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The Erasure of Women in Military History | Women in Service Coalition · Follow the Leighder

• Leigh/@followtheleighder: Howdy folks and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leighder. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and you guys are gonna like this podcast today. I have brought in women veteran friends of mine. We have Kris Fuhr and Jess Ruttenberg. Welcome ladies to the studio. Jessica Ruttenber: Thanks for having us. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Thank you for having us. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. So little bit of background of how why they're joining us today. ⁓ They a part of Women in Service Coalition, Inc., which becomes, we're going down to WISCI. ⁓ WISCI is the name of this organization ⁓ that you co-founded, correct? After you served in ⁓ overseas in Germany, you graduated from West Point, commissioned officer in military Intel. ⁓ Tell a little bit what that was like to make your military service and turn it into WISCI Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Well, yeah. really what we do at WISCI is want to be the voice for the women who are currently serving. ⁓ know, lot of organizations deal with women veterans. We do a little work in that space, but really we want to be the voice and represent the women who are in uniform now who can't speak up ⁓ what's going on in the world around them. And we chose WISCI because ⁓ that serve as coalition, but WISCI is also the phonetic pronunciation, military pronunciation of the letter W for women. And we have some kind of jokes about nicknames. around the current Secretary of Defense, but we won't bring those up. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. And Jess, you are retired Lieutenant Colonel, an Air Force pilot. You have served Operation Iraqi Freedom, 3,000 flight hours and 1,000 combat hours. Tell me a little bit about how you got involved with with WISCI. Jessica Ruttenber: Well, I knew when the administration had changed and I started seeing some of our policies roll back. We were disbanding ⁓ very important organizations like DACAWITS, the Department of, ⁓ sorry, DACAWITS, the Department of, ⁓ Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Defense advisory cancel. Jessica Ruttenber: The Advisory Committee of Women in the Service, I had a brain fart there, sorry. So the Defense Advisory Committee in the Women in the Service has been around for over 75 years, making recommended changes for women, not just for their advocacy, but also to help maintain readiness within the force. And after 75 years, Pete Hexeth had just dismissed them, calling them divisive. He also minimized the footprint of the women. the Women ⁓ Peace and Security, which was actually a law under the Trump administration, also calling that a feminist agenda as well, as well as disbanding many organizations like the Women's Initiative Team that were advocating for... ⁓ to remove barriers for potential service members from meeting their full potential, being their ability to do their job. So with this dismantling and the websites being taken down and the videos baking down, I knew it was only a matter time before we needed to organize ourselves. And WISCI, I immediately recognized that these women knew what they were doing. They were heavy hitters like Kris, Sue Fulton, and quite frankly, I wanted in. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Yeah. And so we can't say enough. We need to talk about our executive director, Sue Fulton. She most recently served as the Undersecretary of Veteran Affairs for Communications. She was in the very first class of women at West Point. She worked heavily in the repeal of Don't Ask, Tell, ⁓ was a huge advocate for transgender service members, ⁓ really worked closely along my side as we worked on the integration of women into combat arms in the Army and into Ranger school. ⁓ Sue is just a force of nature and we're so grateful ⁓ to have her leading our organization. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And just looking at your website now, mean, everybody on your staff are military veterans. They're women military veterans. And like you said, you don't focus on ⁓ veteran women a little bit, but this is ⁓ in the service, currently in. One of the things you talk about on your website is protecting opportunities for women, ⁓ specifically in combat roles is one of the first things you mentioned. a little bit about this administration and combat roles for women. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Yeah, I'll start Jess if that's okay. So women were fully integrated into all combat roles across the service in 2015. Jessica Ruttenber: Yeah, absolutely. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: And there were studies done by the Army. There was a study done by the Marine Corps, which has been debunked. Even the old commandant of the Marine Corps, when testified before Congress, said, ⁓ yeah, I kind of stacked the deck. The men were trained. The women weren't trained. And then the Army did quarterly studies from 2016 through 2023, gathered data on soldier performance, collective performance, everything you could look at. The Army said over and over during the course of those five years, women are effective in combat. We just saw Senator Gerono. I asked the senior listed advisors of every service branch, know, there are many, any issues with women reducing effectiveness. And they all said no. She asked the same question of all the vice chiefs of each of the services. They all said, no, women are a vital part of our force. And so one of the things we ask ourselves at WISCI is why is Secretary Hegess so obsessed with women in the service? So. Leigh/@followtheleighder: That's exactly what it feels like. mean, Jess, like, it feels like Hegseth is obsessed with women in the military service. can't, ⁓ doesn't like to, whether it's Dachkowitz or having any female Joint Chief of Staff or any sort of high ranking, he doesn't like women in authority. Can you speak a little bit about other ways that this administration has erased a service member? Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Jess, did you? Leigh/@followtheleighder: female accomplishments or actions. Jessica Ruttenber: Well, one thing that stands out to me right now is that when I left the service that year and the year after we had four female four-star serving, which is a pretty good number compared to how many service heads they are. Typically there's anywhere between 32 and 40. So we're looking to represent about the number of women that are in the service. Today there is zero and two of those one was asked to retire and one was removed by Hegseth. representation at the highest levels, there's nobody having their voice in these rooms when we're having these discussions. And without having representation, having the press leave, the Pentagon, ⁓ we're having lack of accountability for the decisions that are made. There's a lot of accusations. We've seen these videos on social media. We know Hexeth is very boisterous on social media. He likes to say that the standards were lowered for women. But the truth is, no standards have ever been lowered for women doing combat roles, not for the Air Force and flying, not for the Army, and not for the Marine Corps. Now we do have separate gender tests when it comes to like overall fitness and health. That is different. You don't expect a personalist or a medical person to be doing the same fitness standards that should be aligned with the job requirements. So I would expect an Army Ranger or a fighter pilot to have higher standards than an administrator. So that is very misleading and he hasn't presented any real evidence. They've kind of alluded to this marine study back over 10 years ago. And if you actually dig into this study, you can see that the study wasn't fully released. They only released part of it that they wanted to release and that they used not a scientific method. It was more a general population where they put inexperienced women at a basic going in there compared to experienced men that were already in the career field. had kind of stacked up the playing field to be on favor of the men's side. So when I hear that he is challenging the study again and that in December 18th he's going to be asking for another six-month review of Women in Combat, I think he's already wrote the conclusion and he's just trying to find evidence or fabricate the evidence or have biased evidence or confirmation bias to draw us towards that conclusion. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Yeah, think you know what he... Leigh/@followtheleighder: and that's a new hit. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: He went down and looked at the Army Ranger School and ⁓ had all these myths from the broverse. A lot of what he does, a lot of what the administration does is based on vibes and myths, not on fact. He'd come in and he was determined that no women were going to continue in the Ranger School. Then he was surprised to find out that 175 women have graduated and no woman has ever quit. And so when confronted by the facts, he realizes that the solution he has has no evidence to support it. And as Jess said, you know, that's what they're doing right now. They're looking for evidence, but they're going to find out the same thing. There is no evidence to support removing women from combat roles. We've got to the contrary, we have 10 years of performance and excellence that shows that women are a vital part of making us a lethal force. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: think we all saw the video of that amazing woman pilot landing on the ground in Kuwait and just calm, cool, and collected and dealing with the local population. That plane did not care who the driver was. Jessica Ruttenber: No, the enemy doesn't care and neither does the aircraft. It doesn't care about your gender or your race. It just cares that you have the ability to execute the mission. I couldn't agree more. ⁓ I'm looking for evidence, not vibes. And I think that's what he's going after. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: If you look historically, particularly here in the United States or North America with indigenous history, I'm here in Montana, and I look at how there's a long story history here of women serving in tribal or indigenous ⁓ warfare and even how they had say on going to war and war councils because it was their children that they were sending off, right? And I just think how it went you remove women from all the decision making, it might make you more lethal, masculine, whatever that direction is, but it doesn't make you more responsible or long term vision or just the other just the whole experience. And I just really appreciated sitting in that talk and then having that talk with an indigenous scholar about that because just something that I didn't take into account even when I served in the Air Force. I was like, you're absolutely right. we do need women serving for more than just the fact that it's fair and equal, but also culturally. Otherwise, we wind up with a warmonger like Hegseth. And it's not calm, cool, and collected. So... Jessica Ruttenber: and great. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Well, he associates lethality with doing pushups and pull ups. when they do the best Ranger competition, they measure people's, these are the most lethal soldiers in the army, the Rangers. And they measure four things. They measure their physical ability, their tactical ability, their technical ability, and their cognitive ability. And to, you may have a guy that can do a million pushups, but can't think his way out of a paper bag. Do you wanna send your son or daughter to war with that person? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right, absolutely. little bit, yeah, that warmongering is a liability. It's not an asset in the way that they are marketing this out to be. And there's also that element in the way the White House is pushing a lot of this, particularly in Iran and the conflict that's going on overseas right now, to make it look like it's a video game. Like, and that... it's really quite dehumanizing and ⁓ gross and all sorts of just struggles. So I appreciate you fighting for women to get back in there because they've kicked so many and pushed so many out. ⁓ The women that have been pushed out, we kind of touched on this, the organizations that have been squashed or other. As you said, the September 18th, think is the date you said on the horizon. December. Jessica Ruttenber: So we made December 18th, he came out with the memo asking for the six month study. In September, he came up in Quantico, where he had all his senior leaders in a meeting where he said, we're going back to a 1990 baseline. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, thank you. When you look at some of these women, the high ranking women veterans that are running for Congress, what does the landscape look like for women going and pursuing congressional means of taking control back in our country? Jessica Ruttenber: ⁓ I have so much hope and this is why. I decided a couple weeks ago to sit down and list out every woman veteran that has put her name into the hat. Whether they're going to be competitive or not doesn't matter and compare them to the women that have served currently or served in the past. Then I cross-compared it to the men that are running that are veterans and the men that are currently serving and this is what I found ⁓ that After World War II, had three out of four men had been veterans and that number has significantly decreased and it continues to have a downward trajectory. However, even though our numbers are very slow, low in Congress right now, our numbers are increasing and we see every cycle more and more women put their name in a hat. That is very important when we get onto these subcommittees. When we go into the Armed Services Committee, when a lot of the stuff that we have policy-wise, Department of Defense, Department of War, comes from the National Defense Authorization Act. When we changed the rules in 1991, 1992, to allow women to fly in combat, it was because the National Defense Authorization Act. Somebody has to sponsor that, put it in House or the Senate, it has to pass both sides, they have to shepherd it through, they have to make deals. So when we have women veterans, and a lot of men veterans too, supporting us. women veterans, understand the space better and they can advocate for us better. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: And you see that with Chrissy Huland, you see that with. Center Duckworth, you they bring ⁓ real experience and understanding to the table and they bring expertise. And I think we're in a place right now where expertise is sorely lacking and just get so excited to see these women running. Kate Conley, she's running in New York against Mike Lawler. She's a West Point graduate, served at the highest levels of intelligence in our country, was a deputy to Jen Easterly, another brilliant West Point woman Rhodes scholar. ⁓ You know, why wouldn't she want Jessica Ruttenber: Mm-hmm. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: someone like that who served in special operations in combat, why wouldn't you want that person to be your congressman? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. Well, talk to me a little bit about the to fight documentary that WISCI is working on. Kris, could you teach us a little bit about that? ⁓ Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Yes, the fight is documented together. You can't have any great organization without a pilot being involved. She is one of the first women to have ships, maybe a helicopter pilot. When women came infantry armor. 2016, Ellen Herring and a couple other researchers, Ellen's a West Point grad, recorded an interview every year for five years with 22 of those women because we knew the military wouldn't gather information. And so we recorded those interviews and recorded their stories in real time as their ⁓ initiation into combat arms and their careers played out. And we put together a documentary and it was interesting because we really, when we first started putting together, it was going be a celebration. of 10 years of look at look at what these women have done. Look how they have just been amazing badasses in the force and we've had to add a third act which is ⁓ look what they're trying to take away from these absolutely amazing soldiers and ⁓ really share that. So we've been very grateful. We've had funding from the Pritzker Military Foundation and we are working on that documentary and hope to have it done this year. Entering it into film festivals ⁓ and we look at you know, how did we end up in this place? one man come in and been able to just try to upend ⁓ so much excellence. And it goes back to another movie that I was involved in before the election called For Our Daughters. And we made this movie to try to talk about the ties between Christian nationalism and what's going on with the Trump administration. And you look at Pete Hegseth, and I mean, he's doing unprecedented things to break down what needs to be the wall between church and He's got not just pastors coming into the Pentagon to preach, but Doug Wilson, someone who endorses ⁓ marital rape, who doesn't think that women should be allowed to lead, who thinks that women should not be allowed to vote. Hexeth had to walk a tweet back supporting women not being allowed to vote. In reality, or any normal administration, he wouldn't have been in the job past that afternoon. But yet we find him here, someone who didn't go to Rangers, school, someone who didn't go to airborne school or air assault school, someone who only lasted a brief amount of time as a platoon leader, never served as a company commander. And now he's decided he's going to remove these women from combat arms who, if you listen to their OERs, their efficiency reports, they're written by men who've served 18, 20 years in combat arms. And they say, never had a finer company commander among the top five officers I've ever served with, set a new bar for her peers in performance. in the infantry. you look at this and again it all goes back to don't believe everything you hear on the internet dude because it's not true. These women are amazing. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. Well, and one of the things you brought up, of course, was diversity. But can you talk a little bit about aircraft design or how that may have impacted black female pilots? Jessica Ruttenber: Right, so a lot of times our barriers are institutionalized not because of a nefarious nature, but because we just simply were doing the things that we'd done before and they kind of got baked in and we weren't noticing them. So a lot of times our anthropometric, that's a very fancy word, ⁓ studies, the way we study how people's bodies fit into aircraft in the seats, anywhere from how they sit, like they're sitting here, looking out above, to being able to actuate a control by their reach, to being able to reach the rudder pedals with their feet by their leg length. Most of our studies were done in the 1960s prior to when women were flying and we didn't consider a lot of minorities either. So if you look at that, we didn't update that database until 2012. And because of that, there's almost no women and no minorities in that database. So our standards for designing cockpits and other equipment for aircrew was based on an 1960s model without representation. Why does that matter? Well, I think it's a little obvious when it comes to women. We tend to be a little shorter, smaller body size, but even minorities have different body proportions, which makes a significant difference. So I can be five foot four and a black woman could be five foot four next to me, but she has a shorter torso and longer legs, meaning she's more likely to fail her sitting height because there wasn't representation of African Americans or black people or women in this database. And as a result, 74 % of Black women were eliminated from flying in the Air Force based on sitting height alone. And that's just one criteria for their medical physicals coming in. And what we were doing on these teams, like the Women's Initiative team, and talking to DACWITS, we were recording this, no one saying, ⁓ Air Force isn't one Black woman. We just didn't realize we had baked this barrier in. And when we shut down organizations like DACWITS and the WIT, our data goes quiet and it's not publicly available for consumption out there. You could have gone to the DACAWITS database which is now not publicly facing and saw all the data that we presented to them about that and we proposed solutions and we showed how we were lowering academic standards for pilots when we didn't have enough qualified individuals excuse me not pilots but the enlisted in the back. Why does an enlisted member that's a flight attendant or a linguist or loadmaster have to have the same height as the up front. We just self-impose that barrier. If the pilots have to be five foot four here, we'll make them five foot four in the back. There's no reason to have the same standards. So we were unearthing these, call them legacy barriers, ⁓ and that is where I call it, know, our institutional memory is important that we don't like take down these websites, that we acknowledge these things happen, because what I found was when I was presenting this information to the Chief of Staff was that somebody had tried to do it before in 2012 when they tried to update the Anthropometry database. And we kind of put a band-aid on it, like a band-aid on a boat hull, and we don't quite solve it. And if we don't document this and hand this appropriately and create procedures and policies that are going to reinforce removing these, we tend to repeat ourselves. And when we repeat ourselves, it costs money or it costs the recruitment of certain individuals. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And when we... We look at the recruitment of certain individuals. It's very clear with a lot of the rhetoric coming out of the head of the DOD that he wants a male military. ⁓ He told a bunch of generals that they were out of shape that grooming standards needed to be overhauled. ⁓ one thing that stood out to me, and hopefully Kris, you can kind of shed some light on this, ⁓ he ⁓ to people who file complaints ⁓ sexual assault or harm ⁓ complainers and that he would be rolling back policies and no more walking on eggshells. Can you speak a little bit about what alarms went off in your head when you heard that? Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Yeah, I was one of the commissioners of the independent review commission on sexual assault in the military under President Biden and Secretary Austin. And, you know, we published a 250 page report trying to, you know, once again, you know, I think we were the fifth or sixth big report looking at what was going on. Why can the military not get ahead of this scourge? And the main section I worked on was the culture and climate section. And, you know, what we say is you might have the best policy in the world, but that policy is not going to work if the earth has been salted. with an anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-trans bias. One of the things people don't realize, more men are sexually assaulted in the military, but because women are a small number, there's a higher percentage of women who are assaulted. And men tend to refer to a sexual assault as, I was hazed or I was bullied. But it's a problem. And when Secretary Hegseth demeans women, and we saw this in the first Trump administration, we went back and looked at the data. When you have an administration that demeans women, that doesn't value women, all the numbers go the wrong direction. Reporting goes down ⁓ and we project that the actual number of assaults and things have gone up. And we expect to see that same thing happen under the second Trump administration. And certainly, you know, when the ⁓ secretary made those comments, he's like, you know, we're not going have any more of this woke stuff. We're not going have these policies. There were soldiers across the force that were walking into company areas ripping down. the sexual assault policy, ripping down the equal opportunity policy and telling women, say, hey, you're just a DEI hire and this doesn't matter anymore. So what leaders say at the top really matters. And I know Jess, you can talk more about the effects on military equal opportunity, but nobody's coming forward. mean, the whole military right now is running scared because, ⁓ you know, people are, you know, force people to turn into snitches. Jessica Ruttenber: All But the thing with the equal opportunity in the IG process is, yeah, could there be improvement? Absolutely. Were investigations taking too long? Absolutely. So I'm all about reform, but the way we went about it, I don't think is the right way. We implied, and I think you just, maybe not even implied, just outright said, you know, false accusations, particularly if you look at Pete Hegsad's history, know, false allegations within his unit, a lot of those substantiated and I think reflecting ⁓ a mindset that I've seen before that ⁓ going to be falsely accused and that's going to be the of my career. But as had referred to, ⁓ we've had more men sexually assaulted by men ⁓ than proven allegations of women ⁓ against ⁓ ⁓ the is right up there on the website to show it. ⁓ And you actually go and say, hey, if these accusations are actually like wild and rampant and just trying to get out of getting in trouble, show us the evidence. Again, just show us the people that are fudging their fitness tests like women in combat. There is no evidence. We're just making ⁓ accusations without evidence base. Again, we're just going back to vibes, which really goes down to the mentality of maybe where he was when he was serving as a captain in a major, ⁓ kind of in that unit mindset still. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: . Leigh/@followtheleighder: Kris, I think you were trying to say something. ⁓ okay. Well, wanna talk about ⁓ folks are getting into aviation. And Jess, you have founded nonprofit called Level Up Aviation. ⁓ How is it for ⁓ Americans, American, the average American, to be able to learn more about aviation if they wanted Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: ⁓ good. Jessica Ruttenber: It is very concerning to me right now. I started this well before this administration changes, level up aviation, because of my work with women in the Air Force. I found that regardless of your gender, regardless of your race, economic disadvantage was the number one thing. If you don't have money, your parents aren't taking you to air shows or getting you flight lessons. Essentially, ⁓ more economically... ⁓ more resources you have, the more likely you are to be successful in this. So that's why I wanted to create opportunities for people that may be not getting that 4.0 with a higher income, but people that can actually fly a good stick and rudder, you know, with a 2.9, they end up being really amazing pilots because, you know, they can do multiple things at multiple times. But my concerns now, and I want to refocus it back to the military, is but the executive order that came out, it was like the second order when President Trump came in, ⁓ basically had inflammatory language saying that our skies were unsafe because unqualified people were flying and becoming controllers, basically saying diversity has made our skies unsafe. And then unfortunately, right after that, we had that DCA crash with the military aircraft, with the civilian airliner that ended up killing everybody. And within 24 hours, President Trump was saying, I heard the tapes and it is obviously because of a diversity. issue ⁓ which having been on to safety investigation board, having been very qualified to do this as someone who's been in aviation over 20 years and been on safety boards, I can tell you no one can make any determination, not even a couple of weeks after something like that. ⁓ Not alone somebody who doesn't fly or hasn't been in the aviation career field. And then in the last couple of weeks, we've seen the Department of Transportation coming out demanding that the airlines show that their hiring practices aren't based on diversity, based on an equal standard and that no one's getting hired. And even if every airline is doing that, and they are, just the fact that the president is saying that, the Department of Transportation is saying that, is enough to reinforce this implicit or maybe not implicit bias within the American population. So the funding has dried up right now for a lot of these organizations like Sisters in the Sky, because we know black women are less than 1 % of female pilots or just pilots in all. So you got 7 % pilots, airline pilots are about 4.5 % when it comes to women and then you have less than 1 % of black women. And we already addressed one of the issues, why? When it came to the military. So organizations like Sister in the Sky are not gonna be able to get grant funding if we continue to go down this route. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you for taking the time to explain what's under threat. Another thing we've talked about with my background serving in the Chaplain Corps as a chaplain candidate are our faith coats and how faith and religion are being weaponized in the military. What have you heard, what specific Christian nationalist rhetoric have you heard from your channels and network? Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: I think it goes back to, let's take a step back. When we were on the Independent Review Commission, as we looked at culture, ⁓ one of the things that affects culture in a unit is the chaplain. And we looked at, you know, the chaplains who refused to provide services. They were actually given a kind of a get out of jail card by the first Trump administration where they weren't required to provide services that were inconsistent with their sponsoring background. And we looked at, you know, who's sponsoring chaplains? Well, 66 percent. This is in 2021. Sixty six percent of our chaplains came from an evangelical background. And they bring with them, surprise, surprise, the same thing we hear out of Secretary Hags says now, women are not allowed to lead in the church. That's biblically forbidden and being gay is a sin. And so these chaplains carry that many of them, not all of them. We got some really great chaplains out there. So let me preface by saying that. But then we also have chaplains that are carrying their personal religious bias in. And when you look at Secretary Hags says, saying, know what chaplains aren't mental health counselors. The job of chaplains is to be pastor the flock, he's pandering to the North American Mission Board at the Southern Baptist Convention, which one of the biggest cover-ups of sexual abuse in the history of our country originated out of the Southern Baptist Convention, yet we allow them to sponsor so many of our chaplains. ⁓ He's pandering to that idea that only men can be spiritual leaders, which again is just ridiculous. And so you look at the things that lead to a Christian ⁓ nationalist society, ⁓ demeaning women, ⁓ placing church on an equal ⁓ podium with the government, ⁓ promoting people and including people within the day-to-day political life of the country who openly advocate for theocracy. Anybody looked at Project 2025, I mean, it was the roadmap to Gilead. Russell Vought, he comes from that same religious, ⁓ I won't even call it tradition, ⁓ Pete Hegseth does, this idea of the classical academy, men are to be trained for life, women are to be trained to give birth to babies. ⁓ Again, this all reflects down on how they look at women in the military. They don't understand how women can lead because they've grown up in a church tradition that forbids women from leading. They don't understand how women can lead because they were part of a military where they never saw a woman lead. And what's so interesting, if you ask the average soldier out there right now, They've only known a combat integrated military or they ask the average airmen. They don't think it's weird at all that a woman's a pilot. They don't think it's weird at all that a woman is a Ranger school graduate because for the last 15 years, that's all they've known. I've personally talked to many men who've been to Ranger school. They're like, I wouldn't have got through Ranger school without that woman in my platoon. Women bring endurance and calm heads in chaotic situations. It goes back to, you need more than just the ability to do pull-ups while most women who go to Ranger School could do a ton of pull-ups. They also bring that tactical, technical, cognitive, ⁓ you know, abilities to again, to help ⁓ make their team the best that it could be. It's funny when women first came to Ranger School, they asked them, why are you here at Ranger School? And the women were like, same reason you are. And it was like, mind blown. ⁓ my God. You actually came here the same reason you came here to be a better leader. Wow. I didn't know why you were here. It's just phenomenal when you think about just how much learning there is to do. And you look at our partner militaries, our NATO allies that have societies that are so much more comfortable with women having equal roles, so much more comfortable with sexuality, so much more comfortable with just like everything. They don't even blink about having women in their arms. because women do everything and it's our society where you know under this administration we're really allowing the hang-ups of the religious right to affect military policy and that is not a prescription for effectiveness or lethality. Sorry long answer. Jessica Ruttenber: Yeah, and just like to add on that, if you saw this in the news, Kris, but, no, I did put it in our chat that Erica ⁓ was recently appointed to the Air Force Academy Board. you know, ⁓ not that is appointed to the board is going to be someone who's served prior in the military. I understand that. But my concerns are, the messaging that it's sending, ⁓ especially Erica Kirk has publicly come out and said that Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: visit. Jessica Ruttenber: and shouldn't delay starting their families. If you're going to the Air Force Academy, you're not allowed to have dependents. You can't be married. So that's number one. So you come in at 18, and you go all the way until the average person to 22, not even allowed to have a dependent male spouse or female spouse. And then on top of that, you have a commitment after that, a four five year commitment. And if you end up being a pilot, your commitment is 10 years. So we're looking for a long-term investment in the officers that we're spending millions of dollars going through. And I think there's this inference that women are going to get out. But I would argue the opposite that we said, here's the door. We're going to make it so easy for you to just apply for separation. We're going to make it easy for you to, you know, to go to the garden reserve and get off of active duty. We'll make it easy for you, but we won't make We don't give the same option to men when they become parents. It literally said in the Air Force personnel ⁓ regulation just a few years ago, I'm pretty sure they changed it since then, that women may find pregnancy and motherhood incompatible with service. And we're allowed to apply to get out, but we don't give that same thought process to our male counterparts that are also having children. And their traditional roles in society are changing as well. ⁓ with the Christian value system. ⁓ And when I say Christian value system, I mean in the extreme kind of sense here that there is a nuclear family when the male is the head because a lot of places the men want an equal part in raising their children. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I'm so glad you brought up Erica Kirk and the Air Force board, because you're right. And no, the head of the DOD or someone on the Air Force, all these positions, they say, they don't have to be super experienced, they don't have to be veteran, et cetera. No, guys, the people that they're putting in leadership positions are a statement. And when we look at the Air Force Academy, particularly as a hotbed for Christian nationalism, focus on the family right there. There's a ⁓ historian, I put that in quotes, who has been denounced over and over by academics because he just outright blends Christian history and American history and it's not accurate, the claims and statements he's making. And it's a really interesting part because this ⁓ David Barton, his work is in military academy libraries. Like this is an intentional push and it doesn't surprise me that at someone from Turning Point USA is now joining that fight or coming with that angle. ⁓ it's just, there's just a lot of red flags, a lot of why, and a lot of follow the money and where is this all leading? And ⁓ none of it looks to be very empowering for women. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Well, and more importantly, not very empowering for the force. You know, in the army, women are holding up the recruiting numbers. If it wasn't for women, the army wouldn't be making their recruiting goals. And, you we look, I mean, they can't even recruit people into ICE. Where do they think this magic army of men is, you know, are they, you know, is it like a Lord of the Rings? They're like waiting over the hill and there's going to be this, you know, loud trumpet and this magic army is going to come marching over the hill. ⁓ you know, you got to fight with the society you have and the soldiers that you have and we're, blessed because we have amazing soldiers who come in every color from every culture, different genders, and they bring experience and they bring grit and they bring a desire to raise their rights. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: hand and serve this nation, which is, you know, we have a commander in chief who dodged the draft. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Amen. ⁓ Can you talk, I know that we're kind of pushing up, can you talk a little bit about how some of this administration is also impacting ⁓ service member, female service member access to healthcare? or maybe they're active or veteran, what's going on with women's military healthcare? Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Jess? Jessica Ruttenber: I know we have a lot of studies that have come out recently, reports due to Congress about women's reproductive healthcare. I don't have the specifics right now, and I think reports are important that we document that. But when I look at the one report I looked at yesterday, I'm talking $4 million for women's healthcare for one study. know, of those Tomahawk missiles costs $8 million each. So when I see the money Like you said, the money. Yes, we're supporting women and women menopause and perimenopause and if they want to delay having children, we'll have them help have time off to get IVF and all these things, but then they give them $4 million. But they'll give, you know, 10 times that amount for men, ⁓ you know. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: 43 million for Viagra as a. Jessica Ruttenber: for those kind of issues. you know, ⁓ when I was flying, I like to compare it that if I wanted to change my birth control from one pill to another, I was grounded for over a month. ⁓ And they didn't bother to do a study on, you know, why do I have to be grounded for over a month just to change my birth control pill? But when Propecia came out for men for balding, they did the study on that and was able to clear them right away. And there was a line outside the flight dock store. So the prioritization and the funding. So we give a lot of lip service. but I can't specifically tell you in the last year. But I will say to abortion services, this is what I will say, and I'll be very frank here to our viewers here. ⁓ There was a time when you could ask for, you know, permissive leave to go take care of something, ⁓ whether it was medical or personal or educational. Oftentimes, women choose to terminate a pregnancy. why they are active duty. And often we found that commanders, not just men, but women were denying their service members the ability to take leave. Not because it was crucial to the mission, but because they didn't believe that based on their faith base. Or I wouldn't get birth control issued to me at the medical clinic because my doctor didn't believe in birth control for women. But I'm a very boisterous woman, so I'm not afraid to speak up. So we're sometimes getting intimidated not to get our control and then we're sometimes denied if we want to have abortion services and quite frankly what I'm concerned about now is that we have, see this overseas already when a woman wants to, whether she's a civilian working for the military, active duty, wants to terminate a pregnancy and she's in a location that doesn't have those services. So now she has to fund all the expenses to come back to the United States because we can't use government funding or any of those kinds of things. And all of that I'm somewhat okay with, but now we're having this problem in the United States. So now what if you're stationed in a state or several states in an area that you can't get access to these services. Are you gonna again have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars and then fight your commander to see if you can even have the time off to do that? Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: And not just abortion, even a miscarriage. ⁓ Jessica Ruttenber: Yeah, I'm using the search. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: You know, as states have changed their ability to treat and provide women with reproductive health care that they need to save their lives when they're losing a pregnancy, you know, we have soldiers saying, well, my wife and I are going to think about having a couple of kids in the next few years. We don't want to go to Texas. Send us to Fort Drum, New York. Send us to Fort Irwin, California. Send me somewhere where I know my wife, where her life will be valued and will be saved if she has an issue during pregnancy. Jessica Ruttenber: Right. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you so much ⁓ for taking the time to explain and I mean we could probably spend a whole other hour. There is just so much to cover. This administration is going after women, queer folk, non-Christian. I mean anybody that doesn't align with them is an enemy and it's just... It's ignorant. It's unfortunate. It's really ignorant. It's ignorant of how strong we are in our diversity. I know he loves to say that diversity is not our strength, that unity is our strength. I mean, of course, shared values and culture and goals, of course, as were the unity. But this is... Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Shared Western values. Shared Western values. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It's all in an effort to say who's the right kind of soldier, right kind of citizen. And it's absolutely ⁓ wrong. So thank you for your part in the fight. How can people learn more about WISCI and what you're doing? Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: So. We just want to say if you're a woman currently serving in uniform, you raised your right hand to serve this country. ⁓ Know that we're out here fighting for you. ⁓ Visit us at whiskymill.org. So W-I-S-C-I-M-I-L.org is our website. You can find resources there, ⁓ fact sheets to dispel all the myths and things that we hear in a variety of places. then ⁓ Jess is an amazing social media content creator and you can let her talk about the other places you can find us at on the internet. Jessica Ruttenber: we're on several platforms. The that stick out to mine are LinkedIn because we want senior leaders to know the information. We have a counter narrative. So every there's a misconception like put out there about women in combat lowering standards, we put out, ⁓ you know, facts. ⁓ And then same thing with Facebook seems to be like a neutral playing ground. But the IG, we want to be on IG because we want to meet the service women where they're at so they feel connected and not alone. ⁓ And I super grateful for women like Kris and Sue. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: The fact. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Jessica Ruttenber: Because I can only imagine since women have started ground combat since 2015 that the majority of the women that are in these positions are still serving and don't have the ability to use their voice to Decept because they're going to be good soldiers. They want to serve their country They're not trying to create problems, but they know the problems exist. So I'm really grateful for organizations like WISCI Kris who takes basically, you know helps the entire female read Ranger program there's a female ranger program that help these women integrate in on her own and sue that goes to the hill and fights for them. we're here. We're listening. Send us an email. Send us what's going on and tell us what you see. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: And we're part of a larger coalition with the National Women's Law Center, Women in International Security, the Summer Women's Action Network, ⁓ and the ACLU. ⁓ Women are coming together and we're locking shields, and we are going to fight to keep these doors open. ⁓ Sue and I were among the early women. Sue was the very first. I followed her five years later. ⁓ We went through hell to integrate the military, and we are not going backwards. We're going to keep these doors open. ⁓ America needs the talent of these women. America needs the talent of everyone who's willing to raise their right hand and serve. We are absolutely here for you. You be excellent and we're out here fighting for you. Jessica Ruttenber: You're not alone. We're here for you. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I just got goosebumps. Thank you so much, ladies, for joining me today. Thank you for your service to our country. Thank you for your service to American women. This has been an amazing call. I hope that you all will come back in the future. I hope that we can continue to collaborate and share resources because it's going to take all of us. Kris Fuhr, WISCI Co -ounder: Absolutely. Thank you. Jessica Ruttenber: No, absolutely. I know you got to go, but I was just telling this morning, I was looking for documentation about the first female fighter pilots in 1993 and a lot of the information was taken off the website. And then I was like, wait a minute, I know them, I'm going to call them. And I was talking to one of them, Betty, that's her call sign, Sharon Pelser, very first F-16 pilot, the one standing on stage in the Pentagon in front of this poor woman in her twenties, in front of the entire press conference. And I was telling her about the that you and Sue were doing with the Rangers and how, because I was asking her about, I can't imagine what it would have been like to be a 20 something old Betty. You didn't ask to be in that press conference, you just wanted to fly. And you're not gonna be making public statements, but I'm really grateful for WISCI with Kris and Sue with the background they have to make those arguments for women that are currently serving in that position. I find it, One of the reasons I'm doing this is because I find a lot of similarities for the generation in the 90s that allowed me to fly. I see it happening. It's almost like cut and paste. The same, we're going to add these fitness standards into flying even though they weren't there before. But now that you guys are here, we're going to sneak them in, you know? And guess what? None of it worked out. They passed them just fine. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ yeah. Thank you, Kris and Jess. Thank you so much for coming and joining me on Fall the Leader. Again, this has been Kris Feuer and Jess Ruttenberg, both. American military veterans, of course, Kris served in the Army and Jess in the Air Force. Thank you again ladies for your service and for joining me. Folks, that is the end of the episode. This was Follow the Leighder. I'm your host, Leigh Larson. Let me know in the comments what you thought. Make sure to like, follow, subscribe. You know the drill. But until then, I'll see ya. Bye.