Transition: The First Three Months and the Last Thirty Nine Years

Alrighty, well...if the so-called "trans-trenders" on youtube are to be believed, it's my duty to post the vaunted "HRT Updates" at certain intervals (sarcasm /off, wink wink j/k). No, seriously tho, I've been openly transitioning since Easter and I'm overwhelmed by how suppportive basically everyone in my life is.  I've officially been "on hormones"(and a testosterone-blocking medication) for three months, but in a way, I've always been on this journey. 

I "came out" publicly with a facebook post, although I'd clued-in my immediate family earlier. "Coming out" is something that I never though I'd do. I mean, not something that I didn't think I'd work out the courage to do, I mean that flat-out I never even thought of myself as any sort of "queer," even though I'd always end up going on to anyone who would listen about how I "always felt different" and "never fit in." When I was very young, I liked to dress up in "women's" clothes with my cousins and to play pretend as female characters...that is, until I was shamed for it. Forbidden from dressing up in those clothes even. This was a pretty universal societal pressure, although my dad was certainly the primary driver behind it in my life. It's a complex thing, mostly rooted in him wanting to protect me, wanting me to fit in neatly with the standard roles in life. It can be hard to parse through those distant memories - what were my real desires and preferences, which were the ones I learned because they pleased others? But not really that hard, looking back. 

I remember, I always loved those strong, badass women in science fiction, fantasy, and action movies. I identified with Alice finding her way through Wonderland, with Dorothy in Oz, and with Sarah as she sought the center of the Labyrinth. After my sister died and we moved to Arizona, my parents gave me a bit more autonomy in some regards. They let me watch "grown up movies," especially the TV-edits, and I got really into Terminator, Aliens, Predator, Robocop - all of these featuring badass ladies. I remember my dad and I plugged in an unmarked VHS tape from one of the boxes he'd picked up from a self-storage auction: it was "Aliens," which I hadn't seen before, qued up exactly to that classic moment - Ripley strides forward in the power-loader to deliver that all-time badass quote: "Get away from her, you bitch!"  "WOW!" I exclaimed, as the film cut from that overwhelming moment to the equally electrifying alien queen hissing in reply. I protested as my dad stopped the tape, but he was just rewinding it, "you're gonna love this," he said - and he was right. Not only was there the main heroine, Ripley, but other badass women as well -  Vasquez, unloading on the xenomorphs with her massive incinterator smart-gun ("LET'S ROCK!"), the snarky pilot Ferro, hell, even the *little girl* Newt was a total badass, surviving the alien infestation with a cool cunning beyond that of any of the adults and overconfident colonial marines. 

Later that same summer, Predator 2 hit home video, also featuring a tough woman on Danny Glover's hardboiled police squad - Leona was one of the only characters to encounter the Predator and survive, spared because she was pregnant, yes, but she fought valiantly in the gang battle that opens the movie, she's shown to be a shrewd and competent detective, and she deftly manages the evacuation of a subway train attacked by the titular monster, saving countless civilians. 

It was around this time I saw a sneak preview of Terminator 2: Judgement Day on the evening news. You know the scene - Sarah Connor, her son John, and the iconic cyborg reprogrammed to save rather than destroy, are all trapped in the Cyberdyne lab, when Ahrnold blasts a hole in the wall so they can make their escape. The next shot is burned into my memory, as I saw a heightened fantasy version of my family trying to flee the turmoil of my sister's death - the hardened tough-guy father figure, the kid caught up in it all, and the badass mom. That badass mom, Sarah Conner, stuck with me most of all. The thirty-second preview scene ended, and I was left to wait months for the finished film to be released in theaters. But I replayed that scene in my head, over and over. I acted it out, imagined myself in it, extrapolated the plot in both directions, pretending I was in it whenever I played outside. And when I ran around our yard, or down trails in the deserts of Tucson, every time, I saw myself as Sarah Connor. I didn't even know who she was, or the name of her character - she was just that badass mom from Terminator 2, the movie I couldn't wait to see. The lady in the black military-style trousers, combat boots, a tank-top with a military utility harness (my mind translated this to a "bullet-proof vest," like the kind worn by Robocop's partner, Anne Lewis). I was always on the look out for a puffy vest or life jacket that I could wear to help me achieve that badass-lady in a bullet-proof vest look, like Sarah Conner sported in the sneak preview, or Officer Lewis wore backing up Robocop, a similar look to Vasquez in Aliens when equipped with the full smart-gun harness.

Terminator 2 finally came, and I was not disappointed - Sarah Connor kicked so much ass! Traumatized from the events of the original "Terminator" movie (which was, to me, a great disappointment, I hated seeing her weak, as someone to be saved by Kyle Reese - himself played by Micheal Biehn, my favorite dude from that particular era of actions movies. I would pretend to be him too I guess, sometimes, acting out scenes from the less-classic "Navy Seals"), she fought hard to protect her son and remained wary of Schwarzenegger's cyborg.

Sometimes I had nightmares about alien creatures and killer robots. I saw Alien 3 in the theater and like many, was deeply hurt that the beloved characters Hicks, Newt, and Bishop were unceremoniously killed off, during *the opening titles* no less. However, there was something that touched me deeply in that film as well ( and I remember its sneak preview, too, on a late-night talk show appearance by Sigourney Weaver), which to me will always be the "scariest" of those films but also the most inspiring. It's stripped down, homogenized, all browns and grays. It's all dark, foreboding shadows, the space-convicts that make unlikely heroes are also, often, very likely villains. Ripley has lost her surrogate family, lost her hair even - she's reduced to this bare, essentialist view of female - on one level, all that differentiates her from the equally-bald convicts is that she is a vessel for a host life to grow inside of - the ultimate expression of the "Alien" films' metaphor. But on another, deeper level, Ripley's experiences and conviction to do what's right are what differentiate her.

My freedom with R-rated movies found its limit shortly thereafter. At a sleepover with a friend, who wanted to rent the most gruesome and badass thing we could find, we brought home "Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth." Neither of us had seen the previous 2 Hellraiser films, we just thought it looked scary and brutal. We were right. I was especially disturbed by a gratuitous and graphic sex scene, as well as the many seemingly pointless deaths perpetuated by the villain Pinhead and his demonic minions. However, something kept me invested in the plot enough to follow it to the end - actress Terry Farrell, whose character Joey Summerskill finally defeats Pinhead. Farrell would go on to play Jadzia Dax in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," which I watched almost religiously when it first debuted. Dax was my favorite character, although I was very embarrassed to admit it (perhaps owing to the previously mentioned shaming earlier in my youth). She also didn't have that "badass" quality like the action-movie characters of Ripley or Sarah Connor. Instead, she was just tremendously smart, pretty, and charming. Dax had this way of walking contemplatively, holding her hands behind her back, that I emulated for YEARS. How did my parents miss that one!? LOL!

Farrell's Joey Summerskill in "Hellraiser 3" was likewise not a "badass" in the manner of the other sci-fi women that inspired me. She didn't defeat Pinhead with hardened grit and gunpowder, but with her convictions, her dedication. It is Joey's investigative instinct, her tenacious courage, and her love for her father that enable her to defeat the film's terrifying villains. In a way, this was a kind of counterpoint to the evolution of Ripley in Alien 3: she's no longer a gun-toting, mech-piloting, badass babe who defeats the Alien menance - she is carrying the alien menace inside of herself and must choose self-sacrifice over "the fucking company's" dubious claims of helping her. Joey Summerskill's empathy towards her dead soldier father, and likewise towards the war-scarred man who Pinhead used to be, are what help her to defeat the demons; Ripley's empathy with the rapists and murderers emprisoned with her in Alien 3 helped her to enlist their aid in defeating the xenomorph.

I know my dad tried to help me. I know he loved me, that he tried to empathize with me. But his attempts to protect me and guide me could also hurt me. He got upset that I found so much relief in escaping from the rigors of teenage life by playing video games, roleplaying games, and tabletop games. He liked to tell me to grow up, to put aside the childish things. He smashed all of my wargaming miniatures during an argument one day - I still have them, but most are still in pieces. When I was going to a friend's house every day to play the seminal game "Final Fantasy VII" on their PlayStation (at that time, he still forbid me from owning a gaming console of my own), he suspected that only drugs or a homosexual relationship could be consuming my time. Both of his envisioned fears seemed equally dangerous to him - he had struggled with alcoholism, and before that was groomed and molested by his Scoutmaster. My friends and I also spent a lot of time wandering around the desert, playing a very loose form of the "Vampire: The Masquerade" pen-and-paper role-playing game. I usually played a female character, "Allison Valentine," named after my dead sister. 

When I was 17, shortly before we moved from Tucson to Salt Lake City, a friend gave me a hit of acid, my first psychedelic experience. Late that night, after the most vivid effects had worn off and I was trying to go to sleep, I was seeing a flickering, dancing light behind my eyelids. It most closely resembled that Ghost of Christmas Present from the "Muppets Christmas Carol." You know - ghostly white, ethereal, always shifting and flowing around? Only more formless, no face, just lightbeams. I was overwhelmed with the feeling that this was my soul - I was seeing my own soul! And to my surprise (not really though), it was a female soul. 

I wrote about the experience in an email. He spied on my email one day, concerned that I was getting into even more trouble, having dropped out of high school that year (and having stolen some of his weed that Noah Gabbard and I found while looking for cigarettes - ha!). He found the draft message talking about my trip and the vision of my girl-soul, and he confronted me. He basically tried to talk me out of it.

"Weren't you just "high? You don't want to base your life around some crazy thoughts you had on drugs, right?" ....I mean, I guess, not, right?

"Don't you just like girls? You want to BE with girls, right?" ....Well, yeah! Yeah, I do like girls!

And while I knew the truth of my vision deep inside, I felt persuaded, I felt like I needed to bury my truth in order to fit in, to find success and love and acceptance. My true self could be my little secret, my own hidden place of solace, just between me and my feminine soul. I almost started to forget. Except, I couldn't forget *myself.* And anyway, people wouldn't let me. Many people, including my dad at times, would accuse me of being gay - girls that I wouldn't just immediately sleep with given the chance, dudes in the Marine Corps, friends who throught I was being too effeminate. I got called a "fag" a lot. In my lengthy and ongoing treatment for post-traumatic stress following my service in the Marine Corps, many practitioners have identified my decision to enlist as an attempt to prove these people wrong, to embrace hyper-masculinity as a defense mechanism. Their assessment only seems more correct the more I have embraced my true self. 

I remember when I first saw women Marines marching in a formation at my MOS school. My heart jumped out of my chest. The other dudes in my platoon expressed various levels of shock, disgust, and sexual desire. I kind of played along, I mean, there were a couple that stood out to me as prettier, more attractive, who I felt more drawn to. I tried to stick up for my sisters in arms - "hey, they're badass, that's awesome that they're doing it just like us." But the prevailing attitude was that they were somehow weaker, inferior, their only value as objects of sexual conquest, and their inclusion in our military branch somehow devaluing. I was disgusted. I've always had so much respect for women in the military, who go through everything that the men do AND have to put up with the demeaning attitude of male colleagues, and all too often, sexual harassment and assault. 

My dad used to get so angry about my hair growing out long. I imagine a large amount of this was him passing on trauma from his own youth. He used to talk about how his father, a former Marine who served in World War II and Korea, would simply "buzz" his and his older brother's hair off with clippers as a matter of routine. Paradoxically, he would describe the need for close-cropped hair as both "super easy and efficient, requiring no fussing or upkeep" AND as a way of "showing other people how well-put-together you are and how you paid attention to your appearance." I guess he was one person who was somewhat convinced of my heteronormativity by my time in the Marines. He kind of gave me a pass about growing my hair long - I had earned the right to be a little bit slack, to let it grow long after having it cropped high-and-tight for those years. He now simply chided me about how "maybe I might want to get it cut, maybe I had let myself go long enough" instead of insisting that my entire life might fall apart because I wanted long hair.

My dad sobered up completely, for good, about five years before he died. And we really did get in some healing then. He seemed to accept my long hair, finally - though maybe perhaps only because I'd gotten married, and finally produced the grandchildren that he was worried I might not? He apologized for smashing my miniatures, for pushing me toward the Marines - I got to take the magnanimous position and accept his apologies, telling him how I'd rebuilt several of the figures and how I valued my experiences in the military, even the negative ones. They had made me into who I am. 

My mom and I endured a whirlwind six weeks of home hospice after he finally went to the hospital in late 2020 and was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He didn't want to fight it, he said he felt it would be best if he could get out of the way. It was a very "Ripley in Alien 3" move. He didn't want to bleed out the family finances, he said. He didn't want to have any clashes with us over parenting his grandchildren - the world was changing, and he finally felt like he could trust me to raise that next generation better than he knew how to, and to look out for them in ways that he couldn't.

It's funny, he probably did need to "get out of the way" for me to be able to transition. I could see myself continuing to advocate to him how "they" were valid, but how I wasn't "one of them," as I had when he seemed so worried that I was a gay teen. In the wake of his death, my mom, my spouse, and I started to plot our move out of Utah and into a different life. Slowly at first, and then advancing rapidly to a breakneck pace. In about the middle of 2021, my partner and my mom asked for my blessing to start feeling out what our move would look like and to start thinking about the criteria for a property we could all move onto to. I less than two months later that we had our eyes set on a few specific places up for sale across the West. Rapidily, our view narrowed, "following the meta-line" as we called it, to what would be our new home in northeast Washington.

Things fell into place, my mom and I checked out the property and it was exactly what we wanted. The inspection was good enough, our offer was accepted (and managed to beat out another from a family that would ultimately become our neighbors around the corner). The move itself was challenging. We didn't really have time or help to sort and pack everything, my seizure a few years prior had broken my arm and shoulder so I couldn't really lift anything myself. We ended up hiring movers and paying them to box and move quite a bit of actual garbage, mixed in with all the bits of our lives. It was pretty emasculating - these big burly men, handling all of our belongings, every look or inquiry to me feeling somehow like an accusation. I over-explained about my injuries, I thanked them for their help even as I tried to admonish them for being late, for being too rough with some of our delicate items. In the end, we were just happy to make it up to the doorstep of Canada with all of our crap!

And then, I thought I would finally get to rest. To recover from it all, for real. To heal from the traumas I found in the Marine Corps, from my seizures, from the emergency cesarean that delivered our first child, and from my dad's early tho-not-unexpected death at the hands of his lifelong vices. But almost immediately, I found my spouse and my mom looking to me to step up in a way I had absolutely not expected, which completely turned me off, making me feel vulnerable and exposed. They wanted me to be "the man of the house." They felt like, in our new rural settings, people would look to me as "the man," and that we somehow owed this to the community. I needed to make all arrangements. My name needed to be on everything. 

And it wasn't about "the doing" of it all. it was about that expectation, and the implication behind it - that people wouldn't respect our family, and would especially disrespect ME, if the male in the family wasn't the one out conducting the business. This really upset me. I pushed back. I didn't want that. I couldn't explain it. Somehow, that "feminine soul" of mine was feeling defensive, and simultaneously more real and more buried than ever before in my life.

It was kind of like my experience in the Marine Corps - I had done the hard, manly thing, but not enough, not completely. I had passed the male standards and was in the male combat unit, but I didn't talk and fuck like the boys expected. Similarly, in the move to Washington, I had held the purse strings, and directed the laborers - but I didn't lift the heavy things, I didn't command respect. And I found that I didn't *want* to. It wasn't that the seizure had taken my manliness, I didn't want the manliness to begin with. I hadn't failed the Marines, they had failed me with their gender essentialism. And yet I had passed their tests, I was one of them.

I wasn't finding the peace we had sought. We had to hire a plow to clear our driveways, and help to clear the snow that piled on our roof over the long winter - further instances of me hurriedly explaining how I was a disabled veteran, thanking them for doing what I would of course do for myself if only I could. I did find a group of miniature wargamers in the nearest city, but when I went to join their league, I didn't speak confidently as a twenty-year veteran of the game, I was timid, reserved. I was however intrigued by the trans-gender / non-binary member of the group - they had confidence, directness, and assertiveness, despite having that "marginalized" identity. At least in the tabletop gaming league, it wasn't a detriment to them.

In this space, my brain was turning things over. I signed up for the regional VA medical center, anxious to get the call for my first primary care appointment. In Salt Lake, I had grown accustomed to being able to state my preference for female medical providers, and, I was disappointed when a lapse in appointments there had gotten me pulled off the care team I'd been seeing for a decade and assigned to some new *dude*. While I waited to be assigned a new primary care doctor in Washington and fretted about all the things weighing on my mind, I often worked on my miniatures and watched youtube. I was struggling to get excited about actually building up my miniature army. Since I'd last played Warhammer 40,000, before the pandemic and only shortly after the birth of our second child, a new edition of the rules had been released. The scout-focused "recon" army I had been playing in the previous 8th edition was hardly even viable anymore due to the scout unit being moved into a different roster slot. I was frustrated. Rules changes making my identity less viable, how dare they!? Taking away the things that made the game fun for me even if I was losing!

I slowly started converting some of my existing pieces to make a couple of new models that would fill rolls that seemed to be more "meta," more desirable in the current state of the competitive game. But I still wasn't excited. Then, it hit me - I could use some leftover female heads from a previous kit to make FEMALE SPACE MARINES! Suddenly, I worked with urgency, with intensity. I found the first head I wanted to use and a suitable model to place it on. I ordered up some new models to put more lady heads onto.  I still fretted over getting that call from the VA. I checked their website to see if there was any information there, any kind of backdoor or pre-enrollment process. I didn't find any, but I did notice an ad for a new VA transgender clinic. I didn't think "oh I need to look into that" - yet. But I did think, "Oh my weird self will definitely be accepted." I continued to fret and piece together my models. Then, while working on my miniature lady marines, I watched a youtube video about "trans women in sports" that pushed me over the edge.

I had already been watching a few trans content creators over the past few years. Everyone watches "Contrapoints," right? But something in the Swedish you-tuber Mia Mulder's "Trans Women in Sports" video really spoke to me. I'd played a few sports in high school before dropping out, but my actual happy and formative memories were of running track in junior high. My main events were always some kind of long-distance, running 400 meters, 800 meters, and up to one mile. The long-distance training was fully gender-integrated, and usually, the races were even run together. The strongest distance runner on our team was one of the teacher's kids, a girl named Heather. If there was anyone to look up to in those races, it was her. My fondest memory of running in an actual competitive race was one particular 800 meter - I was just coming out of the first curve in the second lap around the track and I looked up and, to my surprise, I had caught up to Heather! I was keeping up with Heather! She gave me an approving nod and a smile as I tried and utterly failed to pass her, and we kept pace the rest of the lap to finish the race.

More than this memory, there was something in Mia Mulder's look, her style, that spoke to me too. I didn't just respect her, I couldn't simply see myself in her shoes. I wanted to BE her! Well, not *be* her, exactly - I mean, who could be Mia *but* Mia, you know? But I could see myself being her, or being like her - and I wanted it. I reflexively questioned the impulse - the voice of my dad, back when I was 17, loomed large in my mind - "Don't you just *like girls*? Don't you just *want to be with* a girl?" But instead of repeating the script back to myself, I had a sort of vision in my mind's eye. I saw a floating castle, made of locks, and all at once all of the locks turned and opened, the castle opened from the inside out, transformed from walls into a passage and then into nothing, it was gone. 

I WAS FREE!

I immediately ran directly upstairs, into the closet, and grabbed one of my partner's tops - a slip, the undergarment, you know - I knew exactly which one on my way up the stairs, I knew it would fit - and it did fit! I looked to make sure no one was there, and scurried to the bathroom, shutting the door behind me, focused on the mirror. I ignored my heavily bearded face, looking instead to the lines of the slip, how it kind of flared out at the hips, how it angled to cup the chest. YES, I thought. I can do this. I hung the slip back up, and put my men's-shirt back on. But I was giddy. My partner detected my excitement, she asked me about it...

"Oh, just, you know..." I explained. "Um, no, I don't know?" she replied."Just, like, thinking about who I am, my whole life and stuff, gotta spend some time in the incognito tabs, it's all good..." She was mildly confused and concernedly perplexed, but she didn't pry. Early the next day, when she inquired if I was finding what I needed in the incognito tabs, I knew I didn't want to keep it from her. I was really scared. What if she didn't want to be with me anymore? What about our kids? What if *I* didn't want to be with HER? Hell, I'd kept *all of this* gender stuff "hidden" (not really) from myself (lol no I hadn't), what else had I repressed? SPOILER ALERT - we both still want to be together.

Itook a deep breath, and slowly, clunkily, almost as slowly and clunkily as this whole mess of writing, with probably as many asides and tangents to discuss the badass ladies of late-80s & early 90s sci-fi, I told my partner, the mother of our children - "Honey, you know I've been watching some of those videos for a while...you remember how you took me to the pride festival and I kept saying, 'well I'm not trans, like, I'm a man, I'm a guy, a regular hetero guy, but also I think I must be some kind of gendequeer, or non-conforming, or genderfluid....you kinda didn't buy it...but like you know me, you know how I am...and anyways...I had this experience...floating castle of locks...and so, you know, um, I think....I think I'm trans. Transdgender. Like, or, at least...I dunno if I want to full on *be* a woman - like, I mean, who knows? Is that even possible? but, like....I tried on your slip....I saw this video by Mia Mulder, and I saw myself in her, I wanted to be her....I haven't wanted to be ANYBODY in years and years, not since I felt like I wanted to BE a Marines, and not even really then...." I rambled on, as everyone knows I do... "Hmmm...wow" she started to reply, "Are you sure....? Because actually, it kinda makes sense, I think I kinda see it...?"  "Yeah!? I replied, almost a question in itself. "I think I'm going to shave off my depression beard!"

And I did. I saved a few of the hairs in a vial, almost crying when I did it, because although I wasn't nearly fully committed at that point, some part of me knew, "this is your last beard, there won't be another one." It wasn't exactly a sad feeling. More...bittersweet? More like....I wish that I could have just identified with myself as I was born, and felt more at peace in my own body. We both went through a few days of needing to remind ourselves not to just hate on men, that masculinity wasn't *wrong* per se. But it had felt very wrong *for me,* deep down, all along.

I got the call to schedule my primary care appointment at the regional VA - I had almost resigned myself to just going along with whatever doctor they wanted to give me, but at the end of the call, they asked if I preferred a male or female provider - "FEMALE!" I immediately blurted out, then almost instinctively, I started trying to justify, to rationalize to the person on the other end of the phone, "Um, you see, that's just, my original primary care was a woman, that's who I'd feel most comfortable with..."

"Oh it's not a problem," the voice on the phone told me, "we want to provide you with the care that makes you feel comfortable."

I happily shared the news with my spouse. When the day came, I wore a large shawl scarf as a sort of cape, with that slip on underneath my boy-shirt as well as a bra my partner had lent to me. When I was talking to the primary care nurse about my mental health history - PTSD, trauma, depression, substance abuse - I kept hinting and the gender identity stuff. In many ways, I was still struggling to admit it. I got into a little bit more detail with my primary care doctor, who thought of reaching out to the hospital's designated LGBTQ counselor. Luckily, he was available at that very moment, and I was able to see him for a quick impromptu appointment. We talked through my experiences and my fears, and he challenged my hesitation, still, to fully accept myself.

"It sounds like maybe you're still having some trouble with labels, but that really, you're already pretty comfortable with the idea already of living as a trans woman?"

His challenge actually made me relax a bit. Yeah, he was probably right. We made plans to start regular therapy and I was invited to begin attending a support group for transgender veterans. Although I continued to have hesitancy, from that moment I was basically eagerly waiting to really "start" transition, which is itself an amorphous concept - hadn't I always been trans, really? Wasn't I at least *living as a trans person* since seeing the castle locks open? Would it not really start until...going on hormones? But what if I didn't want any surgeries...or at least wasn't anywhere close to being sure about that yet?

I struggled some in this liminal space. My mom and in-laws commented on my freshly smooth face - "Oh, what a nice, clean-shaven man your daddy is," they said to my kids. Another time, moving a small fallen tree off of a path on our property, my mom exclaimed to the kids, "oh look, your daddy is so strong," and it made me upset, angry almost. It felt like that expectation to be the man of the house. It felt like reinforcing binary gender roles to my kids - the man moves the heavy thing, the women remark on how strong he is. I didn't like it. But I struggled with "coming out." I struggled to even think of it that way. But eventually, I described the experience of going to the VA to my mom, explaining it through a medicalized mental-health lens.

"I've been diagnosed with gender dysphoria," I told her.
"What, like, instead of PTSD?" she replied incredulously.
"No, like, as an additional thing."
"Oh, *another thing,*" she said, seemingly channeling my departed father. Then, remembering her love for me, "I'm glad you're getting the care you need and I hope it helps you. It always tears me up when you're unhappy."

I kind of let things hang in that ambiguous place. I didn't out myself to her as transgender, just "gender questioning," just "exploring ways to alleviate the dysphoria." But in many ways, that still felt like hiding myself, even if other times I still felt like I was in the middle of figuring out who exactly I was. I began wearing the cape-scarf look most of the time, and even a few more overtly feminine shirts. Once, after achieving a particularly close shave, I balled up some socks and stuffed them in the borrowed bra, checking myself out in the mirror. I exclaimed to my spouse, "I see her! I see her!" It was kind of like my own sneak preview of my future self, I was a kid again running around pretending to be the heroic women that inspired me, only now that inspiration was my own self.

Finally, at a local easter-egg hunt that we took the kids to, we met our older kid's future kindergarten teacher, and I received another push. I was in one of my most overtly trans or outwardly "queer" outfits yet - more feminine pants, a soft teal lady's top with a pink women's overshirt, and finally a soft blue shawl from my mother. I had my hair pinned back with blue clips and a bit of makeup and lipstick on. There were some parents at the egg-hunt who were made visibly uncomfortable by me, but, the kindergarten teacher and her husband were extremely friendly to us. Then, the teacher asked my name - and I felt stuck. I told her my given name, the government name, the boy name, and left it at that. My maleness was fully undeniable, not that I was at all close to "passing as female" or whatever. But it put things right out in the open, I was a dude, a guy, just a weird one, and I didn't like that. I'd already been a "weird guy" all my life, and it really just was not working for me! We went home and I told my spouse, I couldn't hide it like that, publicly, anymore. I needed to be "out," full time, all the time, every day, to every person.

I took a couple of pictures in my easter get-up and wrote up a "coming out post" on facebook. A few of my extended family struggled just a bit, but by and large, everyone was supportive. The last person I came out to was my old junior high best friend from the Air Force, Dustin, who avoided social media. Of course, I'd been leaving him breadcrumbs...for months, actually. Before moving from Salt Lake, even. Because I've always *been* me, myself. Just trying to get out.

I pursued hormone replacement more earnestly and decisively, seeing my primary care doctor again to get the referral. It was amazing how different I felt already, and how different and almost universally better I felt people treated me. When my doctor moved my hair to listen to the top of my lungs with her stethoscope, there was a gentleness I wasn't used to. It felt so tender and special to me. Maybe every doctor before had used the same gentle care...maybe the difference was just in me? Who's to say, but, I know that I like the way I feel about those small forms of touch now so much better than before. I used to feel so awkward and tense about anything like that. Now it just seems...easy? And soothing.

I attended the trans support group, feeling at first like an outsider, an interloper. But I also felt quickly welcomed. Many of their struggles were very specific and kind of outside my experience, at least up to that point, but underneath that, the other veterans seemed to be coming from a similar place with similar concerns. One veteran even reassured me to be patient when I said that I had gotten referred but had not heard anything back yet about hormone replacement therapy. She told me confidently from a place of experience - the appointments are all remote, the HRT is all handled out of Portland and Seattle, and it will take time but I will get there. I few weeks late, I saw the gender endocrinology doctor, from Portland, on a remote appointment, and I continued to wait until finally, the HRT meds arrived, from Seattle, just like the other veteran had told me they would. 

Going through HRT can be difficult to describe. There's some basic stuff, the subject of countless youtube videos and blog posts (just like THIS ONE!) - tender nipples that increase in size, a shift in emotions and how they're perceived, changes in sexuality and sexual functionality. Mostly, it just feels *right.* It feels like the constant driving anxiety and despair are fading. Even the rotten horrors of the burning modern world, which are still often overwhelming, somehow feel less so, because they feel less like my problem. What is my problem is how I deal with it all, and how *I choose to be,* and that feels more within my grasp than it has in a long time. I feel like some things can upset me somewhat faster and more intensely,  generally personal and interpersonal, relationship-y, friendship-y things...but that overall, I can calm down and self-soothe soooo much more easily.

Maybe it's just leaving behind the big city for country life? Maybe it's getting completely and consistently sober off of marijuana, something that has at times in the past felt totally impossible (but which came about almost naturally during my second week on estrogen)? But I don't think so. I think this is just the beginning, of these changes in my body and my mind, and maybe I needed to ride the meta-line to this corner of the world and leave the rest behind to be able to get this new start. Maybe it's all kind of a package deal, you know?

The first couple of years of HRT are often described as a "second puberty," and in many ways that makes a lot of sense to me as I sit here, three months in, reflecting on my life. I have been feeling more like "myself" than I have since I was a teenager, when I was finding fulfillment roleplaying as a vampire woman and painting my first tiny model space marines. In many ways, that first puberty and the social expectations about what being a mature male meant are where I really went off the rails. Then, trying to prove that I could be what everyone thought I should be by enlisting in the Marines led me to a high speed crash - and then, ultimately, seeking to validate myself through others practically buried me.

But like the dread kindred Allison Valentine who I dreamed up on a masquerade character sheet all those years ago, I have risen again. I put a lot of Allison's character creation points into useful background support and possessions - a secure apartment, regular feeding partners, a good car, an extensive weapons cache - and one by one, in that first story campaign masterminded by my air-force-bro Dustin, they were all taken away. And in my actual life, I have endured many more real and devastating losses. But I am still here. I feel like I have gained a different sort of strength - a power and wisdom beyond my age.  I still often feel uncomfortable. I'm struggling with hair removal, getting it off of my body and face, one of the most common hurdles for newly transitioning mature femmes. I live too far away from any electrolysis clinics to commit to that most-permanent form...laser could possibly work but still presents a scheduling difficulty. So I do my best using an Intense Pulsed Light "it's-not-a-laser" device to slow some hairs down, an epilator to auto-pluck others, and I work on improving my makeup techniques to cover the beard-shadow.

The locals seem to have gotten the point of my efforts, if not each individually understanding exactly why, or with some still comprehending me as a man "dressed in women's clothes" and not "as a woman on the inside of a male body (that becomes less 'male' every day)." Really, does it matter? I guess only to me, and I'm happy just getting to be me, the real me, the whole me. The "badass lady" me. Our oldest kid joined the recently co-ed Cub Scouts and I've gone to the pack meetings with her - the elderly woman who runs the pack doesn't care what my gender is or how I present, she cares that I was an Eagle Scout, and invited me to consider accepting a leadership position. This brought up all the old fears, and yet, as I've said, they are quicker to quiet down. I'm worried about what it means to me and what it means to my kid, not what it means to anyone else.

I don't know what exactly the future holds - I already received my next 3 months of HRT supplies, and next week I'll have the labs drawn and get the appointment scheduled to set up the next 6 months of treatment. If this the past three months have been my "Terminator 2" and "Alien 3" sneak preview, I think I'm going to like the feature presentation. I already need to take the seizure pills twice a day, every day, for the rest of my life - what's a couple of hormone patches twice a week, every week? Honestly, I like being me, I think I'm going to keep it up!

Thanks for reading,
- Josalyn Isbell

Selling Semper Fi: Culture, Collectibles, and Real American Heroes 1973-2003

The Vietnam War challenged the collective notion of American veterans as liberating heroes and scions of democratic values, causing the nature of later recruiting and media portrayals to change. Using a wide body of secondary sources along with various memoirs and archival oral histories, this chapter will argue that the old patterns of glorification were combined with capitalistic marketing to convince the American public to sequester military responsibility to an all-volunteer-force. I will also examine the era’s popular films, comic books, and other media to uncover how the cultural feedback loop between this developing militarism and violently liberalized depictions thereof proved more powerful than actual lived experiences, fostering a willingness to conduct the endless imperial policing effort now formalized as the Global War on Terrorism.

The so-called Hollywood Marines earned their reputation cultivating the association in the public imagination between martial sacrifice in the execution of just violence with concepts of American power and morality during the Second World War. Driven by continuing Cold War tension, public aversion to open conflict, and the shift to an insular professional military, the post-Vietnam hero changed from a selfless volunteer or draftee doing their part into a more mercenary and clandestine operator concerned with ends over means. Thus the 1980s saw a rise in popularity of fictional vigilante and former Marine Frank Castle—Marvel Comic’s “The Punisher”—while real-life Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North skirted any lasting punishment for his role in the Iran/Contra scandal. Then, in the midst of a booming comics and collectibles bubble built in part on the militarization and brutalization of classic super heroes, the widely-televised First Gulf War was marketed directly to children in the form of Topps trading cards.

Recruiting material from this period also suggests a change in the meaning of service, from shared obligation to an exclusive form of premium citizenship available to a narrowing slice of a diversifying population. While the Army emphasized enrichment and fulfillment by inviting recruits to “Be All That You Can Be,” one Marine recruiting poster mocked technological dependence with the image of a single camouflaged rifleman captioned “SMART WEAPON.” The Marines positioned themselves as elite Americans, via slogans like “The Few and the Proud,” while rejecting the comforts simultaneously marketed to mainstream civilians.

The result was tension in competing interests that created a compartmentalized demand for foreign interventionism within a detached public while also inviting the willing to seek initiation as one of a few proud insiders. The underlying notion was that individual sacrifice was not a collective problem as long as proper compensation was remunerated, demonstrated by the increasing use of incentive bonuses when recruiting for demanding military specialties. In this way, military action itself became just another commodity traded in risky economic bubbles, much like the oversold comics, trading cards, and action figures of the twentieth century’s parting decades. 

From Silver and Bronze to a New Dark Age: Mainstreaming Comic Book Adventurism

The stories and characters featured in comic books have risen in cultural prominence over the last century, during which time superheroes have alternately served alongside and as a challenge to popular conceptions of nationalism, masculinity, and militarized patriarchy. Closer examination of these cultural intersections with military recruiting and public relations hints at revealing many contributory origins of early twenty-first century interpretations of responsibility and authority. Opposition to the Vietnam War championed by an increasingly visible counter culture led to a die-off of traditional military comics in the 1970s. However, the tonal and market changes wrought by the dawning of the modern “dark age” of comics in the 1980s and 1990s re-introduced firearms as a featured means of exerting the will and dispensing justice. No longer limited to foreign battlefields, these characters were soon deployed to urban and pastoral domestic settings as well.

Nick Fury evolved from leader of the fictional army unit the Howling Commandos to Agents of Shield. Fury’s gunslinging ways win the day in the third-issue story “Hydra Lives” (1973), but this proves to be a ruse facilitated by harmless ammunition and casualty actors; in this late-Vietnam-era narrative, deceit and subterfuge are depicted as equally potent weapons. The 1980s saw a more overtly militaristic revival in comics, most obviously in Marvel Comic’s adaptation of the cartoon G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, which like the Agents of Shield was rebranded from an older incarnation into the saga of a diverse paramilitary organization battling a known extra-national foe. At the same time, Marvel’s Punisher—originally introduced as an antagonist who’s brutal ways brought him into conflict with the morally upstanding Spiderman—was legitimized into an anti-hero. Subtle changes to the character’s backstory in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe between 1983 and 1986 editions include a shift from “ex-Marine” to the more positive “former Marine” and the omission of certain details of his background. Punisher’s “war on crime,” while notably outside the law, is framed as a struggle against worse criminals in keeping with real-world national sentiment at the time which sensationalized both ethnic gangs and underground mafias.

Writers influenced by or commenting on this atmosphere increased Batman’s reliance on weaponized vehicles and powered robotic suits in several popular storylines. These traits were translated to that character’s multiple film appearances across 1989 to 2016 with greater prominence than his traditional reliance on shadows, psychology, and non-lethal methods. As notions of irregular warfare informed the action depicted in films and comics, superheroes themselves became increasingly regimented, often discarding the distinctive forms of organization, morality, and direct action which they had acquired in earlier war-weary eras. Sometimes these militarized and even government-backed superheroes no longer represented an alternative or parallel system of justice, but rather the pinnacle of the established system.

Depictions of individuals or small squad at odds with their superiors—or abandoned altogether by morally inferior commanders —are themselves a likely import from late-and-post-Vietnam-era cinema. Just as anti-war Vietnam movies could get by on a relatively small budget by focusing on a single squad in a claustrophobic jungle setting, and thereby present narratives that might not receive direct military support, pre-9/11 global war and covert ops could similarly focus on an elite special operations squad while exploring themes more excessively pro-war or overtly dehumanizing to Middle Easterners, Southeast Asians, and Central Americans. However, the synthetic catharsis of fictionally overcoming situations where military solutions had failed in real life offered by films like Delta Force and Rambo: First Blood Part 2 meant that policies of aggressive foreign intervention appeared to be validated. 

Similar storylines of re-writing destiny appeared in many comics’ characters and storylines. The popularity of these themes contributed to the founding of the new legally independent but creatively shallow publishing imprint Image Comics when a group of artists attempted to wield the collective popularity of their drawing style as a weapon in order to break away from the major publishers in 1992. Although celebrated as the herald of a new era of creative freedom, at the time this merely amounted to the freedom to present hyper-masculine violence free of traditionalist guidance and institutional censorship that might have resulted in a refined narrative content. This shift correlates to the de-emphasis of loyalty, thoughtfulness, and group morality as masculine ideals and their replacement with unilateral decision executed via lethal violence.

Marvel introduced The New Mutants “Cable” (1990) and “Bishop” to the Uncanny X-Men (1991) as latter-day time-travelers in an attempt to integrate gun-wielders into the X-Men’s very pure strain of super-hero mythos. X-men characters wield explicitly mutant powers in battles largely amongst mutant factions over differing interpretations of mutant rights. Writers kept the new characters grounded within these themes: Bishop’s weapons channel his energy absorption abilities while Cable’s absurdly massive arsenal is also a thematic device compensating for the dampening of his own superpowers by a lifelong viral infection. Silver and bronze-age combat in X-men comics centers around the interaction of various supernatural powers with are frequently biological in origin. In contrast, the X-men’s dark-age storylines involved the more grim and fascistic anti-mutant future of Bishop and the apocalyptic mutant supremacists opposed by Cable. These struggles still often derisively devolved into a contest between forms of interchangeable rock-paper-scissors, but even the darker stories of the late 1980s and early ‘90s utilized creative problem solving and even emotional reasoning often enough to inspire readers.

Indeed, the tenants delineating super-heroic combat from its mundane military counterpart are frequently enshrined in the very slogans, catchphrases, and gimmicks of the characters themselves: Superman wields his power to uphold “truth, justice, and the American way;” The X-men “fight to protect a world that hates and fears them;” Batman’s concealed movement through the shadows facilitates his dispensation of justice as “the dark knight.” Real-world conventional militaries instead ostensibly operate in the open, in service of competing state interests. 

The darkening terrain of 1980s comics was punctuated by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s landmark Watchmen, which challenges the naivety, romanticism, and unreal logic of traditional superhero narratives. Following that decade’s popularization of hyper-violent martial power fantasies, the militarized superhero teams and gun-toting vigilantes of the early 1990s fed an escapism that was not realistic but presented the ability to wield bodily power over others as more readily accessible—perhaps unintentionally so— via the personally-owned firearm. Vigilante stories in particular fed American fears of urban crime that politicians often deliberately stoked as well. 

This era further coincided with a shift in how these types of stories were sold and how devoted fans interacted with their favorite products. The complete story of the capitalization of imagination and the rise of brand messaging is ultimately beyond the scope of this essay, but the overall conceptual move was from the serial stories of singular creative voices to larger multi-format properties managed by a pool of corporate talent. These properties were marketed across media from film and television to books and magazines as well as being merchandised into toys, apparel, and ultimately almost any product. Fans were thus invited to consume the brand fitting the story of their choice, and to a more limited extent judge others based on their preferred story and setting.

The Reaganomics of Entertainment, Collectibles, and Consumer Fandom

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Mark Fowler presided over a general mood of deregulation from May 1981 to January 1987, during which time the agency enacted several changes that dramatically altered the media landscape, particularly for children’s programming. Fowler’s FCC not only fought against limitations on advertising during television broadcasts targeting children, it also explicitly rescinded preexisting restrictions on “program-length commercials” and tacitly endorsed “host-selling” during such shows.

Program-length commercials in the context of children’s programming referred to the emerging production of episodic and mostly animated stories which existed not to tell their stories but to market the characters and merchandise featured therein. Host-selling is the practice of explicitly advertising the products featured in such shows or those similarly branded during or after their broadcast. These practices, especially when combined, launched huge toy brands and attendant fictional mythos like “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” and “The Transformers.” While toys based on children’s television existed before, companies in the 1980s built these new creations from the ground up to sell toys which were based in fictional storylines whose sole thinly-veiled purpose was to sell toys based on the show’s characters and settings.

In the 1970s, the ABC network had prevented Mattel from advertising Hot Wheels toy cars during a Hot Wheels cartoon. Agreements between the broadcaster and toy manufacturer also forbade the production of toys based specifically on those shown within the cartoon. Self-regulation of this sort sparked several rounds of complaints and investigation, with charges that the program itself constituted an ad. Although initial major impetus came from Mattel rival Topper Toys, there would be considerable interest in the issue over the next decade. However, critics of broadcast restrictions invoked the First Amendment to question the free speech concerns of content or plot limitations and the FCC’s existing policy vesting programming decisions with broadcast licensees as a matter of “public interest.”

Many of the program-length commercials that followed on the airwaves of the 1980s were similarly constructed along a template dividing characters into competing good and evil teams. Each faction represented a different product line and each character or play-set within those factions fulfilled a specific function or possessed a different gimmick. This enabled staff writers to churn out stories for multiple episodes quickly from the ready stock of plots offered by introducing new characters from the line, spotlighting a specific character and their abilities, and exploring the different factions’ specific traits and lore. Characters portrayed in these dressed-up marketing situations become more immediately familiar and recognizable, contributing to their use as advertising mascots for unrelated products as well.

This process further helped the entertainment properties market themselves across a variety of mediums and also invited a form of completionism. Toys were packaged with a visual checklist of all the available action figures in their range, and larger brands like Hasbro’s Transformers and G.I. Joe had ongoing alternate storylines published by Marvel Comics. An older devotee of the property might feel compelled to acquire each toy and check every box. A younger child who watched the television show and then received an issue of the comic could more reasonably request a later numbered issue from their parent’s next visit to the newsstand. 

Entertainment universes could evolve to service toys with the cross-promotion of cartoons and comics, but comic book culture along with associated values like visual aesthetics and collectibility also influenced the creation of new toys increasingly meant less for child’s play than for explicit consumerist gratification. George Lucas famously recouped his relinquished film royalties in Star Wars by retaining rights to an aggressively marketed toy line and other merchandising. Through the happy accident of slow development and incremental release, demand for the original Kenner brand action figures based on Star Wars and its sequels would essentially exceed their supply from before their release through the entirety of their production run. This led to a strong consumer aftermarket as parents and collectors sought to acquire obscure figures and rarer or more popular variants of the series main characters.

Another such incarnation positioned more explicitly at the intersection of late-twentieth century dark age comics and toy marketing is Todd McFarlane’s Spawn. [MORE ON IMAGE COMICS AND THE COLLECTIBLES BUBBLE] McFarlane went on to largely abandon his role as a comic book artist to focus almost exclusively on deluxe action figures. His toy company grew to produce a host of characters from many different intellectual properties, bringing stylized hyper-realistic reproductions to a large and maturing audience. 

The economic story of the latter Twentieth Century is likewise one of expansion and internationalization. Americans tended to be in favor of this intermingling when it meant a steady flow into their own country of cheap goods and novel innovations, such as Hasbro’s rebranding of the Japanese Diaclone and Micromaster toys into the Transformers line. However, many in the US disapproved whenever they felt the flow of ideas and capital was seen to favor other nations or was conducted without the their own input, benefit, or necessity. The US preached democratic self-determination backed by rugged adventurism, but interfered in nations that made determinations counter to perceived US interests and tended to foster their most right-wing elements. The US preferred stable capitalist trading partners like Japan, the source of another hit ‘80s import—the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Gaming Systems and the Death of Imagination

Alongside the boom in comics, cartoons, action movies, collectible merchandising, and the cultural influence therof, the 1980s also saw an acceleration in the distribution and popular acceptance of various forms of systemized consumer games. Arcade games and home video gaming systems readily spring to mind, but this period also saw a dramatic expansion in tabletop wargaming. These games were mostly rooted in historical or science fiction themes, remaining a niche interest but avoiding widespread public acrimony. The 1970s previously spawned the sensationalized role-playing game (RPG) “Dungeons and Dragons,” (D&D) which was viewed with suspicion for the perceived Satanism of its fantasy elements and for fears that impressionable players would commit to its role-playing inductive and internalize the deadly motivations of their fictional personas. Although these games emphasized individual imagination, they eventually developed their own burgeoning product lines of source books, figurines, and media tie-ins.

In 1993 Richard Garfield introduced a new form of game that was intrinsically commodified by design with Magic: The Gathering (MTG). The retail product consisted of an initial set of several hundred cards released in small randomized packs and larger decks. Cards represented various types of spells and the resources to use them. The spell sets were divided into elementally-themed factions on a manner reminiscent of earlier '80s toy properties. MTG further encouraged collecting and secondary market trading with a deck construction mechanic. Players needed to construct a playable deck with a greater likelihood of drawing the game’s most effective combos, instilling a need for multiple copies of certain cards. The post powerful cards were also rarer, increasingly their value in aftermarket trading. Parents sharply criticized MTG as they had the earlier D&D, questioning the influence of the game’s limited satanic imagery and its play mechanic of reducing an opponent's “life” through damage (really a backwards scoring system where the first player to zero loses). 

There is a long-running debate about the potentially de-sensitizing nature of violent games, especially video games that mimic the actions and especially physical movements of committing violence. The entirety of such discourse is well beyond the scope of this essay, but several points directly apply. The first of note is that concern over violence in games became dramatically elevated following the Columbine school shootings, and that visible domestic gun violence has dominated the discussion of this issue. The role of violent entertainment culture in motivating persons wishing to more legitimately commit such acts is less discussed, as is the potential for the virtual spectacle to distract from actual acts of violence.

Video games featuring the destruction of digital enemies are as old as Pac Man, but the generation of games featured on Nintendo’s NES home console, its successor the Super Nintendo, and rival platforms broke new ground in terms of visualization of recognizable characters who could be harmed. Released to arcades in 1987 and on NES in 1988, Konami’s Contra enabled players to shoot recognizably human enemies in every direction while fighting through the jungle.

America would have to wait over a decade for its own video game platform. Microsoft’s Xbox launched in November 2001, with the first-person shooter (FPS) Halo as its flagship title. The wildly successful Halo was produced by once-independent game studio Bungie, who were purchased in whole by Microsoft in 2000 and committed exclusively to the Halo franchise. Bungie’s earlier series Marathon and Myth: The Fallen Lords were made primarily for the 1990s Apple Macintosh home computers and usually included editing software to customize or totally remake the games, a somewhat common practice to personal computer (PC) games. Later Halo titles eventually featured limited level-editing, but its customizability and that of similar games centered mainly on the cosmetic appearance of player avatars. Game developers have gradually monetized customizable appearance and equipment in many console games, while some popular PC games still spawn robust third party modification (mod) communities. 

Halo and FPS games did not merely arrive on the scene. The original FPS is generally acknowledged to be id Software’s Wolfenstein 3D (1992) for MS-DOS. This World War II themed game centered around a first-person perspective wherein players ran down simulated hallways, shoot pixelated Nazis and looting treasure. One iteration in the original series even had players shooting and cartoonishly super-powered Hitler to death. Wolfenstein’s developers would go on to make Doom (1993) and to feature three-dimensional enemies as well as environments in the later Quake (1996). These games featured demonic enemies and imagery and attracted conservative ire like the earlier paper-based D&D and MTG. Doom itself seems to have formed the locus of blame for the Columbine shooting in the minds of many searching for a singular explanation for that tragedy.

The films of the 1990s contributed to a rise in more realistic FPS games on the Sony Playstation (1995) and Nintendo 64 (1996) consoles, setting the stage for Halo on Xbox and the tripartite landscape of twenty-first-century console gaming. Rare Software’s FPS game Goldeneye (1997) for Nintendo 64 was based on the same-named James Bond film released two years prior. The competing Medal of Honor series (1999) for Playstation was not explicitly based on Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan film from the prior year, but he created its story and it was produced by his Dreamworks company. Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan invoked America’s heroic near-past and through the lauded realism of its gory combat admonished the nation to validate the sacrifices of veterans, respect the horror of war, and live responsibly to maintain peace. Americans audiences eagerly received this message, save for the call to peace.  

Fictionalized Combat and Commercialized Recruiting

Closer examination reveals evidence that Kurt Vonnegut’s warning in Slaughterhouse Five that “wars were partly encouraged by books and movies” broadened to encompass the majority of all media. Under the cover of all-American workers willingly performing difficult tasks for monetary and cultural rewards, film and television in the era of the AVF carried a subtle and insidious pro-military message almost intrinsic to the medium. Writ large, the unstated argument was that the largest productions with the most convincing drama and effects were produced by American film studios, and therefore American foreign policy enabling such productions was justified by its storytelling output. On the smaller scale, this meant that every plot device or moment of on-screen tension resolved through violence or emotional excitement communicated that such adventuring was justified.

The 1970s ended with the introspective and arguably anti-war films The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979) achieving top-ten box office success and critical acclaim. The next decade Platoon (1986) outperformed both combined with over $138 million in domestic ticket sales. Oliver Stoner’s reflective film teased the illusion of national closure while also riding a wave of spectacle-driven action films like the year’s highest-earner, the $350 million-earning government-sponsored Top Gun. Audiences seemed to tire of graphic war critique by the next year, however, as Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987) similarly focused on a small group of Vietnam-bound combatants and their relationships to the relative exclusion of the larger operational war, but grossed only $46 million to rank 26th for the year. A lone squad still struggled against a jungle-savvy foe to widespread delight, however, with Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Predator pulling in $98 million internationally and the #8 top spot. Robin William’s more light-hearted Good Morning Vietnam was #5 with a $123 million domestic-only gross.

The prior year had seen James Cameron release a hit sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien that offered a subtle Vietnam allegory with anti-imperialist undertones; insidiously, Aliens (1986) was also heavily militarized. While the story showed a corporate-backed military expedition being defeated and portrayed the arrogance of technological advantage as futile, the film’s “Colonial Marines” and their distinctive weapons became iconic in the public imagination. In the 1990s toy-maker Kenner even went on to market a line of Aliens and Predator toys, struggling to adapt the R-rated source material and stopping short of fully producing a planned tie-in cartoon. In an era of muscled silver screen strongmen, Aliens also featured strong women in both Sigourney Weaver’s lead protagonist Ripley and several of the Colonial Marines, including Janette Goldstein’s whitewashed Private Vasquez. Although women did not yet serve directly in frontline infantry units as seen in fiction, AVF force structure meant that more women than ever before were serving in uniform and in a greater variety of career fields. Cameron’s other sequel hit Terminator 2: Judgment Day also featured a determined, capable, and militarized female protagonist in Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Conor and was the number one movie worldwide in 1992, grossing over half a billion dollars.

Top Gun was a huge blockbuster produced with the support of the US Navy that doubled the sales of subtly anti-war Aliens and Platoon. Many smaller productions of the 1980s would not receive Pentagon support or approval but still ushered pro-war and often subtly racist messages with them into cult-classic status. Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and The Delta Force (1986) were both escapist fantasies that eluded critical acclaim but soothed the national ego. American pride continued to be bruised not just by the Vietnam War but also bloody entanglements like the Iran Hostage debacle and the 1983 bombing of the Multi-National Force barracks in Beirut, Lebanon that killed almost 200 US Marines and allied troops. The Twentieth Century’s final decade would open with the film Navy SEALS (1990) depicting a ground combat victory for US troops in Beirut. During the climactic action sequence a building is leveled with explosives, but this time it is full of terrorists and hijacked stinger surface-to-air missiles. New York Times reviewer Caryn James knowingly observed:

“What will Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles be when they grow up? On the evidence of Navy SEALSs, they are perfectly suited to be members of an elite navy commando team. The men who fight Middle Eastern terrorists in this new action film are a mere step away from the Turtles in maturity and complexity of character." 

This is especially tragic as cutting-edge research by Duke University’s Renee Ragin shows that the youth of Lebanon in this era also celebrated and romanticized small groups of clandestine paramilitary operators. 

The intense television coverage of the Gulf War and other forms of commoditizing the drama of its events blurred the lines between fiction and reality in a way that was largely new. Whereas older war reporting, newsreels, and later dramatizations all existed in various states of temporal remove and interrelated veracity, the embedded broadcasts and on-screen graphics of the first Gulf War marketed a uniform interpretation of the war directly to viewers in near real-time. Two different brands of trading cards based on the war became a collectible item during the peak of the comics bubble.

Throughout this cyclone of cultural upheaval, the image presented by military recruiting itself—particularly the traditionalist Marine Corps—helped to anchor public perceptions of state and paramilitary violence in official legitimacy and democratic ideals. The old Marine Corps emphasis on the every-man aspects of junior enlisted personnel intersected with evolving AVF policy and messaging to portray volunteer service members as working-class heroes. This functioned to smooth-over scandals like Oliver North’s Iran Contra Affair with the implied assurance that the majority of lower-ranking but morally upstanding troops populating the services somehow balanced out the worst ambitions and abuses of any errant officers or politicians. Thus Aaron Sorkin’s 1989 stage play and its 1992 film adaptation A Few Good Men presented young idealistic Marines as morally superior, but naive and easily manipulated by their more self-interested seniors. In the film, leaders of the Guantanamo Bay Marine detachment direct two junior enlisted personnel to discipline a third who then dies due to an undiagnosed medical condition. The officers perpetrate a cover-up attributing the incident to hazing on the part of the two enlisted men. Demi Moore’s Navy Judge Advocate defense attorney refers to the two defendants directly as “recruiting poster Marines.”

So what did recruiting posters and other AVF marketing look like? A ready example known to anyone who lived through the era is the Army’s renowned “Be All That You Can Be” campaign. This messaging push—which won awards from the corporate advertising industry—helped to lift the Army out of its fumbled AVF initiation by combining a resonating call to individual self-improvement with deft ad placement and timing concentration. [NEED MORE HERE AND TO CONTRAST RECRUITING AMONGST THE SERVICES]

Bursting the Bubble: Reality Catches Up

Many military interventions in these decades were not celebrated victories, however, and voices on the ground show hints that military personnel themselves were aware of some creeping disconnects between their stated missions, methods, and the meaning and purpose behind them. An exploration of firsthand accounts varied across time of service, rank, role, and source type offers ready casual evidence supporting the notions of tension between AVF organization and social goals of quick, limited, and decisive war. Some of these sources also call direct attention to the role of media in how they experienced their military service and the discrepancies between popular depictions of war and the reality of what they saw. 

Other themes are shared between these various recollections that further demonstrate in varying degrees the disconnect between the expectations imparted by media and reality in a modern career military. One is the professionalization of the whole armed force altering its social dynamics. This includes the crusty old non-commissioned officer trope becoming the norm, the logical end of a successful career rather than an eccentric exception; likewise, single-term enlisted troops carry some level of perceived failure. Neither is simply the “everyman” doing their part, and, few know what the end of a major conflict looks like given a diminishing pool of holdovers from more fully-concluded prior wars. Under this paradigm, deployments and medals begin to take on character of resume entries. Another theme involves the complications posed by modern military organization and technology. The simplistic and direct fulfillment of personal and group goals was challenged the sheer number of highly specific systems required to amass modern combat power. This ranges from structural segmentation of the overall military experience to the focused specialization of various equipment operators, technicians, and logisticians. The former refers to the division between recruiting, basic introductory training, specific occupational specialty training, day-to-day operations in garrison, pre-deployment workups, rotational foreign assignments, crisis response, full-blown large-scale combat operations, and recovery and reset. Each of these stages in the lifecycle of a military professional’s career is itself the focused concern of specialized staff, and any careerist serving to retirement is likely to fulfill several such roles in turn. Inquiry into the effects of supposed organizational revolutions on military affairs were nothing new, but the implementation of the AVF warrants heightened attention to the emphasis on the interplay between technical specialties, professional competence, and in-group relationships. 

One high-ranking officer's description of operations and policy in final years of Vietnam War offers what would become an almost prescient view of things to come. Major General Alan Armstrong served as the Commanding General (CG) of the Marine Air Wing and Deputy CG of all Marines in III Marine Amphibious Force in Vietnam from July 1970 to April of ’71, and was later interviewed by the Marine Corps History and Museums Division in two sessions in late 1973. Armstrong’s account emphasizes several negative aspects of the late war chaos that would unfortunately come to embody more and more of US operations. These include the morale consequences of failing to inform troops or plan for their long-term wellbeing, the planing and coordination difficulties imposed by utilizing various echelons of secrecy, and also the risk shouldered by friendly forces intervening to protect overextended covert operations.

[ANTHONY ZINNI’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY WITH TOM CLANCY, “BATTLE READY” GOES HERE]

Zinni’s rank and station encouraged a somewhat aloof view of post-Vietnam reorganization as a challenge to be overcome through more perfect organization and renewed commitment. The effects of reconstituting conservative order could be much more severe on the enlisted personnel like John Williams, who served as a Navy Corpsman from 1966 until his medical discharge in 1971. Williams was interviewed by the Utah State Historical Society in 1986, seemingly motivated by his prominence as a black civil rights activist in mostly white and Republican Utah. His recollections of active service are filled with anecdotes of traumatic violence and racism internal to the military, including his own passing estimation of the systemization of racial discrimination.

Utah native Nick Lopez joined the Marines in 1984, motivated by both a lifelong desire to be a US Marine and the idle prospects of recent legal trouble. At the time of an oral history interview on October 6th, 2009, Lopez had attained the highest enlisted rank of Sergeant Major and was serving in the Marine Corps Reserve. His story offers fascinating insights into how young Americans were inspired by images of military personnel, hardware, and installations, as well as how they internalized their connection to the American mythos. He describes being motivated to join the marines by a television commercial as a child, and readily presents his service in cinematic terms as an adventure of his choosing, even from the beginning of his enlistment. He reports successfully arguing for his choice of basic training location by informing his recruiters “No, I’ve seen the movie ‘The D.I.’ with Jack Webb and I’m going to Paris[sic] Island.” Lopez waxes nostalgic about his days on “the same rifle range,” featured in Clint Eastwood’s Heartbreak Ridge, another 1986 military action film eclipsed at the box office by the more critical Platoon and technocratically individualist Top Gun.

Army Black Hawk pilot First Lieutenant (1LT) Lisa Kutschera was interviewed even before the conclusion of Operation Just Cause by a designated task force historian, Major Robert K. Wright. Her account of training to fly Black Hawk helicopters and participating in Just Cause offers several examples of the the themes explored so far, all seemingly offhand and unlikely to be contrived. Kutschera describes the detached attitude of many personnel when her unit was placed into an alert status prior to launching the 1989 invasion. She notes the secrecy of planning contributing to her peers’ resignation but also how this caused her to suspect a real operation. Kutschera also discusses how her unit’s few combat-experienced Vietnam veterans reassured others in the unit with the simplistic admonition to perform their tasks as trained. The uncertainty and apprehension evokes the confusion and planning difficulties observed by General Armstrong as flowing from mission secrecy, though overcoming this can be seen to lay the foundation for a newer generation of veterans to pass on the reassurance of experience — an experience rooted in acceptance of manipulation by those with more complete information.

Major Wright interviewed many others, including the 193rd Infantry Brigade (Task Force Bayonet) Executive Officer (XO) Steve Ankley and Intelligence Officer (S-2) Chester Floyd, who discussed reconnaissance of Panamanian units, particularly anti-aircraft and mortar emplacements. The pair also mention the frustration of enemy repositioning somewhat nullifying the information gleaned from aerial scouting, contrasted with confidence gained from review and anticipated implementation of various pre-planned operations/templates for securing the canal, reminiscent of how World War II strategy in the Pacific was expanded from War Plan Orange. However, in the AVF era, this was not planning conducted by a professional skeleton staff waiting for ranks to be bolstered by a draft in response to some precipitating crisis. For the AVF, this was a continuous process of not only planning but training and rehearsal as well. In theory, even large forces could be assembled, moved, and massed against the enemy quickly. The outcome of Just Cause echoed the earlier perceived success of 1983’s Urgent Fury in Grenada and perhaps suggested to some that the late Cold War methodology of covert operations and limited interventions was translatable to a larger scale. Ankley and Floyd’s frustration with imperfect knowledge of enemy movements speaks to a more difficult and complicated reality.

It was not long before the US utilized its military in just such a concentration of overwhelming force in the First Gulf War. One raw account comes from former Surveillance and Target Acquisition (STA) sniper Anthony Swofford. Although he was would take over a decade to publish his memoir, the Jarhead (2003) wastes no time exposing the relationship between military service and popular culture. Swofford offers a typical post-Desert Storm experience as an example of “the movie cliche, the mad old warrior going through his memorabilia” on the very first page of his text; swiftly, he transitions to anticipating deployment through the medium of film, reminiscing that “we send a few guys downtown to rent all of the war movies they can get their hands on . . . we concentrate on the Vietnam films because it’s the most recent war, and the successes and failures of that war helped write our training manuals.” He also notes that the directors Coppola, Stone, and Kubrick “failed” to dissuade against war with their critical films Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket. 

Higher-profile veterans of the early stages of the Global War offer tantalizing evidence of the previously described influence of cultural factors on the motivations and expectations of US military volunteers of the era. These factors include positive media depictions and the celebration of established traditions, conflict-oriented fiction across a variety of media often marketed to children alongside related merchandise, as well as blurring lines of form, function, and audience. 

Author Rick Bragg’s 2003 biography I Am a Soldier, Too, describes how the future POW Jessica Lynch “imagined war, and waged it with plastic pistols and pinecone grenades” as a child with her brother and sister; interestingly, her sister Brandi recalls that “out here [in rural West Virginia], you had to imagine,” while their brother Greg Jr. perhaps exaggerates when describing “probably ten thousand dollar’s worth of doll babies, toy cars, and G.I. Joes in that mud” discarded around their old home. The experience of the Lynch children suggests that even adolescents more isolated from advertising and consumerism by geography or poverty were still familiar with branded toys. It is also compelling that the Lynchs do not appear to have especially treasured these toys but rather their memories of improvised sports, outdoor adventure, and mock combat. Greg Jr. and Jessica both enlisted in July of 2001, well ahead of the September 11th attacks, seemingly for mostly economic reasons but also in keeping with the somewhat resigned patriotism of their community. Jessica was also especially motivated by a desire “to go somewhere” and recalls growing to like the feeling of overcoming challenges in basic training. She credits overall naivety and her job as supply clerk in a maintenance unit with keeping her detached from the implications of September 11th, 2001 and the US response; inevitably, when learning that her own unit would deploy as part of the invasion of Iraq, Lynch recalls feeling mostly trepidation and obligation.

Evan Wright portrays a more celebratory view of the Iraq invasion held by many marines in his account General Kill (2003). Wright embedded with First Reconnaissance Battalion as a reporter for Rolling Stone during the US march to Baghdad and candidly presents the unit as elite but still overwhelmingly young and idealistic. One young marine in Wright’s chronicle displays his naive and media-driven cultural understanding of the violence he has just perpetrated by described it as “Grand Theft Auto Vice City.” Others tell him of being inspired to enlist by a recruiting commercial featuring a dragon-slaying knight transforming into a US Marine clad in a dress blue uniform. Nathaniel Fick commanded the platoon Evan Wright spent most of his time with, later publishing his own memoire recounting his time as a marine officer. His narrative is still centered mainly on the invasion of Iraq, but he explores his reasons for joining, training experiences, and first deployment as part of the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Fick recalls that he considered his decision to serve in “peacetime” an easier sell to his parents, but also tellingly ponders the 1983 Beirut bombing as “an early shot in the terror war.”
 [NICK LOPEZ ALSO CROSSES PATHS WITH 1ST RECON IN IRAQ]

Anuradha Bhagwati offers a fitting closing voice with her account of becoming a Marine Corps officer and later founding the Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN). Bhagwati recalls being inspired by Ridley Scott’s film G.I. Jane (1997) to attain acceptance through the endurance of hardship only to discover that the bigotry harbored by many in the real services could not be undone by the satisfactory completion of training challenges or job duties. Meanwhile in the fairy-tale ending, G.I Jane’s Demi Moore completes SEAL training and even goes on to cement the respect of her male peers by killing Libyans on a mission to recover a crashed satellite. 

Forever War Forever After

Ultimately, these ideas are not new. Propaganda and the mobilization of art and culture towards military ends is practically written into the origins of modern entertainment culture, most obviously in the “Mickey Mouse morale” efforts during the Second World War. The popularity of these stories and their familiarity within the popular culture also speak to the function of a cultural feedback loop enabling continuing war.

Looking back we can see the roles of political response to the Vietnam War at play in film and cultural history, and also identify this as one potential origin point in the aims and means of modern U.S. culture and foreign policy. The late Cold-War era of the All-Volunteer Force was in many ways a continuance of this reaction through its many smaller-scale and shorter-duration interventions - concurrent with both an evolving and oft-obscured South-American “drug war” and escalating Middle-Eastern adventurism. As military service motivation became more economic, the reality of military experience mattered less compared to the appearance of value of that experience. Creative endeavors strove less to present religious, civic, or personal morals but rather to uphold the internal moral frameworks of the most successful entertainment properties.

James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Todd McFarlane...these late twentieth century creatives brought a boyish energy to their work, inspiring a generation. The children raised during the popularization of blockbuster cinema and the ascension of nerd culture to the mainstream would go on to serve global war, the oldest in the waning Cold War era and the youngest in the new sprawling conflict against the concept of Extremist Islam. However, they often did not find the fulfillment of romantic heroism portrayed in the stories they grew up with. 

George W. Bush has often been accused of invading Iraq to finish his father's war, and in the same way, the "global war" he declared was neither wholly new nor would it be neatly concluded in a single narrative story arc. The identification of this turn-of-the new century media through-line therefore represents the beginnings of inquiry rather than a definitive conclusion. Many threads remain confusingly tattered and invite closer attention to confirm the implications of their appearance and place in the overall weave of history. One is a deeper narrative and literary analysis to more clearly expose what stories and values audiences find to be most appealing, which best serve martial or state interests, and the social and cultural effects of internalization of these attitudes. Closely related would be broader quantitative examination of the funding sources, sales figures, and overall economic impact of the action movie genre and military fetishism. Is there a military-industrial-entertainment complex? 

The feedback loop:

what you really do and how you feel about < --- > <--->  what most people think you do

in terms of militarizing culture:

Dehumanizing actions of war < --->  <--->  alienation of romanticization of war     

    >Literally cut-and-pasted from my rejected 3/4 draft while I meant to do that academic thing and edit it obsessively before submitting somewhere else, but then COVID, so, you know, no time for research and writing tra la la, and I'm too lazy to edit the footnotes in, oops, ho hum. <          

My Reactions to A Marine Domestic Terrorist

I've been pretty derailed this week, so here's an adaptation of my facebook rants and twitter threads on the subject of the mass murderer and disgraced Marine who turned on his fellow Americans:

The Commandant of the Marine Corps, General Robert B. Neller, disavowed Thousand Oaks killer Ian Long as an “ex-marine,” while “Lance Corporal of the Marine Corps” Maximilian Uriarte said that the adage “Once a Marine, Always a Marine does not apply to this one.” I think the idea of the "once & always Marine" DOES apply here, because if ex-Corporal Long thought that seeking and accepting help is weak, who taught him that? Who taught him that you're not a real Marine—or a real man—if you're not in the infantry (with a Combat Action Ribbon & confirmed kills, preferably)? I know who.

By the by, did you know that isolating blame around an individual's presumed moral failings is *the* USMC scapegoating tactic, and has been since at least Ribbon Creek in 1956? Hey, it's not the MARINE CORPS' fault that recruits drowned marching in a swamp as punishment for pissing off their drunk DI. I mean, the Corps only created the culture of swamp marches as punishment on a base featuring a booze-soaked NCO club where DIs relaxed between shifts. But that one DI, boy, he should have known better than to engage in all those activities the Marine Corps taught him.

This mass shooting thing is a cultural problem, and the Marine Corps (really the whole military industrial complex) is idolized within that culture. The very same USMC attitude driving people to say "he crossed a line, now he's nothing" is THE SAME hard-charging Marine attitude that drove this killer to tell himself "that's it, I've had it, lock and load.” This is a realization I’ve made with the help of a decade of excellent mental health care from my local VA (which I've been told is one of the best). I think it's a cultural problem first, tied to the secondary gun control problem. If the guns and mags and ammo weren't around, they couldn't be used. But they're around because of the gun-loving, take-charge, macho individualist culture, and they're used because of the same culture's glorification of violence. I think the same cultural problem applies to the VA debate, too. The idea that there's a silver bullet to fix the system; there isn't. Disgruntled veterans saying "I've tried to use [the VA], it's screwed" and throwing their hands in the air is part of why it's screwed. We don't need "better care for our veterans," we just need to care, period. 

This makes me think…Doesn’t immediately distancing this former Marine into a non-marine kinda shirk any responsibility the

@USMC

 might have to address its own culture of violence? The Marine Corps intentionally endeavors to create & tame killer devil dogs who sometimes break off the leash or follow the wrong scent. We don't *teach* atrocity, nor *try* to bring the war home. But we are taught to kill, and inculcated to equate gunsmoke with glory. Whatever Ian Long’s problems before going the Corps, he spent years in its hardass culture, one that says don't go to sick-call or ask for help, and that motivates leaders to demean those who do. 

Maybe Neller is trying to say that Marines shouldn't externalize their violence, and that's admirable, but his boss Mattis said a few months back that lethality is everything. Our military isn't *meant* to *murder.* To kill, yes, if need be, but it's *supposed* to purposeful, bound within the laws of war, and controlled and reflected upon within constraints of good order and discipline. 

That's why I'm questioning the role of leadership failure.

Obviously the 

@USMC

 doesn't intend to produce individuals who massacre civilians; that's against our core values. And 

@JimLaPorta

 is right that even traumatizing armed service does not automatically equate to a greater propensity for violence. But that doesn't disentangle the Corps from all responsibility. I feel that there's a need to be very careful here, and thoughtful and deliberative in our dialogues, because young, impressionable, constantly stressed recruits and Marines can easily misinterpret things. 

If 

@GenRobertNeller

 is saying "this betrays our values, and won't be tolerated in my Corps," that's great. But if his message can be construed to mean "this isn't our problem," then that's troubling, because that's just another manifestation of the "suck it up" attitude. In the end, it can't be denied that Long’s 

@USMarineCorps

 recruiters shipped him, his Drill Instructors passed him through boot camp, and his unit awarded him for good conduct. 

So yes, rebuke his heinous actions, but not as an excuse for failed leadership or to avoid painful revelations. 

I'm not saying the Marine Corps is responsible for a culture of mass shootings. I am, however, arguing that the Marine Corps needs to actually deal with the role its own celebration of violence plays in creating these circumstances, perhaps especially as pertains to "ex-corporal" Ian Long. The repression of his own pre-service assault of track coach Dominique Colell itself shows how the Corps DOES benefit from the American culture of military worship, and the resulting willingness to dismiss warning signs when there's a perception the aberrant behavior can be made to serve to a military mission through sanctioned violence. Sometimes, that violence finds its way out of the Corps, to be inflicted tragically upon the very same civilian public that Marines swear to defend.