"And, on deployment, what were my options really, for friends, for companions? For anyone who would listen to me? I had almost no overlap in my day to hang out with other women, & we had to worry about being accused as 'dykes'
The 'good guys' wouldn’t dare to be my friend—it was too dangerous.
Instead of leaders caring about taking care of their women, General Order one criminalized us for having vaginas—from day 0 of boots on the ground, a woman on the team became the biggest threat, not the asset she could be.
If I found a friend, a confidante, someone who would listen to me for a bit, who could maybe help me through all the complicated emotions of spending a year at war, of being a woman in this impossible world, he’d get pulled aside and told to watch out.
Being near me was bad for a career. I’d become radioactive.
And so it happened that the only time I could get human conversation, human understanding, human connection, was with men who were already willing to risk their careers—the men who wanted me naked. And as broken as I was, what did that matter?"
"But now it felt like it was killing me, like they were slowly tearing off my skin along with my clothes, and I didn’t have anything worth while on the inside. I truly wondered if I was light enough to just float off that tower and out of this world all together."
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