During the late 1980s, I served overseas in the United States Army in what was then West Germany.   I was eighteen when I went in and twenty-one when I left.

I understood that, as a traditionally masculine enterprise, there would be some hazing and pushing of my physical and emotional endurance. That was my official, structured indoctrination.

The unofficial indoctrination was thorough and pervasive misogyny, from the very top brass to the lowliest grunt.  I’m not saying that everyone behaved like a Neanderthal.  I’m saying that it was unavoidable, like sunrise and sunset.  I admired the few women I encountered.  They seem to have been tested and toughened in ways that might have broken me.

One of my commanding officers in basic training was sexualized and the focus of aggressive, dehumanizing gossip on a regular basis by many of my fellow basic trainees.  This was all done behind her back, of course.  To her face, it was always “Yes, ma’am” or “No, ma’am.”

The few women billeted to our barracks in West Germany had separate lodging facilities.  They always seemed uncomfortable to me.  Some of the male soldiers tried to strike up “romantic” relationships with them.  I watched a few of the women have casual conversations, but nothing on their end that I would determine romantic in any way, shape, or form.

There was an unceasing, unrelenting focus on trying to fuck women — who was doing it, how men were frustrated that they weren’t doing it as much as they wanted, why you weren’t really a man if you weren’t always up for it, et cetera, ad nauseum.  I remember one soldier, considered to be a virgin, being relentlessly hounded about losing his cherry.  Others bragged about hiring a sex worker to get him laid.  None of it ever seemed to take his wants or wishes into account.  It was expected, therefore you were expected to go along with the hazing, consent be damned.

Oh, and one soldier was arrested for murdering a German sex worker of color.  On the flyers posted throughout our barracks, her grainy head shot was plastered on what looked like a mannequin’s body.  That always gave me nightmares, like the authorities were looking for a half-human doll instead of an actual person.  When the military police finally came to make an arrest, was it one of the muscular, typically masculine soldiers you would suspect would do such a thing?  No, it was a thin, unassuming sort of man you’d think couldn’t harm a fly.  That I had no idea who I roomed and worked with or what they were capable was a stark and shocking realization.  I never saw anyone attempt sexual assault/rape, but I thoroughly believe The Invisible War is 100% accurate.

This happened on top of the casual racism.  I’d never met a white person that casually called my people “niggers” in front of me, but I worked with a man who did so.  It wasn’t even what I would determine hostile.  He just thought us black folks were a lower sort as compared to whites (not, mind you, me, one of the “good ones” in his estimation).  That sort of thing was pretty commonplace.  Have you seen the opening sequence of Full Metal Jacket?  Yeah, that’s what it was like but without the screaming: just a bunch of good-natured dismissal of my total humanity.

And let’s not forget the drinking.  Friday nights before the weekend were alcohol-laden escapes from boredom, regret, and desperation.  A good many of the people there probably didn’t want to be there, and when you added German booze (with a higher alcohol content than U.S. brands, with newly-minted adults away from home, probably for the first time in their lives) on top of that … well, nothing good ever happened in that kind of situation.  One of the NCOs in my platoon woke me one night to watch one of the new privates I worked with lose his shit in an alcoholic frenzy.  I guess my NCO thought I would help him, but I just went back to my room.  As far as I was concerned, that guy was a full grown man responsible for himself.  Oh, my colleague who thought of my people as niggers?  Yeah, he tried to pull me out of the top bunk I was sleeping in once, calling me a faker, not a real man, etc.—real chest-thumping, machismo horseshit clouded by intoxication.  I woke up to the smell of a pool of his own vomit (that he never cleaned up).

Now maybe the various American armed forces have gotten their act together since I’ve left (nearly thiry years ago).  Maybe my battery was an anomaly.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if nothing has changed much.

Needless to say, I don’t drink or abuse drugs (legal or otherwise).  I didn’t before I went in to the Army and I saw absolutely nothing there that looked even remotely fun.  I don’t have a problem with those of you that can handle the occasional beer, glass of wine, or joint responsibly.  Drinking just never appealed to me, and I consider high and drunken behavior actively repellent.  I’m also pro-feminist and anti-bigotry, so whatever kind of man the military was trying to mold me into didn’t take.