Becoming a Beacon for Change in the Navy with Jeni Brett

And in this four part series, you'll hear from these individuals as they share their unique experiences in the military and the lessons they learned that carried them into their new roles in civilian life. In this episode, I speak with retired U. S. Navy Chief so in Our Technician, Jenny Brett. Jenny served in the Navy for twenty years, but fourteen months into her service, Jenny was sexually assaulted. Rather than let this deter her, she used these events

to fuel her. She vowed to become an ally for those who would find themselves in similar situations. She wanted other women and lgbt Q members of the name Be to know that they had someone on their side. Today, Jenny works tirelessly to research and identify safe spaces for women and LGBTQ veterans. Hi Jenny, Hi, Well, I'm super happy to have you here, and let's start from the beginning. I want to go back to where you grew up. You know, what was it like at home. I grew

up in northeastern the United States. I grew up in a little town called North Attleborough, Massachusetts. UM. It was by all accounts idyllic. I am from a middle class, very white family in a middle class, very white town. Everybody had a quarter acre lawn, and everybody's lawn was always done really well, and everybody had nice cars in the garage. And it was a very upper middle class upbringing.

My parents were married until I was out of the house, and I went to a great high school and I went to call I was actually seventeen when I graduated high school, and I went to college very briefly, and I I knew leaving high school that college was not going to be for me. I just wasn't ready for college yet, and so I waited long enough till I turned eighteen, UM, and then immediately enlisted in the military.

When I was a kid, I knew there was something else besides just my little hometown in Massachusetts, and I wanted to get at it, but I didn't know how to do it except to join the military. It was kind of like my version of joining the circus. At that point in the late nineties, they were heavily recruiting women, um and I knew that. I knew. That's why one of the reasons why I wanted to enlist was Tailhook

was still very much sort of a big deal. I don't know if you know what Tailhook is, or if anyone knows the Tailhook is anymore, because it happened such a long time ago. But in the late nineties mid nineties, there was a military convention called the Tailhook Association, and they got together and there was some really inappropriate gender based violence, since some sexual harassment, and there were um sex workers hired to work for this organization, and just

a whole lot of really inappropriate behavior. It made the news. A woman blew the whistle on it. Her name is Pola Cogglin. She's amazing. She still speaks about military sexual violence. And the Navy's answer at the time, and all the Joint chiefs of Staff decided we should put more women in the military, and so women were going to be allowed to be in ratings where they weren't allowed to be in before, so there were more opportunities opening up

for women. Talk about your first year in the military and and how different that was for you. Wow. So, like I said, I'm from my very white, middle class town in Massachusetts and boot camp was a huge eye opener for me. I mean, I was eighteen and had never been hungry in my life, and I had always

had medical care. Um the the idea that someone had signed away the rights to their child to their parents in order to do this to get medical care because they weren't able to feed their kids was shocking to me. Like to me, it was almost kind of a diversion or like an escape, but to some people it was. It was a life change. It was a a necessary

decision in order to survive it. Sounds like your experience in the Navy gave you a different perspective of the world and some of the different struggles that people face every day. It definitely opened my eyes to experiences like that. Um. So, my best friend is still in the military. She is a whole technician, she's a welder, she's an amazing little bulldog. She is the coolest chick I've ever met in my life. But her partner. His parents were refugees from the Cahmer

rouge of Mong descent. They a hill tribe that lived in the areas of Laos and Thailand and Cambodia. He comes from a very large family. His parents weren't very you know, well educated. They came here in the seventies with virtually nothing. He became a citizen through the refugee process. But for him it was definitely a way to pay back what the US gave him. I mean, it gave his family safety where he didn't. And I'm like tearing up right now because it's a concept that I think

a lot of us don't understand. My parents did not escape violence through the literal jungle carrying me to a refugee camp, but that was that was his experience, and so for him it was a payback thing. And then my friend grew up in South Texas. She actually grew up just outside of San Antonio where I am now um and her family was military. She was homeschooled for most of her schooling career, and her family was very,

very religious. But her dad was in the Air Force and the Army both, and for her it was just there was two things. It was their calling, it was just what their family did. And two it was they didn't have any money for college or you know, once you turn eighteen, that's that's what you do. You you leave and you you make your own way. And for her, making her own way through the military was, you know,

the best option. Whereas for me, I could have gone to college, but I would have had to do what my parents wanted me to do, and I had to go to the school that they wanted me to go to. And I was kind of rebelling just by saying, I'm not doing any of those things. I'm just gonna go out on my own at eighteen. And I had to find a job and a place to live and food, and the Navy was like, hey, we have all of

those things. Yeah, very three, very different experiences within you know, two of my friends and myself, many of us have seen so in our technology depicts in the films or TV. But Jenny is the real deal and she has a skill set. If you have, so, Jenny, tell me about what a naval sonar technician does and what those responsibilities are. So we are underwater, sub hunters. We're basically the ship's

last defense against a submarine threat. There's two kinds of so our technicians, there's submarine or on our technicians and their surface ships on our technicians. Submariners use sonar to navigate. It's how they survive, so for them, sonar is a much um plays a much more important role. Sonar in the Cold War was incredibly important. Now we work in a multi unit way, so we work in conjunction with aircraft and with helicopters, and we listen for subs, look

for subs. If need be, we can neutralize a sub threat. The real plan is if we find one and we think it's hostile, to run away and hope we managed to get away into time. If you're a surface ship, you don't want to go toe to toe with the submarine because they can get much closer to you than you can to them before you find out. I worked on a system that is underwater fire control. So underwater

fire control is the torpedo system on board. So I was sitting at the console that actually fired torpedoes, and so they would send over a hostile contact and you line up the ship in the right direction with the submarine and so that your torpedo could actually hit it. And finding a submarine is very very slow, neutralizing a sub threat is very very quick. I mean, no one has done that in the history of the United States naval warfare in a very long time, and hopefully no

one ever has to again. But in practice, that was a lot of fun. It's two hours of quietly sneaking around in the water looking for a submarine and then five minutes of the most intense you know, everybody's calling things back and forth. You were a headset with two different audio channels in it, so there's new five people in each year talking back and forth, and everyone standing behind your chair, like the captain is standing right behind you and like literally breathing on your neck, and no

one knows what your screen says. It's kind of like the matrix. Everything looks kind of weird, but I understand what it says. And the guys and sonar are the same way. People going to sonar and look and they're like, what is that? It's just lines, but yeah, it's it was pretty intense. Um. I really did enjoy it because it's it makes you feel really important, like when when you're sort of the last hope. Sonar is very interesting. It's a lot of fun. It's it's very secret, squirrel.

You know, the vast majority of it is classified information. So it's interesting to know sort of what together parts of the world can do in terms of their submarine forces and their their naval sonar systems, and it's it's really fun to work with other countries. Um, we worked a lot with the Canadians, we were at the Australians, we work at the Japanese. We've worked with lots and

lots of other Allied countries doing submarine stuff. So we work with their aircraft, we work with their helicopters and their their teams in their helicopter and their aircraft. So yeah, it was really interesting. I know when you were in the name of you doubt what sexual assault? Uh, do you feel like that's somewhat common or with with women of the military at least having to hear or be exposed to it. I think it's incredibly common. I think it's so common that a lot of women don't recognize it.

I think it's accepted. There's a lot of just language and small actions. Sometimes people call the micro aggressions. I'm not really a fan of the term micro aggression. I think it's just an aggression, but just the language and the way that the military operates in general tends to be not very welcome ming two people who are not the norm. So yeah, I think I think it's very,

very common. So I was sexually assaulted at nineteen. I was in my initial training school and the guy who assaulted me was older, he was a marine, he was married, and so I trusted him, and there were a lot of red flags. His language was inappropriate, but there were no women in my chain of command. They were all men, and I didn't have anyone to model appropriate behavior for me. I didn't have any women who could tell me that, hey, that's not okay and that's probably not safe. It was

my first time out of my little hometown. So when I was sexually assaulted, he went through the n JP process. It was not to my satisfaction. Um he was not held accountable for his actions, and in fact, I was held accountable for his actions. I realized that one of the reasons that it went so badly for me was that there was no one there to advise me. There was no one to commiserate with me. And there was no one to have warned me that it wasn't going

to be okay. Oftentimes women who report sexual assault in the military are given the option in their service early, but rather than leave, Jenny set our sides on becoming an ally for others and a champion for fairness. After the fact, I was taught this is normal, this is what happens, and I'm sorry this happened to you, but expect it from now on. And I didn't really know what to do with that anger, and so I decided

to channel it into my work. There were newer girls on base, and so they were, you know, men talking about the newer girls, and and I thought, you know what, I didn't have anybody there for me, So I'm going to be a support system for someone else behind me. And I told myself, if I can change one person's experience for the better, if I can stop what happened to me from happening to one person, then I can sleep.

I made changes, and I intercepted talk gone wrong and and just acted as a support system to as many people as I could. And so every time I felt like I had done something for someone that hadn't been done for me, I felt a little bit better about it, and then I got a little bit more serious about trying to deliberately make that effort. My second enlistment was so about seven years. I really saw that as my job. I was like, you know what, I'm going to stay

just to do this. I'm gonna do my job, But in my head, my goal was to be the person that I needed when nobody was there for me. How would you mentor other women within the service who experienced what you did UM during the time that you enlisted. I would first of all, let them know that they are not the only one experiencing it. I think for a lot of us within this culture. So often the longer you stay in, the fewer of you there are.

So a lot of times I was the only woman in my job field, I was the only woman in a room a lot. One case, I was the only woman of my rank on my ship UM, and that's a very very lonely place to be. So I would recommend that they seek each other out and find each other and support each other, even across ranks and across job fields and across departments and divisions. Because the way that it's the easiest to fail is when you're doing it alone, and the more support you have the better.

And then it's not just women who support us, it's also men. And so I think more than mentoring the women who I think are on the right track, honestly, I would start with men and I would let them know what women need from them in order to succeed. You retired from the Navy after twenty years. You went back to school in Texas. Right, that's a big move. Absolutely, yeah.

Um So. I am a grad student at the University of Texas, San Antonio, and I am a cultural anthropologist who studies the lasting impact of being in a military environment on women and LGBTQ veterans um including transgender people and gender nonconforming and gender non binary. I intend to do research on wellness and well being and feelings of belonging, looking at post military communities that veterans join up with.

Many women veterans do not feel comfortable in sort of the traditional we call the Big Six Veterans organizations like the Disabled American Veterans or like Vietnam Veterans of America, the American Legion, or Veterans of Foreign Wars VFW. A lot of those places are not necessarily welcoming to women, to LGBTQ folks, and so a lot of women who have felt uncomfortable get out of the military. A lot

of us sort of test out those places. We'll go to the v A, you know, to get our care, and feel uncomfortable with the v A, we go to the VFW maybe, or we go to the legion and we try and fit in in a couple of different places. The problem is that a lot of us were not comfortable within the military environment to begin with. It is

a very masculine environment. It's an intentionally masculine environment, and a lot of us felt the need to perform an excess of masculinity while we were in the military, and we got out and sort of readjusted and fell back into our lives, and so that environment is no longer comfortable for us, and so in order to go into those places, we kind of have to revert back to

our military selves, which are not comfortable. And a lot of those places are places where especially older veterans, especially the older male veterans go in order to revisit those feelings of masculinity and that comfortability with their veteran personas whereas we we want the connection, and we want the community, and we want people who understand what it's like to be us, but we don't want to have to perform this veteran role, this sort of hero role that people expect.

I just want to be me and tell my stories and talk to people who understand what I've been through and what my experiences without having to overtly perform some role. So my research is based in that I'm hoping to find organizations where women veterans do feel comfortable and lgbt Q veterans feel like they can be their whole selves and not have to hide part of themselves or have to perform in a certain way, and find out what

makes those organizations so welcoming. So far, I've only really experienced one organization that I think is doing incredibly well, and that's Focused Forward Fellowship, which is a fellowship for student women veterans. They're all ages that come from every conflict, they've served any amount of time. Some of them are

currently active duty. They're serving in the National Guard. Interestingly for me, within that organization, it's only for women identifying veterans and there are no male participants in any form

for the entire higher residential portion of the fellowship. So women veterans apply, they go to Indiana, which is that it's at Purdue University, and they're there for seventy two hours for the residential portion, and then the rest of the annual fellowship is conducted online and zoom groups like this.

There are no men in a room with you at any point for seventy two hours, and it's incredibly healing to be able to feel safe, I think for the women who take part, and it's incredibly healing to not have to start at a baseline of explaining performative gender behavior or why some of the talk that we experienced was difficult, or how hard it is to not see representation. In a lot of cases, women veterans are very isolated, and it's very very difficult because you don't have any

support systems, You don't have anyone to turn to. And most of us sort of grow up in the Navy being independent and being fiercely independent, and we've build these very thick brick walls of self defense, and it's amazing you can almost physically see those walls coming down with these women in a room full of their sisters and I want to know what the mechanism is that makes that happen. Because Focus Forward Fellowship is one fellowship. It

takes place once a year with twenty women. But if I could figure out what the tiny pieces that makes that possible and tell everyone else so that we can all have that experience, women, men, people who are lgbt Q, gender non conforming, abled, disabled, everyone deserves to feel like those women feel for that seventy two hours. I just need to figure out what it is what I need to distill that down to a dissertation. So what is your goal by studying this? Meaning what action do you

hope to do? I would really love to be a professor. I love academia. I think academia is an incredible way to reach people sort before they feel like they're they've completed their whole selves. I feel like college is really a place where people see themselves as developing humans. They just want change and they want to take on a way to be better. And I think being a professor is a really incredible opportunity to reach people that want

that change. I'm using my experience as a woman veteran because that is my closest experience with dealing with situations of unequal powers structures. Hopefully, whatever information I find and whatever information I managed to distill out of these organizations will be useful within any organization that has unequal power structures, and we will will be useful to any person who finds that they have spent time in a unequal power structure.

They felt like they had to form in a certain way within an organization, and now they're struggling to sort of readapt to a different life. I'm hoping that this transcends the veteran experience into just people experience. It seems like there might also be opportunity to influence policy change

in academia right absolutely, so. I hope to be able to inform policymakers that are creating policies for the military, influencing post veteran service organizations, places like Disabled Veterans of America and Vietnam Veterans of America, UM, the American Legion, those places that are kind of recognized as veterans, sort of helping organizations about how their practices impact women and LGBTQ veterans and how they could better serve us as

a community. I know inclusivity is very important to you. How would you like the military to be more inclusive. I think the very first thing the military can do is to change the language that we use. Military folks love to use the words male and female when describing people. UM. I think it is very reductive. It reduces people to their biological capability, and it assumes a binary that just doesn't exist. Biology has told us for years and years

scientists know. Um. I think everyone knows at this point that male and female are definitely on a spectrum and people are just not one or the other. Um. In some cases they're both. In some cases there neither. And I think the use of that language puts the military on the wrong foot and and starts in boot camp being very exclusive and very binary. You have such an interesting story, you know, what would you take from it to to share with other women who are just thinking

about entering the military. You know they're at the emfancy stages of their process. I definitely think it's an increable jumping off point for any career. The benefits are amazing. I would not be able to be in this profession now and doing the work that I do if I hadn't been in the military and retired. The paycheck allows

me to be an academics. Academia is not a job that pays well, so being able to be an academic um is definitely because of my military career and also my post nine g I bill paid for my undergraduate career, so that was helpful. And I think if you take the lessons that we learned, just the very basic lessons, the soft skills that being on time, learning how to organize, learning how to network, I'm a handier than I expected them to come in my post military profession, So I

would absolutely recommend it. But I would definitely recommend that women look immediately for ment, worship and for a network of them themselves and of of allies while they're doing whatever job they're doing in the military. Do you think change is possible in the Navy. I do think it's possible. I think that there are some amazing people working to

change things right now. Like I said, I think that the women who are still in the military right now are making change, and I think they have the resources that I didn't have to reach out beyond the military and reach out to people who are making policy changes. There are some amazing people working within policy, working for veterans organizations and working with Congressmen and working with representatives

to make change. The I Am Venesseguian Act is being written and being pushed, and there are some amazing women working on that, both women involved with some of the organizations that that I'm researching, and women who are who are policymakers, women who are on on boards within the House of Representatives and in the Senate. So I think we are absolutely at the crest of a big wave. It's just a matter of how long does this wave roll before it really crashes down and change is made.

I think we're making huge progress, but I think there's still a lot of progress to continue to be made. And I don't think even once we managed to make progress, I think we're going to find that there's more to still be made. I really appreciate the time and you know, thank you for spending it with me and as we are. You know, in the Veterans Day and out of Veteran's Day, if you get a bunch of a normal folks like myself who are like, what can I do? Like, what's

something easy people can do to celebrate Veteran's Day? Wow, Um, there's so many organizations that are smaller organizations, that are local organizations that our help veterans that are not you know, sort of the big six veteran service organizations. There's probably one in your hometown. Those little organizations are really vital for connecting veterans as communities. They do things like, you know, providing service dogs, which I know you're familiar with. They

do things like therapeutic programming. So if you can find a smaller organization in your hometown and find out what they need. Maybe they just need money, maybe they need volunteer time, maybe they need you to phone bank. But um, if you could just spend one hour looking for a smaller organization and helping them out, that would mean the

world to at least one veteran. My final question, you know, what lessons have you taken from the military that you've applied to your work now as a grad student, researcher um or into your civilian life. I really learned that there are so many different stories. Everyone has a different experience, No one has a life like mine. And so in hearing those stories, and in telling those stories, and in giving people space to tell their own story, we learned

so much about each other. And I think we all feel so much more connected and more of a community if we just give ourselves that lesson and that gift of listening. So I think that's what I've learned, is to ask people what their story is and and to ask them to share their experience with me, because I can learn from them and they can learn from me. Check out a website j and I Brett dot com, Jenny Brett dot com, or Jenny Rider on Twitter at

j e n I writer. Really appreciate the time. Thank you for sharing your story, and I think a lot of people are going to take a lot from this, so so thank you very much. Thank you, Bob, You's so nice to be here. I want to thank Jenny for sharing your story and being a support system for so many veterans. Change is possible, especially when there are people like her working to create a fair and just

system for everyone. To find out more about the Focused Forward Fellowship and similar veteran resources, check out the list in our show notes. Thanks for listening to Bets you should know. Check out our other episodes from more great stories from inspiring vets who continue to work selflessly and tirelessly in civilian life to make positive change. If you like what you heard, please rate and review the podcast.

We want to hear from you and don't forget to subscribe for free or follow the show on the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Vets You Should Know is a special four part series podcast from I Heart Radio hosted by me

Bobby Bones. Our show has written and produced by Molly Sosha, Andy Kelly Ethan fix Cell in partnership with Haley Ericson and Garrett Shannon of Banter, Edit, sound design and mixed by Matt Stillo and my personal producer and hero is Mike d two