Victim?
 
 
In the end, after plowing through the four-hundred pages of Hornet's Nest -
The Experiences of One of the Navy's First Female Fighter Pilots (Writer's
Showcase/Writer's Digest, New York/Shanghai) you will not know if author
Missy Cummings wants you to feel sorry for her. But you will know that she
feels very sorry for herself. Thanks to male obstinancy, she has been
through hell and back in her short career as a naval aviator. Fortunately
though, "for those women behind me," she writes from early retirement in
Virginia, "the fat lady has left the stage and hell has a glacier climate:
Women are now officially warriors and there is no turning back."
 
The devil was not just in the details. At the Naval Academy the entire
atmosphere was downright diabolical. Because of the fishbowl environment
for women at Annapolis, "most suffered from varying degrees of low
self-esteem. Many women were extremely attractive and most were thin and
in good shape, but the male mids still lumped us all in the 'fat and ugly'
category. The constant verbal abuse from our male peers was unrelenting.
When we walked down the halls, many male midshipmen would often moo and
oink at us."
 
During basic pilot training at NAS Corpus Christi, and especially at her
tie-cutting ceremony when there was "a lot of hissing and some outright
booing in the audience," she thought that her experiences at the Naval
Academy served her well; so while not understanding what was happening, she
thought nothing more of it.
 
That lapse was unfortunate for it left her unprepared for events at NAS
Kingsville, Texas. Assigned to jet training, Miss Cummings was happy to
encounter another female future fighter pilot. Then, surprise: The woman
"had absolutely nothing positive to say about the squadron, the instructors
or her peers...it was the worst decision she ever made, the guys, both
instructors and students, obviously did not want her there. She enjoyed
the flying aspect but could not stand the people she worked with and
couldn't wait to leave...she had not intention of staying in the Navy
because of the way she was treated."
 
Miss Cummings was shocked - and unperturbed. Surely, that other female
pilot had created her own hell. Missy would never ever be like her, even
if she knew, as she did at NAS Meridian, that instructor pilots "Hacker"
and "Montana" hated her.
 
As did most of her fellow pilots in VC-5 at Cubi Point, the Philippines,
where she was assigned to driving Skyhawks and where real purgatory
commenced: Miss Cummings, "like many other round-eyes, fell victim to the
sex-plagued environment." Worse, virtually everything she did outside the
workplace, seemed to alienate her fellow pilots: "Although they did not
want me in their club, they nevertheless expected me to hang around them.
This was yet another illustration of the dichotomy of a woman in a man's
world." No wonder, then, that Lieutenant Missy Cummings turned "very
distrustful of men."
 
While en route from Cubi Point to Cecil Field, Florida, Miss Cummings
picked up undergraduate and graduate degrees in aeronautical and
astronautical engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey.
Meanwhile, the Combat Exclusion Law had been lifted under Congressperson
Patricia Schroeder's stewardship, and the F/A-18 community happened to need
pilots with advanced degrees. The sky should have been the limit for Missy
Cummings and the climb there a piece of cake in full after-burner. If only
it had not been for the men of VFA-106.
 
The squadron, you see, "was so rife with hatred for women pilots, that if
the instructors perceived me as a troublemaker, I would never survive."
Pretty soon she was ordered before the Human Factors Board and then before
the Field Naval Aviator Evaluation Board. And through the ordeal she had
to cope with attacks of thyroid failure and related hormonal dysfunctions.
Her list of medical problems suffered, illnesses both acute and imagined,
reads like an encyclopedia of autoimmune afflictions. Miss Cummings did
not need a doctor's expertise to conclude that "almost all autoimmune
processes can be triggered and aggravated by stress." She survived it all,
barely.
 
Back at VFA-106, she became the squadron leper: "The situation was so
antagonistic that I could not even do my job without blatant verbal abuse.
I could handle the ostracism both in the cockpit and in the wardroom.
However, with the unfair duty assignments, the bogus SOD, and now the
verbal lashing in the Ready Room, it was clear the situation wasn't getting
better, it was getting exponentially worse. The hatred the guys felt for
me was no longer manifesting itself in passive aggressive action, now they
wore their derision for me like a badge of honor."
 
She experiences flashes of comprehension: "Without a doubt I know my
biggest mistake was trying to act just like one of the guys...I should have
been the quiet, demure little lamb the men wanted me to be." She suspects
that "it may sound absurd, but the women fighter pilots who were mousy and
inconspicuous were the ones who were the most successful."
 
What is absurd in this observation? Exactly nothing. Cummings herself
writes that "women who take on the masculine qualities of aggressiveness,
competitiveness, and independence are shunned by those they are merely
trying to emulate." Merely trying? Men will resent the mere attempt.
 
Cummings' confusion shows in her escape into phony reasoning when she
claims: "Despite the quantities and objective scientific evidence that
women are just as capable as men in combat aviation, and the proven
successes of the women pilots in all branches of the military, many still
refuse to believe women belong in the cockpit."
 
But no such "quantitative and objective scientific evidence" exists or can
exist. Besides, men's rejection of women's combat roles might be rooted
not in science methods or dry statistics but in instinct, that archaic
remnant from less decadent eras. Male bonding originates in those dark
times as well, as observed by anthropologist and ethologist Desmond Morris:
 
"Human males operating in groups - talking, planning strategies, devising
traps, improving weapons, sharing the spoils - became the most successful
biological phenomenon on earth. In the process, the male-grouping became
an essential evolutionary element in human nature. The urge to form male
'gangs' became deeply ingrained in the human personality. Group loyalties
and powerful bonds of attachment went beyond mere cultural influences. It
is this important process and its consequences for modern mankind that
Lionel Tiger set out to study and which he reports in his book 'Men in
Groups.' His comments are particularly valuable at a time when attempts
are being made to minimize the difference between the sexes. A misguided
but vociferous minority is campaigning to conceal human gender differences
and to obscure the evolutionary truth about our species. This unisexual
philosophy seeks to distort the facts as part of an unjustifiable
exploitation and subjugation of modern woman."
 
(Desmond Morris in his foreword to the second edition of Lionel
Tiger's "Men in Groups", New York and London - Marion Boyars Publishers,
Inc., 1984)
 
Thoughts and insights such as Desmond Morris' cannot be found in text-books
on aeronautics and astronautics. Perhaps Miss Cummings could profit from
immersion in the humanities. She would then also find out that Captain
Queeg commanded not HMS Bounty, but USS Caine.
 
H. Joachim Maitre

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