ProPublica (which is awesome investigative journalism! Send them money! Unless you don’t have money, in which case don’t!) has been running a series called Brain Wars: How The Military Is Failing Its Wounded.
Traumatic brain injuries are the “signature injury” of soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan: roadside bombs release shockwaves that ripple through soldiers’ brains. Although they leave no marks, traumatic brain injuries can have serious mental and physical effects lasting for a lifetime.
The American military, however, has shamefully failed to support soldiers with traumatic brain injuries. Although 115,000 soldiers have suffered traumatic brain injury according to military statistics, ProPublica investigations show that tens of thousands have gone undiagnosed. Some soldiers with traumatic brain injuries have been denied the Purple Heart, which is supposed to recognize injury in combat, because their wounds “weren’t serious enough.” The Pentagon’s primary health plan, Tricare, refuses to cover cognitive rehabilitation therapy, despite its endorsements by top neurologists.
The military is an incredibly masculine organization. Even as it has included women within the military (not without a fight, of course), it has kept its adherence to the traits of hegemonic masculinity: courage, hierarchy, strength, toughness, authority, violence. Many of these are positive and necessary for fighting and winning.
However, in addition to the positive traits of masculinity, the masculinization of the military has preserved many of its most destructive traits. NSWATM has covered, ad nauseam, the gender conditioning men receive to “tough it out,” to not go to the doctor, to refuse to take care of their health, because injury means weakness and weakness is unmasculine. The military’s attitude towards soldiers with traumatic brain injury exhibits the same nasty belief. If they were real soldiers (compare: real men), they wouldn’t have these injuries– particularly injuries they might as well be making up, since no one can see them.
One of the key insights, to me, of the concept of hegemonic masculinity is that maleness is not privileged; certain kinds of maleness are privileged. Nowhere is this more true than war. War is old men talking and young men dying, white men talking and men of color dying, rich men talking and poor men dying. Hegemonically masculine men can send (some) less hegemonically masculine men off to die for their wealth or glory or political power. And in general they don’t give a fuck what happens to the disposable men once they’ve been used up.
But now it’s gender-equal! Now poor women and young women and women of color can die for the greater good of hegemonically masculine men too! We are also free to ignore their injuries once they return! Yaaaaaay!
The “disposable male” has become the “disposable soldier.” This is the wrong fucking kind of gender equality.
Commendably, thanks to ProPublica’s investigation work, many of the problems suffered by soldiers with traumatic brain injuries have been ameliorated. The director of the Defense Center for Excellence, which researches and treats brain injuries and PTSD, unexpectedly stepped down. More that 70 US senators and representatives have called for Tricare to cover cognitive rehabilitation therapy; congresspeople in districts close to Fort Bliss, covered in ProPublica’s story, have sent a letter demanding answers from medical officials about the treatment of soldiers. New guidelines on the award of the Purple Heart will make sure that soldiers with traumatic brain injury are not denied the medal they deserve.
Most shockingly to me, new Pentagon policy states that soldiers must have 24 hours rest after a mild traumatic brain injury (also known as a concussion) and a complete neurological exam after three concussions in a year. I’m not sure whether I’m more pleased that they’ve created this policy or disappointed that this is apparently new. The health of our soldiers should be one of the military’s first concerns, as opposed to its hundred and first.
However, I encourage the Americans in our audience to write to their congresspeople about the importance of proper treatment for soldiers with traumatic brain injuries and to encourage them to keep the pressure up on the Pentagon.
Mod note: I am serious about this derail. Stop it.
@Rebecca Bloom,
Thanks for sharing all that. I wish you the best of luck in getting that PET or DTI scan so you can prove your son’s injury.
Are they seriously not accepting a non-empirical diagnostic evaluation from a neurologist of some kind? The insurance company too? Demanding you pay for a $2000+ procedure to prove you need money is ridiculous… keep telling people your story and hopefully one day the fear of public embarrassment will get them to crack. Best of luck…
@Rebecca Bloom, thanks for sharing. Bottom line it’s all about money….. and the fact that the Iraq War has left a boatload of injured military personnel who will be needing healthcare services for a long time….some for the rest of their lives. That translates I to a LOT of money. I read your entire story and felt okay until I got to this part, and this is what really made me angry. I remember back in 2003, when I was about to get deployed to Iraq for the first time, I would pull into a gas station in my uniform… Read more »
Thanks for keeping the plight of Servicemen and Women suffering from combat related TBI in the spotlight. My Son was one of the Soldiers with a TBI interviewed by Propublica and NPR at Ft. bliss, Texas. My Son was the Soldier who stated “the Army was sweeping them (Soldiers with TBI ) under the rug”. All 3 Soldiers interviewed were being treated at a civilian impatient neuro-rehab center…..because Ft. Bliss was not in a directed state of readiness as mandated by the Army / DOD to function at their TBI Treatment Designated level. We were part of the group that… Read more »
@Ozy, thanks but… shouldn’t you have been spamfiltered yourself? 😉 You kept talking about… ah never mind. It’s a pity that the comments can’t be moved.
This is your semi-regular reminder to please keep the discussions civil and clear of personal attacks. AB, do not accuse Schala of having a “narrow attitude,” say the transphobic radical feminists had good reason to dislike her, etc. Unfortunately, we can’t move comments to the Open Thread, but if you wish to discuss hegemonic masculinity and Foucaultian power relations, that is where you should do it. Any further comments on this thread about hegemonic masculinity or Foucaultian power relations will be spamfiltered. Getting out of modvoice, I have two comments: one, trans women experience a larger drop in income than… Read more »
@AB, oh, yeah and I can see you using the “but there are so many kinds of feminists” approach to deny that feminists can have bad ideas. Even if a String Independent Woman is a broader concept than just the idea of leaving your husband, it’s not that much broader. “The Personal Is Political” is practically a feminist slogan and nobody else’s – not MRAs, not anyone except feminists – and the idea of a Strong Independent Woman intersects with that slogan in a very particular way, which is the way that my girlfriend had inferred from all of her… Read more »
Mods… I feel bad, these comments should really be moved to an open thread… could you help us out?
So now you’re saying that asking women to look inward at potential problems with themselves before concluding that “the personal is political” is the same as putting men into a repressed traditionalist box? And that’s your response to Schala? You don’t see any problems in your logic?
First off, she’s using a very broad concept in a ridiculously narrow way. Strength and independence are many things, and many of them are benevolent @AB, Do feminists really, and I mean really use a “very broad” definition of Strength and Independence? Because in my experience it’s an extremely narrow and often contradictory one to begin with. So now you’re saying that it’s actually really broad. What do you mean by broad? How is the feminist definition of a Strong Independent Woman broad? Here’s the thing, though. I never said that she said that concepts of “strength” or “independence” were… Read more »
@Schala:
Who says I do? I’m just pointing out that he’s demanding a lot from women which he’s not willing to do himself.
@dungone: First, 30-40? It’s not nearly that antiquated and it certainly hasn’t gone away completely. But regardless, in that case it would still make perfect sense in my example because, well, that divorce took place 20 years ago. If feminism was capable of screwing up people’s lives then, then it’s quite possible that it’s still able to do so now. So you argument is that because people’s notions of empowerment aren’t always constructive in the concrete situations they find themselves in, and many notions of female empowerment have (for good or bad) been found in feminism, some of which hurt… Read more »
@f, actually I find the Foucault part to be a fascinating aside… but it all started with the chicken-or-the-egg discussion about hegemonic masculinity, which is the part that I find ironic. As for urban planning, I will readily admit it makes more sense to think of it that way – I have another concept for you, though – chaos theory. At the same time that postmodernists were forming their wacky way of looking at the world, scientists were realizing that when you add an external source of energy into a system, the system can take on a self-organizing nature. This… Read more »
“Not to mention that I have yet to see an anti-feminist, least of all you, ever tell men that they need to stop pretending there’s an issue with anyone but themselves just because they’re unhappy, and they need to get over it so that they can focus on supporting women and children.”
This is a very very conservative position. Why would you want dungone to hold it? It’s the default position of the Republican party, and of people who deny men have any reason to complain, too.
dungone I thought we were working on your relationship problems WITH FOUCAULT.
Massive thread drift o_o
@dungone, we are far afield here but a city ain’t a film. The vast majority of configurations you find, while they tend to work fairly well according to some type of logic, are a total patchwork rather than the result of one designer’s work. They’re also shaped by forces that are highly abstract – War. Flows of capital. Peoples’ lifestyle desires, centuries ago. Religious significance. Tradition. Safety concerns. Outdated aesthetics. etc. What I find useful about Deleuze’s idea of “rhizomes” or some of what Certeau says about the construction of spatial relations in “The Practice of Everyday Life” is, things… Read more »
Side-note. I find it ironic that in a post about the failure of our society to properly care for wounded war veterans, we’re having a side-discussion about how societal power structures are designed to benefit men over women. Very ironic! Thank you feminism… FYI, I am a veteran and as far as I know I might also be wounded, but probably not, but who knows? I have been inside of vehicles and structures that had been “blown up”, been exposed to depleted uranium, jet fuel, etc. So I actually take a particular interest in this issue. Who knows, maybe I’ll… Read more »
@M Dubz, Hugh, I also think it’s pretty disingenuous to say that men adopt traditionally masculine behaviors and power plays ONLY at the urging of other women. Ok, then rather than saying “If women on average didn’t care so much about status in men, then there would be no incentive for men to compete to become hegemons,” let’s pretend I said “If women on average didn’t care so much about status in men, then there would be less incentive for men to compete to become hegemons.” @f. @Hugh Tipping, the hegemon isn’t like, some dude or a group of dudes… Read more »
@Collette “A man I was seeing, and who remains a good friend of mine, is currently in the military and was in Iraq. He also has a brain tumor of sorts that he had to keep secret in order to remain in the military (I don’t know why he wanted to). ” This is an important piont you have raised. What reasons does he give for staying in? “However that tumor (fortunately benign) developed, he and others believe, from these things called burn piles. Apparently, that KBR (?) doesn’t want to pay for the proper disposal of the earthly remains… Read more »
@f, one of the interesting things with postmodernist deconstruction is the loose-goosey way in which someone can take the theory and apply it to anything. So in an English Lit class I took once, I had to read an entire book on Foucault and then write a postmodernist deconstructions of Jaws, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Aliens (the movie with Sigourney Weaver). I wrote them and got perfect scores, acing the class. Then one day I was sitting around drinking a beer and began to wonder… how do I know that Freddy Kreuger was really an exploration of spaces… Read more »
@Hugh Tipping
Very Foucaultian indeed, relying on people to understand “power” as something that comes into creation as an independent entity.
Nah dude, just no, that is not a thing.
@dungone, yeah I guess some people don’t much get with postmodern ideas about power, but uh… I basically say, whatever helps me in the design process. If I can grind it up and make a delicious sausage out of it then it’s going in the grinder.
OK I am now done white-knighting for Foucault but seriously, poststructuralism. SERIOUSLY.
@dungone: AB, I’m going to call you out on that. It’s double barreled. Anti-feminists criticize feminist organizations such as NOW for their stance on issues such as child support, which effectively puts a legal obligation on men to support women and children. Why would an anti-feminist turn around, then, and suggest to men that they need to suck it up and pay child support? It would be the same situation if a feminist were to tell a woman she better shut up, lose the shoes, get pregnant, and cook dinner. Then why expect it of feminism? As a matter of… Read more »
@AB, go read Father’s and Families. This MRM organization is focused primarily on issues of family law and victims, domestic violence, and men’s health (i.e. circumcision, prostate, etc). They never mention feminism unless it happens to be that a feminist organization such as NOW is actively lobbying against a Father’s and Families initiative for shared parenting or something related to this. Think about the recent brouhaha about circumcision and HIV… based on entirely faulty research… that has been championed by many women’s rights groups (funny, no?) much to the detriment of men in the developing world. So as much as… Read more »
you’re using to a phenomenon which is at least 30-40 years old to categorise a movement which is still active and developing. First, 30-40? It’s not nearly that antiquated and it certainly hasn’t gone away completely. But regardless, in that case it would still make perfect sense in my example because, well, that divorce took place 20 years ago. If feminism was capable of screwing up people’s lives then, then it’s quite possible that it’s still able to do so now. So the mother tried to bring up her daughter using those “antiquated” standards, and the girl went on to… Read more »
@dungone: It’s funny because in another thread, you’re arguing that you know exactly what all MRAs believe and that any man who believes otherwise doesn’t have a clue about who MRAs really are. I said that MRAs are generally focussed on being anti-feminists more than anything, and that they rarely care about victims of DV except as means to attack feminism. Could I have added more of my usual “I think/it’s been my experience”, but then again, I wasn’t making any more of an absolutist claim than the average poster here, including you, or Schala who also made an absolutist… Read more »
Not to mention that I have yet to see an anti-feminist, least of all you, ever tell men that they need to stop pretending there’s an issue with anyone but themselves just because they’re unhappy, and they need to get over it so that they can focus on supporting women and children. AB, I’m going to call you out on that. It’s double barreled. Anti-feminists criticize feminist organizations such as NOW for their stance on issues such as child support, which effectively puts a legal obligation on men to support women and children. Why would an anti-feminist turn around, then,… Read more »