Category: Navy

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Pat Tillman Foundation Scholars 2021 Essays

Last year I applied to Pat Tillman Scholars program. It was the last time I would apply since I am no longer eligible. It’s not the first scholarship I applied to (and certainly not the last) that I’d be rejected from. However, I think it is important to recognize that rejection happens and it happens constantly. And some – especially when intertwined with an identity can be hurtful. I have qualms about what to share and what to leverage in these applications. It often sounds like trauma porn – or a bad RuPaul episode where a queen makes herself vulnerable only to lip sync for her life and sashay away. I also have qualms about contributing to military exceptionalism – but this is a military/veteran scholarships so that moot point.

I think these were/are great essays and speak to who I am as a veteran committed to service, my research, and others. So I want to share them. They got me passed the first round so they’re somewhat successful. But what’s important is that you are and I am still successful. The essays – from my knowledge – are the same each year. So keep in mind if you’re applying again to keep your mental health in an ok place. There’s only so many times you can repeat a vulnerable memory for leverage just to sashay.

I think posting my application might be my new thing – maybe it can be called “failure porn” if that hasn’t already been done.

Discuss your motivation and decision to serve, in the military or otherwise. Explain how your unique life experience has influenced your life and your ambitions. What is the most important lesson you have learned? (400 max)

When I joined the Navy, I did not know what service meant. Like many other Americans of color, I saw the military as a way out. I saw it for the opportunities it could provide me. However, I did not realize how much harder it would be for me to reach those opportunities as a queer, Asian and Filipino American during Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

I went to the Naval Academy Preparatory School first. There, I felt the most alone. The cadre during indoctrination suspected I was gay. They singled me out, and the harassment continued into the academic year. One day, someone even wrote faggot on my back during class. Only one person showed me kindness and helped me. That one person’s act held me together.

My true call to service came after I arrived at the Academy the next year. There, I found a cohort of queer midshipmen. For the first time I saw people like me. Working with them, I realized I could and wanted to serve in the Navy.  Best of all, I knew that we had to help each other navigate the precarious waters of secrecy and advocacy. Our presence was a statement that we belonged.

They remained my anchor and only source of help during DADT, but that was not enough. In the fleet, I was sexually harassed by a sailor while deployed. Of course, I turned to those queer midshipmen for help. But what would have empowered me during that time, instead of just staying resilient and staying the course, is a leader who looked like me.

I could not be that leader. Cancer drove me out of the Navy. Still wanting to serve, I recalled those who helped me along the way. In their spirit, I went from serving the country to serving others by volunteering for other cancer patients, mentoring foster children, and helping neighbors. Service is a value that I want reflected in all aspects of my life. Today, that value is reflected in my research about veterans transitioning to college and my work advising veterans applying to college. My ambition is to continue service through scholarship, scholarship that provides veterans the tools and resources to be empowered and to empower others.

Share your academic and career goals. How will you incorporate your experiences into these goals? How will you make a positive impact? (400 max)

Pursuing a master’s degree and then a PhD in Linguistics has allowed me to raise awareness about how language mediated the adversity I experienced during Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and bring about positive change. Accordingly, my academic goal is to expose through research how discriminatory and oppressive ideologies are engrained in the language we use. My career goal is to have a platform to use my research to advocate for and to empower those of marginalized communities. Being a Tillman Scholar and hearing how Tillman Scholars talk about their experiences will enrich my scholarship and provide a network of likeminded leaders for greater positive impact.

Since starting my academic journey, I have already had an impact. For example, motivated by my research on queer naval officers, I founded a coalition of queer and ally student organizations called Spectra Alliance. (Like my experience at the Academy, I knew we would be stronger together.) Our first event, which brought my research to life, provided a platform for transgender service members to share their lived experiences with our community and three other universities. Our next event is “OUT in Research,” a conference which will elevate the research and needs of queer students at Georgetown and plant the seed for a dedicated queer research program.

In 2020, I started my dissertation. I examine how veterans talk about their transition into student life. Findings from my study have already impacted veteran programming at Georgetown. For example, I initiated a community of mentors called Veterans Helping Veterans (VHV) to help other veterans transitioning to the rigors of academia. From VHV, a women-veterans special interest group emerged. And, in collaboration with the LGBTQ Resource Center, VHV will hold a queer military career panel. This panel and the veteran women’s group highlight VHV’s mission and the spirit of Georgetown: commitment to service, veterans for others, and the celebration and inclusion of diversity. It is through my commitment to service that my academic and professional goals collide. My academic goals center on developing the scholarship needed for improving those of marginalized communities. My career goals are bringing that research to life through positive social change. My research has had a positive impact in my local community already at Georgetown. As a Tillman Scholar, I can have a greater and broader positive impact in the military and in higher education.

In what unique ways has the COVID 19 pandemic affected you and your candidacy to become a Tillman Scholar? (optional, 250 words)

In 2016 I was diagnosed with Leukemia for the second time and had to receive a bone marrow transplant. While the general population has a 95-99% survival rate, I have a 68% survival rate as a transplant recipient. 

While concerned about my health, my dissertation research was immediately impacted by COVID-19. My original dissertation plan was an ethnographic study of the socialization process into the US Naval Academy during the Summer of 2020. It took me two years to design the project, collect the relevant scholarship, gain access to the Academy, and raise personal funds to support the project. However, prior to meeting with the Commandant, the nationwide shutdowns took place. Two years of work disappeared.

I was still determined to start my dissertation that Fall of 2020. In July, with a new idea, I designed a new project, collected the relevant scholarship, and passed the institutional review board in two weeks. Because of my supportive faculty, I immediately began collecting data before passing my dissertation prospectus defense in November.

While COVID-19 has made doing research more difficult and canceled all my public speaking opportunities, it has elevated the inequities in marginalized communities. Examples of these inequities emerge in my own research. Now more than ever, my research can benefit from a platform like the Pat Tillman Foundation and raise awareness for positive social change in these communities.

Special Skills or Expertise (optional)

Three skills I want to bring attention to are my skills in illustration and photography, conducting and facilitating meaningful conversations, and community-building.

Before applying to the US Naval Academy, I wanted to go to art school. I had taken art classes in high school, specifically a class in graphic design where I found I like illustrating and photography. Throughout my time at the academy, I designed logos for sports teams and organized my own photography shows. While serving on my first ship, I used my photography abilities as the collateral duty public affairs officer and to document my deployments and travels. More recently, I have returned to my love of illustrating and have illustrated large murals for friends and their homes. This skill also came in handy during my graduate assistantship in the Georgetown Veterans Office where I redesigned all the flyers and information pamphlets, as well as the illustrations and logos for our newsletters, website, and online material.

A second skill I have is facilitating productive and meaningful conversations. This is because most of my research has consisted of interview data, or what we as linguists call “semi-structured conversations.” While I always have a set of questions prepared, I allow the conversation to flow on its own. And not only do I practice this skill during research projects, but I also have to later transcribe and analyze my interview data. This allows me to reflect on my own conversational mannerisms, catch things I could have asked about, and make myself a better listener. This skill has transferred to my personal life as it has overall improved how I make interpersonal connections with people.

My last skill is community-building. While in the Navy, especially overseas, I tried to connect people and help others build community with like-minded people. When a sailor needed help, I liked being able to connect them to the resources they needed. As a PhD candidate, I like to connect individuals who may share the same research interests so that they can potentially collaborate. In my department, I initiated a mentor program that matched incoming graduate students with seasoned graduate students. I also like to connect groups to create stronger communities and coalitions. I did this last year when I initiated Spectra Alliance. It started out as GradPride and OUT@MSB, two queer organizations at Georgetown and then it became five organizations.

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Queering the military: Thank you for your service (abstract)

I’m excited to present my research again at the Linguistics Society of America’s 94th Annual Meeting. The title of my paper is “Queering the military: Thank you for your service.” The extended abstract is below.

Abstract: In the United States, national identity and military identity are inextricably linked. And, the U.S. military is arguably an arbiter of American masculinity (Disler, 2008). Following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, President George W. Bush delivered his address to the U.S. Congress in which he constructed a national identity centered on victimhood and unified Americans in support of the military (Podvornaia, 2013). One manifestation of this support is the phrase “Thank you for your service” (henceforth, TYFYS) (Moore, 2017). In this study, I take a Queer Linguistics turn (Motschenbacher, 2011) to examine through discourse analysis how a “multiplicity of masculinities” (Milani, 2014) are invoked in TYFYS. To do so, I define TYFYS as a speech act (Austin, 1975), and examine how the illocutionary act (i.e. the speaker’s intention) (mis)aligns with the perlocutionary effect (i.e. effect on the recipient) of veterans through their discursive construction of affect and military identity(ies). The data for this study come from interviews, or semi-structured conversations, with seven self-identified veterans who recently discharged from the military and are transitioning into civilian-life at a U.S. college. Copland and Creese (2015) point out that interviews provide an emic, or insider, perspective from the participant’s point of view. But more importantly for my study, the interviews allow the participants to demonstrate diverse text types (e.g., narratives, chronicles, explanations, and questions) where discourse strategies emerge to convey affect and to construct identities. To deduce affect and identity, I draw Martin and White’s (2005) definition of affect and on Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005) sociocultural framework. Specifically, I draw on Bucholtz and Hall’s principle of “adequation and distinction” to analyze the construction of military identity at both the micro- and macro-levels. At the micro-level, I analyze specific discursive strategies such as details (e.g., imagery of combat), and negation (e.g. I never deployed) that index a participant’s military identity. At the macro-level, I draw on Kristeva’s (1986) notion of “intertextuality” to connect the micro-level discourse with the public imagery of military identity (i.e. the archetypical masculine soldier and “wounded warrior”) that index “military masculinity” (Belkin, 2012). Intertextuality, which Kristeva introduced in her discussions of Bakhtin’s (1986) theorizing, describes how discourses are reverberations of past discourses and contribute to current and future discourses. In other words, it is a means of exploring connections between discourses. The findings reveal that the veterans in this study discursively construe negative affect (e.g., “I hate it” and “It makes me feel uncomfortable) towards TYFYS, and rely on resources of military masculinity (e.g., fighting in war, risking limbs) to construct military identities separate from their own experiences. The findings suggest a disconnect between the public imagery of military veterans, and how veterans see themselves through the lens of a masculine-gendered military identity. By examining constructions of masculinity through TYFYS, this study connects Queer Linguistics (Motschenbacher, 2011), through discourse analysis, to the interdisciplinary enterprise of Critical Military Studies (Basham et al., 2015) which questions power relations in the military, and the negotiation of military identity through social practice and political contestation. Lastly, as Messerschmidth (2019) points out, hegemonic masculinity (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005) can be examined at different levels of abstraction, specifically local, regional, and global. This study demonstrates how hegemonic masculinity of a masculine gendered institution is contested through veteran constructions of military identity and the public imagery of military identity.

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Queering leadership: leadership narratives as stories of self-commodification

Recently, I was invited to contribute my research about how Naval Officers who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender talk about their leadership performance through “sea-stories.” The book, which centers on Queer Linguistics as an approach, really forced me to re-examine my analysis through a Queer Theory and Queer Linguistics lens.

The chapter will draw on data from my master’s thesis which takes a social constructionist stance towards how identity is constructed. For my thesis, I interviewed 14 Naval Officers. Six identified as cis gender men, five identified as cis gender women, one identified as a trans man, and one identified as a transwoman. Of the seven total men, three identified as straight, two as bi, and two as gay. Of the five total woman, two identified as straight and three identified as lesbians.

In each of their interviews, each participant had a “sea-story” to tell. A sea-story is a common term in the Navy used to describe some interesting story that occurred while at sea. These sea-stories in particular were elicited, meaning I asked for a specific story. And in each story, the participants talk about standing watch as Officer of the Deck (OOD). While standing OOD, the Naval Officer is pretty much in charge of all operations occurring on the ship. They’re also in charge of navigating where the ship goes. In these sea-stories, the participants shared a story where they talked about a challenging experience while standing OOD. One participant talked about transiting the Straits of Malacca and experiencing a near collision, another participant described conflict between her and another officer while launching and landing helicopters on the flight deck, and one officer described a man-overboard. So what I was interested in examining here is how each participant talked themselves into “being” a leader in these stories.

While writing my master’s thesis I thought it was a first step towards examining how people who identify as queer do leadership. To my knowledge, it is and was the first of its kind.

As so as I mentioned above, I am excited to re-examine my data from a Queer Linguistics perspective and question “what is masculinity” in the context of the military. And I think more exciting – “what is heterosexuality” in the military? What’s fascinating to me about Queer Theory and Queer Linguistics is that even though I’ve always thought that individuals can express sexuality in different ways, I never actually thought about heterosexuality in this way.

So from this perspective, even individuals who identify as heterosexual (and cis gender) are performing a specific type of heterosexuality and masculinity. So quite literally, in the words or Ru Paul, we’re all born naked and the rest is drag.

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Linguistic Landscapes on US Navy Ships

This week in Language and Society (a class I’m a teaching assistant), we’re talking about linguistic landscapes. I remember when I was a kid, I used to read signs and billboards out loud when driving around with my parents. I always thought it was cool when there were signs in other languages because it felt like I was traveling further away. These signs were (and are) different because they can say what a community is about, and if that community is welcoming or not.

Language can also have a very specific function as well. For this class, I shared the linguistic landscapes of the inside of a US warship. These aren’t my photos – I friendsourced via facebook, found some on DVIS (defense Visual Information Service), and found one on navalhistory.org. On a US Navy ship you’ll find pretty much everything labeled. Every door is labeled, every bulkhead (wall) is labeled, and every kind of pipe you can find is labeled. These first three pictures demonstrate that.

In the first photo, the officer is in their living quarters playing guitar hero. You can tell they’re likely an officer because of the khaki colored belt. (US Navy Chiefs, or E-7s and above, also where khaki belts.) Above the television is a pipe that says “SPLY Vent.” It’s probably part of the HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) system, and supplying air for that purpose. In the second (center) photo is a ladder well that leads to a vertical hatch to the outside. It has a Z (super small sorry) on it. All doors (hatches) leading to the outside will have a letter code on it (X for X-ray, Y for Yoke, and Z for Zebra). These refer to material conditions of readiness. X-ray is the least secure and Zebra is the most secure. During certain events on a ship (from entering port to general quarters), a material condition is set. If Zebra is set, then anything marked with a X, Y, or Z are secured (i.e. closed). In the third photo, there is a fire hose on the left and fire extinguishers marked with AFFF ( read A triple F), which means Aqueous Film Forming Foam). These are obviously to fight fires – but the type of fire will determine how to fight it. AFFF is used for flammable liquids, e.g. if fuel catches on fire.

These three photos are a small sample of the types of identification systems you’ll find on a ship. And, they convey the highly technical nature of the linguistic landscape that’s predicated on safety and awareness – a responsibility of all sailors.

It’s important to note that each section of the ship is “owned” by a specific department of the ship. So engineering spaces (i.e. where the engines are located), will be “owned” by the engineering department. Sailors who work in that department are responsible for keeping it clean and making sure everything throughout it is labeled correctly. So what about living quarters? Or the mess decks (where sailors eat)? Those spaces are owned by the supply department. As we see in the first photo, there is a supply vent going through the officer’s room. Nearby there’s likely a bunch of fire fighting equipment as well. While these are equipment owned by engineers, they run through supply department spaces. Sailors in supply department must be aware of what these things do in cases of emergency.

These next two photos demonstrate how intertwined the systems are and how important this linguistic landscape serves the sailors on a ship in regard to safety and awareness.

The photo on the left with the sailor in red has several things going on in the background. The space is likely an engineering space (specifically a passage way) and is below the main deck. The door has a yellow sign with noise protection ear muffs. That’s likely an engine room that requires double hearing protection (ear muffs and ear plugs). Above the sailor are a bunch of pipes. The white wipes are probably air. The purple pipe is likely fuel. And then there’s a small pipe labeled AFFF. In cases of collision or fire, it’s probably important to know that there’s fuel running through that space in a pipe. It’s also really helpful to know there’s an AFFF source there to fight a liquid fire.

The photo on the right has a sailor cleaning in a passageway. This kinda looks like an Operations Department space. The door in the back leads to the outside so it’s definitely on or above the main deck. On right right-side of the photo we have a bunch of pipes again. Since these are blue they’re likely water. There’s also a fire hose for fighting fires. On the left side of the photo there is a poster that says OPSEC which means Operational Security. It’s a reminder to sailors to not share sensitive information about the ship or their jobs.

In these two photos, we again see how safety and awareness is present throughout the linguistic landscape. The sailor on the left (who is likely a boatswain because he’s wrapping rope around a bar) has a bunch of things going on behind him that he might want to be aware of if there was a fire. If it’s a liquid fire, he knows he has an AFFF source nearby. If he wanted to enter that door, he knows he needs to have ear protection. The sailor on the right who is cleaning, is reminded that he shouldn’t share sensitive information about the ship with people who don’t need to know.

The last photo I want to share is one of the most fundamental elements of shipboard knowledge that conveys a sense of awareness in a ship’s linguistic landscape. It is the compartment identification system. The photo is a door to “Female Officer Country” and I borrowed it from navalhistory.org. It was taken in 1994 on board the USS Eisenhower when women were first able to serve on US warships. Today for officers, the women’s living spaces are integrated in with the men’s living spaces. But women are assigned to rooms with the same gender. I want to point to the “FR 44” and the “02-44-3” on the door.

On every door (likely above it), you’ll find the compartment identification number. In this photo, you have 02-44-33. It’s crucial that all sailors are able to read and understand what this means. These numbers represent (from left to right) deck number, frame number, centerline, and usage. I further explain them here:

Deck Number: The main deck is 1. Anything above it is labeled 01, 02, 03 etc. Anything below is 2, 3, ,4, 5 etc. So 5 would be 5 decks below 1 and 05 would be 5 decks above the main deck.
Frame Number: This is the foremost bulkhead. It indicates where the compartment is in relation to the front of the ship.
Centerline: Where the compartment is in relation to the centerline. If it’s an even number it’s on the port side (i.e. left side), if it’s an odd number it’s on the starboard side (i.e. starboard side). So a 1 would be on the starboard side but close to the centerline while a 7 would be further away from the centerline.
Usage: These are usually letters. An E is for Engineering spaces. An L would indicate a living quarter.

In the example above, the FR 44 refers to the frame of the bulkhead (wall). On the door, the compartment label is 02-44-3-Female Officer Country. So it’s on the 02 deck meaning it’s 2 decks above the main deck. It’s frame 44 (i.e. where it is in relation to the front of the ship). And it’s the 3rd compartment, starboard from the centerline at that frame. Instead of “Female Officer Country” it could also be L for living quarters.

This has a lot of practical implications. It means anyone who’s familiar with this system can go on board any ship and independently find a space. One of the most crucial implications is fighting fires and floods, or other emergencies. With this system, a ship can direct the appropriate fire/flooding teams to the emergency.

It’s fun using my experiences in the Navy to demonstrate to the class how a linguistic landscape is more than just signs on the street. It can also be signs in an office building, a school, or a navy warship. The examples I used here convey the technical nature of a warship’s linguistic landscape that serves to inform sailors of their surroundings (situational awareness) and ensure their safety, the safety of others, and the safety of the ship.

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