Our Armed Forces

This week I was listening to National Public Radio and a story came on about soldiers who experienced PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). The Army has been throwing out these soldiers with less than honorable discharges for their symptoms, e.g. drug use, instead of recognizing it as the disorder it is and treating it overall. One particularly disturbing quote was from a soldier saying some were strong enough to handle the battle, and others were simply weak. The other disturbing part of this story was that it was cheaper to treat the soldiers this way than providing them with full treatment.

This gave me a chance to consider this as an example of how men are adversely affected by sexism. I can't imagine what it's like fighting in Iraq. My son's father is there as a doctor and it sounds quite stressful for him and he's not even on the battle field. Worrying about your every step and the sounds you heard around you because of IEDs and other activities Iraqi militias might engage in would set the calmest of us on pins and needles for the rest of our lives. To characterize the people who served over there as weak because they experience emotional problems from that experience is insensitive at best, and simply missing the point at its worst. What sort of man would be unaffected by this experience? If we're thinking about the likes of Charles Grainer (remember Abu Graib), then we're in real trouble. He is the sort of emotionally off person I do not want serving in our military.

I've heard the stories of people who return from a tour from Iraq and they have a hard time adjusting to life at home. Their tempers are hair-trigger, they don't know how to resolve conflict if they're not at the other end of a gun, and they are haunted by their battlefield memories. For all of this patriotic ying-yang about supporting the troops, the least we could do is make sure the institution they work for, the military, takes copious amounts of time to listen to them and fully heal from their experiences.

But in a society that decides that men who respond to brutal warfare in these ways are weak, this will not be the pay back for their patriotic duty. Instead they're dismissed as not up to the task, let me repeat, weak. Feminine? Perhaps men need to consider feminism as useful to them as well. Then we'll really understand men's strength.