Earl Bockenfeld's Radio Weblog

TAQADDUM, Iraq - If every male soldier here were having as much sex as he claims, his female comrades would hardly have time to fight the war. Still, sex happens. And in Iraq, it happens a lot.

It's hardly a national secret that male and female soldiers have been mingling for as long as both sexes have been in uniform. And, some soldiers are wont to point out, some male warriors have been finding comfort in each others' arms for as long as wars have been fought.

But with limited exceptions in other conflicts, there has never been a time in which American men and women have served, side by side and in such numbers, in units engaged in combat. And troops here appear to be making the best of that situation.

Male and female soldiers in four Iraqi cities were eager to speak about what goes on when uniforms come off, but as sex at the front remains such a taboo with commanders, most asked for confidentiality, noting their careers were at stake. In the plywood hallways lining the spaces between the steel shipping containers that serve as a dormitory, of sorts, for most of the enlisted soldiers of the 146th Transportation Company, soldiers meet and mingle and sometimes find a partner.

It is, they note, only natural for the teens and 20-somethings who make up the majority of U.S. forces in Iraq to do what civilians of their age back home are doing. "They can try to keep us apart as much as they want, but they miss the point," said one female enlisted soldier, a Utahn.

It's about being young and having sex. "And that's what people this age do."

And a spokesman said the military is not keeping statistics on the number of women who return home from the battlefield because they become pregnant. Though, in all commands, soldiers note, the military's machinery does seem to understand that sex happens within the concrete walls and razor wire that surround each forward operating base: Base exchanges sell trashy lingerie, medics hand out condoms and, in some places, have a supply of pregnancy test kits available.

By their sheer numbers, most male soldiers are not regularly having sex, despite some male braggadocio to the contrary. But testosterone-induced swagger being what it is, word of others' exploits tends to get around. Male soldiers figure anywhere from a quarter to three-quarters of their female comrades are accepting of sex while on deployment.

Perhaps surprisingly, many female soldiers say those guesses are probably low. "If you include all the girls who are having sex with girls, it's much closer to every one of us," said one female enlisted soldier from the 146th.   The military still bans homosexual conduct, but enforcing that policy in a world where men berth with men and women berth with women is a practical impossibility.

The same soldier boasts she's made no less than seven of her comrades "feel a little less at war and a little more at home" since arriving in Iraq about three months ago.   Not everyone is simply trying to bolster morale, though.

"Some girls here say, if you just flirt with a guy you can get whatever you want from them," said Sgt. Emily Zike, one of two female soldiers with the Utah-based 222nd Field Artillery. But such exploits have consequences for female soldiers who do not make themselves available for conquest.    Zike, one of the senior soldiers in a barracks at Camp Ramadi comprising women from other units, says she walks to and from the mess hall with her hat pulled low over her eyes. "You make eye contact with them and they'll be all over you," says Zike, a resident of Indianapolis. "I try to look as unapproachable as possible."   Zike, who is married, feels fortunate to have fallen in with the 222nd.   "It's unlike any other battalion I've ever been in," she says. "It's like I inherited 500 big brothers - I've never seen that many happily married men in my life."    Married women, on the other hand, are considered "up for grabs" until they demonstrate otherwise, at which point, many female soldiers bitterly say, they are considered to be "bitches."
[...]
Even anonymously, female soldiers are reluctant to speak about sexual harassment. "They won't demote you, because that would be too obvious, but you can forget about being promoted, or even treated like a human being, if you make those kinds of waves," said one female soldier in Mosul.
The other choice to being a bitch, writes Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran Kayla Williams in her recently published memoir, is "slut."   "If you're a woman and a soldier, those are the only two choices you get," Williams writes in Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army.

About 15 percent of the Army is female.   "And that whole 15 percent is trying to get past an old joke," Williams writes. "''What's the difference between a bitch and a slut?'" A slut will have sex with anyone. A bitch has sex with anyone but you.
"So if she's nice, friendly, outgoing or chatty - she's a slut. If she's distant or reserved or professional - she's a bitch," she writes.

But, one female Marine officer stationed in Ramadi notes, this is not a problem unique to the military. "What a lot of these women don't understand, because they are young or inexperienced with sex before they came out here, is that it is the same back home, too," she says. "Men want a girl to be easy, but they don't respect a girl who is easy. So whether we're in Iraq, or Salt Lake City, or New York or wherever, this is our reality.

"You have two choices: You can keep your pants on and be miserable and be harassed or you can take your pants off and you'll still get harassed, but you'll be a little less miserable."

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