SAN DIEGO -- There's something deeply disturbing and depressing about getting contacted by the same brand of journalist over and over again.

Whenever someone from any media outlet is referred to me, the assumption typically insists that my military-related trauma included MST. It certainly did not.

Then I have to go into the spiel that men are raped and harassed as well, and that women experience all sorts of trauma (just like men), to include combat and racial persecution - just to name a few.

But as soon as the topic of racial persecution is brought up, the brakes squeal and that eager vehicle racing toward a story comes to a dead stop. The reporter I spoke with stated that she just didn't want to cover something because it was "en vogue" but she was just finding out about the topic of MST and wanted to cover it. As a journalist, has she been living under a ****ing rock?

If someone in her profession has missed all the coverage, and oh, I don't know, that Academy Award-nominated documentary called "The Invisible War", and everything that Panayiota Bertzikis, BriGette McCoy, Kate Weber, Congresswoman Jackie Speier, Kirsten Gillibrand, and more have been doing to address the issues, then I don't know if I could really be of any assistance.



Iraq war veteran Eli Painted Crow on issues affecting Native veterans

Once again, the issue of racism in the US or its military is just not "en vogue" and I don't foresee that changing any time soon. But I won't back down from talking about it so long as it still makes others squeamish. And does one not know how much they might be needling an issue that has not seen any justice and again, turn away, and reignite that same feeling of abandonment and betrayal by one's supposed compatriots?

Bottom line: If you're a journalist, a blogger, or anyone who thinks they give a shit enough to report what's not being covered, stop yoking your work in service of State-influenced media and be a ****ing thinking individual and do your JOB.