Being a female soldier is a weird situation.

Some wives I know were flipping out because this one found out her husband and this one female soldier in his unit had been texting back and forth. They were acting like it was some big scandalous thing. I asked to see the texts. They were SO mundane. "What's the uniform for tomorrow's formation?" "Are you bringing your flack vest? I am because SGT Jones is an ass and will make us." "Do you know where the USO show is this weekend?" "Are you going to the chow hall for lunch? Need a ride?" I can tell you, this is totally mundane stuff. It's basically the Army equivalent of water cooler talk. Honestly, if nobody told me that the soldier who wrote these texts was female, nothing would have tipped me off to that fact. It was all very straight forward as far as I could tell. Hell, I used to have those same conversations with my coworkers every single day when I was Active Duty. So does nearly everyone else.

So basically, these girls were flipping out about it. "How DARE she text someone's husband?!!" was the group consensus. I took offense to that. Here's why. THIS is how female soldiers show up to formation in the wrong uniform. THIS is how female soldiers have no battle buddy, and it's not noticed when something is wrong. THIS is why the suicide rate for female soldiers and vets is 3x that of males. It's because you're nearly bound to be one of the only females in your unit, and with more and more soldiers marrying at lower and lower ranks, a significant percentage of your peers, no matter what rank you are, will be married, or engaged, or dating someone, and they will not come within 10 feet of you because they (rightly) think their wife/girlfriend will flip out on them. Therefore, female soldiers fall through the cracks no matter how hard they try not to. This is wrong.

The other thing that is wrong is the response I got when I pointed out that this stuff is really no big deal and pointed out that female soldiers really just want what any soldier wants, to be treated like a regular person. The reaction was predictable, but it still really made me mad. "Well, I know some female soldiers who wanted more than that..." Really? Yeah, me too. I also know that one of my best friends in the entire world is currently divorcing his wife because she slept with a Private while he was in Afghanistan, but I don't throw my friend's wife in people's faces when they say that military wives are generally just regular people. Exceptions do not negate the truth that most people, uniform or none, married or not, are just regular people who want to be treated as such. People can accept this for every group in society BUT female soldiers and vets. We are scum.

Now, I can tell you, being in the Army, especially being a young female soldier in a mostly male unit, will change any person's view of the institution of marriage. After a year of that, I was definitely under the impression that most people's marriages were probably a crock of shit, but it wasn't because other female soldiers had told me so. It was because the minute we'd leave post to go anywhere remotely far away (and engineers do that a lot), a HUGE percentage of married guys ditched their wedding rings, and said things like, "What happens on TDY stays on TDY." Male soldiers who act like that (and no, it's not all or even most. My unit had an inordinate number of scumbags, to be honest.) have done a far greater disservice to military marriage in general than gender-integrated units could ever do. The fact is, though, even if you forget about all this, it ALWAYS, 100% of the time, male or female, military or civilian, comes down to who the person is. If they're shady, then they're not a good person to be around, no matter what gender they are. If they're cool, then they're just fine, gender irrelevant. Being a female soldier SHOULD NOT automatically cast a person in a skeptical light. People give male soldiers more courtesy than that. Why not female soldiers? Most really are just regular people.

For the record, Thak has a female boss. She ain't the least bit ugly either. I have met her. She is very straight up and trustworthy. We both like her a lot. Does he text back and forth with her basically all day long? Yes. Yes he does. That's how they keep one another updated on what's going on with different stuff they have going on. Somehow, by these standards, I should be opposed to this because she's female? Really? Why should she be less able to do her job and communicate with her coworkers just because of her gender? That would be so completely unfair. Oh, but I should worry because somewhere out there, some female soldier is trying to steal someone's husband? Dude... again, it's about who someone is as a person. If you don't get the creep vibe off them when you meet them (and any soldier should be willing to meet his/her coworkers' family members), then what are you worrying about?

Also, I know what it's like to deal with the bad kind of female soldier, so it's not like I haven't been there before. There was this one girl from my unit who just wouldn't leave Thak alone after he went back to Ft. Hood to clear post after our wedding. He told me about it, and I took care of it. For one, I know for a certain fact that Thak thinks this girl is the pinnacle of disgusting, but I wanted to get rid of her anyhow, so I called one of my friends from Basic, who was stationed at Hood at the time, and had her relay my message personally (I would have done it myself if I'd been there). We never had another problem. So yes, even though I have first hand experienced the bad kind, and frankly, know more about that than kind of person than I want to (when you live in the barracks, you know things...), I don't automatically distrust every female soldier who crosses Thak's path. They are NOT nasty old SPC James from Ft. Hood, so why would I treat them as if they are? That makes no sense, but it is very accepted to do just that to female soldiers.

It's just a strange situation to be a female soldier. It's like, if you call a coworker for some legitimate reason, you've got about a 25% chance of that person's wife grabbing the phone, telling you never to call her husband again, and slamming it down. If you are just trying to get a group of people together to go to lunch, you'll be accused of trying to steal someone's husband (because unlike wives, soldiers really don't think in terms of "married and not married" when it comes to mundane daily stuff. They think of who's about their rank, who's in their platoon, and who has room in their car for one more.) If you walk into the company one morning and try to talk about Saturday's game with the only other Gators fan in the unit, you run a pretty high chance of getting brushed off because their wife will flip out if she finds out he talked to a female soldier. It's like, everyone wants you to just go away, even if you didn't do anything wrong.

Man, I'd be so screwed if I thought like that. Thak has a female boss, and has reenlisted countless female soldiers since being here. Somehow.... nothing bad has come of this. Mystery of mysteries, huh?