Catholic soldier says her Muslim-sounding name made her a target for harassment

Alright there may be more to this than is being described. She may be the target of legitimate hatred or she may just be the butt of a lot of distasteful jokes because of her name. I am betting on the latter.

In the Army we ream EVERYBODY and I mean EVERYBODY. The Army is probably the most jokingly racist, sexist, prejudice, organization on the planet. Looking in from the outside the civilian world would be appalled at what they saw and heard if they walked into a normal Army platoon and just listened for awhile. We have a saying that everybody in the Army is green, there is no black, white, asian, hispanic etc. But that doesn't mean you won't catch hell no matter what race you are, but its usually all in fun even when you get a bit sick of it.

One of the guys in my unit is sicilian but looks straight out of Iraq. We ream him daily about it. He laughs it off most of the time but it gets on his nerves. I am the butt of black jokes at least 5 times a day. You should have seen us when we went to the pool today and I'm not too fond of the water. Oh man did I not hear the end of it for of course being the only black guy in the squadron and the only guy who can't swim very well. I'm still getting texts right now from guys riding my ass. Its annoying but its funny and its what we do.

We went to do some hand to hand combat stuff the other day and one of our Asian LT's ended up getting his ass kicked...badly. We gave him hell for days. "How do you lose a fight? Can't you people fly and do kung fu and all sorts of crouching tiger (*)(*)(*)(*)?" He won't hear the end of that for awhile.
And when the female pilot screwed up on a takeoff the other day...she caught hell too..See THIS is why we don't like girls around here, you can barely drive and you don't fly much better. She laughed, shes the butt of all the female jokes.

You BETTER have thick skin in the military, especially in the Army. Could this SFC have some legit complaints? Sure. But I'm pretty sure that she was just tired of being harassed all the time. It does get old really fast, I get sick of it all the time too. But its what we do.

I can almost 100% guarantee you that in public the last guy who was harassing her about her name would be the first guy to knock your lights out if you did it.

 

I'm 50/50 torn on this. I see her point but I also know how the Army is. Half of me wants to say suck it up like the rest of us do. But I do understand that being a female leader in the military is hard enough on its own. Having a name like that just adds to the difficulty and the harassment could be used as an undermining tool.

I would like to know much more about this before making conclusions. One of those cases where I wish I was a fly on the wall. I have seen first hand Soldiers just getting their feelings hurt because they are sick of being made fun of, even though everyone gets made fun of. Then they go tell and a whole big spew happens because we have to "do something" whenever somebody complains. I have also seen legit hatred towards others in the military.

I'm just not sure which is the case here without more evidence. I actually had to deal directly with a case like this a few years ago. Looking at it from the outside you would think that this Soldier had a valid racism complaint that needed to be addressed. When I caught wind of it I personally got the issue thrown out because I knew that kid and I knew that he had a rep for throwing the racism card out whenever somebody chewed his ass because he hated being yelled at. I ended up saving an E-6s career for exposing this kid as a liar and not letting him label this NCO as a racist.

And on the flip side Ive had to stand in front of a Commander and back up a kid who actually did have a valid complaint against another Soldier who crossed that line you are talking about.

We have to be careful when passing judgement before knowing the whole story. This is one of those times where we would have to have been there on a daily basis to see just what people were doing to her and whether or not this was her having soft skin or having a valid complaint.

 

Bingo!

Grab a random civilian who knows absolutely nothing at all about the military. Drop them in the middle of an Army infantry tent down range. That person would leave believing that the US military was nothing but grade A Bruno style flaming homosexuals.

People in the Army get it, people not in the Army do not.

That is why this is so "shocking" so some people. We are professionals held to a very high standard and we present ourselves as such to the outside world for the most part. Amongst ourselves we are the most racist, sexist, prejudice, and hateful people in the world...all in fun. Its part of Army culture. But at the end of the day we are all green and we all harass each other. Sometimes it gets heated but thats just part of it.

Infantry thinks they are Gods gift to humanity. Tankers hate infantry, infantry hates tankers, tankers hate scouts, scouts hate infantry, all of them hate artillery. Infantry, tankers, scouts, and artillery all hate the rest of the army who isn't combat arms. It gets heated sometimes and sometimes that magical line gets crossed. I have literally seen these guys get into fist fights over this stuff. But I 100% promise you that if an outsider decided to say something negative about any one of them then they would all come together and that would be a pretty bad day. I've seen that too.

 

They "we" treat our Muslims allies just fine. I've been there and done that so I know a thing or two about how we treat people. We also have Arab Muslim pilots come train with us all the time. We welcome them in as one of our own. The military is one of those places where you literally get judged on YOU. Not your race, but you. That's a bit of a shock to people who have never really dealt with others outside of their own race. Or to those who think that seeing another person of their race means sanctuary. Nope, sorry you all turn green when you are here and if you suck then you suck, period and will get treated accordingly. It's the place where you will see things that you would never think you'd see. Such as a black guy, a white guy, and an arab muslim all going to a huge outdoor country concert together as friends.

Don't let the media give you information on the military culture. Get it from those who are there its much more accurate that way.

 

No Im saying we need way more evidence than what is being presented here. Walk into my squadron and you would think that I, along with pretty much everybody else, were a bunch of hateful racists. We harass each other, its what we do. Most people take it in good spirit. I've been harassed to the point where I wanted to punch the lights out of somebody. I've harassed my buddies to that same point numerous times.

What we don't know is whether or not this woman was the victim of actual mistreatment or someone who has soft skin when it comes to military culture.

If I wanted to I could go to the media with a 100 page grocery list of racist slurs and jokes that have been thrown at me over the years. Me and just about anybody else in the Army could. What people don't realize is that this is what we do to each other and you can't get offended easily here. We are joking. You may not find it too funny, I didn't think some stuff was too funny, but its a joke. In the Army world you have a good chance of getting a nickname. You have a better chance of completely hating it but its what you are getting called whether you like it or not. The worse the better.

What this story doesn't uncover is whether or not she is the victim of ill mannered reaming that she may not have found too funny or if she is the victim of actual mistreatment. So many are willing to jump to the conclusions without actually understanding the facts or military culture in general.

 

Thats not really THAT big of a deal...this isn't the Air Force people make 7 in less than a decade pretty often.

But anyway I understand what you are saying. Many men do have a problem with female authority especially in a "male" organization such as the Army. So that is a valid point and one that I addressed earlier. However, this could also go both ways. She could very well feel that she needs some sort of advantage since she is a woman. I have personally seen a woman leaders authority get undermined by male counterparts and I have also seen women make examples out of men to prove she is on a level playing field.

So again, without more evidence we really have no idea what is going on here. The sad thing is that the Army HATES publicity like this. They hate it so much that I have personally seen, within the past 3 months, an NCO get demoted from his position (not his rank) and moved to a different platoon because of an accusation from another soldier that had absolutely NO basis whatsoever. The unit just didn't want to deal with all of the hype so instead of doing the right thing they gave the lying soldier what he wanted and transferred a seasoned great NCO and took his position.

So she better have some very valid reasons for this. And by valid I don't mean getting your feelings hurt because people are picking on you. This type of thing can destroy careers very easily so this is hopefully a legitimate case.

 

lol...you ever been in the military?

If you are in the military and people aren't harassing you then you are doing something horribly wrong and you have no friends. It's not getting harassed that you have to worry about its when people stop harassing you, that's when you might want to worry.

If I went to work monday and nobody gave me (*)(*)(*)(*) I would be wondering if I got too drunk over the weekend and sent out a mass text to all my buddies wives or something.