![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
military recruiting
Apr. 6th, 2007 03:50 pmi hope this email exchange is a joke, but i'm afraid it is not. the don't ask, don't tell policy is insulting enough, but the fact that a military recruiter would use her professional position in order to interact this way with anyone is even more insulting.
yes, it was clear that the person who responded to the email was trying to bait her into a discussion. there's nothing wrong with that. she could have chosen to leave him alone. she could have sent a short email back to him saying that they still do not take out gay people, and leave it at that. she would have had no further obligation to continue talking to this man about the army. she could have dealt with the bait in a calm, professional manner, and she did not have to get into discussing any issues with him if she did not want to do that. it would have been her prerogative and her right.
what she should not have done is...well, exactly what she did. she tells him that gay people aren't qualified to serve in the military, and then goes off on an all-caps rant about how he needs to be so thankful for everything that the military does, that freedom isn't free and all that cop-out stuff? he wasn't trying to impugn the military, tell them that they're bad for doing things to defend the country. he wasn't bringing that up at all. he was bringing up the one military policy of not taking gays. later in the exchange, he did get snippy. that's true. but, it would take the patience of a saint for him not to get snippy toward the military recruiter after some of the extremely juvenile, heterosexist, jingoistic, and later racist comments that she was making to him.
it says at the beginning that she was reassigned. i know they never would actually do it, but i think this should be grounds for a dishonourable discharge. if we citizens are supposed to have such respect for the military, the military should be expected to treat the citizens with respect as well. if someone like this was a recruiter, was part of the public face, part of the public contact front of the military...i find that disconcerting, and i find that scary.
the military is publicly encouraging parents of potential recruits to be open-minded and proud about their child joining the military, and couching that in terms of encouraging parents to talk to the recruiters, ask them questions, and do research about the military to know what their child is getting into. if these are the kinds of answers that recruiters are giving people who are asking questions, it really makes me think that the facade of wanting dialogue about the military is just that--a facade.
yes, it was clear that the person who responded to the email was trying to bait her into a discussion. there's nothing wrong with that. she could have chosen to leave him alone. she could have sent a short email back to him saying that they still do not take out gay people, and leave it at that. she would have had no further obligation to continue talking to this man about the army. she could have dealt with the bait in a calm, professional manner, and she did not have to get into discussing any issues with him if she did not want to do that. it would have been her prerogative and her right.
what she should not have done is...well, exactly what she did. she tells him that gay people aren't qualified to serve in the military, and then goes off on an all-caps rant about how he needs to be so thankful for everything that the military does, that freedom isn't free and all that cop-out stuff? he wasn't trying to impugn the military, tell them that they're bad for doing things to defend the country. he wasn't bringing that up at all. he was bringing up the one military policy of not taking gays. later in the exchange, he did get snippy. that's true. but, it would take the patience of a saint for him not to get snippy toward the military recruiter after some of the extremely juvenile, heterosexist, jingoistic, and later racist comments that she was making to him.
it says at the beginning that she was reassigned. i know they never would actually do it, but i think this should be grounds for a dishonourable discharge. if we citizens are supposed to have such respect for the military, the military should be expected to treat the citizens with respect as well. if someone like this was a recruiter, was part of the public face, part of the public contact front of the military...i find that disconcerting, and i find that scary.
the military is publicly encouraging parents of potential recruits to be open-minded and proud about their child joining the military, and couching that in terms of encouraging parents to talk to the recruiters, ask them questions, and do research about the military to know what their child is getting into. if these are the kinds of answers that recruiters are giving people who are asking questions, it really makes me think that the facade of wanting dialogue about the military is just that--a facade.
