Reply #7: I'm with you there. [View All]

I think any woman in the military has either proved they were manly enough by overcompensating and adopting macho behaviors, or has seen other women survive by being that way. A really stupid example from my own time is that I only like coffee with cream, but I drank it black the entire time I was in the army. Such a small petty symbolic thing to do, but even without being able to put words on it at the time, I realized on some level I could not do anything that signaled feminine without risking harassment.

Steinem should know better. Many women succeed in highly misogynistic environments by trying to be one of the guys. It's not so different from any other minority group trying to survive in the dominant culture. Look at the shitstorm that happened when Cynthia McKinney didn't wear her hair "white" enough - to this day, when people want to make her look like an extremist, they'll use a photo of her with natural hair that's not straightened. When 9/11 happened, some Arab Americans outpatrioted the rest of us in many cases, hanging huge American flags on their shops, so they wouldn't be accused of being terrorists.