleared.
I remembered the incredible women with whom I served. Mighty, determined, doing the exact same work as men under the constant stress of quotidian sexism. They deserve recognition as veterans, and I was among them.
As I ran, I felt the familiar dull ache in my right hip, an injury I sustained during my enlistment. Hegseth has disparaged service members who “take advantage” of the government by seeking medical care, an opinion recently repeated by the Economist. Hegseth has also said advocacy groups encourage veterans toward an artificial dependency on government benefits.
This rhetoric is not new. I heard it when I served — that to seek care for any reason less than a Purple Heart was not only weakness but selfishness. As if to claim basic healthcare is to elbow past war heroes. Overtraining fractured a bone in my hip, but the same rhetoric Hegseth perpetuates moved me to truly believe that the moral thing to do was shut up and deal with it.
Have you been shot? I used to scold myself. Have you deployed? Then what are you limping for? Get it together.
Pushing through physical pain felt like the only recourse. I knew what was said about women who sought medical care. Weak and faking it and couldn’t hack it lined the path to treatment.
My hip did heal. Imperfectly, and only after a decade of yoga and backpacking. I was lucky.
To Hegseth I am surely no veteran. I fought no wars. To him, my — incompetent! distracting! — enlistment must be meaningless. The physical pain and the lingering distrust of men, the years it’s taken to be able to breathe in crowds, the restlessness that kept me sleepless for a decade — worth nothing.
Honoring only those whose enlistments take them to the farthest reaches: what a clever, cinematic way to dismiss the experiences of most male and female service members, the majority of whom never see combat.
“We’ve all served with women, and they’re great,” Hegseth said in November, though whether he’ll stand by the statement remains to be seen. “It’s just our institutions don’t have to incentivize that in places where … over human history men are more capable.”
What Hegseth is implying is this: Women shouldn’t be leaders in the military.
Barring women from combat hinders their leadership potential. It’s more than a calculus of promotion. It’s the internal conversation women and men in the military have about whose opinion deserves to matter, whose service deserves respect and whose bodies deserve fair treatment.
About who is even a “veteran” at all.
Comments from people in power, as Hegseth may soon be, normalize, exacerbate and preserve a culture that makes it OK to dismiss and even harm women. If Hegseth bounces back from his sexist commentary, it will be sad proof of the incredible leniency that allows men in power to walk away from damage they’ve caused.
I started calling myself a veteran again for the sake of other young women I served with. The ones in my company who used to greet each other on Monday mornings with, “Make it through the weekend?”
Meaning, did we make it through without rape. Without abuse. Without having to barricade ourselves in a barracks head, texting a guy we trusted, could he please do something about the guy we did not, who would not leave us alone.
We had to laugh. Didn’t want to create drama.
We had to detach. Didn’t want to be those girls — the ones who complained.
The language we use to speak of women seeps through the ranks. Right now, some female private who with all her heart wants to serve her country is being reminded that her enlistment isn’t as important as that of the man next to her. Supposed leaders, who should care about her training, career and retention — to say nothing of her well-being — believe she is critically incompetent.
She is not. Get out of her way.
I said yes to the red poppies. Not for me — for her.
Bailey Williams is the author of “Hollow: A Memoir of my Body in the Marines.”
