MRFF Advisory Board Member retired USAF Brig. Gen. Marty France on Substack: “The Threat of Christian Bias In The Military: My Experience Over the Last 47 Years With Christian Nationalism and Sexism, Among Other Biases”

From December 2024
“When you hit 50, and you haven’t had children, you’re going to regret it. You have mis-aligned priorities. I know that’s hard to hear. A career, especially for a woman, is not as important as a family.”
The above quote isn’t from 1955 or 1975 or not even 1995, but December of 2024. And, it was a public post by a (now former) friend, retired officer, male of course, to an active-duty officer on HER social media feed. It stood out among all of the other posts that were expressing admiration and envy for the female officer because of some of her recent travels to magical and inspirational places, peripherally related to her most recent assignment. What’s even more shocking is that the responding misogynist does not (militarily) outrank his target and that the original poster is easily one of the most talented, professional, and high-achieving military officers I’ve known in my 47 years of involvement with the US military—male or female.
He then takes the conversation off-line to DMs where he doubles down on his condescending, patriarchal stance with the following:
“You have a serious issue. I know you well enough and you have screwed up, DARLIN‘ [emphasis added]. You have a very limited time to fix your priorities. Good vibes are not in order at this point. Figure it out, XXXXXXX (rank redacted, but it’s superior to his retired grade). You need to actively create the future, and you’re not doing that. If you can’t create, adopt. Do something. You, as a woman, do have a different role than I do, believe it or not.”
She forwarded this exchange to me shocked that a former friend and colleague would feel empowered to not only publicly denigrate her for her professional and personal choices and then for exacerbating the situation with his series of DM lectures. She wanted not only my advice, but primarily to demonstrate to me that “they“ are still out there—the sexists and Christian Nationalists that do not believe in equality of opportunity and are still actively seeking to impose archaic gender roles on members of the active-duty service.
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Don’t send me any more mail.
Edward, did you just out yourself?
Nationalist Christians suffer from a lack of imagination. To them if you have a womb that is the totality of your identity.
This mindset ignores all the women in many cultures who were mothers, warriors, and wives, sometimes all at the same time. It also ignores the bald fact that some wombs are more equal than others.
To say anyones achievements only count if they give birth… To discount all one has achieved to better life for all, it takes my breath away.
I’m not a birth mom and any potential children of mine are very grateful (using the NatC’s logic of kids in heaven waiting to be born). My genes suck and it’s certain any kids popping out of me would have had to live with the same genetically based mental illnesses and physical limitations that plague me today. For Pete’s sake! I live with suicidal ideation; not something I’d wish on my enemy let alone a human I create.
The world as I see it has never been black/white, instead it’s grey in all its shades and intensities. It behooves us to honor however a human chooses to manifest their gifts ie having kids, dedicating their energies to a career or if they are endowed with more energy than I can imagine, both.
We The People have so much work to do and it starts now by challenging the limiting thinking of those stuck in the past. Here/now it’s all hands on deck, one conversation at a time. Good luck kids, you’ve got this.