Assalamu alaikum. Welcome to virtual university. In today's lesson, we are going to talk about word formation, how words are formed in English. Now when you read, you come across a lot of unfamiliar words. It is often possible to guess the meaning of these words if you understand the way words in English are generally formed. Learning the meaning and use of these words in English can be made easier and even enjoyable if you understand something about the way in which many English words are formed. An English word can be divided into three parts. A prefix, a stem or root and a suffix. Prefix the pre-part as the word pretells you means before. Therefore, prefix is that part of the word that comes before the stem or the root. You are familiar with the word demagnetize your students of computers and you are familiar with this word demagnetize. Now in this word demagnetize, DE is the prefix, the part that comes before the stem. The stem is magnetize. The stem is actually the word magnet. IZE is the suffix. So, you notice in this word, this word demagnetize has three parts. A prefix D magnet the root the stem and IZE the suffix the last part. Now a suffix is what is attached to the end of the stem the word programmer. In this word ER at the end of the word is the suffix. By adding ER, it means the word becomes the person who programs. Both prefixes and suffixes are referred to as affixes. Now the stem of a word is its basic form the fundamental element which is common to all the other forms of the word. A prefix is a form which is fixed at the beginning of a stem and a suffix is a form which is fixed to the end of the stem. Take the word measure. The word measure if you add ABLE at the end of the word it becomes measurable. ABLE at the end is the suffix added to the word the root stem the root measure. In the same way if you add IM at the beginning it will become immeasurable immeasurable. IM is the prefix ABLE is the suffix. You have added something to the beginning and something at the end and you have created a new word. The word was originally measure you added ABLE and it became measurable another word and if you add something at the beginning something like say IM it becomes immeasurable. Now a prefix usually changes the meaning of a word. You want to know what is the point of having these prefixes and suffixes. There is a purpose. The prefix changes the meaning of the word while a suffix it only changes its part of speech. For instance when you add the suffix ABLE it changes verbs into adjectives. Example break, break is a verb but if you add ABLE it becomes breakable.  The word break which is a verb has changed its form it changes its category. It is no longer a verb it is an adjective. The prefix IM changes the meaning to the opposite measurable means capable of being measured and if you add IM to it it will mean it is not capable of being measured. And you as students of English if you become familiar with the formation of English words it will help you a great deal in understanding words on your own. You need not look for the dictionary all the time. You have the skill you can find out guess the meaning. So by learning only a few prefixes and suffixes you can know a lot of guess the meaning of a lot of English words. Now we look at a few examples the English language makes frequent use of this method of adding prefixes and suffixes. On your screen you will see a number of lists and prefixes and suffixes are added to one word the word is act it is the stem. You will notice the number of words that can be made from this stem act by adding prefixes and by adding suffixes the prefix. When you add RE to act it will become react add EN and it will become an act it is another word add RE to an act it becomes reenact then enter INTER interact if you add TRANS it becomes transact. In the same way if you add a suffix to the word act the suffix ION it will become action you add IVE it becomes active you add LY it will become actively add less LESS action less ABLE actable ITY activity ATE if you add ATE at the end it becomes activate and then you have activation and you have OR if you add the word OR the letters OR it will become ACTOR and you add ESS ACTRESS. Now you can add prefixes and suffixes to the word ACT REACTION ENACTIVATING REENACTIVATING REACTIVATING REACTIVATION INTERACTION TRANS ACTION from TRANS from ACT you had TRANS ACT and if you added something at the end it becomes TRANS ACTION and then you have got INACTIVE AND IN ACTION. On your screen there is a little table it tells you that prefixes and suffixes they are referred to as affixes the table illustrates there is a table which shows you how by adding suffixes words change their categories how they become nouns verbs adjectives adverbs look at the table and you will notice that words that end in ANC ENC OR ER ISD NES they are nouns this is a this is something that you will find very useful later on in life when you are reading English it will remain fixed in your mind that words ending with NES ENC OR ER ISD NES are always nouns now in the same way words that ends with end with IZE ATE FY EN IFY verbs usually verbs then you have adjectives and these endings that you can see on your screen ABLE I B A L E L S I C I C A L I S H I V E these are usually endings of adjectives these are all clues for you you as a skillful reader the minute you look at the ending that will give you the clue what category of word it is in the same way you have got the adverb L Y words which have L Y at the end are usually adverbs and even W A R D word home word backward these are hints to show you that it is an adverb now we will look at an exercise this is in detail what we have just done now I have gone through it recently now look at this table the suffix ants A N C E the meaning is a state it describes a state a state of being but if you add A N C A N C E the word changes its meaning it becomes performance it becomes a different word in the same way you have got the word independence you add E N C the word independence you add OR or ER program programmer operate operator teach teacher right paint painter and you add ER it becomes these are all nouns it changes its meaning compile compiler accumulate accumulator if you add OR and ER in the same way you have the suffix Asian A T I U N it means the act of execution suffix IST or Y ST it means a person who who who does something you add IST to the word type it becomes a typist a person who types in the same way the word analyze and you write analyst Y ST and it becomes analyst analyst and it changes its meaning in the same way by adding NES you are describing a condition cleanliness clean cleanliness I O N you are describing a state conversion convert conversion by adding ING multiplexing multiplying dividing take the word the letters any NT if you add any NT it again the meaning is it is describing a state or an action measurement in the same way you add ITY electric electricity I A N which means pertaining to electrician ISM it means you are again talking about a state or a condition and it is magnetism take the word magnet you are add the letters ISM at the end and it will become magnetism in the same way you add D O M it is again describing a condition take the word free you add D O M to it and it becomes freedom King add D O M Kingdom you create a new word a new meaning ship if you add the word SHIP at the end of words you are describing a condition or a state you've got words like partner and you add SHIP to it it becomes partnership relation relationship friend friendship and on your list you've got ARY binary by means one or two binary now look at words verbs by adding certain suffixes you change the verbs their meaning computer rise if you add I Z E to the word computer you it becomes a verb computer rise automate you can add I Z E A T E F Y E N if these suffixes at the end will make the verb the word into a change the word into a verb hard harden wide widen simplify simple simplify in the same way you've got suffixes the suffix L Y it changes the word into an adverb electronic electrically logic logically compare comparably help help fully or helpful you've got the word helpful and you add L Y to it it becomes help fully in the same way there is a long list of words that become adjectives if you add suffixes to them and the suffixes are A L A R I C I C A L all four had the meaning of the quality of if you add A L to the word computation it becomes an adjective computational you add A L to the word logic it becomes logical you add A R to the word circle circular you add I C automatic magnetic and electrical electric and you add A L it becomes electrical it is describing a quality in the same way you've got the suffixes A B L E ideally they are they are both dealing with the quality of being capable of being comparable divisible then you've got suffixes like O U S I U S which mean full of or like danger take the word danger and you add O U S it becomes dangerous the word religion you convert it by adding I U S and it becomes religious you are describing the word these are adjectives used to describe something else religious in the same way you've got suffixes F U L L E S I S H E D I V E I N G and they all make words into adjectives F U L as I said earlier help helpful less which means without a word which has less and at the end is a big clue for you that it has it means without careless helpless useless then the word I S H it usually means like yellow you add the word I S H it becomes yellowish if you add I S H to the word red it becomes redish meaning like red it's not red exactly but it is redish like red yellow yellowish it's not exactly yellow it means it is like yellow in the same way if you add E D computed punched they can be used as adjectives they could be used to describe a noun computed or punched cards you have the word card if you add the word punch to it the word punched is an adjective here describing the card the word card the noun card sorry and you've got I V E which means the quality of interactive interact and you add I V E to it and it means interactive in the same way I N G to make or to do something programming it can be verb but it can also be an adjective programming coding processing multiplexing now we are going to look at the base words if you as a skillful reader can locate the base word it will go a long way in making you a good reader now sometimes it is difficult to locate base words because they are spelling frequently changes when suffixes are added to base words you will have noticed that the base word the stem the spelling of the stem changes now there are just a few rules three you have to remember number one that if a base word ends in E the E may be dropped when a suffix is added to it for example take the word mature the word mature ends with an E and you are going to add I T Y the suffix I T Y so you will drop the E at the end of the stem and add I T Y and the word becomes maturity M U T U R I T Y here you have dropped the ending the the last E in mature and you will find there are many other words like this number two if a if a base word ends in Y the Y may be changed to I when a suffix is added to it there are many words that end in Y for instance the word harmony it ends with Y if you are going to add a suffix to it for instance you want to add I O U S the suffix I O U S I am sorry the suffix O U S so what will you do you will change the Y into I and add I O U S and it will become harmonious right you have got the word parsimonious there are many words like this this is just an example for you to remember the third rule is that base words may undergo other spelling changes when suffixes are added to them take the word reclaim right and if you add the suffix Asian A T I O N and you write the word it becomes reclamation the I in reclaim is dropped so now we will look at an exercise I will this is just for practice sake so that you will be learn to identify the base word as I said sometimes because of spelling changes learners of English have difficulty in identifying the base word you will have 12 to 13 sentences and the base word is in bold in bold letters I will read the first sentence for you and I will tell you which is the word that you have to look at you have to locate the stem in that word established the authenticity of our antique chair the word is authenticity you have to find the stem in that word and there is a sentence given there which will help you locate the stem so what word will you fill in that sentence we have an authentic antique chair the word authentic is the stem in the word authenticity right you added I T Y the suffix I T Y you added to the word authentic so the stem the base word is authentic number two we enjoy the collegiate athletic games the word is collegiate now how will you know which is the base word in collegiate to help you a sentence is there and the word that you fill in there you will find is the base word we enjoy the athletic games at college so college is the base the stem word and I A T E is here the E at the end of the word college was dropped I was added and you added the suffix A T E notice how the spelling changes number three the accident left her comatose now that is a big word the accident left her comatose you would not know what comatose is but look at the sentence underneath that will help you locate the stem the accident left her in a coma the base word is coma right number four we had comparative good luck the word comparative is in boldface so what is the base over there the suffix is I V E in the sentence that you have to illustrate the sentence that you have to fill out it says if you dash our luck with that of others our luck was good so the word that you will fill in there will be if you compare if you compare our luck with that of others our luck was good so the base word was compare and you added I V E comparative to make it a different word number 5 can you differentiate between them the word is differentiate so what is the base over there in that word the sentence that you have to fill out is can you see how they how they differ the base word is differ from differ you got the word different and from different you got differentiate so the base word is is differ number six his knowledge of china is not experiential that is a big word what does experiential mean these sentences will help you locate the base word his knowledge of china is not based on actual experience so the base word over there is experience number seven she has expertise in mathematics what does expertise mean where is the base over there and in the sentence that you have to illustrate the word that you will put over there will be the base word she is an expert in mathematics the word expertise has been created by adding I S E to the base word expert number eight she gave her answer with finality finality the base over there is the base stem word over there is final we knew her answer was final number nine they have servile attitudes all right servile what if you do not know the meaning of servile hmm it is a word it is a new word how has it been made it is been made by adding I L E to the base word and the base word is serve they have attitudes of those who serve number ten the numbers are in tabular form you have to find the base word the stem word in the word tabula and the sentence to help you is the numbers are in a table from table you got tabula number eleven we enjoyed her commentary on the news commentary the suffix is ary we enjoyed her the base stem word is comment all right we enjoyed her comments about the news number twelve who were the disputants now what is the stem in this word disputants the sentence to help you is who engage in the disputes in the disputes and number thirteen this machine has a multiplicity of parts the word multiplicity the base is multiple it has multiple parts now in this exercise that you have just gone through this exercise was to help you locate the base the stem of words so far we been looking at stems of words now we will look at suffixes we will go through a number of sentences and you will read them and in your mind try to find out which is the suffix right I will read out the sentences and you find out which is the suffix the first sentence number one the system analyst provides the programmer with the details of the data processing problem all the sentences that you will come across now are all dealing with computers so you should not have any difficulty answering this bit I will read the sentence again the systems analyst provides the programmer with the details of the data processing problems now which words in this sentence are suffixes it is the word analyst it is y s t that is a suffix then the other suffix in this sentence is in the word programmer program programmer e r is the suffix that has been added to the word program and the third suffix in this sentence is I n g the data processing problems number two CRT terminals are very useful interactive devices for use in offices because of their speed and quietness CRT terminals are very useful interactive devices for use in offices because of the speed and quietness if you remember the table it is ALS in terminals f u l in useful I v e in interact interactive and n e s in quietness so there were three suffixes in now sentence number two the third sentence the new micro computers we purchased sorry the new micro computer we purchased does not have a FORTRAN compiler it is promo it is programmable in basic only I will read the sentence again the new micro computer we purchased does not have a FORTRAN compiler it is programmable in basic only now there were three words I hint for you three words which have suffixes first it is the word micro computer e r is the first suffix and e r again in the word compiler and a b l e in the word programmable so there were three suffixes in sentence number three sentence number four a computer is a machine with an intricate network of electronic circuits that operate switches or magnetize tiny metal cores a computer is a machine with an intricate network of electronic circuits that operate switches or magnetize tiny metal cores and the suffixes are e r in the word computer I see in the word electronic and a t e in the word operate and you have got I z e in magnetize so there were four words that had suffixes in sentence four sentence five in very large and modern installations the computer operator sits in front of a screen that shows an up to date summary of the computer jobs as they are being processed in very large and modern installations the computer operator sits in front of a screen that shows an up to date summary of the computer jobs as they are being processed so you will find that in the word installations it is the suffix a t i o n s that is the suffix in installations again in the word computer it is e r that has been added there that is the second suffix and in the word operator it is o r and in the word summary it is a r y and again in the word computer it is e r computer and the last word is processed and it is e d that is the suffix sentence six the introduction of terminals and screens has partly replaced the use of punched cards the introduction of terminals and screens has partly replaced the use of punched cards three words that have suffixes attached to them and these were introduction the suffix t i o n the suffix a l s in terminals and the suffix e d in the word punched sentence seven binary arithmetic is based on two digits 0 and 1 binary arithmetic is based on two digits 0 and 1 there is only one word which has a suffix to it and it is the word binary a r y number h sentence number 8 multiplexing is when many electrical signals are combined and carried on only one optical link let me read it again multiplexing is when many electrical signals are combined and carried on only one optical link simple i n g in the word multiplexing a l in the word electrical and again a l in the word optical sentence nine computers are machines designed to process electronically specially prepared pieces of information computers are machines designed to process electronically specially prepared pieces of information and as you are familiar it is e r s in computers and a l l y in electronically again l y in special specially l y and in the word the last word information it is t i o n a t i o n information and in the last sentence the computed results were printed in tables the computed results were printed in tables there is only one word which has a suffix to it and that is the word computed you have looked at sentences in which you had to find the suffix now we will have sentences in which you have to fill in the appropriate word appropriate form of the word the words are given you and again they all deal with computers and you are fairly familiar with the workings and the terminology of computers take the first sentence the words are operation operate operator operational operationally and operating it is just one word operate but there are so many different endings different suffixes which change the meaning of the word and the category as well number a a computer can perform mathematical very quickly mathematical what the only word of course you know the word the word is operate but what form of that word the appropriate form is mathematical operations a computer can perform mathematical operations very quickly b the next sentence one of the first persons to note that the computer is malfunctioning is the computer is the computer operator it is again the word operate but with the suffix o r added to it it is the computer operator the next sentence the job of a computer operator is to something the various machines in a computer installation so what does the computer operator do the computer operator the job of a computer operator is to operate the various machines and d the new machines in the computer installation are not yet and you can you have a choice over here you can either have are not yet at the word at the ending i n g or at the ending a l so you can have the new machines in the computer installations are not yet operating or you can have are not yet operational notice that by adding different suffixes there is one word the word operate and you have created so many other words by adding different suffixes now take the word except a double c e p t we will do the same thing again the base word is except and you have to add different endings you have got the word except acceptance except accepted acceptable acceptably and look at the sentence the meaning the sense of the sentence and complete the sentence by using the appropriate word a computer is a device which processes and gives out information so which form of except will you use over there the correct one is a computer is a device which accepts processes and gives out information it accepts takes in processes and gives out information the output now the next form of the word except the students are still waiting for there into the computer science program what word would would you fill in there you have got the word the base word except you will have acceptance students are still waiting for their acceptance into the computer science program and the third sentence it is dash it is to work without a template if the flow charts are not kept on file and the correct form of except would be acceptable it is acceptable to work without a template if the flow charts are not kept on file so with that we end our lesson for today today you have looked at word formation in English and we have concentrated on the use of the suffix next time inshallah we will talk about prefixes and how they change the meaning of the word so till next time Allah Hafiz.


No work, no earnings, no land, no water, for tribals, but everything for the corporates. India's Environment Ministry has proposed new rules in the Countries' Forest Conservation Act. Many are asking if these new rules are meant for forest conservation or forest corporatization. Several environmental experts and opposition parties have expressed concern about this move. India's BGP ruled central government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has often been criticized for its covert efforts to hand over the country's resources to its corporate cronies under the guise of ease of doing business. This most recent action is being seen in the same context. This last change that has come about is an extremely serious one and will have a very adverse impact on the people living in tribal areas, living in forest areas and unfortunately, the government has gone all ahead to promote the corporatization of forest areas. In fact, handing over the natural resources in forest areas very easily to the corporates. The owners are the tribals, the non-tribal forest dwellers who have been looking after the forests all these years. But this act has been made or changed in a manner to facilitate the takeover of the forest land by corporates. The Forest Conservation Act was enacted in 1980 with the stated aim of combating deforestation. However, the new rules allow the central government to clear the forest without consulting its inhabitants, which leaves them with no choice but to accept it. So before the Forest Rights Act, the Forest Conservation Act was used against the tribals. Now what the government has done, it has weakened the Forest Conservation Act in a manner whereby whatever minimum laws that are there to protect the tribals also get totally scrapped. For example, the Gram Sabhas are not required to give any consent. Even if the local people, if it's adversely going to affect their lives, even then now they are denied the right to be able to oppose. The Pesa is there in place to protect the tribals' rights. That is also not now applicable. Means such blatantly the government is handing over the forest. The new guidelines also do away with the old rules that required developers to obtain consent of local authorities and community representatives before acquiring forest land. Under the new rules, the approval can be provided by the central government alone. The rules say nothing about resettling the inhabitants once they are evicted. The central government can now collect payment for compensatory afforestation from private developers before even obtaining the consent of the forest dwellers. There is absolutely no talk of the rights of the people who may be living in that land or around that land. A place may be taken over by the government for afforestation with payment from the agency who has taken over the forest land for whatever purposes it wants. So here also the tribals will get totally displaced and in the lands which may be taken over for afforestation to compensate the loss of forest cover in a forest area which may be taken over by a corporate. The people in both the places in this law there is no talk, there is no line which talks of safeguarding the rights of the people who will be affected. The new rules also contradict the Forest Rights Act of 2006 which recognized the symbiotic relationship between forest dwelling tribal communities and other traditional forest dwellers to forest resources on which they rely for their livelihood, habitation and other socio-cultural needs. And women especially because women are very dependent on forests and the tribal community per se are dependent on forests, they live with the forest and the forests also live because of tribal people, they protect the forest. Many opposition groups and parties in India have opposed the new rules. The Communist Party of India Marxist has demanded a public consultation with all stakeholders and stated that the views of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs need to be taken into account as well. The reality is that these laws are going to put the tribals and the poor dwellers in forest lands into a much serious and critical situation. So they are very very perturbed, very agitated by this and surely there are meetings and protests going on. The government today has proposed the candidature of a tribal woman for the President of India and that same government on 28th of June has brought about the rules for divesting the tribals of their right to their own land. This is a contradiction in terms and this is what the Modi government has always been famous for. It talks of one thing but actually does something else. It gives a slogan but takes policies exactly the opposite of those slogans.


Good morning, everyone. Hello, I am Dr. Gina Palmer from the College of Leadership and Ethics. It's my pleasure to be your emcee for this portion of the program. Our first panel is Women in Combat moderated by Admiral Lars Saunas. Admiral Saunas retired from his position as Chief of Royal Norwegian Navy in 2017 and is now CNO Distinguished International Fellow in International Programs at the Naval War College. He served as the head naval section of the Norwegian Defense High Command and the Norwegian Defense Research Institute. Please welcome Admiral Saunas. Thank you, Gina. And thank you for being our Zoom moderator today. And today we are looking into a really, really important aspects of women, peace and security and that's women in combat. So I hope you out in the Zoom land will follow up and post your questions in the chat and Gina will look it up in the Q&A so we can have that dialogue also virtually and also for you the audience to make notes and be ready for your critical questions. I know the student's body will always have critical questions for our experts today. So going back, so it struck me that, most of us thought that the cultural aspects was the most important barrier for having equal gender role in the military. And I would say if you talk about women in combat, that's actually putting it on the spot. And nowhere else will you find those barriers more frequently raised than around combat positions. But we're also happy to have three services represented here today from the Army, Air Force and Navy and the services in the United States being a Norwegian are very different with regard to gender implementation and history. So I remember being a submarine commander in the 1980s when we had first women on Norwegian submarines. And I think we had our first submarine commanding officer in 1994. And in 2015, we actually had 1400 female conscripts competing for special forces qualification in Norway. So women has been included in combat operations as long as I've been in my service, I'm really old. So I even retired. So I think it's at the same time I had to reflect when I was the chief of the Navy that we are still struggling with the same barriers, the culture, the values of integrated women, whether it's sexual harassment, whether it's a male dominant environment and culture. We like to call it women add their perspective that makes us more efficient in operations. But we are also forcing women to include the male perspective. And I think that is not always the right thing to do. And today you will hear about that from our panelists. You will also hear about the discussion about physical collocations in combat. There are different perspective on that too. And you will hear about that today as well. And you will hear about diversity in gender to accomplish a more efficient operations as well as how the gender perspective has been assessed as a meaningful participation in the US force. So if you think about all these things, I've been trying to promote a gender neutral perspective for a while, but at the same time, I'm accepting that I was wrong because women have a different perspective and challenges in combat. And men have another different challenge and perspective in combat. But unless we start listening to you and include both genders in that dialogue, we will never solve that problem. So that is why it is so important to have honest dialogue about how much do we accept women in combat operations? How much should they accept of the main dominant culture? How do we man value the feminist perspective into your operations? You have seen in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Norwegians go there too. That is highly valuable. So with this short introduction, I would like you to think about something while you're listening to my panelists. What is the woman unique perspective? How do we ensure women's meaningful participation across services and also integrated with allies and partners? I think you can think about questions around that. How can we best break down the cultural barriers regarding women in combat? Both from a female and male perspective. We look at masculinity as the third gender. It's called by some tactical feminitis. And I'm questioning myself, what does that mean? How do we as men appreciate that? And do we really accept to have a gender-neutral assessment to meet combat challenges? I think it's important to ask this question because it is challenges for women and it's challenging for men to be in combat positions. And we should be honest about it. So with no further due, I will introduce my panel. We will have major Lauren Ward from the U.S. Military Academy. Talk about military masculinity, tactical feminitis and the third gender in Ashley's war. We've also heard the frailty myth, the case for gender-neutral physical fitness assessment practices among the United States airmen by Dr. Madalena Burgac and Lieutenant Colonel Stephanie Frioli from the College of Professional Military Education at Maxwell Air Force Base. We also hear from Ms. Antonietta Rico about women, peace, and security and defense objective one, assessing women meaningful participation in U.S. Army combat arms units. And last but not least, by Commander Sara Woodwell, our own military professor at the War College talking about advantages in cyberspace needs more than the nerds. So the word is hand over to you, Lauren and eight to nine minutes. Thank you. All right, good morning and thank you. As I was introduced, my name is Major Lauren Ward and I am an instructor of English at the United States Military Academy. And so I'll begin today's panel with a perspective on women in combat found in a book, Ashley's War, The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gail Lemon. My presentation is not a consideration of the U.S. Army's use of the all female cultural support teams in the war on terror as a strategy, doctrine, or policy, but rather this is concerned with how we talk about women in combat, how we share stories. And so I turn specifically to this book. In doing so, I offer a rhetorical analysis that is an analysis of the triangulation of author, audience, and message with a particular emphasis on the audience as described in Aristotle's on rhetoric. I argue that despite the celebratory nature of Lemon's narrative, the rhetoric of Ashley's War continues to instrumentalize women's bodies and stories, reenacting many of the misogynistic tropes that continue the marginalization of women in male-dominated spaces. Counter-intuitively, this is actually a necessary precaution for Lemon to ensure the broad appeal of her book to a polarized American public and to sell the idea of women in combat. This book is a 2015 biographical narrative of Ashley White, the first member of a cultural support team to be killed in action in Afghanistan in 2011. It is a third-person account that is focalized mainly through the perspective of Ashley herself, reinforcing Lemon's own objective of sharing the true story of women in combat and bridging the civil military divide between those who have been there and those who have not. As a celebration of women's abilities on the battlefield, this book is empowering, offering an example of what women in combat can look like. The women of the CSTs necessarily embody both their own femininity as well as military masculinities, by which I mean the set of masculine-coded actions that signify the necessary skills to succeed in male-dominated spaces such as the military. I draw this conception of military masculinities from remarks evoking Theodore Roosevelt's Man in the Arena speech made at Ashley's funeral, saying of Ashley, she was the man in the arena. From context, this slip in gender markers between the feminine pronoun she and the masculine noun man did not mean to imply anything about Ashley's gender identity and is solely looking at her performative actions, calling to mind Roosevelt's position symbolizing U.S. martial masculinity at the turn of the 20th century. Ashley has ascribed the ability to embody highly desired masculine actions, implicitly the acts of competitiveness, aggression, decisiveness, combativeness, and most importantly, action, while still maintaining her static, essentialized feminine identity. This liminal space between masculine and feminine is termed the third gender, stemming from the first report on the viability of all women engagement teams in Iraq in 2010 and reiterated by Lemon throughout her book. The common trope of the have it all narrative appears cemented in U.S. strategic documents as well as these bestselling books as women are, quote, accorded the advantages rather than the disadvantages of both genders, end quote. Despite its lauding of women's achievement, Ashley's war also recreates the CST's instrumentalization of gendered labor. Following Arleigh Hochschild's definition of emotional labor, scholar Elizabeth Miesach calls attention to the, quote, instrumentalizing of essentialized femininity even as the spatial and gender divisions of labor were destabilized, end quote, by integrating women into men's spaces. We might also use Kate Mann's more irreverent term for affective labor, kermongering, the disproportionate expectation for women to be caring and nurturing. As an example of this, Lemon narrates the scene of an individual Rock March event in the CST selection process, wherein the women rallied around a struggling teammate despite explicit instructions that they, quote, were on their own, no talking allowed, end quote. Once the women went into action, they were disciplined for not following proper protocols, though some maintained that the Rock was actually a test of the women's ability to stay together as a team when something went wrong. In fact, this is a crucial application of the US Army's warrior ethos. I will never leave a fallen comrade. But there's a clear understanding through the scene's shifting narrative focalization that the warrior ethos might apply differently here, including the frustration of the all male instructors. The scene depicts women heroically bucking the system, outwitting their instructors, and proving that the empathetic kermongering is in fact a worthwhile martial action despite the latent messaging that women are in fact treated differently here. Lemon seems seemingly avoids criticizing this latent misogyny because her project aims to persuade those most resistant to the idea of advancing women's opportunities in the military without garnering the fierce opposition that is characteristic of the social media age. To capture the sense that women had to tactically assume the role of subordination here, I alter Gayatri Spivak's conception of strategic essentialism to become tactical femininities, to reclaim ownership of the strategic aims that drove both the CSTs and this book, Ashley's War. My hope for this term is that we can come to see women in the military free to choose their own presentation of masculinity or femininity, including in their choice of career path. And as it returned to my roots as a literary scholar, I have to call for a careful examination of the language we use to tell the stories of women in combat to varied audiences. As Lemon notes on Twitter, stories matter, but how we tell those stories matters just as much. Finally, in a rhetorical analysis, we ought not to forget the extra contextual element of timing. Lemon's book is first published in 2015 in the period of time between Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's 2013 instruction to the services to open combat roles to women and the 2016 deadline for service implementation of that policy. Now that in the US Army, women have indeed graduated Ranger School, been assigned to ground combat units and been assigned to our combat arms branches, we might refocus our discussions on the ways in which these programs, CSTs and Ashley's War, represent a moment in the history of modern warfare where women tactically assumed this position of support nation in order to push for the real strategic objective, equal inclusion in all military roles for which they're capable. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. And now we will be joined on a virtual by Dr. Magdalena Bukac and Lieutenant Colonel Stephanie Freyoli, who will talk about the case for gender-neutral physical fitness assessments and practices among the United States airmen. The floor is yours. All right, thank you so much. I believe I'm sharing my slides. So I'm just waiting for those to come up and a good audio check. Perfect. Thank you. Good morning. As a quick disclaimer, the views here in our own and not reflective of the Air Force. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Stephanie Freyoli and my co-author is Dr. Magdalena Bukac. Our paper titled The Frailty Myth, the case for gender-neutral physical fitness assessment practices among United States airmen, pulls its cause from several documents and policies. First, in 2013, the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced the rescission of the 1994 Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule, which restricted assignments of women to occupational jobs in direct ground combat units. In 2014, after the decision to eliminate the rule, the National Defense Authorization Act directed the establishment of empirical-based gender-neutral physical standards before opening any restricted occupations to women. The Act also gave the services until October 2015 to demonstrate that such measures were in place. Additionally, the 2022 Air Force Manual for Physical Fitness States. Every member should be physically fit, regardless of age, grade, gender, or duty assignment. In this very sane document, however, the Air Force Fitness Assessment requires female airmen to perform fewer repetitions and slower runtimes on all events compared to their male counterparts. Furthermore, in 2022, the House Armed Services Committee approved an amendment to the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act to create gender-neutral fitness standards for combat arms positions. This bill does not specify what jobs this will apply to. Services will determine whether roles like aviation, security forces, or common support roles within combat units will be covered by this fitness mandate. Despite all of this, the Air Force has yet to adopt these standards. There is no open-source data as to why, but when the Army scrapped its plans to use similar physical fitness tests for all of its soldiers in 2022, reasons pointed to political pressure after early numbers of significant female failures. Today, the fitness assessment for men consists of cardio-respiratory fitness, muscular strength, and core endurance. Members may choose any combination, one per component, for their fitness assessment. Comparatively, the fitness assessment for male airmen consists of the same components, but with faster run times and high repetitions required for all other events. Although the female fitness assessment standards have improved over the years, they are still a gender-normed version of male physical fitness standards. For instance, in a 2012 interview, several female Marines concluded that it is simply not reasonable to expect the average woman to perform the same exercises as men due to a genetic predisposition for weakness and other physical shortcomings. This quote clearly showcases that even women are prejudiced against other women in terms of strength. The reluctance to incorporate gender-neutral fitness requirements into the Air Force is aided by the prevailing perception that very few women can perform to men's standards. As a result, women are assumed to lack the ability for such a feat. However, events like running, push-ups, and sit-ups are skills, and skills can be learned and perfected with practice. In contrast, an ability is a relatively stable trait with biological growth and maturation processes, which remains unchanged by practice. If this is the case, then it is safe to assume that women have the ability but lack the skill. Fitness comes with time and practice, and women are as fit as men in relative terms. It was not until January 2014 when the Marine Corps began offering a pull-up option for women. In 2018, around one-third of female Marines still opted for an alternate exercise, the Flexed Arm Hang, instead of performing the pull-up. The Corps' reluctance to adopt gender-neutral standards may suggest a psychological aspect of the frailty myth that is harder to overcome than the physical. This should come as no surprise as the frailty myth has been systematically institutionalized in American society and made a smooth transition into military culture. Gender conditioning, gender stereotypes, and the resulting perception of women's innate weakness continue to play a crucial role in making decisions about the scope of physical fitness tests more so than the lack of strength training and practice. Furthermore, the frailty myth, in addition to fostering learned weakness, has affected women's sense of competence. The absence of a pull-up requirement for female Marines on their PFT appears to be enough to convince some men and women alike that pull-ups are virtually unattainable for female Marines. If the Air Force Fitness Assessment Test remains in its current form, suboptimal female fitness performance will continue to be institutionalized. What you see on this slide is a picture of the first female to graduate from the Air Force's highly demanding combat control school and earned her coveted Scarlett Barré. She had to transcend her gender in order to pass the school. Let's give others like her a fighting chance by initializing the following solutions to gendered fitness standards. To us, the solution seems simple. A fitness assessment metric commensurate with a woman's size would shatter the misconceptions. An Air Force Fitness Assessment testing relative strength and cardio performance to size would make an airman responsible for their body mass and send a more gender-inclusive message. Hence, a gender-neutral fitness assessment would require all airmen to lift their body weight and the force required would be relative to their size, making a gender norm fitness metric unnecessary. One popular equation that measures relative strength is called the Wilkes coefficient or Wilkes formula. The equation measures the relative strength of power lifters despite the different weight classes of the lifters. While there have been some criticisms of the Wilkes formula, this model from the powerlifting world might offer a potential solution to the problem of gendered physical assessments. Another popular formula is called the Sinclair coefficient, a mathematical equation designed to determine who is the best male or female lifter across any age group and weight class. While the Air Force Fitness Assessment is not a powerlifting competition, lessons can be garnered from how other sports measure performance. Another possibility is using alimetric scaling to grade relative strength and cardio performance. Alimetric scaling refers to the changes that take place within a species as size changes. It has been widely accepted by a significant number of Olympic lifting and CrossFit research communities as a proper way to scale performance. Additionally, it has been validated in a host of populations, including high-level football players, has solid theoretical support and seems to work well when comparing performances across different sized athletes. Furthermore, studies have shown that women can adapt to training the same way men can. This supports the conclusion that women can train to perform at the same fitness standards as men since few differences exist in the quality and responsiveness of men's and women's lean mass. This reinforces the idea that strength and endurance come with practice in our learned skills rather than innate abilities. To begin deconstructing the frailty myth, we recommend non-gender specific early physical education to start to give women a fair and equal chance later in professional military life. In conclusion, female frailty is a myth. We argue that while lower physical standards for female airmen may seem like a good thing, the success of all airmen, especially women, depends on successfully implementing equal and fair standards of physical rigor without accounting for one's gender. Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie and Elena. That was a lot of good talk for thoughts. And now we'll move over to the Defense Objective 1, assessing women's meaningful participation in the US Army Combat Arms Unit. And I'll hand the microphone over to Antonita. Thank you for having me on the panel. So I work as a Women's Peace and Security Advisor for the Peacekeeping Stability Operations Institute in the Army. I'm a contractor and my comments reflect my professional and research experience and do not reflect the views of DOD, the Army or PKSOI. So women have participated unofficially and officially in the defense of our nation and every American complex since the Revolutionary War. Restrictions on their meaningful participation have existed just as long. Official structural barriers, which included policies that ban women from serving jobs like the previous ground combat exclusion policy or policies that inadvertently disadvantage women. Unofficial barriers included sexist attitudes and beliefs and gender bias and harassment by fellow soldiers and leadership. The Department of Defense WPS plan, which we've talked about in this conference already, Defense Objective 1 talks about allowing for the meaningful participation of women across the development and management and employment of the joint force. It notes that meaningful participation is both critical mass and decision-making power through an organization structure. I see that more as an outcome of women being able to meaningfully participate in their day-to-day job that leads to more women staying in the military. So they will reach critical mass and eventually leadership positions. So to reach that outcome, we must eliminate those day-to-day barriers that women face to meaningful participation. In the IRC report, they noted that one of the biggest barriers, sexual violence is the leading barrier to women's meaningful participation in the military.  But before I go there, I'd like to say, combat arms jobs were open to women as a result of military necessity. It was a recognition of the reality in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fact that there was a huge capability gap on the ground without all male teams. And so the integration of women in combat arms jobs is also important in so far as meaningful participation because the ban on women being in combat arms jobs has long been seen as one of the most important barriers because most of the general officers or flag officers in leadership positions disproportionately come from combat arms branches. So moving on to the gender integration study prior to 2016 when women first went into the training pipeline for infantry and armor, training and doctrine command conducted a study called the gender integration study released in 2015. It identified five key barriers to successful integration which are up there on the slides. And in general can be equated to barriers to meaningful participation. So in 2016, when the first women in combat arms entered the infantry and armor training pipeline and went to for bending for iBullock and aBullock, an independent research team consisting of Dr. Megan McKenzie out of Simon Fraser University in Canada and retired colonel Dr. Ellen Herring currently with women in international security and myself assisting began collecting that data on the experiences of those first women officers. So it was 22 women officers, but infantry and armor and we followed them for five years. So a preliminary assessment of this data is I looked at this database to identify specifically barriers to meaningful participation. So in order of precedence, these are the preliminary findings. Number one by far is gender bias reflected in attitudes, beliefs and behavior by male soldiers. Number two, physical performance barriers and really physical preparation performance barriers which are still ongoing. Number three, reliance by the army units and male soldiers and leaders on women's emotional labor. So gender bias as a barrier was expected and identified by the GIS study as well as physical performance and preparation. Both of these factors are barriers still ongoing in infantry and armor that need to be overcome. However, for this presentation, I'll focus on talking about the last factor which is not really talked about and the army may not have anticipated. So what do I mean by reliance and women's emotional labor and why is it a barrier? So I'll talk about the leader's first policy which I do wanna say was rescinded finally in November of 2022, but it relied for the first five years of integration on women being a role model cadre. So the rule required that two women leaders be assigned to an infantry or armor unit first before the unit could accept junior enlisted women. But who were these leaders? Well, these leaders were brand new lieutenants. They were meant to teach men how to interact with junior enlisted women, help prevents sexual assaults, act as advisors to the junior enlisted women to help them navigate this immensely complex terrain of being the first to integrate combat arms units. And all of this while this junior lieutenants were themselves trying to navigate integration and also learning how to do their job as infantry and armor lieutenants. So real quickly, other examples of additional emotional labor the women are doing includes men of their units relying on the women to report incidents of harassment even though they themselves see the incidents, relying on women to ask needed questions during briefing so they don't have to ask the questions, turning to women to talk about emotionally stressful situations they're facing that they do not feel they can safely talk about to other men. So this is a barrier to women's meaningful participation because this task can be emotionally taxing to the women themselves, but it also takes a chunk of the time which they could be using to accomplish their military tasks and it affects their reputation because they're the ones asking the questions or bringing up the issues. Additionally, while creating a psychologically safe environment is really great for their units. This leadership style may be penalized in officer evaluation reports that may focus more on accomplishment of technical tasks. So these are questions that we need to be asking. I do wanna touch on a couple more barriers that have emerged in the research. A big one is that the women are under a microscope and I think that was obvious. It puts undue pressure on them to perform well but it also results at least according to the preliminary data. And what appears to women being scrutinized more for counseling or UCMJ than their male peers. And I'll give an example. So there is, I think on a certain regular basis officers gather to talk about high-risk soldiers, et cetera. And so one of the incidents that came out of the interviews was the leaders discussing the idea of informally counseling one of the enlisted women for what the chain of command viewed as promiscuity. But yet when the question was asked, are there other men in your unit who are just as promiscuous, it was like, yes. So why aren't you counseling them? And so this is an emerging barrier identified that really bears more scrutiny in the available data because everybody is watching this first women. Are this women facing more negative administrative actions like UCMJ that men would not get? I'm almost done. No time, so. Okay, great. So men, another of the barriers was men walking on eggshells around women. This was identified in the GIS study. But the women interviewed said that men were afraid of false, sharp accusations. So they avoid the women. This has both social and professional implications. The data highlighted especially often NCOs. So NCOs would not make corrections of the women which was not only detrimental to unit cohesion because the enlisted men were resentful but it was also very detrimental for the women's own professional development because you got private PFCs and they're trying to learn their job but then the NCOs are not correcting them because they feel they might be falsely accused. But on the flip side, women in combat arms especially enlisted women in this unit are facing sexual assault and harassment as reported by the women officers during the interviews.  The army at large continues to grapple with and so it's also present in this infantry and armor units. Finally, I would like to briefly highlight two more interesting preliminary findings and that's the concept of family support. In the army, we often say the spouses are the backbone of the army and the military structure counts on spouses being primarily wives who support their husbands and this is especially significant in combat arms but what happens when that spouse is male? What are the implications of that for both how the army does family outreach before the women themselves? And I'll just quickly say it's not in my remarks but let's talk about men who are wounded in combat arms traditionally we think of the caregiver as the female spouse and if somebody wants to ask me a question after this I'll go more into it but so what happened to an infantry and armor woman who's wounded in combat arms? So who will be their caregiver and will it be their male spouse? And so the other concept I will talk about before I close out is exclusionary inclusion. This term was identifying data out of the Israeli defense forces and it's also found in the preliminary research here in the United States that we've done. So I will give one example from the data it's an incident of enlisted infantry women being placed in the rear hatch positions of a striker. So I don't know how much you know about strikers is an infantry carrier vehicle, nine-man squad, two crews. So the rear hatch positions is the two soldiers observing. So typically these two rear hatch positions are reserved for soldiers on profile because when you dismount into an objective and you do a mission the two rear hatch positions stay in the vehicle. And so in this unit what was happening when they went to a training exercise the women were being put in the rear hatch positions and they were not being allowed to dismount and this was very they're moralizing for them because they joined to be in the infantry they want to do dismounting patrols. So that's another thing that's emerging in the data exclusionary inclusion that we need to look more into. So the army has made significant progress in removing institutional and structural barriers to women's meaningful participation within combat arms much progress remains to be made in regard to social, cultural, gender-based barriers. And so identifying barriers such as the ones I've talked about is the first step in order for women to meaningfully participate in combat arms we must understand the barriers they're facing day to day and discuss solutions. So the promise of meaningful participation for women which by the way why do we care about meaningful participation of women because it makes our units more effective. So in order for that to happen we have to look at these barriers, eliminate them so that can become a reality. I will leave with one positive preliminary finding the women officers who were most able to meaningfully participate in the roles. And in this context is they were able to actually do their jobs day today and be successful where the ones who reported having a great senior NCO either a platoon sergeant or a first sergeant who was accepting of the women in combat arms and worked with them not against them to ensure that the women officer who was the platoon leader or a company commander ensured the success of their unit. So thank you. Thank you Antionita. Wow, that was interesting to see the book when you produce the paper and we'll be looking forward to reading more about this. So our last but not least is Commander Butwell who will talk about how a cyberspace need more than nurse. The Florida source. Thanks Admiral. So as he said, I'm Commander Sarah Butwell. I'm a Navy Cryptologic Warfare officer and my career is focused on signals intelligence and cyberspace operations. I'm gonna talk about cyberspace and how military actions in cyberspace work better when planned and executed by a team than that lone hacker you might have seen in the movies. All right, so when I say the term hacker what do you picture? Is it someone like this or hoodie guy? Definitely this guy. And you can tell these guys were up to something. But how about her? She's operating a bomb and those were used to crack codes in World War II. This is Genevieve Feinstein. She wanted to be a math teacher but ended up working for the Army Signals Intelligence Service stationed at Arlington Hall outside DC. In 1940, she discovered patterns in the Japanese purple code that allowed her team to build a machine that decrypted Japanese government messages. With most able-bodied women going or men going forward to fight women filled combat support jobs back home. And by the end of the war over 5,700 civilians and 2,200 military personnel worked at Arlington Hall for the SIS including Ann Cara Christie there on the right an English major who eventually worked her way to become deputy director of the National Security Agency in 1980 the top civilian position there and a job only one other woman is subsequently held. Daddy Blum also worked at Arlington Hall in the NSA. She pioneered the use of computers and crypt analysis moving the NSA away from bombs and towards high performance computing. She coded in Fortran before it was publicly available and ran NSA's computer operations organization. And Elizabeth Smith Friedman here with her husband William she majored in English literature with a minor in applied sciences while also studying Latin, Greek and German. She and William studied cryptology at an early think tank and formed the core of the US code-breaking effort in World War I. William went on to run the SIS for the Army while Elizabeth worked for the Coast Guard when World War II kicked off her unit identified German spies in South America and exposed fascist coup plots and secret weapons deals between Germany and Argentina. This work of coding and decoding building machines and mapping radio networks and constructing the mathematical, repeatable frameworks underneath it all built the foundation of what is now cyberspace. And it used contributions from a wide range of people with different educational backgrounds pulled together to gain an information advantage and win the war against fascism. 80 years later, we've made some progress in opening computing to a wider swath of the population but while women have increased their share of degrees in a number of fields the number of women getting computer science degrees peaked in 1984 and is holding at about 21% today. Industry surveys say that women made up about 24% of the cybersecurity workforce last year. This is an industry that Bloomberg says had had 600,000 unfilled positions in the US last year. The Navy tracks fairly consistently with industry the information warfare community as a whole the officer community runs about 21% female and enlisted community about 23%. When you break down the enlisted specialties the cryptologic technician networks rating our cyber operators is 15% female. And that compares to cryptologic technician interpretive those guys who go and get intensive training in a foreign language and do analysis in intelligence, 35% female. So increases in female representation in law school, med school and college in general tracks with the sense that women tend to gravitate towards jobs that involve working with and helping other people. Computer science professor Carnegie Mellon found that women that left the program there reported feeling inadequate because they came in with less prior computer experience than men. And there was a sense that if you didn't work in school all day and then go home and code all night, you wouldn't be a real computer scientist. Some people have hobbies and friends and they should be able to code too. Colleges that established quality introductory classes find better retention in computer science programs in general and not just with women. Cyber security company Fortinet ran a project where they applied artificial intelligence to thousands of cybersecurity job ads and resumes. And they found that in ads for corporate chief information security officer positions 17 of the top 20 skills employers want are what they consider soft skills things like leadership, planning and communications and building relationships across organizational boundaries more so than tactical technical security skills. Shifting from business to the military we have similar need for technology operators and leaders and both the people that code all night and the people who want to work across stovepipes. And I've gotten this far without defining cyberspace. So I've got an abridged version from JP3Tech12 in the top bullet there. We think of cyberspace in three layers the physical network of equipment and cables and signals in a spectrum the logical network of codes and protocols and the cyber persona layer that digital representation of a user group of users. So my dad doesn't have his own Facebook page he uses my mom's and that's a thing to consider when engaging with that particular cyber persona.  So from an offensive perspective it's steps to gain access to and cause effects on someone else's network. From a defense for a defender it's what to look for to prevent that from happening. So this model works at the tactical level but it's missing some things when it comes to a joint operation. So that highly trained on that operator that hacker that he conducts reconnaissance he or she conducts reconnaissance against logical or physical infrastructure that an intelligence team has identified through any number of sources. Weaponization sure capability development requires a very technical skill set but someone needs to be able to explain that capability to the boss and explain that it complies with legal rules of engagement and that they've analyzed potential collateral effects and the risk associated.  It needs to get enriched with other intelligence and use to inform decisions and future operations. So the operator doesn't decide if that particular bit of cyber infrastructure is terrain we wanna establish persistence on that installation step, the leadership does that based on recommendations from the bigger team and the greater context of the effects we can generate from that position. The operator on the keyboard executes the fire but it's on the order and at the timing and tempo determined by the operational staff according to the plan. The plan built by a team that took the commander's intent analyzed the got approved objectives, analyzed the mission and the adversary, identified the effects likely to achieve those objectives, got targets approved, work with a fire cell to identify a cyber capability as the best weapon solution then synchronized it with actions in the air, sea, maritime and space domains and got execution approvals, all those things you're learning in JMO. That's a lot of information to process and cross organizational work and we're dealing with actions that may require the approval of the president or the sector. So you really need to do your homework at those diverse perspectives on that team to think through and explain how those actions on the network impact systems and the people who use them or rely on them because fundamentally warfare is about people. So yes, let's try to broaden the pipeline and encourage people who don't think they're technical to study computer science and let's get people who understand other cultures and languages and people who understand marketing and teach lawyers about data centers and cloud computing so that they don't fixate on physical locations and target review and find people who can take technical concepts and break them down to something even a pilot can understand and approve because we need a lot of different perspectives and talents to gain success in with and through cyberspace. Thank you. Thank you, Sarah. That was fantastic. And now it's up to you, the crew here to be fantastic and ask the right questions and the critical question that Sarah asked us to do earlier today. And it just reminds me of a presentation to see what is combat positions today in sort of the competitive world that we're all in. It's also interconnected. And I think these panels also show that there are cross-services reflections and learning that we all can take with us into our own services. And I think I saw on your faces that many of the points that was taken here was familiar to you. Isaac, you see some smiles here and there.


10. So the days passed, and the nights, and more days, and more nights. July, August, August, on and on and on. Strenuous, nerve-wracking, heart-breaking surgical days, broken meritably only by the pleasant, soft-worded greeting at the gate, or the practical, homely appeal of good food cooked with heart as well as hands, or the tingling, inciting, masculine consciousness of there being a woman's blush in the house. Strenuous, house-working, child-nursing, home-making domestic days, broken meritably only by the jaded, harsh word at the gate, the explosive criticism of food, the deadening, depressing, feminine consciousness of there being a man's vicious temper in the house.  Now and again in the late summer afternoons, the white linen nurse and the senior surgeon strolled together through the rainbow-colored garden, always and forever with the little crippled girl, the other woman's little crippled girl, tagging close behind them with her little sad, clanking leg. Now and again in the long sweet summer evenings, the white linen nurse and the senior surgeon sat on the clematis-shadowed porch together, always and forever with the little crippled girl, the other woman's little crippled girl, mocking them quarrelously from some vague upper window. Now and again across the mutually ghost-haunted chasm that separated them flashed the incontrovertible signal of sex and sense, as once, when a new intern grossly bungling, stepped to the hospital window with a colleague to watch the senior surgeon's car roll away as usual with its two feminine passengers. What makes the chief so stingy with that big handsome girl of his? Quarid the new intern a bit resentfully. He won't ever bring her into the hospital, won't ever ask any of us young chaps out to his house, and some of us come mighty near to being eligible too. Who's he saving her for anyway, a saint, a miracle worker, a millionaire medicine man? They don't exist, you know. I'm saving her for myself, snapped the senior surgeon most disconsertingly from the doorway. She, she happens to be my wife, not my daughter, thank you. When the senior surgeon went home that night, he carried a big bunch of magazines and a box of candy as large as his head, tucked, courtingly under his arm. Now and again across the chasm that separated them, flashed the uncontrovertible signal of mutual trust and appreciation, as when once, after a particularly violent vocal outburst on the senior surgeon's part, he sobered down very suddenly and said, Ray Mel Gregor, do you realize that in all the weeks we've been together, you've never once nagged me about my swearing. Not a word, not a single word. I'm not very used to words. Smiled the white linen nurse, hopefully. All I know how to nag with this is raw eggs, if we could only get those nerves of yours padded just once, sir, the swearing would get well of itself. In August the senior surgeon suggested sincerely that the house was much too big for the white linen nurse to run all alone, but conceded equally sincerely under the white linen nurse's vehement protest. That servant's, particularly new servant's, did creak considerably around a house, and that may be just for the present at least, until he finished his very nervous paper on brain tumors. Perhaps it would be better to stay just by ourselves. In September the white linen nurse wanted very much to go home to Nova Scotia to her sister's wedding, but the senior surgeon was trying a very complicated and worrisome new brace on the little girl's leg, and it didn't seem quite kind to go. In October she planned her trip all over again. She was going to take the little crippled girl with her this time, but with their trunks already packed and waiting in the hall, the senior surgeon came home from the hospital with a septic finger, and it didn't seem quite best to leave him. Well, how do you like being married now? Asked the senior surgeon a bit ironically in his work room that night, after the white linen nurse had stood for an hour with evil smelling washes and interminable bandages trying to fix that finger the precise particular way that he thought it ought to be fixed. Well, how do you like being married now? He insisted trenchantly.  A little bit wonly this time she smiled her pluck up into the senior surgeon's questioning face. Oh, I like it all right, sir. Oh, of course, sir, she confided thoughtfully. Oh, of course, sir, it isn't quite as fancy as being engaged or quite as free and easy as being single, but still she admitted with desperate honesty, but still there's a sort of a sort of a combination importance and and comfort about it, sir, like a like a velvet suit the second year, sir. Quizzed that all. Quizzed the senior surgeon bluntly.  In November the white linen nurse caught a bit of cold that pulled her down a little, but the senior surgeon didn't notice it especially among all the virulent ills he lived and worked with from day to day, and then when the cold disappeared Indian summer came like a reeking sweat after a chill, and the house was big, and the little crippled girl was pretty difficult to manage now and then, and the senior surgeon, no matter how hard he tried not to, did succeed somehow in creating more or less of a disturbance, at least every other day or two.  Oh, Father, come quick! Come quick! Peach has deaded herself, yelled the little girl's frantic voice. Just with his foot on the step of his car the senior surgeon heard the cry and came speeding back up the long walk.  Leave her alone! thundered the senior surgeon. Leave her alone, I say! Brusley he pushed the little girl aside and knelt to cradle his own ear against the white linen nurse's heart. Oh, it's all right! He growled and gathered the white linen nurse right up in his arms. She was startlingly lighter than he had supposed, and carried her up the stairs and put her to bed, like a child in the great sumptuous guest room, in a great sumptuous nest of all the best linens and blankets, with the little crippled girl subprintending the task with many hysterical suggestions and sharp staccato interruptions. For once in his life the senior surgeon did not stop to quarrel with his daughter.  Gazing downwardly at the laser-ruffled sleeve of her night-dress, the white linen nurse made her first public speech to the world at large. Who put me to bed? whispered the white linen nurse. Ecstatically the little crippled girl began to pound her fists on the footboard of the bed. Father did! she cried in unmistakable triumph. All the little hooks, all the little buttons, wasn't it cunning? The senior surgeon would hardly have been human if he hadn't glanced back suddenly over his shoulder at the white linen nurse's precipitously changing colour. Quite irrepressibly as he saw the red, red blood come surging home again into her cheeks, a little short, chuckling laugh escaped him. I guess you live now! he remarked dryly. Then because a senior surgeon can't stay home on the mere impulse of the moment from a great rushing hospital, just because one member of his household happens to faint perfectly innocently in the morning, he hurried on to his work again, and saved a little boy and lost a little girl, and mended a fractured thigh and eased a gunshot wound, and came dashing home at noon in one of his thousand-dollar hours to feel the white linen nurse's pulse, and broil her a bit of tenderloin steak with his own thousand-dollar hands, and then went dashing off again to do one major operation or another. Telephoned home once or twice during the afternoon to make sure that everything was all right, and finding that the white linen nurse was comfortably up and about again, went sprinting off fifty miles somewhere on a meningitis consultation, and came dragging home at last somewhere near midnight to a big black house brightened only by a single light in the kitchen where the white linen nurse went tiptoeing softly, from stove to pantry in deft preparation of an appetizing supper for him. Quite roughly again, without smile or appreciation, the senior surgeon took her by the shoulders and turned her out of the kitchen and started her up the stairs.  Are you an imbecile? He came back and called up the stairs to her just as she was disappearing from the upper landing. Then up and down, round and round, on and on and on, the senior surgeon began suddenly to pace again. Only for some unexplainable reason to the white linen nurse upstairs, his work room didn't seem quite large enough for his pacing this night. Along the broad piazza she heard his footsteps creak. Far far into the morning, lying warm and snug in her own little bed, she heard his footsteps crackling through the wet, leafed garden paths. He had the senior surgeon didn't look an atom-jaded or forlorn when he came down to breakfast the next morning.  Oh, Father, isn't it lovely to have my darling, darling peach all well again? Beamed the little crippled girl with unusual friendliness. Speaking of your darling peach, said the senior surgeon quite abruptly, speaking of your darling peach, I'm going to take her away with me today for a week or so. Eh? jumped the little crippled girl. What? What, sir? stammered the white linen nurse.  For a little trip he confided amably a little holiday. A trifle excitedly the white linen nurse lay down her knife and fork and stared at him, blue-eyed and wandering as a child. A holiday, she gasped. To a beach, you mean? Will there be a rollercoaster? I've never seen a rollercoaster. Eh? laughed the senior surgeon. Oh, I'm going to! I'm going to! Piped the little crippled girl. Most jerkily the senior surgeon pushed back his chair from the table and swallowed half a cup of coffee at one single gulp. Going three, you mean? He glowered at his little daughter. Going three? His comment, that in suit was distinctly rough as far as diction was concerned, but the facial expression of naffable peace that accompanied it would have made almost any phrase sound like a benediction. Not by a damned sight, beamed the senior surgeon. This little trip is just for Peach and me. But sir, fluttered the white linen nurse, her face was suddenly pinker than any rose that ever bloomed. With an impulse absolutely novel to him the senior surgeon turned and swung his little daughter very gently to his shoulder. Your aunt Agnes is coming to stay with you in just about ten minutes, he affirmed.  But Peach is so pleasant, wailed the little crippled girl. Peach is so pleasant, she began to scream and kick. So it seems, growled the senior surgeon, and she's dying of it. Tearfully the little girl wriggled down to the ground and hobbled around and thrust her fingertip into the white linen nurse's blushiest cheek. I don't want Peach to die, she admitted wordly, but I don't want anybody to take her away. The pony is very white, urged the senior surgeon with a diplomacy quite alien to him. Appruptly the little girl turned and faced him. What color is Aunt Agnes? She asked vehemently. Aunt Agnes is pretty white too, attested the senior surgeon. With a faintest possible tinge of superciliousness the little girl lifted her sharp chin a trifle higher. If it's just a perfectly plain white pony, she said, I'd rather have Peach. But if it's a white pony with black blots on it, and if it can pull a little cart, and if I can whip it with a little switch, and if it will eat sugar lumps out of my hand, and if its name is, is, beautiful pretty thing. Its name has always been beautiful pretty thing, I'm quite sure. She insisted the senior surgeon. Inadvertently as he spoke he reached out and put a hand very lightly on the white linen nurse's shoulder. Instantly into the little girl's suspicious face flushed a furiously uncontrollable flame of jealousy and resentment. Madly she turned upon her father.  She screamed. There is no white pony.  You're a, a drunk. You shan't have my darling Peach. And threw herself frenziedly into the white linen nurse's lap. Impatiently the senior surgeon disentangled the little clinging arms and raising the white linen nurse to her feet pushed her emphatically towards the hall. Go to my workroom, he said. Quickly I want to talk with you. A moment later he joined her there and shut and locked the door behind him. The previous night's loss of sleep showed plainly in his face now, and the hospital strain of the day before, and of the day before that, and of the day before that.  All the splendor was suddenly gone from him, all the radiance, all the exultant purpose. Well, Ray Malgreger, he grinned mirthlessly. The little kid is right, though. I certainly don't know where she got her information.  The pony's name is not yet a beautiful pretty thing. I am a drunk. I was drunk most of June. I am a robber.  Poof! said the white linen nurse. It would seem silly now, sir, to marry a boy. And I've been a beast to you, persisted as senior surgeon. From the very first day you belonged to me I've been a beast to you, venting brutally on your youth, on your sweetness, on your patience, all the work, the worry, the wear and tear, the abnormal strain and stress of my disordered days and years. And I've let my little girl vent also on you, all the pang and pain of her disordered days. And because in this great gloomy, rackety house it seemed suddenly like a miracle from heaven to have service that was soft-footed, gentle-handed, pleasant-hearted, I've let you shoulder all the hideous drudgery, the care, one horrid homely task after another piling up, up, up till you dropped in your tracks yesterday, still smiling. But I've got a good deal out of it, even so, sir. protested the white linen nurse. See, sir, she smiled. I've got real lines in my face now, like other women. I'm not a doll any more. I'm not a... yes, groaned the senior surgeon, and I might just as kindly have carved those lines with my knife. But I was going to make it all up to you, to-day. He hurried. I swear I was. Even in one short, little week I could have done it. You wouldn't have known me. I was going to take you away, just you and me. I would have been a saint. I swear I would. I would have given you such a great, wonderful, child-hearted holiday that you'd never dreamed of in all your unselfish life. A holiday. All you. You. You. You could have dug in the sand if you'd wanted to. God, I'd have dug in the sand if you'd wanted me to. And now it's all gone for me. All the will, all the sheer positive self-assurance that I could have carried the thing through. Absolutely selflessly. That little girl's sneering taunt. The ghost of her mother in that taunt. God. When anybody knocks you just in your decency, it doesn't harm you, especially.  I don't know exactly how. I'm nothing but a man again, now. Just a plain, everyday, greedy, covetous, physical man on the edge of a holiday, the first clean holiday in twenty years that he no longer dares to take. A little swayingly, the white linen nurse after standing weight from one foot to the other. I'm sorry, sir, said the white linen nurse. I'd like to have seen a roller coaster, sir. Just for an instant a gleam of laughter went brightening across a senior surgeon's brooding face and was gone again. Ray Malgreger, come here. He ordered quite sharply. Very softly, very glidingly, like the footfall of a person who has never known heels, the white linen nurse came forward swiftly and, sliding in cautiously between the senior surgeon and his desk, stood there with her back braced against the desk, her fingers straying idly up and down the edges of the desk, staring up into his face all readiness, all attention like a soldier awaiting further orders. So near was she that he could almost hear the velvet heartthrob of her, the little fluttering swallow, yet by some strange persistent aloofness of her, some determinate virginity, not a fold of her gown, not an edge, not a thread seemed to even so much as graze his knee, seemed to even so much as shadow his hand, lest its short circuit thereby the seething currents of their variant emotions. With extraordinary intentness for a moment the senior surgeon sat staring into the girl's eyes, the blue-blue eyes too full of childish questioning yet to flinch with either consciousness or embarrassment. After all, Ray MalGregor—he smiled at last faintly— after all, Ray MalGregor, heaven knows when I shall ever get another holiday. Yes, sir, said the white linen nurse. With apparent irrelevance he reached for his ivory paper cutter and began bending it dangerously between his adept fingers. How long have you been with me, Ray MalGregor? He asked quite abruptly.  Do you happen to remember the exact phrasing of my proposal of marriage to you? He asked shrewdly.  You called it general hard work for a family of two. A little grimly before her steady gaze, the senior surgeon's own eyes fell and rallied again almost instantly with a gaze as even and direct as hers. Well, he smiled. Through the whole four months I seem to have kept my part of the contract all right and held you merely as a drudge in my home. Have you then decided, once and for all time, whether you are going to stay on with us or whether you will give notice as other drudges have done? With a little backward droop of one shoulder the white linen nurse began to finger nervously at the desk behind her and turning halfway round as though to estimate what damage she was doing, exposed thus merely the profile of her pink face of her wide throat to the senior surgeon's questioning eyes. I shall never give notice, sir, fluttered the wide throat. Are you perfectly sure? insisted the senior surgeon. The pink in the white linen nurse's profiled cheek deepened a little. Perfectly sure, sir, attested the Carmine lips. Like the crack of a pistol the senior surgeon snapped the ivory paper cutter in two. All right, then, he said, Raymal Gregor, look at me. Don't take your eyes from mine, I say. Raymal Gregor, if I should decide in my own mind here and now that it was best for you as well as for me that you should come away with me now for this week not as my guest as I had planned, but as my wife even if you were not quite ready for it in your heart, even if you were not yet remotely ready for it, would you come because I told you to come?  Yes, sir, whispered the white linen nurse. Abruptly the senior surgeon pushed back his chair from the desk and stood up. The important decision once made no further finessing of words seemed either necessary or dignified to him.  He ordered, I want to get away from here within half an hour. But before the girl had half-crossed the room he called to her suddenly. His whole bearing and manner miraculously changed and his face in that moment as haggard as if a whole lifetime struggle was packed into it. Raymel Greger. He drawled mockingly. This thing shall be barred her way through to the end with the credit always on your side of the account. In exchange for the gift of yourself, your wonderful self and the trust that goes with it I will give you, God help me, the ugliest thing in my life. And God knows I have broken faith with myself once or twice, never have I broken my word to another. From now on, in token of your trust in me for whatever the bitter gift is worth to you, as long as you stay with me, my junes shall be yours to do with as you please. What, sir? gasped the white linen nurse. What, sir? Softly, almost stealthily, she was half-way back across the room to him when she stopped suddenly and threw out her arms with a gesture of appeal and defiance. All the same, sir. She cried passionately. All the same, sir. The place is too hard for the small pay I get. Oh, I will do what I promised. She attested with increasing passion. I will never leave you. And I will, mother, your little girl.  And I will be to you whatever you wish. And I will never flinch from any hardship you impose on me, nor whine over any pain. On and on and on all my days, all my years, till I drop in my tracks again and die, as you say, still smiling. All the same. She reiterated wildly. The place is too hard. It always was too hard. It always will be too hard for such small pay. For such small pay? gasped the senior surgeon. Around his heart a horrid, clammy chill began to settle. Sickeningly through his brain a dozen recent financial transactions began to rehearse themselves.  He said a bit brokenly. You mean that I haven't been generous enough with you? Yes, sir. Faltered the white linen nurse. All the storm and passion died suddenly from her, leaving her just a frightened girl again, flushing pink, white, pink, white, pink, white, before the senior surgeon scathing stare. One step, two steps, three she advanced towards him. I mean, sir.  I couldn't expect you to love me, sir. I couldn't even dream of your loving me. But I do think you might like me just a little bit with your heart. What? flushed the senior surgeon. What? Wickedly bang against the window pane sounded the little crippled girl's knuckled fists. Darkly against the window pane squashed the little crippled girl's staring face. Father! screamed the shrill voice.  Is it on Dagnus? With a totally unexpected laugh, with a totally unexpected desire to laugh, the senior surgeon strode across the room and unlocked his door. Even then, his lips against the white linen nurse's ear made just a whisper, not a kiss. God bless you. Hurry! He said, And let's get out of here before any telephone message catches me. Then almost calmly he walked out on the piazza and greeted his sister-in-law. Hello, Agnes. He said, Hello, yourself. Smiled his sister-in-law. How's everything? He inquired politely. How's everything with you? Parried his sister-in-law. I'd leave for a few moments the senior surgeon threw out stray crumbs of thought to feed the conversation. While smilingly all the while from her luxuriant East Indian chair, his sister-in-law sat studying the general situation. The senior surgeon's sister-in-law was always studying something. Last year it was archaeology. The year before, basketry. This year it happened to be eugenics or something funny like that. Next year again it might be book-binding.  She queried banteringly. The girls ate darling, Linda Cut. I haven't had as much sport in a long time as I had that afternoon last June when I came in my best-calling clothes and helped her paint the kitchen woodwork. And I had come prepared to be a bit nasty, Linda Cut.  She seems to have a way. Smile, the senior surgeon. She seems to have a way of disarming people's unpleasant intentions. A trifle quizzically for an instant the woman turned her face to the senior surgeons. It was a worldly face. A cold-featured, absolutely worldly face with a surprisingly humorous mouth that warmed her nature just about as cheerfully and just about as effectually as one open fireplace warms a whole house. Nevertheless, one often achieved much comfort by keeping clothes to Aunt Agnes's humorous mouth, for Aunt Agnes knew a thing or two. Aunt Agnes did. And the things that she made a point of knowing were conscientiously amiable. Why, Linda Cutfaber? She rallied him now. Why, you're as nervous as a schoolboy. Why, I believe. I believe that you're going courting. More opportunity than any man could have dared to hope, the white linen nurse appeared suddenly on the scene in her little blue-surge wedding suit with her travelling case in her hand. With a gasp of relief the senior surgeon took her case and his own and went on down the path to his car and his chauffeur leaving the two women temporarily alone. When he returned to the piazza the woman of the world and the girl not at all of the world were bidding each other a really affectionate goodbye and the woman's face looked suddenly just a little bit old and girls' cheeks were most inordinately blooming. In unmistakable friendliness his sister-in-law extended her hand to him. Goodbye, Linda Cut old man, she said, and good luck to you. A little slyly out of her shrewd grey eyes she glanced up sideways at him. You've got the devils on temper, Linda Cut dear. She teased. And two or three other vices probably, and if rumour speaks the truth you mock more than once in your life.  To what woman do you particularly refer? mocked the senior surgeon impatiently. Quite brazenly to her own heart which never yet apparently had stirred the laces that enshrined it his sister-in-law pointed with persistent banter. Maybe I refer to myself, she laughed, and maybe to the only other lady present. Oh! gasped the white linen nurse. You do me much honour, Agnes, bowed the senior surgeon. Quite resolutely he held his gaze from following the white linen nurses quickly averted face. A little oddly for an instant the older woman's glance hung on his. More honour perhaps than you think, Lendicott Faber, she said and kept right on smiling. Eh? jerked the senior surgeon. Restively he turned to the white linen nurse. Very flushingly on the steps the white linen nurse nailed arguing with a little crippled girl. Your father and I are going away, she pleaded. Won't you please kiss us goodbye? I've only got one kiss. Socked the little crippled girl. Give it to your father, pleaded the white linen nurse. Amazingly all in a second the ugliness vanished from the little face.  Beautiful father! She cried, I kissed your feet. Abruptly the senior surgeon plunged from the step and started down the walk. His cheekbones were quite crimson. Two or three rods behind him the white linen nurse followed falteringly. Once she stopped to pick up a tiny stick or a stone and once she dallied to straighten out a snarled spray of red and brown woodbine. Missing the sound or the shadow of her the senior surgeon turned suddenly to wait. So startled was she by his intentness, so flustered, so frightened that just for an instant the senior surgeon thought that she was going to wheel in her tracks and bolt madly back to the house.  With his foot already half lifted to the step the senior surgeon turned abruptly round and lifted his hat and stood staring back bare-headed for some unexplainable reason at the two silent figures on the piazza. Ray, he said perplexedly, Ray I don't seem to know just why but somehow I'd like to have you kiss your hand to Aunt Agnes. Obediently the white linen nurse withdrew her fingers from his and wafted two kisses one to Aunt Agnes and one to the little crippled girl. Then the white linen nurse and the senior surgeon climbed up into the tunnel of the car where they had never, never sat alone before and the senior surgeon gave a curt order to his men and the big car started off again into interminable spaces. Mutually without a word, without a glanced passing between them the senior surgeon held out his hand to her once more as though the absence of her hand in his was suddenly a lonesomeness not to be endured again while life lasted. Whiz, whiz, whiz. Whurr, whurr, whurr. The ribbony road began to roll up again on that hidden spool under the car. When the chauffeur's mind seemed sufficiently absorbed in speed and sound the senior surgeon bent down a little mockingly and mumbled his lips inarticulately at the white linen nurse. See, he laughed, I've got a text too to keep my courage up. Of course you look like an angel. He teased closer and closer to her flaming face.   Oh, don't talk, sir. She whispered, Oh, don't talk, sir, just listen. Listen, listen to what laughed the senior surgeon. From under the heavy lashes that shadowed the flaming cheeks the soul of the girl who was to be his peered up at the soul of the man who was to be hers and saluted what she saw. Oh, my heart, sir, whispered the white linen nurse.


It's been kind of a roller coaster, I guess I would say, a lot of grief, a lot of sadness and then a lot of sublimating that to something productive. Young people from all over the world are marching today, their students from all over the country are demanding action for their schools and people are listening for the first time in a long time. All this came together to show that, you know, we know what we're talking about and we're aware of what's going on in the world and we know that we can make a change. This is a show of community and unity that we're together under a single cause and that this many people are unhappy and if this many people are unhappy then something's wrong. This is Olivia for Uproxx. We're here at the March for Our Lives. In the aftermath of the Parkland School shooting, we wanted to come here and see what protesters had to say. I'm here to perform my song, Peace, Love and Unity and really speak to the people and support a great cause, you know, be a part of the voice. We're here today just because this really could have happened to any one of us and it's kind of a really scary reality and I think we're all tired of just seeing politicians not making real change. I think today is a really important moment for students to know that they're not alone, that all over this country there's people standing beside them, they have adult allies, they have student allies. Gemma, why are you marching today? We're asking the question how many more innocent lives need to be lost before people will realize that weapons of war have no place in our society. I think that coming here and supporting this is really important because us kids needed to show that we're the ones who are affected by this and we're the ones who need to take charge. It's so cool that everyone's here, especially young people our age, who maybe couldn't have had a voice before but now are showing that they do have a voice and we can use it. My dream for this in the next upcoming year is that it sticks and that people continue to talk about it every day until meaningful change happens.  It's going to be a very long process and there's time to jump in if people want to make a change.