You will never be good enough to belong

Pete Hegseth and the role of women in the military and public life

Two hours into Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing to serve as Donald Trump’s secretary of defense, Sen. Joni Ernst asked him whether he would support women in the military continuing to serve in combat roles.

Hegseth has stated repeatedly and unequivocally that he does not believe women should serve in combat roles in the military. As recently as November 7, on a podcast hosted by Shawn Ryan, Hegseth said, “I’m straight-up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated.”

In response to Ernst’s question, Hegseth stated. “Yes, women will have access to ground combat roles … given the standards remain high. And we’ll have a review to ensure the standards have not been eroded in any one of these cases.”

Later, Hegseth stated that as secretary of defense, he’d review those standards to ensure they hadn’t been changed to meet quotas.

That line of questioning allowed The Hill to declare, “Hegseth tells Ernst he would support women in combat roles if confirmed.”

Later, when questioned by Sen. Elizabeth Warren about his position on women in combat roles, he defaulted to that claim, caveating that he supports women in combat as long as they meet the standards. Unlike Ernst, Warren wasn’t buying it, She repeated his own words back to him — “I’m straight-up just saying we should not have women in combat roles” — and he stumbled for an answer.

Hegseth hasn’t changed his position. He doesn’t support women serving in combat roles. His answer is akin to the stepmother in the fairy tale telling Cinderella she can go to the ball if she gets all her work done. But the work is never done. The bar continues to be raised. In Hegseth’s mind, even if and when women overcome the highest standards, they won’t belong and they don’t belong.

During the entirety of the hearing, Republican senators and Hegseth posited that “DEI” and “woke” are the real enemies of the state. A focus on equity and inclusion has diminished the military. America needs to return to a “warrior ethos” and to focus on “lethality.” In their minds, the military’s standards have eroded under Democratic leadership. And the presence of women, minorities, and LGBTQ people in the military is evidence of how our mighty country has fallen.

The reality is that it’s men who have had a hard time meeting Army recruitment standards. A Military.com report this month states that the “yearslong Army recruiting slump was centered around men, while female recruiting numbers have remained relatively strong. The numbers also point to young women as an increasingly vital recruiting pool, especially as young men are struggling to meet the Army's eligibility requirements.”

It’s not that the Army has been actively recruiting women. Army recruiting efforts haven’t changed much at all. But women are less likely to have criminal records and more likely to have college degrees, both of which can be key aspects of eligibility. The Military.com article goes on to state, “The Army's biggest recruiting challenge isn't just convincing men to sign up — it's finding eligible ones. Academic standards have become a major barrier for recruits, with a significant portion failing to meet the minimum requirements for enlistment.”

The presence of women in combat roles has nothing to do with falling standards; rather, it has everything to do with men failing to meet those standards.

And in so many ways, Hegseth is the perfect vehicle for this righteous male grievance.

Hegseth isn’t qualified for the role to which he feels entitled. But during the hearing, his lack of qualifications became an asset in the eyes of Republican senators, and to Hegseth himself, who argued that his lack of a background working for places like “Lockheed Martin” meant that he was independent. Even the allegations of sexual assault (which Hegseth has denied) and his admitted adultery became evidence of his character. Sen. Eric Schmitt cited Hegseth’s infidelity as evidence of his forgiveness and faith in the eyes of God. Sen. Tim Sheehy, who lied about his own military service, pointed to the allegations against Hegseth — including accusations that he’s been drunk on the job — not as disqualifying but as evidence of the liberal plot to persecute a good man. One, he noted, he could identify with.

Even less helpfully, Sen. Markwayne Mullin angrily asked the room full of senators who among them didn’t know a senator or two who has shown up to the job drunk.

But the message among Republicans was support for a man whom they see as similar to themselves — falsely accused, belittled and shamed by snobby DEI hires who know nothing of warrior ethos. And no, it doesn’t matter that Sen. Tammy Duckworth lost her legs in service to her country, or that Sen. Elissa Slotkin served in the CIA, it doesn’t matter how high a bar they cleared to serve their countries and sit in that room — the message was they didn’t belong.

During the hearing, Breitbart, Fox News, and conservatives on X already began creating its narrative as that of Hegseth, the war-weary hero, standing strong in the face of screaming liberal shrews.

It’s the narrative that will stick. It’s easier for the American imagination to hate a qualified woman than it is to hate an unqualified man.

And that’s what the undercurrent of the hearing was: Women, people who are gay or trans, people of color have no right to be in men’s spaces. Their presence is not evidence of their capability but the feminization of America, a softening, a weakening, a moral rot.

It doesn’t matter that men are increasingly not qualified for these roles; they’re entitled to them, while everyone else has to work and work and work to be there.

And it’s not just the military. This week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg voiced a similar sentiment in an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast, arguing that companies need more “masculine energy,” and saying, “I think a lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered. Masculine energy is good, and obviously, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it. I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.”

This is what the election was about. This is why Trump will never back down on Hegseth. This is the fight of the next four years: male grievance, resentment and a sense of entitlement to the things women and minorities have and the spaces they worked hard to occupy. It’s not enough for Trump to win; women must be punished for their ascension, their qualifications, their independence.

The rebranding of women’s roles as trad wives and soft girls is no coincidence. Our voices and experiences are the “anonymous smears” that beleaguered men have had to endure.

And it’s significant that Ernst — a woman who served in the military and who is a Republican — was the vehicle for Hegseth’s dodge on the question of women in combat roles. Ernst had initially seemed skeptical of Hegseth’s nomination, but caved to the pressures of her party and the not even thinly veiled threats that she’d be primaried if she didn’t get in line.

She provided the human body shield for this mediocre man to ascend. A mouthpiece for an agenda that has no room for her, except as a mollifying agent. Maybe she wanted to. Maybe she felt forced. The women of the Trump administration are there of their own volition, but they are still being used to shield men from the consequences of creating a government determined to punish women; determined to punish people of color.

And as bleak as it is, the reason this backlash is happening is that progress is happening. Because we had the protests for racial justice of 2020; because the #MeToo movement did expose the realities of gendered power; because women marched against Trump in 2017 and were elected in droves in 2018.

The spectacle of the hearing was supposed to reassert the norm; to remind women to stay silent and return to the maintenance of men and their good reputations. And it was a reminder that we will never be good enough to earn through merit the spaces where men feel entitled to exist.