Burdens of proof: veteran frauds, PTSD pussies, and the spectre of the welfare queen

This article examines veterans’ experiences when they return from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and navigate the bureaucratic and gendered systems of the military-medical complex. Broadly, it focuses on the embodied struggles of veterans, such as Ethan McCord, who seek disability benefits for the official diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Drawing insight from Ethan McCord’s interactions with the Veteran’s Administration (VA) and a broader literature on veterans’ struggles to qualify for disability benefits, it maps the micro- and macropolitical ways that soldiers navigate the bureaucratic system of the VA within gendered formations of power. It argues that the bureaucratic and capitalist structures of the military-medical complex – along with the US Administration – are waging an invisible war on soldiers, veterans, military families, and military communities that has disabling effects. Particularly, it examines how the gendered and historical spectre of the underserving ‘welfare queen’ and ‘welfare fraud’ in neoliberal discourses historically informs contemporary images and discourses of veterans as underserving ‘frauds’ when they seek mental health services and disability benefits at the VA. It situates these gendered discourses and speech acts within broader systems of militarized power and in the everyday struggles of veterans’ interactions with doctors, psychiatrists, and the higher chain of command. Finally, it demonstrates how veterans such as Ethan McCord are both embedded in and resist these modes of gendered social control in the military and VA system.