Once upon a time I was pregnant in uniform. For whatever reason, our HQ Co commander was an asshole who took forever to sign my memo requesting maternity uniforms. So I was this tall and thin officer with a large bump in the middle of my plain ass ACUs for a bit.

At some point, I was briefing in a meeting with our O-6 commander, a dude that wasn't generally well liked. Dude comes to shake my hand, while triple taking at my nonsequitur belly. He judged the shit out of me that day. (But of course I owned my briefing.)

Fast forward to when said O-6 commander was set to depart. We had two senior female officers in the command, and they had kicked off a women's officer group to discuss and mentor. And COL Dudebro is invited to address the inaugural meeting.

He came by to tell us how glad he was that our senior female officers were doing this.

And then he told us how little of a fuck he had given about women in his current and prior commands, and he only changed because he had a grown daughter who was a LT, married, thinking family

At this point I was postpartum and struggling, and I did. not. have it in me. for this kind of shit.
Because I wasn't feeling super thrilled about my environment at the time either, and the last thing I needed was the CDR not seeing this until it affected someone he cared about.

You know what good leaders have?

EMPATHY.

It means you don't have to be directly affected by an issue to be able to see how it may affect your subordinates.

It means seeing the stresses someone else is dealing with and working to understand and support them.

Now you may all guess I am a fairly outspoken individual, and I have a tendency to run my damn mouth, for better or for worse.

But I was just so disgusted by this entire premise of how he chose to approach the women in his command that I fucking walked out.

Don't be that idiot leader. Admit to growth, anyone who is paying attention takes in new information, that is fine. Don't proudly share how entirely inflexible your worldview is that you can only process women (or anyone different from you) thru the lens of "my wife or daughter"

How can you be responsible for my life and my well being if you can't grasp me outside this window of "like my wife or daughter" anyway?

Let me tell you.

You can't.

I have had many male leaders in the army.

Dudes, your quality has a wide variance. Get your shit together.

If a woman is placed in command, she needs to lead men. This is expected. This works with all people. If you cannot lead ALL of the humans in your org, you will fail.

This goes for leaders of all levels, not just at the top. Someone reports to you or has to share a space with you and they need you to have some fucking empathy.

I don't tolerate bullshit, and I know I am tough as nails to work with, but I do approach with empathy for my humans.

Command went through some bulllllllshit after him... and once things settled down, we got a pretty kickass (terrifying) female CDR and she is still a mentor to me.

But since 90% of my senior officers are male... I also lean on and learn the most from the ones who see me for me.