#do i agree with every soldier or veteran? of course not there’s a huge amount of them

[mars-ipan]

i think i’ve talked about it already but i fucking hate when people misconstrue my hatred for the military as hatred for soldiers/veterans. a huge part of my hatred for the military as an institution is the way they fuck over and exploit their soldiers and then abandon their veterans. like that is 50% if not more of why i hate the military

[brooklynboysficrecs]

Ria’s Top 10 Shrinkyclinks Fics

I will admit this isn’t my preferred AU -- I won’t immediately jump on a fic just because it’s pre-serum Steve and WS Bucky. I gotta like the plot, or the premise, or be really, really intrigued by the tags, but to be fair, that’s how I am with everything that isn’t Modern Bucky and Cap Steve, so. That being said, I have read some truly fantastic shrinkyclinks stories, and I do very much love Steven “Fight Me” Rogers at his scrappiest. And these fics also tend to feature protective!Bucky which is another personal favorite of mine. Oh, but also: shrinkyclinks generally refers to pre-serum Steve with actual Winter Soldier Bucky, but a lot of people use the tag just to imply body types, and when they say WS Bucky they mean he’s all huge and muscled and sometimes has a metal arm, though that isn’t required. That’s the definition I’m going with as well, so hopefully nothing’s confusing!

1. If Wishing Made It So by leveragehunters. Before I get into anything about the actual fic, let me say this: leveragehunters is probably my favorite stucky writer. Like, hands-down, I read almost everything they write, and they’re big into fantasy stories, which is a great bonus for me personally. So, so, so many good shrinkyclinks fics by them (Even Underneath the Waves, a mermaid AU that features equal amounts of pre- and post-serum Steve, and A-mage-ing Grace with mage Steve are two of my other favorites, and they would’ve been on the list, but I try not to put more than one story per author, ya know? And IWMIS kinda wins out above the others for me, so). This story features jinn!Bucky who finds himself in the baffled hands of Steve Rogers, who is perfectly prickly and stubborn and good. Bucky’s got a terrible past with humans in general (and Hydra in particular, what a shocker) that he and Steve have to overcome as their relationship progresses, but that progression is frankly beautiful to watch unfold. I come back to this story time and time again because of how much I love these versions of Steve and Bucky getting to know one another, learning to trust each other, supporting each other through the worst the world has to throw at them. Plus, there’s a few more stories in this series if you get as hooked as I am, which is always great!!

2. Roots Have Grown by AustinB. I remember reading this and just... completely feeling what Bucky is going through. Not everything -- he’s an agoraphobic veteran, and I can’t relate to either of those, really, but he’s so... awkward about his crush on Steve. And that’s -- that’s relatable to me. But it’s precious, really, how he tries to help Steve even though he’s afraid to actually meet him initially; he becomes Steve’s sort of... anonymous benefactor? Guardian angel with money? Like, it’s definitely a sugar daddy type deal originally but I doubt Bucky would describe it like that. I don’t know, it’s cute, though, and I loved seeing Bucky opening up to Steve as they became closer. 

3. Through The Woods by VenusMonstrosa, alby_mangroves. Okay, hear me out: werewolves. I fucking love werewolves in fiction; I mean, not really the romance novels you’ll see in the grocery store, but. Werewolf mythology is one of my favorite things, so seeing it in fanfiction almost always manages to lure me in. And I was so not disappointed with this story! Steve’s living alone in a cabin in the woods, which of course sounds like the opening to a horror movie, but here it leads to love. Werewolf Bucky is both charming and terrifying, to a degree, he’s a wolf, but he and Steve are fantastic together. This is another story that goes in on the trust aspect of their relationship and I for one am a big fan of that. There’s some violence, minor character death and the like, but it’s definitely not undeserved so. If you can handle that (and the sex, because there is sex in this) then I highly recommend this one!

4. The Joy of Little Things by obsessivereader, Sealcat. And so we move from werewolves to dragons. Yup. Dragons. Another of my beloved mythical creatures that I obsessed over when I was kid. Bucky’s capable of shifting into a human in this, but primarily he’s a big ol’ dragon that surprisingly doesn’t want to eat the scrawny sacrifice from the local village. Steve ends up working for Bucky, instead, and from there hilarity ensues. Steve’s obviously wary of Bucky, but Bucky isn’t at all what he’d been expecting, and they grow closer the longer Steve’s staying in Bucky’s caves. There are a couple of stories with Dragon!Bucky, but this is my personal favorite; it’s cute and heart-warming and, well. I just really like it. 

5. I Just Want to Love You in My Own Language by agetwellcard, inediblesushi. So this one has Cap!Bucky (Bucky!Cap?) but again, sometimes it’s more about how Bucky looks rather than his role as the Winter Soldier. Anyway, I remember my biggest take away from this story was how adorable Bucky was in his quest to win the affections of sassy Nurse Steve, who patches him up after missions and is probably playing hard to get. Bucky uses terrible pick-up lines, absolutely awful, and he is completely unashamed of that fact. Which is, as I said, adorable. Steve, initially, does not agree with my assessment, but he gets there eventually. After some requisite drama, of course.

6. Tint & Shade by forestofbabel. Oh, god, this one hurt me, I remember that pretty clearly. Bucky is the Winter Soldier in this, and Steve is a 21st century art therapist who just so happens to resemble his late grandfather, Captain Joseph Rogers, who fought in -- you guessed it -- WWII. Like I said in the intro, if I really like the premise of something I’ll usually read it regardless of the configuration of pre-/post-serum Steve and pre-serum/WS Bucky, and this was definitely one of the fics I got into for that reason. Having actual WS Bucky interact with a modern pre-serum Steve is always interesting, given how much they don’t have in common, generally (there isn’t even really the veteran status that modern Bucky sometimes has in fics), and it’s a journey to see how and why they connect. Having Steve resemble his WWII era grandfather caught my attention, and the fic itself made me grateful that I decided to go for it in the first place. This is another one where is trust is key to their relationship, considering the mental/emotional state Bucky is in at the beginning. Very good story overall!

7. Fourth Floor by dirtybinary, mithborien, picoalloe. So dirtybinary has written some amazing stucky fics, which is why I was so excited when I saw this being posted initially (a few years ago, but still). There’s magic! Mystery! Suspense! Some NatSharon! Looking this over, I’m wondering if I should’ve saved it for the Urban Fantasy list I wanna do (and If Wishing Made It So, if I’m being honest) but I do like it for the shrinkyclinks list. The writing is great, the characterization of Steve and Bucky is great, and like, they live in what is essentially a magical apartment complex, so what’s better than that? 

8. my heart tells me you are lonely, too by FanGirling. Alright, so I read this one as it was being published, and the slow burn about killed me. You know, in a good way, though. Bucky lives in Steve and his mother’s apartment building, trying to figure out where to go with his life now that he’s broken free of Hydra and gotten his autonomy back. He’s obviously wary, skittish, but he takes a liking to Sarah Rogers when she reaches out to befriend him, surprised anyone wants to be near him let alone take the time to get to know him. Steve... is not so easily sold on Bucky. And I’m not gonna spoil anything here, but the shit these two go through is intense, and I cried a lot during this fic, sometimes out of frustration because they’re both ridiculous about their feelings (of course Bucky’s fears are valid, the man has been through literal hell, but also I was internally screaming a little as Bucky continually talked himself out of getting closer to Steve.) I wanted to wrap the both of them in about thirty blankets for pretty much the entire length of the fic. God. They’re just -- they’re so incredibly sweet in this one, once they work past their issues (Bucky and Steve are both more than a little messed up from their respective circumstances, but they make it work). Mind the tags on this one, also, especially because there is a chapter that deals with attempted sexual assault against Steve (obviously not with Bucky!), but Bucky handles the situation before anything truly nasty happens, that I can promise. 

9. Local Raccoon Befriends Angry Chihuahua by charlesdk. This is yet another author I really love; they have a fantastic farmer!Steve/Modern!WS!Bucky story that I love to bits, as well as other great fics. But anyway, this one. The title sold me the second I saw it, honestly, I can’t even pretend that wasn’t the deciding factor in me reading this. I don’t think I can really do any better than the summary in explaining why I recommend it; feisty tiny Steve and lovestruck grumpy Bucky are a winning combination in my book. This one does feature the boys dealing with homophobia and ableism, though I can’t recall how severe it is. So I’d just mind the tags, and if you’re alright with them, thoroughly enjoy this story. 

10. The Road to Hell is Paved with Tony’s Good Intentions by pinlilli. Bucky as a mail-order Russian bride. That’s the detail that pretty much demanded I click on this fic, and oh my god, it was even better than I ever could’ve expected. Tony, in a bid to help Steve get over his awful ex-boyfriend (fuck Brock Rumlow in every universe, honestly), literally orders him a husband -- in the form of beefy James Barnes, who is a fucking gem and I will not hear one bad word against him. He does chores, it’s lovely and adorable, and you will definitely fall just as hard as Steve does. There’s some canon-typical violence in this one that relates to James’ past, but nothing super graphic as far as I remember. Again, Rumlow is a dick and should be treated as such, but he’s hardly the most important part of this fic and I urge everyone to take a look at it if they’re as intrigued by Bucky being a mail-order husband as I was. 

[jeanjauthor]

Just reread an officer's choice, and in it you said there are literal billions of people in the terran armed forces, now assuming the military is 1 % of the Terran human population and the word billions is the minimum of 2 billion, that would mean that the Terrans have a population of about 200 billion people, am I anywhere within spitting distance?

…That’s assuming the proportion of the population in the military is just 1%.  By Ia’s day, there is a very sizeable amount of military presence needed to patrol around each of the Salik worlds.  A very large number of those in turn have to be cycled out frequently because Blockade duty is extremely stressful.

On top of that, they have to have a large military presence for the Border patrols, which includes not only inhabited sectors but uninhabited sectors…and there are a lot of star systems without inhabited moons or planets (domeworld or M-class, it’s all the same).

And on top of that, every inhabited system (moon, planet, space station, etc) has to have a TUPSF-Navy presence for guarding it against attacks…

And on top of that…yep, all those planets & moons have to have ground troops.  Not just in case of invasion from outside forces, or even the (highly improbable) possibility of civil war uprisings, but because if it’s an inhabitable world, it’s full of potentially dangerous local lifeforms.  Military troops also double as search & rescue teams, relief supply personnel, etc, etc, during natural disasters.

…The real question is, where the heck did all those kids come from??  And that, I can tell you, is quite simple:  wombpods.  Artificial uterinoid technology.  Medi-mechanical growth tanks for developing children.  Even before Jackie’s day, the need for women (and nonbinary/transgender folks, etc) to be the sole source of reproduction for the survival of the species had been completely removed from the equation.

If someone with a womb/uterus wants to have a child the old-fashioned (i.e. risk of death, albeit very very low in the 23rd century) way, they are completely free to do so.  In fact, PopEx (Population Expansion) pays people to have more children…provided they pass the mandatory training courses & tests to make sure they’ll be good parental material.

Many choose to transfer the zygote to a wombpod as soon as they know they’re pregnant.  Many more children are deliberately bred via wombpod creches, where they are raised by professional nannies, etc. One of the big reasons why PopEx pays people to have kids is because newly settled colonyworlds are dangerous places; the more people are born, the more people there are to replace those who die, and the more hands on deck there’ll be when they’ve grown up enough to help out.

Colonizing a world (inhabitable open air colonization or carefully spaced clusters of domes in style) has an attrition rate, but it also has an expansion rate curve that has to be kept ahead of. The initial living situations are sparse, resources are tight, and it’s all increasingly crowded. But infrastructure is being built by that first generation that then uplifts the second generation into much more rapid expansion.

Take Sanctuary, for example: the parent generation (firstworlders, the ones to actually land on the planet) was roughly 50,000 people.  Admittedly, that’s a bit low, but that’s because they were pulling colonists off of Eiaven and other lesser heavyworlds to try to populate Sanctuary.  By Ia’s day (2nd generation, grandchild of the firstworlders), there are over 200,000 settlers…and that includes an attrition rate on a planet where simply falling down can kill a person, if they fall on the wrong surface. (Cracked/crushed skulls, etc.)

Eventually, enough soft plexcrete and other padded surfaces get laid all over the place that the death rate drops significantly…but the wombpod creches are still pumping out lots of children.  By the time of the Firegirl Prophecy, they have a population of many, many millions.

On the downside, once there are a craptonne of people, the need for excess population expansion has to be slowed down…but gauging by how much is awkward.  That means you have about 1-2 generations (10-20 ish years Terran Standard) where you’re still “overproducing” population numbers…and many of them need to have a job to do.  Except, on the home colony, all or most of the infrastructure is laid, or at least the current workforces can easily keep up with the needs of the people…and so you need to give them something to do.

But oh, hey, look, we just happen to have a huge Saik Interdicted Zone, and all those hundreds & thousands of star systems to patrol, and if you agree to serve for X number of years defending planet Y, you’ll get the title deed to a nice big plot of land ot settle on, and grow that world’s population some day, maybe, with kids of your own!

Ironically, Ia knows that there will be a massive problem with scaling down the Space Force, with lots of people suddenly out of military work, and in need of being reintegrated into civilian work, and…well, the nice thing, the really nice thing, about the Terran United Planets Space Force, is that they don’t just hand a soldier her discharge papers and show her the door.  They transition them, and keep in constant touch for years–yes, years–afterward to make sure they’re doing okay. (Everyone gets free healthcare paid by actually sensible taxation, though military veterans have additional free access to specialists who deal with veteran-style chronic injuries to body, heart, & mind.)

We just never got to see any of that because Ia’s story was focused solely on her and her choice to become career military, i.e. not retire during the scope of the story…and Jackie’s story during the First Salik War both started and ended at points in her life where we just didn’t get to see any of that post-service support going on for her.

[sociologyquotes]

United States War Crimes During the Vietnam War

from the article War Crimes: Agent Orange, Monsanto, Dow Chemical and Other Ugly Legacies of the Vietnam War by Dr. Gary G. Kohls

“Fifty years ago this next month (December 1965), with the urging of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the rubber stamp approval of President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the United States Air Force started secretly spraying the forests of Laos with a deadly herbicide that was known as Agent Orange.

Operation Ranch Hand, whose motto was “Only We Can Prevent Forests” (a shameful takeoff of Smokey the Bear’s admonition), was a desperate, costly and ultimately futile effort to make it a little harder for the National Liberation Front soldiers from North Vietnam to join and supply their comrades-in-arms in the south. Both the guerilla fighters in the south and the NLF army had been fighting to liberate Vietnam from the exploitive colonial domination from foreign nations such as imperial France (that began colonizing Vietnam in 1874), then Japan (during WWII), then the United States (since France’s expulsion after their huge military defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954) and then against its own nation’s US-backed fascist/military regime in South Vietnam that was headed by the brutal and corrupt President Diem.

(Incidentally, the nepotism in the US-backed, Roman Catholic Diem’s iron-fisted rule was almost laughable, with one brother being the Catholic Archbishop of Vietnam, a second brother being in charge of the Hue district, and a third brother being the co-founder of the only legal political party in South Vietnam [as well as Diem’s principal adviser]. It needs to be pointed out that true democracies do not criminalize political parties.)

The aim of the National Liberation Front was to unite the north and the south portions of the country and free it from the influence and occupation of foreign invaders. The leader of the liberation movement since its beginning was Ho Chi Minh, who had made sincere appeals to both President Woodrow Wilson (after WWI had weakened France’s colonial system) and President Harry Truman (after the Japanese had taken over Vietnam during WWII and then surrendered to the US in 1945).

Each appeal asked for America’s help to liberate Vietnam from their French colonial oppressors, and each one fell on deaf ears, even though Ho Chi Minh had frequently incorporated the wording and spirit of America’s Declaration of Independence in his continuous efforts to achieve justice for his suffering people.

Agent Orange’s Ecological Devastation of Southeast Asia

Operation Ranch Hand had actually been in operation since 1961, mainly spraying its poisons on Vietnam’s forests and crop land. The purpose of the operation was to defoliate trees and shrubs and kill food crops that were providing cover and food for the “enemy”.

Operation Ranch Hand consisted of spraying a variety of highly toxic polychlorinated herbicide solutions that contained a variety of chemicals that are known to be (in addition to killing plant life) human and animal mitochondrial toxins, immunotoxins, hormone disrupters, genotoxins, mutagens, teratogens, diabetogens and carcinogens that were manufactured by such amoral multinational corporate chemical giants like Monsanto, Dow Chemical, DuPont and Diamond Shamrock (now Valero Energy). All were eager war profiteers whose CEOs and share-holders somehow have always benefitted financially from America’s wars.

Such non-human entities as Monsanto and the weapons manufacturers don’t care if the wars that they can profit from are illegal or not, war crimes or not; if they can make money they will be there at the trough.

They are however, expert at duping the Pentagon into paying exorbitantly high prices for inferior, unnecessary or dangerous war materiels. One only needs to recall Vice President Dick Cheney’s Halliburton Corporation and that company’s no-bid multibillion dollar contracts that underserved our soldiers during the past three wars, but enriched any number of One Percenters.

Agent Orange was the most commonly used of a handful of color-coded herbicidal poisons that the USAF sprayed (and frequently re-sprayed) over rural Vietnam (and ultimately – and secretly – Laos and Cambodia). It was also used heavily over the perimeters of many of its military bases, the toxic carcinogenic and disease-inducing chemicals often splashing directly upon American soldiers. (But “stuff happens” as Donald Rumsfeld would say).

The soil in and around some of the US and ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) military bases continue to have extremely high levels of dioxin. The US military bases where the barrels of Agent Orange were off-loaded, stored and then pumped into the spray planes or “brown water” swift boats are especially contaminated, as were those guinea pig “atomic soldiers” who handled the chemicals. The Da Nang airbase today has dioxin contamination levels over 300 times higher than that which international agencies would recommend remediation. (Guess which guilty nation is doing nothing about Agent Orange contamination of the sovereign nation of Vietnam?)

It is fair to speculate that any American G-I that spent any time at bases such as Da Nang, Phu Cat and Bien Hoa in the 1960s and 1970s may have been exposed. US Navy swift boat crews that sprayed Agent Orange on the shores of the bushy rivers that they patrolled were often soaked by the oily chemicals that were sprayed from the hoses. Secretary of State Kerry, are you listening?

The poisonous spraying continued for a decade until it was stopped in 1971. The South Vietnamese air force, that had started spraying Agent Orange before the US did, continued the program beyond 1971.

Agent Orange – the Chemical That Never Stops Giving/Poisoning

Agent Orange was a 50/50 mixture of two herbicides: 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid) and 2,4,5-T (2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid). Other herbicide agents were mixtures of other equally toxic polychlorinated compounds, but every barrel was contaminated by substantial amounts of dioxin, one of the most toxic industry-made chemicals known to man.

The toxicity of the herbicidal chemicals known as “dioxins” or “dioxin-like compounds” is due to the chlorine atoms and the benzene molecules (or phenyl groups) in the compound to which they are attached. Dioxins have very long half-lives and are thus very poisonous to the liver’s detoxifying enzymes that humans and animals rely on to degrade synthetic chemicals that get into the blood stream. The fatty tissues of exposed Vietnam vets, even decades after exposure, continue to have measureable levels of dioxins.

[...]  Should it be a War Crime to Use Disease-inducing Herbicides as an Instrument of War?

According to Wikipedia,

“War crimes have been broadly defined by the Nuremberg Principles as “violations of the laws or customs of war”, which includes massacres, bombings of civilian targets, terrorism, mutilation, torture and the murder of detainees and prisoners of war [realities that abounded at places like My Lai and other massacre sites]. Additional common crimes include theft, arson, and the destruction of property not warranted by military necessity.”

According to that definition, anybody with a smidgen of awareness of what really happens in any combat zone would have to conclude that every war that the US military has ordered its young soldiers to go off and fight and kill in, especially the many corporate-endorsed, Wall Street wars, was laden with war crimes.

Four million innocent Vietnamese civilians were exposed to Agent Orange, and as many as 3 million have suffered diagnosable illnesses because of it, including the progeny of people who were exposedto it, approximating the number of innocent Vietnamese civilians that were killed in the war. The Red Cross of Vietnam says that up to 1 million people are disabled with Agent Orange-induced illnesses. There has been an epidemic of birth defects, chronic illnesses, fetal anomalies and neurological and mental illnesses since the “American War”.

Most thinking humans would agree that destroying the health and livelihoods of innocent farmers, women, children, babies and old people (who had no interest in the war) by poisoning their forests, farms, food and water supplies qualifies as a war crime.

Disrespecting Sickened Veterans Again and Again

According to Wikipedia, the chemical companies involved in an Agent Orange Vietnam veterans’ class action lawsuit in 1984 (against seven chemical companies that got Agent Orange contracts from the Pentagon) denied that there was a link between their poisons and the veterans’ health problems. On May 7, 1984, as is usual for Big Corporations that know when they are losing, the seven chemical companies settled out of court for $180 million just hours before jury selection was to begin. The companies agreed to pay the $180 million as compensation if the veterans dropped all claims against them.

45% of the sum was ordered to be paid by Monsanto. Many veterans were outraged, feeling that they had been betrayed by the lawyers. Fairness Hearings were held in five major American cities, where veterans and their families discussed their reactions to the settlement, and condemned the actions of the lawyers and courts, demanding the case be heard before a jury of their peers. The federal judge refused the appeals, claiming the settlement was “fair and just”. By 1989, the veterans’ fears were confirmed when it was decided how the money from the settlement would be paid out. A totally disabled Vietnam veteran would receive a corporate-friendly maximum of $12,000 spread out over the course of 10 years. By accepting the settlement payments, disabled veterans would become ineligible for many state benefits such as food stamps, public assistance, and government pensions. A widow of a veteran who died because of Agent Orange would only receive $3,700.

According to Wikipedia, “In 2004, Monsanto spokesman Jill Montgomery said Monsanto should not be liable at all for injuries or deaths caused by Agent Orange, saying: ‘We are sympathetic with people who believe they have been injured and understand their concern to find the cause, but reliable scientific evidence indicates that Agent Orange is not the cause of serious long-term health effects.’”

[...] Such shabby treatment of returning veterans has been the norm after every war, including the reality of the “bonus army” revolt of the 1930s when thousands of poor, disabled and/or unemployed World War I vets marched on Washington, DC, demanding the bonus that had been promised them in the 1920s. Rather than receiving justice, Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower dishonorably ordered their troops to burn the bonus army’s temporary villages and disperse the vets empty-handed.

[...] US Veterans’ Diseases Caused by Agent Orange

I conclude this essay by listing the currently-accepted list of diseases that the VA acknowledges can be caused by exposure to Agent Orange. This applies to American veterans, but one can be certain that the consequences are a hundred times worse for the Vietnamese people who were sprayed and who are still being exposed to it in the soil for the last 50 years.

The VA says that certain cancers and other health problems can be caused by exposure to Agent Orange and the other herbicides during their military service. Veterans and their survivors may be eligible for benefits if they have one of these diagnoses.

Amyloidosis, Chronic B-cell Leukemias, Chloracne, Type II Diabetes Mellitus, Hodgkins Disease, Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Ischemic Heart Disease, Multiple Myeloma, Parkinson’s Disease, Peripheral Neuropathy, Porphyria Cutanea Tarda, Prostate Cancer, Respiratory Cancers (including lung cancer), Hairy Cell Leukemia, Soft Tissue Sarcomas and spina bifida in infants of Agent Orange exposed Vietnam veterans.”

[blockheadbrands]

Healing Our Heroes

Sophie Saint Thomas of High Times Reports:

Sexual trauma is epidemic in the military, and survivors are demanding cannabis to help them heal.

A plate dropped at the restaurant where Kristina, a combat vet of 14 years, worked. She dove under a table. “It was around the 4th of July—that’s when the fireworks happen, which is a very stressful time for me,” she says. The national holiday is difficult for many vets, as fireworks can sound like a war zone. A younger male coworker wasn’t doing his job and ignored Kristina’s requests to pick up the slack. “I asked him repeatedly to do it, and then I lost it and almost went for the kid’s neck,” she recalls. Thankfully, a friend was present to bring her out of the flashback and into the present. “She nudged me with her elbow, and I was like, ‘Whoa, what just happened?’ I went to the VA the next day, and I haven’t been back to work since.”

While Kristina (whose last name is being withheld for legal protection) has been out of the military since 2008, it was only six months ago when she realized she was suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. “PTSD is a huge problem regardless of the source, and we’re only starting to grapple with the implications as a society. Nowhere is going to be as difficult as the military,” says Harvard-trained holistic care and cannabis-therapeutics specialist Dr. Jordan Tishler.

Kristina is also a military sexual-trauma survivor. When asked if she was assaulted while in the service, she responds: “Yes, ma’am. Numerous times in numerous ways in numerous countries by numerous people.” According to a report released by the Pentagon, sexual assaults across the US military increased by nearly 38 percent in 2018. The Pentagon also estimated that 20,500 service members across the military branches, about 13,000 women and 7,500 men, were assaulted in 2018, according to an anonymous survey. A quick internet search provides an array of articles and research on combat violence, PTSD and cannabis, but the same is not true for sexual violence within the military. Despite the lack of acknowledgment, vets who survived both combat trauma and military sexual trauma (MST) may have particularly intense PTSD. “There is a greater persistence of the PTSD symptoms when both have been experienced,” says clinical psychologist and sexologist Dr. Denise Renye.

There is a void in what should be a plethora of discussions given how common MST is. According to a study looking into sexual harassment and assault of female US military personnel in the Persian Gulf War, sexual assault had a more significant impact on PTSD than combat exposure. “The sexual trauma was worse than anything they experienced combat-wise,” says somatic psychologist and sex therapist Holly Richmond when asked about her veteran clients. “Combat violence gets more attention because it’s seen as a valiant act,” says Alandria Hatcher, a US Army veteran who served from 1998 to 2009. She adds that despite the #MeToo movement, it’s no surprise that MST stats are going up. “I think, unfortunately, that in the era of #MeToo, because the military is such a good old boys club, they kind of poke fun at it,” Hatcher adds.

Ten years ago, the VA diagnosed Kristina with anxiety and “a little bit” of PTSD, so she assumed the incidents at work were anxiety-related. “I didn’t think it was as bad as it was until it got worse. PTSD is so unpredictable,” Kristina explains. Because she was on pharmaceuticals and in recovery from alcohol, she never considered cannabis as a viable treatment option. Then her son stepped in. While she was visiting him in California, he offered her a piece of infused white chocolate to help her sleep after he saw the large amount of benzodiazepines she was taking. Kristina was hesitant, but her son assured her he would take care of her. “I took the candy,” Kristina says. “I slept like a stinking baby and better than I had in years. The next day I called my husband, and I said, ‘Honey, how do you feel about me bringing home some butter?’ We made a whole bunch of butter at my son’s, and I took some plants home.” Kristina’s friends and family welcomed her new medicine when they saw how much it helped her.

Kristina has been making her own cannabis medicine ever since (and hasn’t had a drink). She also weaned herself off the pills. Of course, there is no shame in taking pharmaceuticals to help treat mental-health problems. Plenty of medical-cannabis users do. As Dr. Tishler notes, “I have some qualms over ‘I’ve got to get off this medicine’… It undermines the validity of that medicine for people who truly need it.”

Some vets, such as Kristina, say using cannabis dramatically improved their health. “Without cannabis, it’s just so hard to be me,” Kristina says. She is not the only MST survivor who finds that cannabis improves their quality of life. “They wanted me on a ton of pills, and that’s great, but I like to be able to function. I learned about CBD and that certain strains didn’t give you a high but helped calm the parts of your brain that get overactive with stressors,” Hatcher says. “I found cannabis a lot more effective than anything else,” agrees fellow veteran Lauren Hough. Previously, she tried an array of antidepressants but ultimately found the side effects were not worth the benefits.

Hough joined the military right after high school in 1996 and served for five years. She was raped by an acquaintance while at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, which she attended after basic training. She was hanging out and drinking with friends on the beach. “I was drunk and going back to the dorms because I just wanted to go to bed. I started walking up the hill, and he walked with me, and he ended up raping me,” Hough says.

After the rape, Hough returned to her dorm and was reported for being drunk by the dorm guard who signed her in. “My eyes were bloodshot and I had leaves in my hair. Those things were not because I was drunk. He reported me, and I got called to the student leader’s office on Monday,” she recalls. During the meeting, she told the student leader what happened. The student leader told Hough not to say anything because if she reported the rape, she’d also need to report the drinking, which would not only get Hough in trouble, but also every friend she was drinking with. “She said, ‘This is the worst thing I’m ever going to tell you, but you will get in trouble and he won’t,”’ Hough recalls. “It sounds strange to say to civilians, but she did this out of concern for me. She was like, ‘I’ve seen what will happen, I know what will happen, and you will lose your security clearance. You will lose rank. Your career is over if you report him.’” The student leader added that Hough was free to go ahead and report it, and she would back her up if she did, but Hough needed to understand the consequences fully. “I would have lost everything. So I didn’t,” she says.

The latest data from the Pentagon shows that about one in three MST survivors reports their assault. Civilian survivors face humiliation, cruel legal systems and re-traumatization when reporting rape too, but the military is its own beast. “We’re stationed places with [our assaulter]. We cannot quit our jobs, and we cannot walk away. You have to work with those people every day,” Kristina says. “Most of the time, you’re somewhere that is away from your home. It could jeopardize your career and make things a lot worse. So nobody says anything. I didn’t say anything.”

“If you report, your career is done,” Hatcher says. “The investigation is going to humiliate you and make you feel like you deserved it.” Someone Hatcher thought was a friend assaulted her while she was stationed in Germany in 2000. She was assaulted again, by a chief warrant officer who had significant rank over her, during her deployment to Afghanistan in 2007. “Your career is effectively over because you’re admitting [to breaking] General Order No. 1,” Hatcher says. “Even though it was a violation, your career is done.” General Order No. 1 lists prohibited activities for military personnel such as drinking alcohol and sexual relationships, and it’s a common obstacle for MST survivors who do choose to report. LGBTQ soldiers such as Hatcher and Hough who served during the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” era also had to hide their assault in addition to hiding their identity. “It was a very difficult time, because you were proud to serve your country, but I had to hide who I was. I couldn’t serve my country as myself. I served my country under a facade to be what they expected of me,” Hatcher says. She adds that work still needs to be done to protect LGBTQ service members and people of color. “The commercials like to pretend that the army is this big inclusive place, but racism and sexism are still incredibly prevalent.”

Despite their trauma, the veterans interviewed share fond memories of the military. “Nobody tells you to smile; you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to wear that day. It’s the happiest place for lesbians until they find out you’re a lesbian,” Hough says. Kristina recently completed a five-month program run by the VA for military sexual-assault survivors. “Everybody gives the VA this bad rap. I want to be the one who tells you that the VA has always given me excellent health care. The only thing that I can say is that the VA, which is a government entity, needs to be able to work with me in my choice in how I want to medicate so that I can recover from the things that have happened to me,” Kristina says. “I don’t get that choice because [cannabis] is still considered a Schedule I drug. I told my doctor that I was going off all my medication. In fact, she told me how to do it. I told her I was using herbal supplements instead of medication. I didn’t say specifically that I was using cannabis. I wish I could tell her.” Until the federal government takes action, vets must continue to seek their cannabis elsewhere. ��Marijuana is illegal under federal law, and until federal law changes, [the] VA is not able to prescribe it,” Susan Carter, director of the office of media relations at the Department of Veterans Affairs, told High Times when asked about vets using cannabis as part of their treatment.

Hatcher now works as a clinical data analyst in a legal state, and she uses health insurance separate from the VA so she doesn’t have to worry about her cannabis use affecting her access to health care. Hough told her VA doctor about her cannabis use, and while he admitted that it probably does help treat PTSD, he can’t prescribe it.

While there are studies that suggest cannabis helps treat PTSD—and PTSD is even a qualifying condition for medical marijuana in many states—more research is needed to understand exactly how and why it helps. “The restrictions contained in federal law are clear. Some research is allowed, but must be done in conjunction with the aforementioned federal entities,” Carter explains. “If Congress wants to facilitate more federal research into Schedule I controlled substances such as marijuana, it can always choose to eliminate these restrictions.” Nonetheless, it is evident that there are legions of military sexual-trauma survivors who successfully use cannabis to treat their condition, even when it means putting their disability payments or access to medical care on the line.

“You have to literally put your life in the hands of somebody who thinks that you’re not valuable,” Hatcher says of women serving alongside their rapist. While all sexual assault is horrifying, the breach of trust and respect—principles the military is supposedly built upon—that occurs is immensely dehumanizing. Once MST survivors leave the service, which is often an extremely difficult lifestyle transition, they go on to do whatever it takes to get that missing piece back in the civilian world. “There’s a very deep sense of betrayal. When I joined, I believed the movies and the books that I read that this would be the finest brotherhood, and everybody would be accepted, and you’d have a common purpose,” Hough says. “To be raped by someone in the same uniform takes away from what you believed in it.”

Originally published in the September, 2019 issue of High Times magazine. Subscribe right here.

TO READ MORE OF THIS ARTICLE ON HIGH TIMES, CLICK HERE.

https://hightimes.com/activism/healing-our-heroes/