Babes in Battle
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Babes in Battle
June 28, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Ten years ago this week Navy Lieutenant Paula Coughlin put her career on the line by telling ABC News how she and other women had been harassed and manhandled by male officers at the Tailhook Aviators Convention. Her unprecedented appearance put a human face on the scandal and turned it into a huge national story that ultimately helped drive some high-ranking naval officers into retirement. Coughlin was the first in a line of military women who have blown the whistle on sex discrimination and other wrongdoing in the services over the last decade. Tension between the sexes have been simmering in the military ever since the draft ended in 1973 and the Pentagon moved to actively recruit women. Until then they had amounted to only 1 percent of the force. But as the numbers of women increased, so did their demand for equal employment. Gradually with much effort, nearly all but the most direct combat jobs were unisex, and as the military struggled to cope with the change, the media found themselves straining too -- to depict the new generation of servicewomen. OTM's Jad Abumrad reports.
JAD ABUMRAD: The Pentagon had intended to keep military women away from combat, but the law of unintended consequences was already at work. Military women, like women everywhere, began to push for gender equality.
CHRIS HANSON: The initial news coverage of this evolution tended to depict the women as trailblazers and pioneers.
JAD ABUMRAD: Chris Hanson is an assistant professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism in Maryland. In a recent article for the Columbia Journalism Review, Hanson traced how the press has portrayed military women over the past three decades.
CHRIS HANSON: The woman making war shattered some of our quintessential categories of gender and family -- the idea that men fight and, and women nurture.
JAD ABUMRAD: And in 1991, after a decade of mold-breaking articles, the press and public's unease about women soldiers finally came to the surface, prompted by a media storm over the capture of two female soldiers during the Gulf War. Coverage of military women, he says, exploded and suddenly took on a new unheroic focus.
CHRIS HANSON: Which I call "women as dubious warriors."
JAD ABUMRAD: A rash of articles popped on sex in the ranks. A Newsweek feature even dubbed one ship "The Loveboat." The question was now out in the open -- how should the press and the public regard the female soldier -- as the sexually ambiguous she-hulk captured here by Demi Moore in G.I. Jane-- [FILM CLIP PLAYS]
DEMI MOORE AS G.I. JANE: Suck my d**k! [GASPS OF ASTONISHMENT FROM ONLOOKERS]
JAD ABUMRAD: --Goldie Hawn's prissy Private Benjamin-- [FILM CLIP PLAYS]
GOLDIE HAWN AS PRIVATE BENJAMIN: I mean look at this place! The Army couldn't afford drapes?!
JAD ABUMRAD: Sociologist Melissa Herbert defines these as the two dominant models of media portrayal of servicewomen -- the Amazon and the Butterfly -- and according to Chris Hanson, knowingly or not, it's the Butterfly model journalists have most often reached for in the decade since the Gulf War, particularly as a string of female whistleblowers have come forward in the press. It began 10 years ago this week with Lieutenant Paula Coughlin.
NEWS ANNOUNCER:In a tailspin over Tailhook, Lieutenant Paula Coughlin, the Navy helicopter pilot who set off the scandal, has resigned, complaining over the Navy's handling of the matter.
JAD ABUMRAD: Coughlin described to the national media how in 1991 she and other female soldiers were assaulted by a group Navy men at the annual Tailhook Military Convention.
NEWS ANNOUNCER: Conclusion? 83 women were grabbed, groped, patted, pinched, stripped or otherwise assaulted--
JAD ABUMRAD:The headline coverage pressured the Navy to better investigate the incident. As a result, heads rolled; a congressional inquiry ensued, and women were granted unprecedented access to Navy jobs formerly men-only. Nevertheless military women were still portrayed as passive and weak. On one TV talk show, Paula Coughlin appeared in her dress whites over the caption "Victim of Sexual Abuse."
CHRIS HANSON: They did not say "Fighter against Sexual Abuse." They said "Victim of Sexual Abuse."
JAD ABUMRAD: And that distinction, says Hanson, is key.
CHRIS HANSON: The notion of "victim" of course is very debilitating if you're in the military, because it suggests you can't really take care of yourself, and if you can't take care of yourself, how could you possibly defend the country?
CLAUDIA KENNEDY: You're not supposed to have a problem. There's not supposed to be anything you can't solve.
JAD ABUMRAD: Before she retired, Claudia Kennedy was the highest-ranking female general in the Army, and yet in 1996 when the press caught wind of an internal complaint she filed against a fellow male officer, much of the coverage was dismissive and smug.
CLAUDIA KENNEDY: I thought it was just astonishing!
JAD ABUMRAD: In her memoir, Generally Speaking, she recalls a particularly nasty article written about her by an editor of the Washington Post which branded her "a petticoat general."
CLAUDIA KENNEDY: And he used all sorts of sarcasm, and he called it "cooing" -- C O O I N G -- "cooing." He also insinuated that cooing had become a dominant feature of a woman's Army. It was very odd.
JAD ABUMRAD: Odd, but common according to media analyst Richard Campbell. Male correspondents often take on what he calls "the equalizer role," stepping in to save a female soldier in peril. On the one hand the journalist is acting on behalf of the military woman; on the other, it's a font of sexist cliche, and it is particularly common TV news magazines like 60 Minutes. Take this 1996 interview between Morley Safer and B-52 bomber pilot Kelly Flinn. Flinn had been charged by the Army with adultery. She admitted to the crime, but came forward to draw attention to what she saw as a pattern of unequal punishment.
MORLEY SAFER: She now faces the possibility of prison.
MORLEY SAFER: You're a tough woman, yes?
KELLY FLINN: Yes.
JAD ABUMRAD: Here, Morley Safer acting as therapist is shown from the waist up, relaxed. All we see of Flinn is her red cheeks and teary eyes. Richard Campbell notes: it was all in the camerawork.
RICHARD CAMPBELL: Reporters were always shot in medium to long shots; victims and villains were almost always shot in tight closeups.
MORLEY SAFER: Could you deal with that?
KELLY FLINN: I would deal with it just the same way I've dealt with every other obstacle that's come my way and it's not something that I really look forward to facing.
RICHARD CAMPBELL: It gives the reporter on television the look of somebody that's in control of the space around him or her, and it makes anybody that's shot in tight closeups -- looks like the space around them's been denied to them.
JAD ABUMRAD: What ultimately sticks in the viewer's mind he says is vulnerability.
CLAUDIA KENNEDY: But you know what, I, I don't know of any woman in the Army, and I know thousands of us, I don't know a single one who thinks of herself as a victim -- even if she's had the experience. I, I hear the-- women say "I was targeted."
JAD ABUMRAD: And that difference, says retired general Claudia Kennedy, is finally getting through to the media. In the current War in Afghanistan women have piloted gunships, fighters and bombers; several have died. And the press is treating it all as a routine story. In fact, female soldiers are rarely featured unless the media can showcase their emotions.
LESLEY STAHL: Can you show us? Can you put this on for us and show us what it looked like?
MARTHA McSALLY: No way.
LESLEY STAHL: You won't even put it on?
JAD ABUMRAD: Case in point. Last April's interview between 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl and Colonel Martha McSally. McSally had attacked the Army for requiring military women posted in Saudi Arabia to wear Muslim head scarves called abayas. After a long commendation of McSally's military record, Stahl suddenly puts on the abaya herself.
LESLEY STAHL: Here I am. This is what you objected to so strongly.
JAD ABUMRAD: The camera goes in for the tried and true zoom.
LESLEY STAHL: Does it bother you watching me? I can see your face. Your whole face is changed, watching me put this on. It's emotional for you.
MARTHA McSALLY: Yeah.
LESLEY STAHL: It's painful.
JAD ABUMRAD: But there has been progress. Women currently make up 15 percent of the collected armed forces. To retired General Claudia Kennedy, the magic number is 20. She quotes the study.
CLAUDIA KENNEDY: "Below 2 percent, the group flies below the radar. They have no impact on the institution in terms of cultural change. When they're over 20 percent, the change has been effected its already completed story. It's between 2 and 20 percent that you have great friction."
JAD ABUMRAD: Currently there are still plenty of trailblazers, butterflies and dubious warriors among the media portrayals, but Kennedy hopes that as women in the military become accepted by their male counterparts, eventually the image of just the soldier will prevail. For On the Media, I'm Jad Abumrad. [THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER] 58:00
BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers with Sean Landis; engineered by Irene Trudel, Dylan Keefe and Rob Weisberg [sp?], and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from Andy Lanset, Allison Lichter and Jim Colgan. Our web master is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large, Arun Rath our senior producer and Dean Capello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from National Public Radio. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. [MUSIC TAG] 58:30 [FUNDING CREDITS] ************
June 28, 2002
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Ten years ago this week Navy Lieutenant Paula Coughlin put her career on the line by telling ABC News how she and other women had been harassed and manhandled by male officers at the Tailhook Aviators Convention. Her unprecedented appearance put a human face on the scandal and turned it into a huge national story that ultimately helped drive some high-ranking naval officers into retirement. Coughlin was the first in a line of military women who have blown the whistle on sex discrimination and other wrongdoing in the services over the last decade. Tension between the sexes have been simmering in the military ever since the draft ended in 1973 and the Pentagon moved to actively recruit women. Until then they had amounted to only 1 percent of the force. But as the numbers of women increased, so did their demand for equal employment. Gradually with much effort, nearly all but the most direct combat jobs were unisex, and as the military struggled to cope with the change, the media found themselves straining too -- to depict the new generation of servicewomen. OTM's Jad Abumrad reports.
JAD ABUMRAD: The Pentagon had intended to keep military women away from combat, but the law of unintended consequences was already at work. Military women, like women everywhere, began to push for gender equality.
CHRIS HANSON: The initial news coverage of this evolution tended to depict the women as trailblazers and pioneers.
JAD ABUMRAD: Chris Hanson is an assistant professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism in Maryland. In a recent article for the Columbia Journalism Review, Hanson traced how the press has portrayed military women over the past three decades.
CHRIS HANSON: The woman making war shattered some of our quintessential categories of gender and family -- the idea that men fight and, and women nurture.
JAD ABUMRAD: And in 1991, after a decade of mold-breaking articles, the press and public's unease about women soldiers finally came to the surface, prompted by a media storm over the capture of two female soldiers during the Gulf War. Coverage of military women, he says, exploded and suddenly took on a new unheroic focus.
CHRIS HANSON: Which I call "women as dubious warriors."
JAD ABUMRAD: A rash of articles popped on sex in the ranks. A Newsweek feature even dubbed one ship "The Loveboat." The question was now out in the open -- how should the press and the public regard the female soldier -- as the sexually ambiguous she-hulk captured here by Demi Moore in G.I. Jane-- [FILM CLIP PLAYS]
DEMI MOORE AS G.I. JANE: Suck my d**k! [GASPS OF ASTONISHMENT FROM ONLOOKERS]
JAD ABUMRAD: --Goldie Hawn's prissy Private Benjamin-- [FILM CLIP PLAYS]
GOLDIE HAWN AS PRIVATE BENJAMIN: I mean look at this place! The Army couldn't afford drapes?!
JAD ABUMRAD: Sociologist Melissa Herbert defines these as the two dominant models of media portrayal of servicewomen -- the Amazon and the Butterfly -- and according to Chris Hanson, knowingly or not, it's the Butterfly model journalists have most often reached for in the decade since the Gulf War, particularly as a string of female whistleblowers have come forward in the press. It began 10 years ago this week with Lieutenant Paula Coughlin.
NEWS ANNOUNCER:In a tailspin over Tailhook, Lieutenant Paula Coughlin, the Navy helicopter pilot who set off the scandal, has resigned, complaining over the Navy's handling of the matter.
JAD ABUMRAD: Coughlin described to the national media how in 1991 she and other female soldiers were assaulted by a group Navy men at the annual Tailhook Military Convention.
NEWS ANNOUNCER: Conclusion? 83 women were grabbed, groped, patted, pinched, stripped or otherwise assaulted--
JAD ABUMRAD:The headline coverage pressured the Navy to better investigate the incident. As a result, heads rolled; a congressional inquiry ensued, and women were granted unprecedented access to Navy jobs formerly men-only. Nevertheless military women were still portrayed as passive and weak. On one TV talk show, Paula Coughlin appeared in her dress whites over the caption "Victim of Sexual Abuse."
CHRIS HANSON: They did not say "Fighter against Sexual Abuse." They said "Victim of Sexual Abuse."
JAD ABUMRAD: And that distinction, says Hanson, is key.
CHRIS HANSON: The notion of "victim" of course is very debilitating if you're in the military, because it suggests you can't really take care of yourself, and if you can't take care of yourself, how could you possibly defend the country?
CLAUDIA KENNEDY: You're not supposed to have a problem. There's not supposed to be anything you can't solve.
JAD ABUMRAD: Before she retired, Claudia Kennedy was the highest-ranking female general in the Army, and yet in 1996 when the press caught wind of an internal complaint she filed against a fellow male officer, much of the coverage was dismissive and smug.
CLAUDIA KENNEDY: I thought it was just astonishing!
JAD ABUMRAD: In her memoir, Generally Speaking, she recalls a particularly nasty article written about her by an editor of the Washington Post which branded her "a petticoat general."
CLAUDIA KENNEDY: And he used all sorts of sarcasm, and he called it "cooing" -- C O O I N G -- "cooing." He also insinuated that cooing had become a dominant feature of a woman's Army. It was very odd.
JAD ABUMRAD: Odd, but common according to media analyst Richard Campbell. Male correspondents often take on what he calls "the equalizer role," stepping in to save a female soldier in peril. On the one hand the journalist is acting on behalf of the military woman; on the other, it's a font of sexist cliche, and it is particularly common TV news magazines like 60 Minutes. Take this 1996 interview between Morley Safer and B-52 bomber pilot Kelly Flinn. Flinn had been charged by the Army with adultery. She admitted to the crime, but came forward to draw attention to what she saw as a pattern of unequal punishment.
MORLEY SAFER: She now faces the possibility of prison.
MORLEY SAFER: You're a tough woman, yes?
KELLY FLINN: Yes.
JAD ABUMRAD: Here, Morley Safer acting as therapist is shown from the waist up, relaxed. All we see of Flinn is her red cheeks and teary eyes. Richard Campbell notes: it was all in the camerawork.
RICHARD CAMPBELL: Reporters were always shot in medium to long shots; victims and villains were almost always shot in tight closeups.
MORLEY SAFER: Could you deal with that?
KELLY FLINN: I would deal with it just the same way I've dealt with every other obstacle that's come my way and it's not something that I really look forward to facing.
RICHARD CAMPBELL: It gives the reporter on television the look of somebody that's in control of the space around him or her, and it makes anybody that's shot in tight closeups -- looks like the space around them's been denied to them.
JAD ABUMRAD: What ultimately sticks in the viewer's mind he says is vulnerability.
CLAUDIA KENNEDY: But you know what, I, I don't know of any woman in the Army, and I know thousands of us, I don't know a single one who thinks of herself as a victim -- even if she's had the experience. I, I hear the-- women say "I was targeted."
JAD ABUMRAD: And that difference, says retired general Claudia Kennedy, is finally getting through to the media. In the current War in Afghanistan women have piloted gunships, fighters and bombers; several have died. And the press is treating it all as a routine story. In fact, female soldiers are rarely featured unless the media can showcase their emotions.
LESLEY STAHL: Can you show us? Can you put this on for us and show us what it looked like?
MARTHA McSALLY: No way.
LESLEY STAHL: You won't even put it on?
JAD ABUMRAD: Case in point. Last April's interview between 60 Minutes' Lesley Stahl and Colonel Martha McSally. McSally had attacked the Army for requiring military women posted in Saudi Arabia to wear Muslim head scarves called abayas. After a long commendation of McSally's military record, Stahl suddenly puts on the abaya herself.
LESLEY STAHL: Here I am. This is what you objected to so strongly.
JAD ABUMRAD: The camera goes in for the tried and true zoom.
LESLEY STAHL: Does it bother you watching me? I can see your face. Your whole face is changed, watching me put this on. It's emotional for you.
MARTHA McSALLY: Yeah.
LESLEY STAHL: It's painful.
JAD ABUMRAD: But there has been progress. Women currently make up 15 percent of the collected armed forces. To retired General Claudia Kennedy, the magic number is 20. She quotes the study.
CLAUDIA KENNEDY: "Below 2 percent, the group flies below the radar. They have no impact on the institution in terms of cultural change. When they're over 20 percent, the change has been effected its already completed story. It's between 2 and 20 percent that you have great friction."
JAD ABUMRAD: Currently there are still plenty of trailblazers, butterflies and dubious warriors among the media portrayals, but Kennedy hopes that as women in the military become accepted by their male counterparts, eventually the image of just the soldier will prevail. For On the Media, I'm Jad Abumrad. [THEME MUSIC UP AND UNDER] 58:00
BOB GARFIELD: That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers with Sean Landis; engineered by Irene Trudel, Dylan Keefe and Rob Weisberg [sp?], and edited-- by Brooke. We had help from Andy Lanset, Allison Lichter and Jim Colgan. Our web master is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:Mike Pesca is our producer at large, Arun Rath our senior producer and Dean Capello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts at onthemedia.org and e-mail us at onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from National Public Radio. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. [MUSIC TAG] 58:30 [FUNDING CREDITS] ************
Produced by WNYC Studios