Candidate’s book has controversy
Van Orden challenging Ron Kind in 3rd District
MADISON - A retired Navy SEAL challenging a longtime Democratic congressman in western Wisconsin bragged in a 2015 book about revealing a male lieutenant’s enlarged scrotum to unsuspecting female officers.
Derrick Van Orden, a Republican from Hager City running for a seat in the third congressional district, wrote about the incident in “Book of Man: A Navy SEAL’s Guide to the Lost Art of Manhood.”
Van Orden says he was providing medical instruction to two officers whom he refers to as “cute girls” in his book. Democratic U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, who is being challenged by Van Orden, calls the behavior sexual harassment.
The book offers readers lessons from his 26-year career as a SEAL, about selfreliance and dependability, and skills through the lens of Van Orden’s view of the roles men should play in society.
“Teaching you how to light a campfire, mix a drink, and handle a terrorist” is the book’s tagline.
In the book, Van Orden writes about a five-day reconnaissance training mission during which he and other SEALS had to dig holes and burrow out to create “rabbit holes” among bushes and poison oak, which caused breathing problems and swelling — including on testicles.
Two men were removed from the training mission because they couldn’t breathe, he wrote. Van Orden’s lieutenant was experiencing similar problems and his testicles had swelled to the “size of a cantaloupe,” but refused Van Orden’s suggestion to leave because of the poison oak’s health effects on his ability to lead the group.
“No matter what I said, he refused to be evacuated from the field because he thought that was showing leadership,”
Van Orden wrote. “If you are slowing people down, or in this case actually retarding the movement, then you are no longer leading.”
After the training mission was over, he and the lieutenant traveled to Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego to get treatment, he wrote. The lieutenant was given a towel to put between his legs.
“Here’s this lieutenant sitting behind a little curtain, spread eagle, (scrotum) huge as a cantaloupe, and his eyes swollen nearly shut,” Van Orden wrote. “That’s when I spotted two ensigns, who happened to be young girls in their early twenties.”
“‘Excuse me,’ I said to the two cute girls, approaching them. ‘Could I ask you something’”
“‘Sure,’ one of them answered.”
“After walking them over to the outside of the lieutenant’s location, I whipped the curtain back. ‘Have you ever seen anything like this?’ I asked. They gasped in horror as they saw the LT in all of his glory. I’m sure they never wanted to have anything to do with a man ever again.”
Van Orden declined to be interviewed but said in a statement he was “instructing two junior Medical Corps officers in recognition and treatment for an advanced case of contact dermatitis.”
“I discussed the treatment modalities used to approach the problem set and the pharmacological interventions utilized to ensure that the SEAL officer could maintain a patent airway,” said Van Orden, who is trained as a medic.
Van Orden did not describe the women as medical officers in the book.
Kind calls incident sexual harassment
Kind called the episode sexual harassment. “His sexual harassment detailed in his book is not something to brag about, it’s something to be condemned,” Kind said in a statement. “It’s outrageous and wrong. These aren’t the values I was raised with here in Wisconsin and it’s not how my wife and I raised our two sons to treat others. This is not the behavior of someone who should be representing Wisconsin in Congress.”
Van Orden said Kind was purposefully mischaracterizing the incident.
“Unfortunately, we are used to Ron Kind lying for his own personal political gain just like he did to the sheriffs of western Wisconsin when he said he had their backs,” Van Orden said, referring to a bill Kind voted to pass in June that would, among other measures, eliminate qualified immunity for law enforcement officers. “His characterization of the story in my book is the latest example of a desperate career politician saying anything to cling to power.”
Ellen Haring, a retired Army colonel, West Point graduate, and professor at Georgetown University who specializes in research focused on women and gender in the military, said if the female ensigns were not medical staff the behavior would have constituted sexual harassment.
“If they happened to be two random women who happened to be there, that would be sexual harassment. The way he describes doing it is ignorant but I wouldn’t call it sexual harassment,” if the officers were medical staff as Van Orden says, Haring said. “Either way it’s immature, childish male behavior.”
Haring said referring to the officers, who were his superiors, as “cute girls” is problematic.
“That’s ridiculously demeaning,” Haring said. “He’s an enlisted Navy SEAL, who is he to call medical staff, women officers, ‘cute girls’? That’s a problem for me.”
Van Orden published the 230-page book after retiring from the U.S. Navy in 2014. It includes lessons typically thought to be bestowed to sons from fathers, and skills typically honed in Boy Scouts, like how to shoot a gun, how to make a fist, how to catch a fish, and how to tie a knot. Other chapters are aimed at more basic skills, like how to do laundry, how to polish shoes, how to sew a button, and how to kiss a girl.
In a 2015 interview about the book, Van Orden said a key moment that would prove consequential in his decision to write the book came during a training exercise during which he asked five SEALS to start a fire but none knew how.
“They just didn’t know how to do it because they’re city kids,” Van Orden said. “That started me thinking and paying attention that holy smokes, the world has changed and my country has changed.”
Van Orden said it was during his grandparents’ era when the change began, when “the American male left the farm and really became more urbanized and that’s where we forgot how to do things.”
The book jacket says the stories are “for young boys who want to be a man; adult males who are at heart young boys, but who want to grow up and be a man; women and girls who want an actual man; and fathers who want their daughters to know how to handle a man.”
Van Orden writes in the first chapter that the book may seem harsh, but it’s by design.
“The world perceives Americans as soft and spoiled, and, unfortunately, I find this to be true more often than not,” he wrote. “I think that we can and should be better than we are, and this is what I am choosing to do about it.”
He also wrote he won’t entertain a discussion of how this book “can be construed as misogynistic,” noting he was raised by a single mother.
“I love my mother dearly and respect her as a human being,” he wrote. “She is, in fact, one of the better fathers a guy could have.”
Van Orden is challenging Kind at a time when Republicans see a chance to finally unseat the 12-term La Crosse Democrat. The top House GOP super PAC announced it was spending $2 million on television and digital advertising in the race.
Contact Molly Beck at molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.
“That’s (referring to his superiors as ‘cute girls’) ridiculously demeaning. He’s an enlisted Navy SEAL, who is he to call medical staff, women officers, ‘cute girls’? That’s a problem for me.” Ellen Haring
retired Army colonel, West Point graduate, and professor at Georgetown University who specializes in research focused on women and gender in the military