If I had known in advance, I would never have done it. I pride myself on giving money to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), and I treat my chickens like children. (The chickens would not approve of Mona.) I cry every time one of those Sarah McLachlan commercials about saving the animals comes on TV, for Pete's sake. But it was the point. I had committed myself to wrestling an alligator, and I couldn't back down.
Unbeknownst to the people in the stands, the keeper had bound Mona's mouth shut with electrical tape. And unbeknownst to me, you didn't really wrestle Mona so much as just sort of sit on her shoulders—one leg on each side of her head—for pictures. So I walked up to Mona, and then I sat on Mona, trying to be as gentle as possible.
Oomph.
I heard her say it: “Oomph.”
The whole thing was just sad, and, again, I wish I had known going in that the activity should be limited to kids who weigh fifty pounds or less—or, more likely, not allowed at all.
But I had different expectations when the idea to conquer one of the world's fiercest predators struck me. I was going to wrestle me an alligator and prove that I was a big-and-strong Marine. It would be a contest of will and wile, and I would risk life and limb.
And then it turned out that a six-year-old could handle Mona just as easily as I could, and that suddenly diminished my achievement.
I'm teasing a bit, of course, but this is how many Marines—or many men—see women. If I'm a big, strong dude, and I can wrestle an alligator, or, you know, make it through the Infantry Officer's Course, but then a woman comes along and does it, then somehow that makes me less of a real dude. If a woman can do it, then it's probably not as manly a thing to do as I thought. So maybe I'll come up with reasons for why she was able to make it: They taped its jaws shut, or they gave her a head start. We heard many men say this about the first two women who graduated from the Army's Ranger School.
In fact, it wasn't until after I joined the Marine Corps that I realized that lowered expectations for women in the military was even a thing. It hit me hard and quickly. As confident as I had been as a kid, after I joined the service, I too fell prey to the belief that women aren't as good at certain things as men are.
Shortly after I earned my commission, or my military appointment as an officer, I questioned whether I was good enough to be a Marine. It started when I got to the Basic School (or TBS), the six-month-long course of instruction all commissioned officers in the Marine Corps must successfully complete before being assigned their military occupational specialties—jobs—and moving on to their first duty stations. It turned out to be way different from Officer Candidates School, which I loved. Officer Candidates School was fun and funny, and we did ridiculous things like running with telephone poles or wading through a god-awful, stinky creek called “the Quigley” with our weapons and all of our gear. (OCS is what officers do instead of boot camp.)
But soon after I got to TBS, I realized that in everything from physical fitness to land navigation, people believed female lieutenants lacked the strength and capabilities of the male lieutenants. I started to believe it, too. It's all about stereotypes, as well as the expectations those stereotypes breed—just like when we tell schoolgirls that boys are better in math and science, and then, suddenly, the girls don't perform as well as the boys.
In the Marine Corps, the perception that women can't do some things as well as men quickly becomes reality, because of how we conduct entry-level training. For officers, it starts with little comments here and there at TBS: “Stay with your teams—make sure the ‘females’ make it over the walls in the obstacle course.” “We're running fast this morning, so the women will be falling out.” “Listen, I don't care if you ace this land-nav course—women never do; I just need you to pass the damned thing.”
Land navigation, land nav, is basically the ability to look at a map, figure out coordinates for longitude and latitude, and use a compass to find a path to a location plotted on the map. It is an incredibly important skill to have when your unit drops you off in the middle of nowhere in combat and you have to lead your Marines to an objective. Since we won't always be able to rely on satellite navigation, all of the services still teach map reading and navigation using a compass.
I will never forget my first trip out to the woods with my map and compass. Oh man—I was lost! I couldn't have found the nearest stream if I fell out of a boat. Big ol’ BOLO. At the time, it didn't occur to me that perhaps I wasn't as capable as my male peers because most of them had grown up navigating with maps. Little boys do that in Boy Scouts, along with learning how to tie knots and run through obstacle courses. Little girls tend to earn sewing and baking badges, which reinforces the idea that one sex is better at certain skills than the other. Land nav was the first time I had ever failed at anything, and it blew my confidence. It didn't help that I was issued a faulty compass, which I realized later. Unfortunately, even though he saw me struggling and doubting myself, my captain never sat me down and said, “Germano, get your head out of your ass. You can do this, and I will show you how.”
He simply assumed I failed because I'm a woman.
After I failed land navigation, I had to spend every Saturday in the
