The ID of Equality

Airmen dressed in their Air Battle Uniforms (ABUs) stand at attention. They are third
weekers in their eight and a half week stretch of basic military training. An instructor bellows:
You are NO better than the DIRT you stand on.
Faces to the ground!
Now PUSH.
Arms quiver as their muscles push their bodies up to a plank position. Eyes trained on the dirt,
they know there is nothing more important than this pushup. Every moment is more important
than the last; it is basic training defeated moment by moment. When this is war, it is a countrys
lifespan preserved moment by moment. This is our defense composed of partly of men and
women, but wholly by bodies of strength. Wind shoves sweat from the scalp down to the neck.
Shaved heads line up alongside intermittent heads with knots of hair tightly gathered at the
center. Gender is reconstructed here. They push together and everybody is equal; everybody is
less than dirt.
The civil war saw women risking imprisonment and institutionalization by cutting their
hair and training for battle beside men. They took on male names and moved up the ranks based
on their performance and merit. They werent fighting for their rights, though. Females placed
themselves before bullets and death for their patriotism and family-inspired fortitude. They
exercised their right under any condition and restriction. Aside from rumor and gossip, they
would not be recognized as female soldiers until their bones were unearthed decades later.
Recently, American politics has refocused social attention toward gender equality in the military.
Numerous policies have been reviewed in order to permit all genders to serve in combat, front-

line fighting roles. This past March, our American Air Force graduated a battle-ready platoon of
men and women in San Antonio, Texas. Among them, my younger brother transformed from an
Eagle Scout to a man of service. During the graduation weekend, third weekers were sent to
direct parents and military officers to the correct parking lots. The atypical frigid weather kept
each trainee huddled in the back of his all-weather gear. As I approached the building designated
for family briefing, female trainees opened doors and directed us to our seats in the auditorium. I
later asked my brother about the subtle gender appropriations. He responded that chivalry is
prominent in the military, and women occasionally eat first in the chow hall.
Chivalry, n.
1. gallant or distinguished gentlemen
2. an honorable and polite way of behaving, especially toward women
With this context, chivalry suggests that men must sometimes conduct themselves as a
second-class citizen in order to be gallant or distinguished. It functions as if honor is comprised
of selfless behavior toward certain societally constructed groups. However, making men go to
the back of the chow line is analogous to any other go to the back segregation policy.
Additionally, as a male, my brother was commanded to stay at least one arms length from any
female trainee at all times. One arms length is the exact distance that keeps a woman just out of
reach; it keeps the man chivalrous. The rule is unreciprocated; females are free to move without
gender-related restrictions. This is a demonstration of poorly executed measures to make females
feel more comfortable in the military. It is not difficult for both males and females to view these
initiatives as a result of the feminist movements focus on military gender equality. In 2014, NBC
News posted an article on their website reporting an incident involving members of West Points

rugby team and several derogatory emails toward women. The superintendent of West Point
noted that the behavior revealed a bad subculture that had existed for years and the head of the
Service Womens Action Network said that it spoke to a pervasive hostile climate at our nations
military academies (Baldor, 2014). SWAN, the Service Womens Action Network, is a
nonpartisan civil rights organization with a mission of transforming military culture to secure
equal opportunity and freedom while also ensuring quality benefits for female veterans and their
families (SWAN,2015). The Issues page of their website calls attention to matters such as
women in combat and reproductive health care for service women; their equal opportunity focus
is on ensuring female access to benefits and rights. Working to change the fabric of gender
discrimination in our military culture is both practical and ethical, and SWAN is recognized as
part of feminist progression. The issue, though, is within the disjointed evolution of feminism in
social and political circles. SWAN is recognized as a group that works to reform military policies
in respect to a feminist perspective, and the military is seeing changes like a space and
movement restriction placed only upon males based on female proximity. This is contrary to the
evolved mission of feminism. Women in the era of our civil war did not seek equality by asking
for or indulging in extra privileges. Our military, which functions as a social norm-defining
institution, places the responsibility of gender equality in the crumbling and antiquated palm of
chivalry. Leaving men to enforce and adhere to these rules creates an acute, yet sharp
consciousness of gender inequality accommodated by male gender compensation.
The injustice is the way we perceive the path to equality. We have others that we define
ourselves against. They are groups whose differences allow us to recognize ourselves and create
collective identities for the groups to which we belong. The Rosie the Riveter poster is one iconic

image of feminism, which celebrates the strength and capability of women. It is an early social
image that is analogous to the current like a girl campaign that that the feminine hygiene
company Always is running with television ads and the twitter handle #LikeAGirl. It is a display
of feminism as celebration. I took my brother to lunch a few days after he returned from basic
training and I asked him if he would consider himself a feminist. He looked cornered by the
question. I asked my female boss the same thing and she searched the room like Waldo would
appear and assure her he could give up his chivalry. People generally feel as though they cannot
identify with feminism, as it places them with an extremist ideology, but then they need to
explain why they do not seem to support womens rights. My brother said he still wanted to open
the door for his girlfriend or pay for her dinner, so he could not call himself a feminist. For some,
eliminating the nuances of cultural gender differences is an essential tenet of feminism.
Therefore, the movement embodies celebration of female empowerment, elimination of
embedded culture gender differences and the most modern approach to equality.
The evolution of the feminism brand was also recognized by Bonnie Marcus, a writer for
Forbes Magazine and the CEO of Ms. Foundation, a non-profit organization originally created
for elevating the female perspective. Below is a portion of the CEOs understanding of the
changes made to the feminist movement through the years (Marcus, 2015).
I think at that time there was such an imbalance of power that you had to recognize the need to
at least get some balance of power to women, some recognition that women should have choices
and opportunities outside of the home, and in the home itself. Today we recognize that true
feminism is the true equality of both sexes, without it being limited or restricted. And we actually
have more young men and young women growing up today that have been raised in more
feminist households, where men and women do a share of work in the house. They both have
opportunities for education and for job opportunities. Jobs are not labeled for men and for
women. Theres still not true equality and theres still true job segregation.

This explanation of feminism demonstrates the change in the movements purpose. Marcus asked
if they changed their brand to reflect gender equality as the main purpose of feminism, and CEO
Teresa Younger replied with a no. However, she offered the explanation that the feminist
movement had to take on the womens movement, the womens perspective so that it could get
to a mainstream conversation. While this is logical, feminisms establishment in mainstream
conversation now calls for a clear understanding of who belongs to the movement. Hesitations to
recognize a singular purpose leaves us with medley of meanings packed into feminism. The
stories we tell ourselves about what it means to be a feminism are mixed enough for us to deny
identifying with the movement, yet need to explain why we accept it in part. We are certainly
used to social and political tumult, as American movements is a main portion of our primary
education history curriculum. America has seen the celebration of black culture, of female
hegemony, and of transcultural perspective. This perspective is encouraged in American
institutions of higher learning and cultivated through extensive study abroad opportunities. In my
four years of university, I studied abroad four times on grants and scholarships. Below is one
axiom of my transcultural perspective.
Dust-sprinkled cracks aged the face of the boy on the median who I was studying from
afar. Truthfully, we were only a few feet apart. I was on a JMU bus on the way back from a
beach excursion in the Dominican Republic, and he was just outside of my window while our
driver shouted at the frozen traffic ahead. To me, the foreign land and culture made him look far
away as I stared. He gazed onward, looking through our tire resting directly in front of him. With
drooping lashes and a caved abdomen, his breaths lightly rocked his shoulders in a rhythm to
and fro. He pursed his lips and redirected his gaze. Dark irises pierced my stare and his
eyebrows angrily pulled toward each other, creating disapproving crinkles between them.

Caught, I flashed him a timid smile. Extending his legs to stand, he began to shake his head and
shifted his spine to my face. I felt hurt, until I saw that his disgust for me matched the proportion
of his condition. He clamored onto the median railing while his skeleton pressed against his dark
skin. My median boy was so hungry.
I understood nothing about my median boy until he responded to me. This is how I have
come to regard every person I meet. The collective identities that bind the females, the hispanics,
the whites, the handicapped, the freckled and the redheads are melting in Americas cauldron of
differences. Observable facts about a person are now less reliable than their behaviors are in
indicating the extent of shared identity. My black friend relates to my small town white
community better than I do. We know nothing more about each other than we do about a
thinning child in another land. So, our social movements must shift with us.
Feminism as an ideology has been bent and knotted by our social communities. Some
believe it to be the sole empowerment of women, some think it to be a movement for equality
and others do not think about it at all. It has manifested in the military as a momentum that
restricts male privilege in the name of female comfort, nurturing a resentment toward equality
measures. Martin Luther King said that destructive means cannot bring constructive ends
because in the final analysis, the means are pre-existent in the ends. Our chosen avenues of
action matter. Feminism has propelled us to this point and blanketed all gender-related issues, but
now we can move onto securing the avenues we need to forge our realities across every identity.
Now is a time to reimagine, reawaken, and rebrand the salient portions of feminism into a
movement that our general population can confidently stand behind.
Bibliography
Marcus, B. (2015, March 31). True Feminism Is About Equality for Both Genders. Retrieved

April 7, 2015, from

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bonniemarcus/2015/03/31/true- (Links to an external site.)
feminism-is-about-equality-for-both-genders/2/

Richards, P. (2011, January 11). Sexism part of military academy culture, Pentagon report says.
Retrieved April 7, 2015, from http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/11/22268691sexism-part-of-military-academy-culture-pentagon-report-says?lite (Links to an external site.)

Things Need to Change. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2015,

from http://forwomen.org/content/4/en/ (Links to an external site.)