NS April 9th, 2007

I have a (most likely rather unpopular) bone to pick with the British sailors who were captured in Iran and held for nearly two weeks before being released. More specifically, with the lone female amongst the crew, Faye Turney.

Maybe it’s the extreme cynic in me. Maybe it’s my admitted distaste for the military. Or maybe it’s because I used to be a Navy girlfriend: my ex joined the service while we were dating and I spent over 2 years attending Navy events, visiting him on huge, soulless Destroyers during port calls in Virginia and going months without knowing where in the world (literally) he was while out at sea. It was hard watching someone I loved be ‘broken’ by the Navy, brain washed and physically punished for something as simple as omitting the first word from the ‘sir, yes sir’ response of incoming boot campers. At a time when I was learning to be independent, questioning authority and learning the merits of individualism, I couldn’t understand why the man I loved, someone infamous in our home town for flying under the radar, wanted to give all of that up and let himself be indoctrinated with someone else’s ideals, someone else’s decree of Right and Wrong. I tried to be supportive but in the end, I couldn’t forgive him for deserting me with no warning (he joined a couple days before Christmas without discussing it with me and left on New Years Day), for forcing me into a role I abhorred, and for willingly becoming part of the national war machine I detested. I broke his heart and for that I will always feel badly, but I don’t regret my decision one bit. Some people find it easy and honorable to be involved in the military, even in an associated way. I am not one of them. But I don’t have to be because I didn’t join. I didn’t promise to serve and protect my country by defending its borders and security. Faye Turney did.

Turney is a Leading Seaman with the Royal Navy. She joined willingly, has served for nine years, and went on missions in the Middle East as part of her job. By all accounts she is no shrinking violet and is more than happy to be ‘one of the boys’, playing the game by men’s standards. No tears, no fears, lots of beers. Or something like that. But the media singled her out as somehow more vulnerable, in a more precarious position than the 14 male captives. Newspapers and tv reporters began calling her the ‘human face of this tragedy’ and continually referred to her daughter and husband waiting at home, which really got to me. Are the men not just as human, just as scared, just as important to their families? Some might think it gallant that many still value women and children more highly than men in life-threatening situations. Bullshit. Even if the intentions and sentiment appear harmless, noble even, they aren’t. We have become so indoctrinated with the idea that women need saving that even some of the so-called feminists bemoaned the fact that a mother was in peril. The British government lapped it up, knowing that the more vulnerable Turney seemed and the more public support she had, the more heartless and evil it made the Iranians look. They’re not idiots, Blair and Co.

It sickens me that we still tie in motherhood with ideas of home and country, as something worth going to war over, when, in reality, being a mother doesn’t mean shit to anyone but her family. To use and exploit motherhood to evoke emotions in the public, emotions everyone thinks are valid and chivalrous, is to further male-dominated agendas and knock women’s lib down a peg or two. The message is clear: the men were brave, the woman was saved. And now that she’s selling her story, insisting that it’s something ‘extraordinary’ when it was her job, what she signed up to do, pisses me off even more. There is nothing extraordinary about being a woman, being a mother, and being in the military. Millions of women do it every day. To pretend otherwise is to confirm what many have known all along — women are still not equal, in the boardroom or in the war zones, both at home and abroad. Turney exemplifies this and willingly makes herself a part of that prejudice.

In today’s news articles, Turney tells of how when she was forced to write those letters, criticizing the British and American governments, she felt like a traitor. Cue soothing sounds and the proverbial pat on the head, everyone telling her she did no such thing, she was doing what she was forced to do. And no, she did not betray her country that day. Her betrayal was much more subtle and on a much larger scale — the millions of females in the military. She’s just made their job a whole hell of a lot harder. And that, to me, is unforgivable.

• Feminist Fury , In The News
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