Oppel quotes extensively Shannon Kent's husband, recently retired after a 20-year career with the Green Berets:
She’d tell me, ‘You can say what you do in two words, but I have to explain over and over to people what I do, and half of them don’t believe me.’ ... As the years went on, she wished she could just say, ‘Hey, I’m Joe, and I’m a Green Beret.’
In many ways, she did way more than any of us who have a funny green hat.
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Her job was to go out and blend her knowledge of cryptology and sigint [signals intelligence] and humint [human intelligence] to help the task force find the right guys to paint the ‘X’ on for a strike or a raid.
She understood how all the pieces came together. She wasn’t just relying on local informants. She knew how to fill in the gaps through her knowledge of different intelligence capabilities. She was kind of a one-stop-shop for finding bad guys.Kent spoke half a dozen Arabic dialects and four other languages. Kent was also a mom; she leaves behind two children, ages 3 and 18 months.
Women like Shannon Kent certainly challenge the image of women as the inferior sex, as somehow less capable than men. She also challenges gender stereotypes that would consign women to domestic roles. Lastly, they remind us that women often don't get their due--they don't get full credit for their contributions, including the risks they take. The story leaves me wondering, among other things, how much a Chief Petty Officer earns, compared to a Navy SEAL. Is Kent's death benefit any less than the other military personnel who died alongside her in that suicide bombing?
Don't miss prior posts under the military label, most on the very topic of women being excluded from combat roles and/or not getting credit for effectively performing those roles.
Thanks for the article professor, I really appreciate you bringing it my attention.
ReplyDeleteI am scheduled to go into the Navy's J.A.G. program. I am honestly very worried about encountering things like this while in the military. I am perfectly aware that they are happening, but am just so confused as to why. As a society, we already strip women of so much of the credit they often deserve. I know that this happens in every industry, but I feel like anyone who is willing to put themselves in harm way to keep our country safe, and by extension us, should not be ignored for their accomplishments. And they certainly should not have their lives made harder by having to have an over-complicated explanation describing what they do, when a man who does something similar has a two-word explanation.
It kind of reminds me of McKinnon's "it's not the difference, but the difference that difference makes" philosophy. It's not that her job is harder because she is a woman, it is that her job becomes harder because we as a society decide to make it harder for her because she is a woman.
I plan on hopefully trying to help people become aware of these issues once I am on the inside, and making life easier for women on the inside. It is one of the reasons I decided to take the class. Anyway, I appreciate the post, and thanks for bringing it to my attention.