Massad Ayoob, Feminist
I am an unlikely feminist, but a feminist nonetheless. I have knowingly risked my career more than once to testify for women, in a world where I was a firearms instructor dependent on cops coming to me for training and I was testifying against police departments that wrongfully fired female officers for not “qualifying” with their department’s male-oriented guns, holsters, and shooting techniques. When I testified against the FBI in 1980 for the women in the class action suit of Christine Hansen, et. al. V. Federal Bureau of Investigation, I was told it would be the kiss of death to my career. So be it. The women were right and the Bureau was wrong, and I couldn’t have looked my then three-year-old first-born daughter in the face had I not gone there and spoke the truth.
I testified. The court listened. The court found in favor of the women, and the Bureau was ordered to “revise and update its obsolete and sexist firearms training.” The Bureau’s sweeping revisions followed in 1981, bringing them solidly into the mid-1960s, but by the Year 2000 they were back at the cutting edge for the first time in half a century. Some of the old heads still hate me for it. Tough ____ (you supply the word).
I recommend that all of my friends go and read the article.