G33k and G4m3r girls

So I ignored the G33k and G4m3r Girls song/video when I first saw it in my RSS in a “who cares?” kind of way. These kinds of videos come out all the time and I ignore most of them. But my husband follows some of the same feeds that I do so I watched it when he got home from work.

What I saw made me react in a few ways, not the least of which was “meh” with a dash of “seriously?!” In short, my interest was piqued by the title (“ooh something about me”) and lost by the contents (“oh wait, these women don’t speak for me at all” *sad face*).

There, fixed it for you

Today a Facebook friend linked to a video entitled “To all the women behind their soldier’s [sic]…this video is for YOU!” and it is a perfect example of what contributes to deployment loneliness. And bad grammar.

As a “soldier’s wife” I appreciate the sentiment and recognition of mutual emotional sacrifice when the military are sent on deployment, but I’m disappointed with the hetero-normative sexism of internet videos/messages (and even some of the provided material from the military) that assume soldiers are men and there’s a noble woman behind each one.

I know how lonely and boring it is for a spouse to be deployed, particularly as I was still seeking employment when my spouse was overseas. I can imagine that loneliness would be compounded by being ignored by the very people trying to be supportive. So I want to take some time to give a shout out to the men behind their soldiers and all of the homosexual couples that have spouses/partners overseas. All of the people behind their soldiers, whoever they may be.

Women are soldiers. Gay people are soldiers. They also might have spouses back home. Where’s their public support? There are no Google results for a quoted search of the phrase “men behind their soldiers” (well, now there might be after this page gets cached). What a shame.