Under wraps

We have now spent close to three months "in theater". Almost without fail, and even in the port calls before we formally inchopped, the countries we've visited have been extremely conservative, traditional, male-dominated, majority-Muslim societies.

I expected women to be largely invisible; black-clad shadows floating, out of focus, in the background; absent from politics, the military, business: all the traditional seats of power. In this, despite the brilliant knots of sari-wrapped wives in Cochin, I was not entirely mistaken. Everywhere we've gone, I've been a novelty, particularly where I've involved myself in the VBSS (visit, board, search, and seizure) and maritime law enforcement training, or assisted with ATFP (anti-terrorism/force protection) concerns, or even just in introductions as the Tactical Action Officer - what our British and Australian cousins call the PWO (Principal Warfare Officer).
In India, where I found company with their regional coast guard's sole female officer, an O-4 in charge of logistics (and where I admit I didn't help my case by providing the musical entertainment for our reception onboard), the general rumor was that I was the captain's wife. Why else is she onboard? In Malaysia, the boarding team members were skittish when I went "hands-on" to demonstrate correct techniques for handcuffing and escorts, and peppered me with questions about frisking female subjects while avoiding what they called "human rights concerns". In Jordan, the local security forces made eyes at all the ship's females (the local US Navy intelligence agent, a woman, said, "Do you feel uncomfortable yet? You will..."), and in Oman, I bought an abaya. Just in case.

Surprisingly, the Saudis were quite polite to me, in our limited interaction; in Bahrain and the Maldives, I was largely out of the operational loop. Everywhere, I was questioned not on my profession, but on my personal life: where are your husband and children?! It reminded me, uncomfortably, of my nosy neighbors in the Deep South.

Gender-wise, the most challenging country we visited was Pakistan. In Karachi, for AMAN '09, I'd volunteered to organize the evolution our ship would run as OTC (officer in tactical command), an exercise demonstrating the multi-national naval forces' collective ability to defend against the threat from small boat attacks. The visiting naval officers were largely nonchalant (worried, no doubt, about their own pending exercises), but the locals weren't sure how to take me. My input in the pre-sail conference was largely smiled at politely - and ignored. After I briefed our exercise in front of the collective countries' naval delegations, long and oppressive silence reigned: nobody dared question my plan...why is a woman up there giving direction in the first place?! Underway, when I sought to take OTC control in order to kick off the exercise, the exercise controller fought with me over an open tactical circuit, belittling my requests. And at the hotwash, it wasn't until the male officers in our delegation repeated my suggestions that they were taken for further review and followup. Still, brush-offs aside, the general response following the at-sea portion was that our exercise - which I had greatly re-written from the previous conference's draft, to increase its realism and applicability - was one of the most useful of the dozen or so executed during the overall event.

So operationally, I've stood my ground. I earned public bridge-to-bridge compliments after conning the ship sweaty-palmed, but smoothly through a RAS (refueling-at-sea) evolution in very rough weather. I gained the silent respect of pilots in Jordan and Bahrain, navigating to and away from a pier; particularly with the very tight mooring evolution in Bahrain, between a South Korean destroyer and a damaged Navy sub, where I spun the ship around in her place and parallel-parked her, as though we had the assistance of stern thrusters or a Z-drive.

I am glad to be here, the female face in the wardroom, in the foreground and not disappearing in the distance. A Navy colleague out here told me that when his destroyer came through, they had a junior officer pretend to be their XO at all official functions: they figured their female XO might be accepted by traditional Middle Eastern societies. To me, that undermines what we stand for as Americans. Do we shy away from appointing a female Secretary of State; do we have her underlings impersonate her in male-dominated countries?

In Bahrain, where I visited the Grand Mosque, my fully-cloaked female guides suggested that what the Western world called "oppression" of women was actually freeing and respectful. Women worshipped separately so they wouldn't be bending over for prayers in front of lustful male eyes. They covered up so they wouldn't distract men from holy thoughts. They had the most important role: raising the children, the next generation, the men who would become great leaders of the future and the women who would, in turn, bear more men. The same words of traditional male-dominated cultures for centuries, and all centered around the towering obelisk of male primacy.


In its own way, I realize, it's no different from the "male gaze" dominating Western popular culture as well, despite our "advances" and feminism. Women's magazines abound with photo spreads of scantily clad women; both articles and advertising convince distraught readers that only with the right cosmetics, clothing, jewelry, fancy shoes, and the right attitudes and acts, can they hope to improve themselves enough to attract or keep a man; which is, of course, the ultimate goal of every modern woman's life.

It is then that the billowy black cloak and protecting veil seem, in their way, liberating.