Uniform Equality

My good friend, The Counselor, copied me a short story the other day. It was proof again that what occasionally crosses my mind does cross the mind of others, too. Surprisingly, I am not surprised by that anymore.

He sent me this story with the following perfunctory observation attached:

“Wow!”

Ya know, kids, there was a time when I would have really ripped into him for that casual remark. I mean, The Counselor spent a lot of money for college classes when he was younger. Presumably, he attended at least one or two courses which touched the concept of creative and descriptive writing.

But, hey, I also noticed a TV commercial recently for some local call-center-customer-service joint; can’t remember the name of the place. At the start of the commercial, the female manager speaks to an off-camera interviewer saying, “When a customer calls our center, I want them to be wowed!”

Ehh, honestly, my reply to that earnest desire would be “fat chance”. I mean, I would have to be really pissed and probably stammering drunk before I would call a call center for anything. In fact, I try hard not to call anybody. In my parlance, I would have to be severely “wowed” before I even picked up the phone.

But I would suspect that the call center manager in the commercial also attended college somewhere. Being the dunce that I am, maybe this “wow!” word implies more than I think it does, I dunno.

Anyway, this story that The Counselor shared with me is not about call centers but is a “wow” on more levels than one. I found it well-written, touching and bittersweet.

This true story is about a woman who wants with all her heart to be like a man.

No … stop it … this is not about her sexual inclination. This is about her desire to be treated as an equal.

Well, this woman takes a risk and does enjoy a brief brush with manhood. She momentarily tastes what it’s like to be respected rather than chastised for being tough and strong-willed. But even though she does her best to learn the language, the attitude and the techniques, she is still told she is not a man and summarily rejected.

In a mild way, it reminds of the time I spent learning Japanese only to be scolded in the end by my teacher, “you may speak Japanese but you will never BE Japanese.” In a more brutal and resounding way, this woman is being scolded as well. She may speak and act manly but she will never BE a man.

I think I learned to come to grips with that hard assessment from my teacher and I’m confident this real, live, strong-willed woman will do so, too.

One significant aspect of this story is that the woman in question is Muslim. The perpetrators of her misery, the primary conspirators of her rude and unequal treatment throughout her short life have been other Muslim men.

Despite her official rejection, we learn she is heartened and strengthened by what she finds out about herself through her very American ordeal. She likes being respected rather than belittled and vows to engage this behavior more. Thus, the seeds of equality are planted in this humble Muslim woman and the end of the story remains unwritten.

Well, this uneven beginning is precisely what Muslim men, and I dare say more than a few Southern Babtists, fear most about Western society. It is our ideal of equality which empowers women to gain the confidence that only men once enjoyed. Once they take off the veil, once they escape the kitchen, they may never really go back. They may end up scratching their way to the top of our traditionally male dominated institutions of education, business and government, making fat-ass-lazy men obsolete.

In their sustained endeavor to become men’s equals, I hope that these empowered women don’t eventually become comparably fat-ass-lazy, but given time to adjust to their new surroundings I expect they will some day be our equals in that respect as well.

Needless to say, perhaps, but this “wow” hides several truths which deny a few myths below the surface.

The first myth is that American society generally sweeps up all the downtrodden, poor, hard-luck souls of the world and gives them all certain rights and an equal fighting chance.

This particular woman left the Middle East to come to live in Queens after her husband ran off with her kids to some other deserted area of the world. According to her story, there is very little evidence to suggest she was welcomed with open arms once she arrived here. She was even disdained by her family for trying to adapt to her new environment. Rather than progressing, she quickly found more oppression and grief owing to her status as a Muslim woman alone in America.

Ok, step back for a minute and think about the American institutions today that really do defend such a myth. Tell me about the American society that welcomes all the poor harassed people to our shores. Tell me about the America that cares for them, pushes them, and teaches them to improve their situations. Tell me about that in a modern and not an anachronistic way. I want to hear all about that.

I think we have a tendency to think that the suffragist movement in America is a rather new idea, that it didn’t come around until the end of the 19^th century or thereabouts. I don’t know why we may think that but it’s not true. If you do some checking you’ll find American women started on about their status almost as soon as they set foot on ground near Plymouth.

As far as our inalienable rights go, one must remember that whatever amount of equality we Americans enjoy today was bequeathed to us. These things were originally earned by the Catholics and Jews, Irish and German, Buddhists and Lutherans, Poles and Chinese, etc, etc, who first came to this land many moons ago. They didn’t have anything handed to them. Their introduction to America was typically a rude shove off the ferry into a forbidding mixture of languages and conflicting traditions.

And one can’t forget all this flowering equality rose from the ashes of the overwhelming destruction of Native American civilizations.

But the final answer is our ancestors did sacrifice a lot for what we now take for granted. With that history in mind, there are those who say that this poor immigrant Muslim woman must also make a sacrifice. She must earn the right to be treated as an equal.

Get a job, save your money, go to Community College, those are standard ways people sacrifice today. And if you’re a Muslim woman, you may have to occasionally remove the head scarf.

More and more American women sacrifice their traditional family life to get out there and earn some equality. We see women working hard, rising to the top all around us. Some say we are now at precarious tipping point in our society where women may finally have unprecedented economic and political power in this country.

I try not to be too overtly committed to sexist or Chauvinist views, and I know mention of this very subject is damn near taboo for most men, but I admit the growing number of strong, powerful women in this country scares the crap out of the pitiful little man inside me.

The reason for my fear is that another myth is being unveiled, perhaps laying bare a hidden and painful truth. The reasonable suggestion at one time was that women wanted to be more like men, in other words, be treated equally like men, equal pay for equal work, and so on. But once that bridge is crossed and that bra is burned to some degree, I sense by the mountain of confounding laws and homespun rules of modern American society that what typical women really want is men to be more like women.

Yeah, man, I tell you, that’s a hard pill to swallow.

And, as I’ve pointed out before, this distasteful thought comes from the mind of a crusty old man who enjoys defining the difference between men and women in the simplest of terms. That being, women like to openly say “I’m sorry” and men do not.

I stand guilty among my peers…

Be that as it may, the American institution that our immigrant Muslim woman chose for her stepping stone to equality in this story is telling, in my opinion.

After repeatedly beating her head against the walls of Fortress America, after enduring humiliation upon humiliation, after a lengthy consideration of the pros and cons, she put her religion and her upbringing on hold and she enlisted in the United States Army as a way out of her downward cycle.

Say what you will about the military. Yes, to put it kindly, it is an organization designed to carry out the most inhuman and destructive activities. And, having served, I can attest to the fact that the limited advertised material benefits of military service do not begin to outweigh the true and lasting cost of the sacrifices endured. However, I was fortunate. I did not have to deny any deep-rooted religious practices to join the military. The Muslim woman in this story did indeed have to do that and I realize that particular effort demands considerable inner strength.

I have often thought since hanging up my uniform that the US military, as an institution, is just a small reflection of the greater American society. I still see clues to this concept every day. It always seemed to me that 85 percent of those who I served with had their shit together, about 10 percent were in constant trouble, and an unlucky 5 percent just didn’t get it. Now, as a mild mannered civilian, I can see clearly where those numbers originated.

But this story The Counselor sent me is leading in a different direction. The traditional role of the military may have changed. Rather than holding up the miniature image of a grander American landscape, it may be the last institution to offer true equality in this country. It may now be something radically different than general society. Rather than just offering an unlimited opportunity for a slice of homemade apple pie, the military may be the last defender of a faded American dream. There may not be any other institution, business, university or other association in this country that not only welcomes diversity but demands equality is such a direct way as the US military or other military-like organizations (police, fire department, and the like).

What average American businesswoman or female leader today is truly judged by her ability, not first by her age or her hairstyle, her dress or her perfume? What company, what university, what other standard American establishment offers gender equality as its primary selling point?

I can’t say that the military environment sustains the concept of pure equality over time. Eventually, egos are regained, hair grows back, men look like men again, and women naturally return to being women. But initially, military-style boot camp wipes away all the common notions of difference, eliminates the individual, and creates an homogenous group of basic unadorned people like no other system that I know. Surviving that scene can dramatically change people’s views.

Now, maybe we don’t want all of that in public, maybe we don’t want to go that far in every instance. And probably those who haven’t served, those who make up the majority of free Americans, will find this all hard to believe.

Perhaps the final ridiculous myth shattered in this story is the joke that the egalitarian military offers a last chance for everyone to find a way out of their individual predicaments. Our determined protagonist in this story doesn’t make it through. In the end, after months of trying to hang on, she is discharged because of her weak grasp of the English language.

But in this story our unique Muslim woman, shunned by her family, in this country alone and afraid, despite her rejection and status as an outcast, finally discovered the power of American-style equality like she’d never seen only after she joined the US Army.

Living on her own in Queens didn’t do it.

She took a risk, she took off her veil and it changed her. Her experience in the Army changed the way she thought of herself. And, quite possibly, it will change the way other people regard her forever after.

Ahh … anyway … I must now recall the oldest son of my great, great, great grandfather Bamboo who sailed to this country with his family from England in 1850 at the age of 7. Ten years after arriving, he was enlisted in the Grand Army of the Republic and fought in the vicious civil war for a country he barely knew. Those events changed him and he was thereafter transformed from the uneducated son of a poor immigrant farmer to a proud, full-fledged member of a new society.

Wow, indeed, how things have changed in the last 150 years!

Cheers,

Mb