Within a few minutes of receiving that email, shockingly, Colonel Haas showed up at my battalion. When he pulled up, I was standing outside by the steps to the entrance of the battalion, getting ready to get into my golf cart to go observe training.
I may have mentioned before that Colonel Haas came to my battalion only exceedingly rarely. I think he was scared I was going to accuse him of causing stress that caused the symptoms to flare up.
We all have our own leadership styles, but I like to think that if I found out one of my Marines were sick, I would start with, “Oh my gosh. What can I do to help? Let's figure out a plan to make this easier for you.”
As I stood by my golf cart, he started by demanding to know what my symptoms were, what was wrong with me, and what my doctor had said.
“Sir, I have MS,” I told him. “I've had it since 2001. It comes and goes, and that's all there is to it.”
He looked fully panicked and acted as if he didn't believe me—like I was making it up to get back at him. I definitely did not sense empathy, and he did not ask if I was okay or if there was anything he could do to help.
If he had known me at all, he would have known I would never have blamed him for something like that. Even if the stress contributed to my symptoms, it's not my style to place blame like that. And he should have known that I wouldn't want to make a big deal about it. I wanted to deal with it and move on, just as I had done for the previous fourteen years.
What I didn't fully understand at that point was that my MS symptoms were the least of my worries.
The bottom of my world was getting ready to fall out.
I tried to teach our women not to be victims.
I was obviously all about girl power and equality and meeting and beating standards, but in the Marine Corps there are a lot of opportunities to get hurt, too.
Let me be explicit: The rapist is always wrong.
Rape and sexual harassment are not women's problems: They're men's problems. Men should know that there are consequences to abusive behavior, and they should know that we'll follow through after an accusation of sexual assault or harassment. Women do not invite rape by being flirtatious or drunk, or by wearing a short skirt or being cute, or for being known to have had sex with other men.
Most male Marines are pretty great—guys I trust with my life, literally. But in a unit made up of a majority of men, there is a strong likelihood that one or more of them has a history of violence toward women. That's all it takes. In that recent RAND report, 27 percent of female Marines reported sexual harassment at work.1 Veterans Affairs reports that one out of five women who go to VA clinics for healthcare screen positive for military sexual trauma.2 A 2015 American Psychological Association report found that as many as 33 percent of women in the military suffer through rape or attempted rape, but less than 15 percent of them report the assault.3 We also know that rape victims tend to be victimized over and over again, and that's because creepy guys can spot them. In the military, if you've reported a sexual assault and no one helps you, you're unlikely to report it the next time it happens. The abusers know that—they know they can victimize you and that you won't report it, because you don't believe anyone will help you.
Purely because of the proportion of men to women, there are opportunities for men to assault women—which, again, is a men's issue and something that's been addressed in civilian business culture. But the ratio of men to women is not the only factor. We have a high number of young people living in close quarters. They often drink to excess to relieve stress or simply because they're twenty years old. There is, without a doubt, a machismo culture that contributes to the service's high rates of assault and harassment. The Marine Corps trains men and women about sexual harassment and sexual assault, but often that training is laughed off. Or it consists of PowerPoint slides that everybody sleeps through. And women don't always support each other. As I talked about before, most women Marines try to be “one of the guys.” Often, women are the least supportive of other women when it comes to allegations of sexual assault, because they are afraid that their association with the alleged victim will impact their ability to fit in. Sometimes the accused is a well-liked team player, and we tend not to want to be seen as “men haters,” so we support the accused man instead of the female who has been victimized.
This lack of support for each other is bullshit, but it exists.
I believe we could stop sexual assault and harassment with mentoring—even if that mentoring comes from veterans—and with officers, especially women, who model supportive behavior. If your culture is to lift each other up, and there's a trusted camaraderie, then women will feel more comfortable talking to each other and reporting harassment and assaults.
In my policy statement on sexual harassment and assault, I told my Marines exactly this: “The act of a sexual assault is equal to a violation of human rights. Every member of this battalion must do whatever we can to safeguard the human dignity of our recruits and our subordinates. As Marines, we deploy worldwide in order to protect men and women who are unable to protect themselves. Why would we tolerate an assault within our own ranks?”
And I talked to my recruits about
