Memorial Day

This was how the conversation started: "You're a veteran!" One of my friends told me. "You can join the VFW!" I'm a what? Having been in Iraq for 4 months now and having yet to even fire my weapon…having yet to even leave the FOB…I'm allowed to call myself a veteran? What kind of sick joke is that? I'm supposed to be able to hold my head up with survivors of WWII, Korea, Vietnam…? Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not a fan of taking accolades that I haven't earned. "Chill, Xena. It's Memorial Day." He said, "I was thinking of you."

I completely forgot that today was Memorial Day. I had been looking at my friends' away messages, wondering why they weren't at work, when this innocuous little IM hit me between the eyes. It's Memorial Day weekend, all self-respecting 20-somethings are drinking themselves into oblivion by the side of a pool. Or buying cars or mattresses, both of which are presumably on sale back in the States, advertised in eye-catching Patriotic reds whites and blues; a clever trick designed to convince your Average Joe that the best way to show his love for his country is to spend money. Bow down before the Altar of Consumerism, America, for lo, it is your God.

So it's Memorial Day. This is supposed to be the day that we remember our war dead, those brave men and women who made the final sacrifice and laid their lives on the altar of freedom, wave the flag, wipe the tear and cue the uplifting music. This should be a day that is especially meaningful for me, being that I am a proud little Soldier Girl and in Iraq, to boot. I should be watching Saving Private Ryan and taking notes – Tom Hank's CPT Miller is the ideal Army commander, selfless and focused on the mission (to the exclusion of all else) – I should be prancing around my room listening to Souza marches, practicing my Patton speeches in the mirror, going to barbeques, and patting myself on the back for being brave/loyal/stupid/desperate enough to land myself over here, involved in a land war in Asia. I should be racking up stories to tell my grandkids. Should be. How could I have let it get here without me realizing?

Memorial Day is like an unexpected present from an Aunt who doesn't know you well – you didn't want it in the first place and now that it's here you don't really know what to do with it. It means well, but it falls flat. This is a day of MEMORY – a day for honoring those who died in service of their country (and let me tell you, ask any family…it's not so dulce, it's not so decorum…screw the medals, they want their kid back), a day for remembering WHY it was we asked them to pro patria mori in the first place. What do we have now that we wouldn't have had if those people hadn't been brave/loyal/stupid/desperate enough to join up, to do their part, and to die by bullet, gas or bayonet? We have a country, we have freedom, we have Texas, we have the United Nations, English as opposed to German, the Space Program, the right to vote when we're 18, and graveyards all over the world filled up with the bones and blood of Americans. I thank God for those people, and my parents thank God that I'm not one of them.

I've been trying all morning to remember what in the hell I did last Memorial Day. I was barely two weeks out of college, working for my Dad and killing time until Officer Basic Course. Did I go to the pool? Probably. Did I go to a barbeque? I might have. I can remember last Christmas easily – I got tickets to Wicked on Broadway…last New Years – got a kiss at midnight from a boy who tasted like margaritas and cheap champagne…last Thanksgiving – the parentals got into it over what kind of sweet potatoes to serve…last Fourth of July – kicked some lieutenant ass in Flip Cup before going to the Montgomery Gentry concert at Fort Leonard Wood. Why is it that the only thing I can remember from last Memorial Day is a vague distaste for car commercials and an impression of the pool? I've spent many a Memorial Day at the pool, in a bikini, going to barbeques and flirting with boys. I don't think I've ever stopped to think about what it actually meant.

Maybe the best way to celebrate this day of death is to celebrate life? Whee, we're not dead, but let's raise a glass to those that are, who made it possible for me to stand here, drinking cuerveza, in a bikini, roasting a hot dog and flirting with boys? My little sister went to a Biker Rally in DC – Rolling Thunder, made up of Vietnam Veterans and Harleys. This is probably the ultimate symbol of memorial day – a day of sound and fury, signifying something…I'll be damned if I know just what, though. There are mothers and fathers all over America mourning their lost sons and daughters today – mourning and praying and remembering. I thank God for those people, for those mothers and fathers, and I pray for them, those families for whom today has a horribly immediate meaning.

I swear to God, Mom and Dad…you will never be one of them.

Busting Mine to Kick Yours

Cause sometimes you feel tired,
feel weak, and when you feel weak, you feel like you wanna just give up.
But you gotta search within you, you gotta find that inner strength
and just pull that shit out of you and get that motivation to not give up
and not be a quitter, no matter how bad you wanna just fall flat on your face and collapse.
Eminem f. Nate Dogg ('Til I Collapse)

So today I took an APFT -- bright and early at 5am (which is early even for the Army...like most people we prefer to do things when the sun is actually up). For those of you not lucky enough to wear a uniform to work, the APFT is the Army Physical Fitness Test -- 2 minutes of pushups, 2 minutes of situps and a 2-mile run. Each event is graded on a 100-point scale, with standards changing for males and females of different age groups. I got a 300 -- 50 pushups, 89 situps and a 14:09 on the two-miler. One thing I love about the Army is that your worth as a soldier is judged almost entirely on your ability to peform on this bi-annual test of physical chutzpah. You could be the most technically proficient soldier on the planet -- THE smartest guy on xyz, but if you fuck up this test, you're automatically seen a shitbag. On the other hand, if you're only an average soldier in terms of your ability to do your job, but you're a PT STUD, well...you're pretty much golden. Kicking ass on the PT test is the only thing I have left out here that resembles an athletic competition.

I miss being an athlete. I miss rowing in particular -- I remember what it's like to walk out onto a wooden dock with a shell resting on my shoulder, I remember the feeling of sliding back and forth on my seat, my oar cutting through the water, the clean economy of movement that makes up each stroke...I remember how the river smells early in the morning, and I miss it. There's nothing like the pride you feel after getting off the erg and realizing you just got your personal best, there's nothing in the entire WORLD that can compare to being a god for 6 minutes on the water. The callouses and blisters that turned your hands into raw meat, and the slide-bites that covered your calves and made it impossible to feel pretty in a dress during the Spring season...the aches that forced you to go through tubes of icy-hot, the missed sleep, the banged fingers, crying walking up stairs, tendonitis, weekends spent chasing medals instead of boys...it was all worth it, just for that 6 minutes when nothing could touch you, when it was just you and seven others tearing your hearts out, chasing glory.

I think that's why I love working out. I'm trying to recapture what I've been missing since Sophomore year of college. It's not that I want to look like a Cosmo cover girl, like the cardio bunnies that make it impossible to get on the stair stepper at 5 in the afternoon -- I'm in search of strength, I'm hunting down my endurance, I'm pushing as far as I can as hard as I can, until I collapse. I want to bench my bodyweight, I want to squat 300 pounds, I want to run 2 miles in sub-13, I want to compete in a marathon and I want to feel that pride...I'm tearing my heart out, chasing glory. I want that stretch of time when nothing can touch me, when the whole world shrinks to my lungs, my heart, my legs, the blood in my ears and the rush that carries me as far as I can possibly go...when I can be a god again, even if it's only for a minute or two.

Who wouldn't want that?

There's Something About Sunny

Every day we have a 1500 meeting with the XO, 1LT Sean Sullivan, where he gives us all sorts of perky little messages from higher command. Higher Command always wants a vehicle or two for some convoy, like that friend who's always borrowing your favorite skirt and returning it with a suspicious stain and not even offering to pay for the cleaning, the bitch. Anyway, besides the usual "give us your shit" messages, there were a couple of new rules we needed to tell our soldiers to adhere to…namely, eating at the Division dining facility is now off limits.

Pardon? Why is that, pray tell?

Well apparently, Higher Command told us conspiratorially (Higher Command is a HUGE gossip) that some idiot up at Camp Taji got drunk and stabbed some other guy at a party. Over a girl. I'll wait a moment to let that sink in.

Let's analyze this situation, shall we? First of all, the guys were drinking. We aren't talking the kind of drunk you strap on with a couple of shots of Jose Gold. Any booze one gets in country is probably of the bathtub variety, which may make one go blind. Clearly it does nothing for one's problem solving skills. Second of all, the one guy brought his knife to a party. At the sake of sounding facetious, Iraq is not the ghetto. Camp Taji is even more plush than Camp Liberty, there is no reason to run around with some 5 inch long pig-sticker hanging off your belt. Clearly this dumbass went looking for trouble and found it. At least he was well armed, hmm? Must've been a boy scout. Finally, they were fighting over a girl. Out here menfolk suffer from an affliction I like to call "Army Goggles", which are similar to Beer Goggles except they result from long periods of celibacy with only men's magazines for comfort. After a few months in the scratch, even the practically deformed start looking pretty darn good. I bet this girl wasn't all that, and in any case, couldn't she have done something to stop the two assholes fighting before one of them got an involuntary orifice?

I'm going to go off on a little bit of a tangent, bear with me, I promise to bring it around again. Females are stupid. We really are. So few of us have mastered the fine art of blowing guys off with finality. Take my stalker situation, for example. Did I mention I have a stalker? Well actually, I have several.

1. Stalker No. 1 is El Gordo Nasty-Pants from Bravo Company. This guy is making an Olympic Sport of trying to get in my frilly under-roos with no subtlety whatsoever. He's at least a decade older than me and let's be frank, he's a bit on the slimy side. However, he's at least got the balls to tell me in no uncertain terms that he wants to be my Relief-For-Cause memo waiting to happen. I myself do not have the same balls of brass. Tonight, when he came up to me outside of the dining hall, I reacted the same way I always do – with jokes. He said, "Hey Miss Sunshine, in PT's again? Do you ever work?" I cheerfully told him to kiss my ass, to which he responded, "Oh I would love to." I leave you to ponder the ick factor.

2. Stalker No. 2 is one of the Joes on guard duty outside the dining facility. Not only does he recognize me even when I'm not in uniform, but he asks me if I'm okay if I miss a meal and tells me if they have cottage cheese or diet coke. I assume he notices that these are the items I most often leave the DFAC with, but still...slightly creepy. I feel like big brother is watching.

3. Stalker No. 3 is the most recent of the bunch. I don't know his name but he works the mail room and has a gold tooth, earning him the moniker "Mr. Bling-Bling" from SFC Brown. He recognizes me, always has some smart-ass comment about where my mail is coming from (mom, friends, bb.com or amazon.com) and when he found out that I work out (I assume the bodybuilding.com boxes were his first clue) he started pestering me for workout advice. Last night was the kicker, he said he was going to come work out with me. Then he told me I had nice legs.

So why don't I just blow these douchebags off? Why doesn't any girl just fix an annoying guy with an emasculating stare and say, "I'm just not interested"? I blame our ovaries. No, really. Bear with me. Our ovaries and their conflicting hormonal advice (our brains want one thing, our reproductive organs are on another plane entirely) are responsible for many of girls' less desirable traits, from our inability to blow off potential suitors before they resort to stabbing each other, to our tendency to morph into Uber-Bitch in the face of competition.

Even if you aren't consciously attracted to the male in question, your ovaries are still sizing him up as a potential sperm donor. Occasionally your ovaries will take over your brain and make bitchy comments about the other girls concerning the amount of fat in their ass, etc. Menfolk think we're just being catty, when in reality it's just biology. Like lusting after chocolate or shoes, we are helpless in the face of our hormones. It's hard to make bitchy comments about girls in DCUs, though…they're so shapeless and unflattering anyway, that'd be like rubbing lemon juice into a papercut. Even my ovaries are not that cruel.

My Muse Needs a Kick in the Pants

I love to write. I've also always been described as a chatterbox, having a mouth like a runaway horse or as Grammy Jeanne used to say, hinged in the middle and flapping at both ends. (I loved my grandmother dearly, but reading that sentence I realize there's no way to construct the phrase "as Grammy Jeanne used to say" without sounding like an episode of the Beverly Hillbillies. Just trust that I'm being sincere, okay?)

Hearing words and reading them are two sides of the same coin…they have a similar rhythm whether written or spoken. I've noticed that there's a correlation between liking to see your words on a page and liking to hear your words in the air – if you're verbose in one arena that's probably going to carry over to the other. Someone with diarrhea of the mouth probably isn't going to spend a lot of time writing, say, haiku. Since I am heinously afflicted with this condition (I pity you all if I ever decide to jump on the next technological bandwagon and start a podcast – which I won't. My desire to conform only goes so far.) it makes sense that my blogposts are roughly the length of War & Peace, only unencumbered by that effervescent Russian optimism. (All you non-literary types are going, what's the joke?)

Anyway, back to my main point. Writing. Love to do it. I write a lot, and I get a million and one ideas a minute – only…well…see there's a slight problem. My muse, usually so helpful in Fed-Exing ideas straight into my brain, abandons me about halfway through the creative process to go sit in a corner and drool on herself. Oh well.

Practically what this means is I have a whole folder on my computer of aborted story attempts. There's one about a girl witnessing the end of the world, which I love but which isn't quite ready to stand on its own; one about a boy who does a favor for the God of a dead planet; one about a guy who meets Death and falls in love (this one is too derivative of Neil Gaiman and so will never get finished); one about a thief who steals unbroken hearts and sells them on the black market to people desperate for a second chance at love…then there's the romance novel I'm working on. That one has stalled less because I don't know where it's supposed to go, and more because every time I have to write an intimate scene, I feel like a voyeur or become jealous of my characters. Why should they be getting play when I'm stuck out here under the oppressive thumb of General Order Number 1? This is completely irrational, obviously, but as several of you card-carrying members of Tribe Penis have told me, irrationality is a woman's natural state. Tell you what – I'll give you that we're irrational if you will admit that your external genitalia make you a danger to yourself and others.

Just kidding.

I'll never admit that women are irrational.

Dairy, Bitches

Have y'all happened to notice a trend to my posts? Besides being exceptionally well written and full of sociopolitical banter (in the manner of Murphy Brown – how I love topical humor! "blahdiblah…the Ayatollah…") they're long as hell, aren't they? Well if you have a problem with that, I'll try really hard to care but no promises. I have a lot to say, a short span of time in which to say it, and frankly, I could give less of a crap if you like my posts or not. I like them. If they seem more like PhD dissertations (written by someone with only a vague idea of what a dissertation should look like) than your average blogspot, well, that's the nature of the beast. This is my little corner of cyberspace and I shall clutter it up to my heart's content. If you want something a little less verbose, perhaps Curious George would be more your speed? Or my little sister's Xanga. As soon as I can convince her my intentions are good, I'll post the link. I shouldn't make fun, but 13 year olds are hilarious. Okay, on to today's feminist rant!

Just kidding.

What I have to say has nothing to do with feminism, the military or big science words. I hear my regular readers breathing a big sigh of relief. Seriously yall, if I get one more IM telling me that the word oxytocin makes your head hurt, I'm going to question your college credentials. No no, today's topic is straight off the bodybuilding.com forums. We are going to discuss the evils of dairy, and why I think animal rights activists are hypocrites.

This whole post was inspired by this thread. To summarize, one of my friends asked about milk as a weight-loss tool – should she drink it, etc. Most people responded saying that milk is a great source of calcium, a high protein diet leeches calcium from bones, active women need calcium so yes ma'am, drink up. This is what I like to call the rational position. For a complete list of why we support dairy, check out the thread, I'm not going to recap here. A few other people – the minority – responded with "milk sucks, it's unhealthy, it's meant only for baby cows, omigod ur goin 2 get cancer n die lol". Now, I have no problem whatsoever with people having different opinions from mine. Different opinions are what make the world go 'round, and besides, I find ignorance extremely humorous (which is a bonus because there's so much of it in the world). What I have a problem with is people dressing up their moral or ethical codas in pseudoscientific evidence to scare the pants off other people and coerce them into the shared belief that animal products are evil. If you choose to not eat animal products, it's not because they are unhealthy (if you're trying to convince yourself that's the case, or that humans were ever vegetarians in our prehistory…well you're wrong) but because of your ethical beliefs. Be up front about it, it's not like people are going to think less of you. People believe all sorts of shit in America – that animals deserve rights and humane treatment is hardly the weirdest of the bunch.

Too many people demonize whole sections of the food pyramid. Earth to space cadets, human beings are omnivores. We are designed to require and utilize a wide variety of food sources – cutting out any one section of the food pyramid is a good way to moralize your way into a nutritional deficiency. If you believe strongly in not eating animal products, more power to you, go forth and hug some trees…but don't try to force those beliefs on others. One of the websites mentioned as evidence for why dairy is bad for you is a website funded by PETA – milksucks.com. Gee, I wonder why they dislike milk. To quote Maddox, whoo whoo, here comes the clue train, next stop is you.

I love America. People can (and do) do anything they damn well please. If you want to follow a diet where all you drink is your own urine, nobody will stop you. People may start avoiding you, but they won't stop you. It's once you start standing on the street corner preaching the virtues of this diet that you open yourself up for attack (and a visit from those nice folks in white coats). Being political (and therefore not apathetic) is something that ought to be commended – so as much as I disagree with PETA, I can't fault them for their convictions. That being said, I think animal rights activists are hypocrites. Don't get me wrong, I believe in humane treatment for Rover, Fluffy and Bessie the Cow as much as anyone, but those yahoos who bomb medical research facilities or throw blood on old ladies in fur coats? What kind of fucked up individual thinks it's okay to destroy property, kill scientists and scare the pants off some poor bluehair in the name of Animal Liberation? Haven't these idiots ever heard of peaceful protest? Jesus, go smoke some ganja and simmer down. Anybody who puts the lives of animals ahead of the lives of their fellow human beings really needs to get their priorities in order. There are people all over the world living in poverty, violence, disease, who look at the wealthy Americans fighting over FOOD and think we've all gone off our smug Western-world rocker. As Chris Rock says, "don't eat red meat? Shit, don't eat green meat."

I just think if you're going to be politically active, there are far worthier causes than animal rights to get yourself involved in. Look at the Sudan – fighting in Darfur that echoes the heinous crimes in Rwanda has been going on for two years – or hell, the entire continent of Africa where children die of diseases that American kids maybe get a day off of school for, because they lack basic antibiotics. If you want to be a hero, if you want to fight for something, go join the Peace Corps or Doctors Without Borders – leave the arguing about poultry for when the rest of the world (hell, the rest of AMERICA) is enjoying the same standard of living as you are. Protest, like obesity, is a luxury of the industrialized.

Just my two cents.

So who are you really?

"I'm not sure who I am," I said cautiously.

"Many people never are," she said, quite earnestly now…"But it doesn't matter, you know. If for one moment of your whole life you know that you are, then that's your life, that moment, that's unnua, that's all."

-- Ursula Le Guin, Changing Planes

I just finished that book, Changing Planes, and I loved every word, every syllable, every punctuation mark. Her language, the GLORY of it -- I got lost in the pages (good books are like will o'wisps, you follow their lights into the marshes and if you aren't careful you might not find your way back) and couldn't put it down; I read the entire book from start to finish in a single sitting, entranced, deaf and blind to the rest of the world, as if it had faded away, as if it had ceased to exist.

I love books. (Is there anything better, honestly, than a good story? I'm not entirely positive that even sex comes close.) If I could I would move to Borders, set up shop in Barnes & Noble...most of my care packages have included things to read, as most of my friends know me well enough to know that without a book, I'd shrivel up...like a mummy or a bog person, except without the bandages or the smell of peat. (Interesting side note: did you know that mummies were used as firewood in Egypt there for awhile? That's why there aren't as many dessicated dead people as you might expect, given the Egyptian prediliction for the spooky stuff) So the immediate sense of well-being I get from just being in a bookstore...Chaz used to bundle me up and drive me to Borders when I was in a pissy mood senior year, which was often...that's part of who I am, as much me as my tendency towards neurosis, my temper, and my hair. I am a redhead who loves books. I know at least that much. I don't understand people who whine about trying to find themselves, or not knowing who they are. How can you not know who you are? You live inside your skin every day, see the world through your own eyes and live an interior life that is uniquely yours. If you don't know yourself, how could anyone else ever know you, either? Introspection, people...look into it.

I know exactly who I am, and that's not going to change. Despite my flaws (everyone has flaws, except maybe The Pope, and he might have been a real booger as a kid) I like this person that I've always been. Finally, after all this time…I accept my temper, I accept my flair for the dramatic, I accept that I have verbal diarrhea and tend to fly off the handle without giving it due thought…I accept that I'm serious and sometimes awkward, that I take things personally and that I tend to demand a lot from the people I care about. As someone told me recently, I'm a "freakin' handful!" but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Is it bad to have high expectations for our loved ones? Is it bad to be bluntly honest and call bullshit when bullshit needs to be called?

People talk about growing into their skins, growing up, growing out…they talk about "maturing" like who you are as an adult is some completely new life-form from who you were at 5, 10, 15 or 20. I disagree. Do you think you would recognize yourself if you went back to sophomore year of high school? Fifth grade? Kindergarten? Or do you think you would see seeds of your future self in the person you used to be? I think "who we are" is an amalgam of traits that we're born with, and we don't change. We age and we become more comfortable with ourselves, but we don't change. Maybe your behavior changes, maybe your way of interacting with the world, but not the essential bits and pieces that make up you.

Know thyself. Really, what would be the point otherwise?

Dropping the Ball on Title IX

I'm sure most people have heard of Title IX. It's the part of the 1972 Educational Amendment that states that schools may not deny any student participation in any activity or program on the basis of sex. The 1987 Civil Rights Restoration Act further expanded Title IX to include all the operations of an educational institution that receives federal funds – so not only does Title IX protect women's athletics, but it also prevents a University from discriminating against women in housing, admissions, financial aid or health services. This article is going to focus solely on athletics, and why I'm concerned about Title IX's future given the current political climate in the Bush White House.

Why is it so important for girls to play sports? The US Institute of Medicine compiled a series of public health reports during the 1990s and released the following findings:

1. Female athletes are less likely to smoke or use illicit drugs than their peers.

2. Female athletes are less likely to be sexually active, get STDs or become pregnant than their peers.

3. Women & girls who exercise regularly are less likely to suffer from depression and more likely to have a positive self-image than their peers.

4. Women & girls who exercise regularly are less likely to suffer from lifestyle diseases like obesity, breast cancer or osteoporosis.

Let's talk facts for a minute. Since 1972, women's participation in collegiate athletics has gone up 400 percent, and participation in high school athletics has gone up 900 percent. Prior to Title IX, only 1 in 29 high school girls participated in sports. Today, 1 out of every 2.5 high school girls participates in sports, and that number is growing every year. Before Title IX, there were virtually no college-level athletic scholarships for women. In 2000, I received an athletic scholarship from Duke University to row for their Women's Varsity Crew Team. On the surface, it looks as though we're making real progress. Alas, dear reader, trouble is brewing.

Certain underrepresented male sports – wrestling, for example – have accused Title IX of forcing schools to cut male sports in favor of female ones. Title IX doesn't force a school to do anything, it just states that athletic money must be spent equitably. If a school chooses to cut men's gymnastics because they don't want to cut into their football budget, so be it. Football and basketball spending has gotten out of control. The average Division I school spends 72% of its men's athletic budget on these two sports alone. Before you argue that football and basketball bring in the money that provides the budget for the rest of the sports at a university, think again. A 1999 study showed that 58% of Division I football programs don't bring in enough money to pay for themselves, let alone any other sport. (*coughcoughDukecoughcough*) Most athletic programs that year in Division I were running at a 3.2 million dollar deficit – because of spending excesses for basketball and football players, along the lines of getting them hotel rooms the night before home games, chartering them privates jets, and outrageous recruiting practices that already have several programs under NCAA scrutiny (University of Colorado, anyone?).

So despite accusations of foul play from "minor" men's sports, women's athletics still lag behind men's at the collegiate level. 53% of students at Division I schools are female, but women's sports only receive 43% of total scholarship dollars, 36% of athletic operating budgets, and 32% of recruiting dollars. That's not exactly equitable, is it? I'm not saying Women's Crew needs the same budget as the Men's Football team, but let me give you an example from my history. While I was at Duke, the school completed construction on a brand new 80-million-dollar football building for a team that hadn't won a single game in two years – the longest losing streak in Division I history. You could've bought 10 new top-of-the-line rowing shells for the crew team, built them a decent boathouse with indoor plumbing, replaced all the wooden oars with spiffy carbon fiber ones and gotten Dolce and Gabbana to redesign the unisuits for way less than half that amount – and the Women's Crew Team had a winning record. And Duke is a school known for its support of women's athletics. Imagine what it's like at a school that isn't.

So why am I worried?

Schools show compliance with Title IX in one of three ways: 1) They show that the percentages of male and female athletes are proportional to the percentages of males and females enrolled, 2) They show a history and continuing trend of expansion of athletic opportunities for the underrepresented sex (in this case, girls), or 3) They show that their athletics programs fully accommodates the interests of the underrepresented sex (again, for the sake of argument, girls).

This last provision is the focus of a new Department of Education memo that allows schools more freedom in determining the level of interest in women's athletics. Previously, the hoops a school had to jump through were pretty intensive – they had to get recommendations from coaches and administrators, survey high school athletics participation and participation in intramural sports for their feeder schools, and use a variety of methods to gauge interest on campus. Now, the Department of Education has come up with an Internet survey that schools can distribute to students via email that will replace all previous requirements for compliance.

Let's think about that one for a minute. What do YOU do when a random survey (a random EIGHT PAGE survey) shows up in your inbox? If you're like me, you never see it because your spam folder automatically filters that sort of thing. Surveys have a notoriously low return rate, and are relatively crude – I remember, I took Stats in college. I quote my professor, "Surveys are a poor statistical tool," end-quote. So when girls in college don't return these surveys, that's going to be seen by the university as a lack of interest and be used as justification to cut women's sports programs.

Look, 18 year olds are idiots and oftentimes don't know what their interests are, except maybe beer and other 18 year olds, usually but not limited to the opposite sex. How are girls going to know they're interested in sports if they've never been exposed to them before? Interest follows opportunity. If someone asked me when I was 18 if I was a fan of paleo-pathology, I would've looked at them blankly and probably shrugged. Funnily enough, that's what I would major in two years later – after being EXPOSED to the topic and given a chance to develop an interest. Half of the girls on the crew team were walk-ons, girls who'd played other sports in high school or girls who'd never played sports at all but were willing to give it a try – girls whose interest in crew was prompted by an opportunity to join the team. Are we really prepared to take that opportunity away?

College is a business. Schools are in it to make money, and honestly I can't really blame them. Football and basketball generate a lot of publicity for the school, and publicity ups donations, makes the Trustees happy, and ensures athletic supremacy in their conference for ever after. If given the choice between playing fair and making money, schools are going to choose making money every time. This is why we have provisions like Title IX that force Athletic Directors to play fair even when that isn't their inclination. If you weaken Title IX, you make it easy for schools to start cutting women's athletics and non-revenue sports to divert even more money to already bloated football and basketball program budgets.

All I'm saying is, if a guy can use athletic ability to pay for college, a girl should have every opportunity to do the same. Female athletes should have the same access to decent equipment, away games, facilities and amenities that male athletes have. It's only fair, and after all, isn't that what sports is about? We demand it from our athletes, let's start demanding it from our Universities and above all, the current Administration – when it comes to women's athletics, everyone needs to start playing fair.

Sources:

Christine Brennan, "Keeping Score", USA Today
Sally Jenkins, "Not for Lack of Interest", Washington Post
Women's Sports Foundation, "Her Life Depends on It"

Love: A Neurochemical Approach

"We were not built to be happy, but to reproduce."

-- Dr. Helen Fisher, Rutgers University

Do you believe there's one person out there for all of us? More to the point, do you define love as some sort of ethereal meeting of souls, or more as a mixture of chemicals in the brain inducing some sort of feel-good response? Is love a by-product of sex, a sort of trickery enacted on our glands by our brains to ensure the survival of our species through neurochemical intimacy? Or is love everything the poets say it is – enduring, consuming, and free from the constraints of the physical?

Let me backtrack a little. Before you get any ideas, I'm not going to spend this episode attempting to convince myself and the world at large that love doesn't exist just because it hasn't come through for me thus far – obviously it exists, there are numerous examples of love dating back to the dawn of recorded human history. Some of the first examples of early writing are in fact love poems, which indicates that the human propensity for goo-goo eyes, sappy sentimentality and marriage is a trait we probably had on our emergence from the primordial soup. The question is, WHY does it exist? What function does love serve and why did it evolve in the first place? Social monogamy serves a distinct biological purpose, so no surprises why it arose -- and before you try to argue that monogamous pair-bonding is an unnatural state enforced on modern man by a judeo-Christian ethic, think again. Pair-bonding in humans predates Christianity. In point of fact, pair-bonding is common in most primates, especially in primates like Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and well, us, that are not especially sexually dimorphic. Gorillas, which exhibit a high degree of sexual dimorphism, have harems. The male gorilla (the silverback) has his little troop of female gorillas that he guards jealously from the sexual advances of any other male gorilla in the vicinity. Chimps, on the other hand, are more like us – everybody gets it on with everybody else. Keep in mind that there is a difference between social and sexual monogamy – for the purposes of this essay I'll assume they're the same, but they aren't. No mammal is truly sexually monogamous.

Unlike many pair-bonding species in the animal kingdom (birds mostly – see the Osprey, which should serve as a model for all couples), humans aren't truly monogamous (a sad fact bemoaned by cuckholded partners everywhere) but rather engage in serial monogamy with extra-pair affairs. The scientific theory behind this is that promiscuity ensures genetic diversity in small groups – but that increased group size among human populations leads to a rise in sexually transmitted diseases (also not a new phenomenon) which curbs promiscuity. So humans live in a sort of sexual gray area, where we are primarily monogamous but occasionally promiscuous – ensuring genetic diversity while at the same time avoiding STDs. "But Sunny," you're saying, "you're talking about sex here, not love! There's a difference." Au contraire, gentle reader, is there really?

Human behavioral scientists have isolated three stages of love and the accompanying hormones that drive them.

Stage 1: Lust

You can't love somebody unless you want to jump their bones first. Testosterone and Estrogen, the hormones which fuel the baby-makin' urge, are responsible for this stage.

Stage 2: Attraction

This is the cutesy, googly-eyed stage that so annoys your friends and roommates. The chemicals involved here are dopamine (cocaine & chocolate affect the brain in the same way – in fact MRIs of people in love look more similar to coke addicts than anything else), adrenaline (responsible for sweaty palms and heart palpitations) and serotonin, the neurotransmitter that makes us go temporarily insane. People in love have been found to have extremely low levels of this chemical in their brains – a state similar to that in people with anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Obviously people in love need to be dosed with some serious anti-depressants. Funnily enough, scientists believe that people taking anti-depressants might be jeopardizing their ability to fall in love – and anti-depressants may mitigate the pain felt when one's heart is broken.

Stage 3: Attachment

This is the "you had me at hello" stage, the happy-endings stage, the Golden Anniversary stage, the grandma & grandpa together for 40 years that's heartwarming but with the advent of viagra a little disturbing stage. It's governed by two hormones – oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin, a chemical related to pair-bonding, is released during orgasm by both the male and the female -- which explains why it is extremely difficult to have sex without intimacy. If some chick ever wanted more from you than you were willing to give, blame that damn oxytocin. Scientists need to get on this; if we can come up with a chemical block for oxytocin – some pill that you can take that will prevent its release during sex – then bazillions of hornballs everywhere can fuck to their hearts' content without having to worry about whether their partner is secretly picking out china patterns.

The bottom line? We become addicted to love – or rather, addicted to the chemical response that the sight/presence/whatever of our beloved induces in us…and if love is an addiction, it follows logically that there must be a cure. Rats and other seriously promiscuous animals don't have the same arrangement of receptors in their brains for vasopressin and oxytocin as we do, which means that while they feel euphoria during sex, they don't have the ability to associate that euphoria with a particular partner. Unlike us. So one would think that if we could alter this series of receptors our brains, we could wipe out sexual jealousy, attachment and most importantly broken hearts in one fell swoop – think of how awesome it would be. We could ensure the survival of our species without having to endure the pain of a broken heart or a disastrous relationship. So here's to hoping that Behavioral Geneticists are hard at work on that particular bit of genomic tinkering.

Until then, pass the Prozac.

Women in Combat?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/12/AR2005051202002.html

I read this article this morning, and frankly, it really got me thinking. As a female soldier, what is MY stance on where women belong in combat? Before I get to that, let's talk about how the outside world sees female soldiers.

The following story is extremely common among the Army girls I know. This particular incident happened in January, while I was preparing to deploy to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (Version 3.0). I was at the mall, looking for a pair of sunglasses that would shield my baby blues from the harsh desert sun. (You might be asking yourself, but doesn't the army give its soldiers sunglasses? Well, it does, the army gives us lots of things when we're getting ready to deploy. The things it gives us, however, are ugly. We'll discuss this phenomenon more in-depth later on.) Anyway, I walked into the sunglasses store and said to the sales girl, "I'm going overseas and I need a pair of sturdy sunglasses." We started discussing the merits of various brands, and I finally settled on a pair of Oakley's. As she was ringing up my purchase, my mother mentioned that I was going to Iraq. At that, the sales girl looked at me suspiciously. "Are you in the army?" She asked. I answered that I was, and she looked shocked. "Really? You do NOT look like you're in the army. When you said you were going overseas, I just assumed you were a model going on a photo shoot! You don't look like you belong in the army…don't you have to shave your head?"

I don't share this story because I have a big ego and I want you all to think I'm pretty. Well, okay, that's part of it. The BIGGEST motivation I have for sharing that story, however, is because it illustrates how far off the mark most people's idea of a female soldier is. Notice, in fact, that the Female Medic's hair length is the first thing the Washington Post article mentions about her. We don't have to shave our heads. In fact, according to AR 670-1, females have a minimum hair length they have to maintain. Buzz cuts are prohibited and boyish haircuts are strongly discouraged. It's bad for the Army's image if its women are running around all Amazonian. Interesting side note: did you know ancient Amazonians used to burn off their right breasts to make themselves better archers? Even back in ancient times, female warriors had to walk a fine line.

Nowadays we don't have to indulge in any mutilation (which is good, can you imagine the publicity?) but we still have to walk a very fine line as females in the military. If we're too girly, the guys dismiss us as prissy and weak. If we act too masculine (ie, eager to get outside the wire or interested in lifting weights), the guys start to make jokes about our suspect genitalia and what team we play for. If we try to be hard charging and authoritative in our leadership roles, it's all too easy to get branded a bitch. If we're too friendly with the guys, we're whores, if we aren't friendly enough we're man-hating dykes. It can be tough to get respect from the guys, and near impossible if they spent any time in a combat arms unit to get them to take you seriously. You have to know your stuff 100% of the time, you have to be a physical fitness stud (but not scarily muscular), you have to be a politician, a therapist, and it helps a LOT if you can give a good manicure. Even the combat arms guys love manicures, as SGT Konvalinka, my only female NCO, told me. "They like to feel babied sometimes. That's how I made friends when I worked with the cavalry units. I must've given 30 manicures in two weeks."

The culture of the Army is tough on women. It won't let us do any of the trigger-puller jobs like infantry, armor or cavalry scout, and it tries to keep us sheltered from actual combat...tries, but succeeds only in an administrative sense. Females can't wear the combat infantry badge or the close combat badge – not because females haven't seen combat but because they can't serve in the units that are authorized to wear them. Infantry, armor and the other combat arms branches are the coolest branches in the Army – watch any recruiting video if you don't believe me – and these are the branches which command the most respect. Females are only allowed to serve in support jobs, and since support jobs are seen as something to do if you can't hack it in combat arms, most males in the army automatically assume we're worthless. This is an attitude that's deeply ingrained – many males don't even think women belong in the Army at all – and it can be very tough to change, if you manage to change it at all.

But that still doesn't answer the question -- where do I think female soldiers belong? It's not that I don't think female soldiers can hack it in dangerous situations, because we can. We get shot at, we shoot back, we kick doors in, we guard towers...we do a lot of what the male soldiers do, but usually with shittier equipment and no air support. The problem comes in when you look at the dynamics of males and females together...out here...alone...for months on end. A lot of the females in my unit are sluts, not to put too fine a point on it. People are at it like rabbits out here, and I think that some women would be a real distraction if combat arms units were mixed. I know a lot of females who could do it, but I know a lot of females I wouldn't trust to fire a gun properly unless the dangerous end was labeled. Of course, none of that matters -- what the article illustrates well is that like it or not, we're IN combat already. Iraq is not a conventional war zone...there's no front line. All of the convoys out of the gate are vulnerable to IEDs or insurgant attacks, every area gets mortored, we're all in danger. We're doing the job, so unless you want to pull all women out of Iraq, shut up and let us keep doing it.

Birth Control and Moral Outrage

What's YOUR favorite court case?

Ask anybody, and they may remember something from their high school civics class. Miranda is popular among would-be criminals, Roe v. Wade among would-be feminists, and Brown v. Board of Education is always a favorite as a hallmark case of the surprisingly liberal Warren Court.

What's mine, you ask? Why, that teensy, sometimes overlooked case on which so many of our rights hinge: Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965, a landmark decision that secured an individual's right to privacy. While ostensibly the case was about contraception and its availability to married couples, according to Justice Douglas, who wrote the majority opinion, the rights people have are more than what can be read in the literal language of the Constitutional text. Griswold paved the way for numerous decisions that have direct impact on our everyday lives:

1. Stanley v. Georgia – Upheld an individual's right to watch porn in the privacy of his own home. Jenna Jameson had a career thanks to Stanley. We can debate the yay or nay factor of that all day long, but a whole generation of pubescent boys will not be spending their formative years in jail because of this important privacy case.

2. Eisenstadt v. Baird – Upheld an UNMARRIED couple's right to use birth control. This is huge -- the case virtually secured an individual's (especially a FEMALE individual's) sexual privacy. What you do with your body is your business, etc. Is it any surprise Roe appeared the following year?

3. Roe v. Wade – Nobody can stand on a pile of dead babies and say, "Whoopee for Abortion!", but the upshot of this case is that it's not the responsibility of old farts in Washington to make a young woman's reproductive choices for her. Roe v. Wade is why we have emergency contraception today…ever had a bad scare because the condom broke? Thank Roe and Griswold and Eisenstadt for that prescription you got filled at the local pharmacy that kept your butt out of 18 years of parental hell.

But wait…

DID you get that prescription filled at the local pharmacy, or were you turned away?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4425603.stm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-11-08-druggists-pill_x.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5490-2005Mar27.html

Pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception, in some cases refusing to turn over the prescription or transfer it to another pharmacy, subjecting the women involved to lectures about their moral fiber instead.

Please join me in a collective, "What the fuck??"

These pharmacists are taking refuge in little known "conscience laws" that most states have which allow medical practitioners to refuse to perform procedures (like abortion) if they are against their religious beliefs. Pharmacists don't technically fall under the protections of these laws, but some groups are lobbying hard to change all that. Some people are seeing this as a victory for personal belief…I see it as a major infringement of my privacy, my reproductive rights, and the entire structure of personal privacy protection that we all currently know and enjoy.

The insidious thing is that conservative lawmakers aren't going after Roe anymore…it's too obvious of a target. These guys are going after Griswold, and with it the entire underpinning of our conception of privacy. If pharmacists can refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, what's next? Doctors can refuse to prescribe them? Wait, that happens too.

http://www.prevention.com/article/0,,s1-1-93-35-4130-1,00.html

This is absolutely the most appalling thing I've heard recently. Who in the hell do these people think they are? What's next? "No, you may not have your Viagra"? "I am not filling this prescription for Zithromax because you shouldn't have gotten that STD in the first place"? This is not about personal belief, this is about PUBLIC HEALTH, and NOT imposing a certain brand of morality on a woman's body when she comes in with a legitimate prescription from her doctor.

Friggin' IDIOTS.

Infantrymen and iPods

So the past few days have been crazy. I mentioned that I'm a Chemical Soldier (complete with a Dragon tattoo) and maybe one day I'll tell the story of how I ended up in the Chemical Corps, but for now suffice it to say that I am a platoon leader in the 92nd Chemical Company, 92nd Engineer Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division out of Fort Stewart, GA.

The Army is divided into three types of soldiers: combat, combat support (which is what the chemical corps is classified as) and combat SERVICE support (medical & supply chains). The Powers That Be have restructured the unit organization so that all the combat (AKA "maneuver") elements are together under one commander, and all the support guys are together under one commander. The brigade my unit is in is called a maneuver enhancement brigade, which is just a fancy way of saying that we help the trigger-pullers do their jobs better. To that end, we're made up of intelligence units, a chemical unit and combat engineers. Combat Engineers normally clear minefields and breach any obstacles in the paths of the maneuver units, and are called "sappers". Our group of engineers, however, is what's called a Combat Heavy Battalion, which means they are really just a group of glorified construction workers. They BUILD things, they don't blow them up. Practically this means that there aren't any COMBAT oriented guys in the entire battalion. Why is that a bad thing? Because they keep making mistakes that the infantry guys wouldn't make. For example, infantry and armor guys are concerned with two things: their vehicles and their firepower. While philosophically I support the idea of rebuilding Iraq, particularly their medical and educational infrastructures, I was also concerned about how well the builders were going to be able to take care of the chemical company.

A chemical company doesn't usually deploy together. Usually each platoon is assigned to a different brigade (1st platoon to 1st Brigade, 2nd to 2nd, etc) and we work directly for the Brigade commander. This deployment, they decided to deploy the Chemical Company together, under a single battalion. Philosophically this was supposed to keep us together so we could better accomplish our missions, do maintenance, support each other as Chemical Soldiers, etc. Practically, this means we are the Engineer battalion's bitch. Any time some random ass tasking comes down, my company gets stuck with it. Guarding the PX (think mini-mall)? Damn skippy. Guarding the Transload (construction) site and directing traffic? Yessiree, that's us. Then, a really COOL tasking came down the pipe. An infantry unit needed 20 extra people to take care of base security.

MY platoon got the job. Now we are attached to a light infantry company out of Hawaii. What's hilarious about this situation is myself and SGT Julie Konvalinka are the only two females in the entire BATTALION...the company we're attached to is attached itself to a Special Forces unit. So you can imagine how popular we are up at battalion headquarters. ;)

So my platoon's job is to guard three towers along the West Wall of the Victory Base Complex. It's a pretty sweet deal, we have to guard the towers 24 hours a day in three rotating shifts of 8 hours each, but we have our own command post with a telephone line, a computer, a printer, etc. I have my own humvee to drive around in, "trooping the line" (checking on my soldiers) and heading up to the company headquarters to get briefings from my new infantry commander, who treats me just like one of his male platoon leaders. He's even trying to convince his battalion commander to let us go on patrols with one of the other platoons. That has about as much chance of happening as I have of making Colonel, but it's a nice thought nonetheless.

I apologize for my last extremely angsty post...I just had a hilarious conversation with a couple of my best friends and I am feeling 100% better (okay, 85%, but still, huge improvement).

Now, I might have to kill someone because some testicle-less asshole stole my iPod. It's really my fault, I left it in the bathroom on accident after my shower...I ran back about a half hour later and the bitch was gone. Well, the batteries were almost dead, so I hope whoever took it is enjoying their new paperweight. *grrr*

Ordered a new one, should be here in about a week. This one I'll handcuff to myself.

Sunny's a CopyCat

I am, really. That probably would've been a better title for my blog than ripping off some Bridget-Jones-esque book I borrowed from the library (with no real intention of returning, mind). I'm not sure I've ever had an original thought in my head, but that may be more a consequence of my mood than anything else.

I'm hurting, and I don't even know why. (Well I do, but that's a topic for another post)

Most of my friends have blogs, and here I am jumping on the bandwagon. For those of you who don't know, and I'm betting most of you don't, I'm currently deployed to Iraq. Baghdad if you'd like to get specific, down to the brass tacks as my commander is fond of saying. He's fond of saying many bizarre things. One of his favorites is "warm and fuzzy", as in "let's make sure you have a warm and fuzzy about your mission". Something about my commander makes that phrase seem almost pornographic, but I digress.

I'm in the Army, and I have been for a little over a year. I graduated from Duke last May which means that this is IT, this is the life I was waiting for through four years of college. As I look out my window on a landscape that resembles pictures sent back from the Mars land rover, I try not to let that depress me. I'm taking the MCATs next April, and hopefully I'll be in medical school someplace very green that following Fall...I miss the color green. Everything here is a washed out shade of tan. I'm a platoon leader, in charge of 18 other people. We're in the Chemical Corps, which is to the Army as the Chess Club is to High School -- we're the sort of people who'd regularly get our heads flushed down toilets, if adults did that sort of thing. My platoon is attached to an infantry company though, so our job is actually pretty exciting...or as exciting as things get out here, without things actually blowing up.

As for blogging...I wonder if my generation is so desperate for attention that we're reduced to throwing open the doors to our innermost thoughts for complete strangers to see...this is probably easier than trying to make contact with another real human being. Real human beings might reject you, whereas cyberspace never will. There's probably something profound and sociological in there somewhere, but I'm not really in the mood to dissect my reasons for making my own blog. Everyone else is doing it, and that's a good enough reason to hang my hat on for now. Introspection can be such a bitch. Beware of turning over rocks, you never know what you're going to find.

This is the new exhibitionism. There's something creepily satisfying about baring your soul on such an anonymous forum as the Internet, writing things about people that you would never say to their face…hoping in a small, bloodthirsty way that they'll read what you wrote, and be hurt by it. Pretending innocence, pretending ignorance, like instigating our own drama somehow makes our lives more interesting. I have lots of things to say, and this is honest-to-God easier than finding someone with the time to listen. We're all moving at 100mph and it's hard to give a flying fart in space about other people when you're having a hard enough time keeping track your own life. Or that's what they tell me, anyway.

I'm a Virgo, 5'8", redheaded with blue eyes. I like running, weight-lifting, reading, speaking Russian and writing bad poetry to put in my away messages (passive-aggressive, doncha know). I'm writing two books (one nonfiction, one book of short stories) and applying to medical school to pass the time here...it's going by fairly quickly, quicker still as it's only 4 months til I get to come home for Morale leave. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince comes out in July as well, so I've got that going for me, which is cool.

I'll be happier tomorrow, promise. I think tomorrow I'll tell you all about my platoon mission. That is if I don't lose interest first. :)