At first when I read the story of the Fort Hood massacre I was shocked and concerned on a personal level. The husband served at Fort Hood before coming to Fort Bragg, we still own a house in the neighboring town of Kileen and his unit in Iraq is attached to a Calvary unit out of Hood. This is a little too close to home for me so I was watching the details very closely. Then the story broke of officer Kimberly Munley who reacted very quickly, responding to the call and eventually shooting Major Hassan several times while being shot herself. After reading more than one article citing Munley’s actions as the sole cause of the end of the gunman’s rampage I was prepared to believe that this was a case of one female officer using her training to stop a horrific tragedy from becoming even more deadly. Then I read the New York Times’ account
The NY Times story read much like every other story, detailing what was known of the gunman’s actions, the casualties and his eventual wounding by officer Munley. What the Times article said that none of the other articles mentioned was that Munley had a partner and that the partner might also have shot at Hassan. That’s it. That’s all that was written about officer Munley’s partner. Well, they did mention his name, that and the fact that he might also have shot at Maj. Hassan. Um, isn’t that kind of a big deal? We have an entire story about the bravery and history of Munley, but no mention of her partner aside from a one sentence introduction of his name. If this partner might have also shot Hassan and he was with Munley when she responded to the call then doesn’t that meant that THEY responded to the call?
I’m still not sure to the extent that this randomly mentioned partner might have played in the shooting, but I am struck by what is not being said. The female officer is a big story. A heroic female cop rushing to the scene, bravely taking on a mass murderer mid-rampage . . . but is that really the way it happened? More likely, Munley and her partner heard the call over their radio and being in the near vicinity decided to respond to it together. Pulling up to the scene both officers would have seen the same situation and reacted. Of the four shots that hit Hassan, how many were Munley’s and how many her partner’s? The news stories aren’t talking about that. In fact, in four separate stories I’ve read about the injuries to Hassan, only one mentioned the partner and his firing shots. How do we know all four shots weren’t his? I guess in our society we are so accustomed to male centric violence – either the criminal or the hero – that a woman’s involvement is so notable as to hijack a story. We saw this in the case of Jessica Lynch. In that scenario not only were there also men captured and wounded, but there was another woman, a black woman named Shoshana Johnson who was shot and captured.
For whatever reason our society is enamored with the idea of white women as the victim and hero to the extent that we are willing to ignore all other circumstances save our majestic white heroine. What officer Munley did, was very clearly the actions of a hero, but if she were with a partner then that glory should also be extended to him. Only when we stop exalting the heroics of the white female above others will we finally be free of the prejudice such heralding extols. Why should she be any more heroic than her male partner or a black female in similar circumstances? It is by our very attempt to point out the extraordinary, in the singling out those whom we deem the unlikeliest of heroes, that makes us sexist. Why shouldn’t a female officer or soldier react the same way a man would be expected to act? Why is Munley’s partner’s heroics less noteworthy than her own? Because she is a woman? We do Munley an injustice by suggesting her actions are heroic because she is female. Her actions, and those of her partner (should he actually exist) are heroic because of the actions themselves, not because of who it was that reacted.
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