In intelligence, we all understood that in a counter-insurgency fight it was important to gain the trust of the people. 🧵
It was becoming increasingly obvious in Afghanistan, that it meant we needed to have women on hand when we busted in the doors of conservative Muslim homes—families who didn’t allow men to look at, much less cordon and search, their women.
But the knot in my stomach grew larger as I approached the infantry guys. What would they think about being forced to take girls into battle with them?
All I’d ever experienced from men at the suggestion that women could do the same things they could was expressions of disgust and denial—
more than one prior-service Candidate at Officer School had confidently declared that the day a woman graduated from Ranger School, they would stand in front of their platoons and eat their rough cloth & velcro Ranger tabs.
Would these guys be married to the idea of their own superiority too? Would they feel the need to 'prove' that they were better than me, by banning me from competing in the first place? Would we even be allowed to contribute, standing as we were amongst the glass ceiling shards?
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