Life’s splendid purpose is to find where you fit,
where you can be of maximum service. The road there, can be a trudge.
When you embark on your journey to fulfill your dreams, you cannot know the height of the mountains or the deep valleys you will cross to get there, yet you must trudge on to find and live your purpose. May healing and joy follow you.
Life at Camp chronicles the often harrowing and all-too-common stories of women in the military and offers recommendations for change at the national, state, commander, and individual levels.
Author Thomas Keith's 5 Star Review
“Doris Sumner, a 36-year veteran of the Vermont Army National Guard, has composed a harrowing and candid page-turner that takes readers inside the good ol’ boy network of the military where victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault have to fight for justice and often come up empty. But more than this, Sumner explains why the military can and should become a template for gender equality everywhere. Long considered to be a male-exclusive domain where bro behaviors were and are still common, Sumner offers a roadmap on how to get the U.S. military into the 21st century and beyond by treating women with the respect and professionalism they deserve. But further, “Life at Camp” explicates how the present environment typified by male-centric chauvinism and turning a blind eye to sexual misconduct hurts military readiness. The good news is that there is reason to be optimistic about the future. This book should be standard reading for everyone in the military as well anyone who cares deeply about the equal treatment of women and who would like to see the U.S. military take the lead in modeling to the world how a fair, efficient, and capable military should look. In the end, “Life at Camp” explains why creating a gender-equal military helps women, men, and our nation! My highest recommendation!” workplace harassment diversity and inclusion
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A glance inside the book
........Alcoholism and codependency issues followed me as I navigated my eventual career in the Vermont National Guard as a State Equal Employment Manager. Processing discrimination cases on the basis of sex, I became acutely aware of the sexist world we all lived in. The pain from my own experiences with sexism was the driving force behind attempting to combat sexism in the military, a daunting objective. The story of my trudge to combat sexism is the story of anyone who uses their pain to make a difference, and eventually finds gratitude for the journey and peace knowing you tried.
‘Life at Camp: Combating the Sexism We Tolerate and why the military should take the lead’ tells the story of a National Guard Equal Opportunity & Diversity Manager who, over time, recognized a pattern of military culture—androcentrism—and spent the later part of her 36-year military career challenging the bias that impedes gender equality, strategic objectives, and response programs. This is not another memoir of a personal account, instead it is the story told by the collector of painful humiliations. I describe the broken process that fails to hold violators accountable for sex-based discrimination in a way that will support cultural change, thus allowing the spectrum of harm to pave the way for more violent sex-based attacks.
