Triple Threat

When I was on active duty, my promotion trajectory was quite fast. Due to a now defunct program called "accelerated advancement," my ability to test well, and a sufficient number of openings in my job title, I was able to achieve the rank of First Class Petty Officer (E-6) in 4.5 years, at the age of 23.

And I took no end of shit for my accomplishment.

Nearly every non-commissioned officer with whom I had contact had the following opinion:

1. I was far too young to have been awarded the rank I had achieved.
2. I had not been in the Navy long enough to have been awarded the rank I had achieved.
3. A woman should not have been awarded the rank I had achieved ahead of a man.
4. The rank I had been awarded was obviously the result of my looks, or who I had slept with, or some other non-merit based criteria. 
5. Some combination of 1, 2, 3, and always 4.

I was promoted because I was smart, and worked hard, and learned the technical knowledge I needed in order to do well on the advancement exam. But I didn't "deserve" it because I was young, female, and attractive. And people - both men and women - felt perfectly comfortable saying this to my face, secure in the knowledge that their behavior was acceptable in  the culture in which we lived and worked.

And it made me think, "I wonder if their attitude would have been different if I'd had a penis?" I think you can guess the answer. Because there was a man in my command who was equally smart, worked just as hard, learned just as much, and got promoted almost as fast. And he was described as "ambitious," "someone to watch," and a "triple threat." I can guarantee I wasn't described in those terms by my peers, even though we shared the attributes that made him praiseworthy. Yeah.

I'm happy to say that the Navy has made some progress in changing the culture so that the assumptions that were made about me are not necessarily the norm anymore. The fact that women are equal in fact rather than only in policy helps tremendously, as did the post Tailhook house-cleaning. But I wonder...how many high quality sailors were run off because staying wasn't worth the grief they took whenever they excelled? Being constantly marginalized - especially as a result of excellence - wears a person down, and I can't blame my sisters-in-arms who made the choice to leave rather than continue to deal with that bullshit indefinitely. I personally consider my experience worth it, and I don't regret it. But that doesn't mean it doesn't still piss me the hell off.