The Marine Corps women had not been properly trained for the gender-integration study. They had gone through Fourth Battalion before the standards were raised there. I have no doubt that women who have gone through boot camp with high expectations from their leadership can perform well in gender-integrated units. We showed in just one year of changes at Fourth Battalion that women can do exactly the things that the Marine Corps used their study to prove women cannot do.
I'm not the only one who believes the gender-integration study was meant to fail. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus—the civilian in charge of both the Navy and the Marine Corps—told NPR's Morning Edition that because male Marines are biased against female Marines, the outcome of the study was “almost presupposed.”3
In other words, if you have low expectations, you'll meet them.
Dear Lieutenant Colonel Germano,
Ma'am, your courage is an inspiration to me. My career is nearing its end, but I am proud to have spent the last two decades of my life in an organization populated by people like you. My Aunt Roslyn is the CEO of the Dallas Women's Foundation and one of the great true feminists of her generation. I share articles I see about you with her every chance I get.
Best of luck, Ma'am. Our Corps needs more like you!
Sincerely and Respectfully,
GySgt Colin D. Davis
Communications Maintenance Chief
GCSS Using Unit Account Manager
5th ANGLICO
When I was a kid, it never occurred to me that, because I was a girl, people expected less of me.
I never understood boundaries. As a toddler, I'd wobble my way out of the house, through the yard, down the sidewalk, and to the neighbor's mailbox, where I would promptly commence ripping letters to shreds. Too many times, my mortified mother suffered through another apology at the Garrisons’ house for my destructive interest in their correspondence. Fortunately, they never pressed charges.
As I grew older, I continued to simultaneously amuse and frustrate my mom and dad by getting up before they did, jumping onto my bike, and playing in the woods all day. As dusk settled and the streetlights came on in the neighborhood, their calls for me to come home echoed from so far away. My imagination had taken me back centuries to build forts with my friends in the woods.
Being a girl never limited me, and I never shied away from a good challenge.
It's like the time I wrestled an alligator named Mona.
Stick with me here.
About a year after my mom died, Joe and I took my dad to Disneyworld. Joe and I were close to my parents, and my mom's sudden death from a second round of breast cancer devastated us all. When the dreaded holidays rolled around, we didn't want to spend Christmas at home without my mom. Momma Bear, my affectionate name for her, had always held the family—and all of the holidays, schedules, and households—together. My parents had been married for thirty years when she died. We all worried that, without her, we wouldn't know how to function as a family. Since my dad had always wanted to go to Disneyworld, we figured it would be a good way to spend time together away from home and the many memories of my mom's illness and death.
By the last day in Florida, the thought of another amusement park ride or Disney tune left us feeling as if the world were perhaps too small, after all. As a joke, I suggested that we go to Gator World or Gator Land or Gator Planet or something.
“This is it,” I said. “I'm going to wrestle me an alligator.”
Unfortunately, I said it out loud. I was kidding, but we got there, and—of course!—you could buy tickets to wrestle an alligator. Then it became a thing—a dare, almost. “Kate's going to wrestle an alligator,” all 5’4” and 115 pounds of me. And, of course, because I said it, I had to do it.
So we bought a ticket. My dad and Joe and I were up in the stands at Gator Galaxy when they announced that anyone with a ticket to wrestle an alligator should come down into the arena. I acted totally excited—clapping my hands and bouncing in my seat—but in my head, I thought, “Once again, Germano, you have gone and gotten yourself into something just to prove a point.” As I ran down the bleachers—still excited!—I dreaded seeing the beast. I thought back to that National Geographic special in which I learned that alligators can travel up to fifty miles per hour in a sprint, and, in the water, they use their tails to jump up five to six feet in the air. But, as with most challenges, I figured I would look that gator straight in the eye and give him a what for. “And for what?” I asked myself as I slowed down a bit near the bottom of the bleachers. No boundaries. Man or woman, wrestling reptiles isn't the best of plans. I could picture the headline, “Maryland Woman…” As I jumped off the bleachers and headed out into the arena, I smiled and laughed at my guys, my ticket all sweaty in my palm like I was five years old again.
And then I looked around. There was nothing but six- and seven-year-old kids in line with me.
Am I the only adult who is going to wrestle an alligator?
But I couldn't back out, because I had my ticket, and I felt somehow obligated to my dad and Joe—even if in the back of my mind I'm wondering if they didn't know that I was going to end up in an alligator pit with children.
Now, to a first-grader, Mona was a giant. Huge and scary.
To me, she looked like something out of a glass menagerie. Small and frail. She measured probably six feet from tip
