As a war veteran, I didn't appoint anyone to speak for me regarding Caitlyn Jenner's transition. Certainly not civilians who never spent a day in uniform themselves.
For the past fourteen years I've put up with exploitation as a political football--I also had family on a high floor on 9/11. Two weeks ago I mentioned why I joined the war and the conversation stalled because someone who was trying to be polite presumed all sorts of political opinions about me that I never held.
Seriously, that person meant well, but she had heard so many things said on behalf of the 9/11 families instead of by us that she thought she was talking to a completely different person.
For example, I don't mind if someone wants to build a mosque at ground zero. This is a free country; the First Amendment applies to everybody. Full stop. What I do care about is preventing another ground zero from happening. The most efficient way to do that is to demonstrate that the Americans are too nice to want to kill. That isn't starry eyed idealism; quite the opposite. One of the things you learn about yourself after you exclaim, "Those bastards nearly killed my family" is you're either the sort of person who picks up a gun and does something about it or you're not. It's a type of self-knowledge I hope you never need to acquire. So let's be clear: those bastards are the individuals who took over an airplane and flew it into a building where my uncle was having a morning meeting with his boss, not the billion or so other people who happen to share a religion.
There are a limited number of things that can radicalize people. Feeling a need to defend your family is one of them; discriminatory treatment is another. So if someone vandalizes the local mosque, drive over and offer to help with the cleanup. Be a good neighbor.
You may disagree; you're free to do so. Just don't pretend you're speaking for me because you're not.
You don't want a motivated enemy. I was volunteering to stand double my rotation of armed watches during the most dangerous part of deployment. I rarely pray, but there were nights when I looked up and asked, "If anybody has to use this weapon please let it be me and not some kid who's just trying to earn money for college." Most of the people in my division were on their first job after high school. When we needed to clean up dead body remains I volunteered so the kids wouldn't have to. That was my frame of mind at the time. If I had been male there would have been more opportunity to seek danger and I probably wouldn't have survived.
People have thanked me for that service back here stateside. I did do a few things to be proud about, most notably taking part in actions that saved 113 civilian lives. There were over 300 other people sharing the work--I'm no Audie Murphy. Civilians have called me a hero; it rings hollow. Mostly what I remember of that week was surviving on three hours of sleep a night.
Mostly I've put away the colorful language we used while performing these services, but once in a while it's appropriate. This is one of those times.
If you think saving refugees from dying of thirst at sea in an overloaded fishing boat has anything to do with trans rights, then your head is so far up your ass you think the sky is brown. There is no linkage. Absofuckinglutely none. That not only disrespects the service, it dehumanizes the people we rescued.
But perhaps that doesn't matter to someone who doesn't give a fucking damn that forty percent of trans people attempt suicide. That's a part of the population that gets beaten by strangers just because they exist.
It costs me nothing to write "Caitlyn" instead of "Bruce" and add "her." It's polite, it's simple, and if that tips the balance so a fifteen-year-old kid doesn't try to slit their wrists so much the better.
So maybe you truly don't agree. That much is fair. I toted a weapon at oh-dark-thirty while you sipped lattes at Starbucks posting comments at Facebook; that's your constitutional right and you're welcome to it.
But do me this minimal favor: don't play other people's military service as your trump card. I can't mention 9/11 without the conversation getting sidetracked. That shit gets in the way of the conversations I do want to have, such as changes to the building code in new construction that could make evacuation more efficient. You never heard about that one, did you? It's boring and nobody makes political hay out of that concept, but if you are serious about having more people survive any sort of high rise disaster then it makes perfect sense to apply volumetric flow rate analysis to stairwell width.
I can see your eyes glaze over already. That sounds like fucking engineering. "But but but what are the odds of airplanes flying into buildings!" people have responded. Well what the hell do you do in any type of emergency? You exit via the stairwell. You use the stairwell to evacuate for fires, earthquakes. Stairwells are the standard evacuation procedure. When there's a limited time that a building can remain standing, faster human flow through the stairwell means more people survive. This ought to be absolutely obvious. But by the time the conversation gets this far, which is rarely, most people are too emotionally drained to think rationally.
And that's among average adults who didn't have an uncle escape the North Tower moments before it collapsed. He had to duck into a subway entrance to avoid the falling debris.
So now, atop all the other nonsense that crowds out serious discussion about choices that could make our country safer, civilians are leveraging wartime service as an argument against Caitlyn Jenner's human rights. Caitlyn Jenner does not detract from my service at all. I fought for Caitlyn Jenner's rights as well as yours, doofus. I've exercising my right to call you a doofus because if you've made that argument that's what I think you are.
There's a lot I haven't thought through about trans issues, quite a few unpacked biases, but one conclusion is obvious: rights don't exist just for the things we agree with. If you only acknowledge someone's rights as long as they say what you like to hear or behave the way you like then you don't have much real love of rights at all. There are times and places for drawing limits but wearing a dress on the cover of Vanity Fair is not among them; it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Yes there are veterans who still prefer to use "he" and "Bruce." That's their right too but I don't see those veterans invoking military service as a reason. That's a civilian thing, a my-grandfather-stormed-the-beaches-of-Normandy thing. There are days I saw in service that I don't like to talk about, experiences most civilians never need to have, and none of those days even vaguely approaches D-Day. Your grandfather didn't spend the rest of his life extricating his recollection of Omaha Beach from unrelated quarrels about the latest headlines. Maybe that's because Facebook didn't exist during the twentieth century; maybe it's because society had a better understanding of respect.
Next time, remember courage isn't a zero sum game.
