NEWS: Don't Believe the Hype

Though not as common as heterosexual rape, homosexual rape happens often as well. The thing I hate most about crimes like this, is the people that do them usually think that it was ok. Yes you heard me correctly, I have been called as a witness twice for court martial trials involving rape. The second one was my friend who I mentioned previously. Almost always the guy will try to go on about how he didn't do anything wrong, how it was completely consensual. In both cases the females were unconscious when the guys took advantage of them. One of my friends is on the verge of suicide over this, but I am so proud of her because she insists on going to Iraq to serve her country even after being raped by a fellow soldier, this is after she has been given the choice not to deploy as well. We are briefed on this as military indoctrination, it is very informative and gets the point across, this is during basic training though. It has gotten better and people putting the information out will only improve the awareness and the situation thanks Bitch PHD.

it doesn't appear to be getting the point accross if this is still happening. Perhaps they should do it every month after basic training?

I agree with you one hundred percent, for instance my unit has been given the suicide briefing at least ten times in the last six months. We have been given at least five ASAP (Army Substance abuse Program) briefing, seven or eight customs briefings, finance briefings,FRG (family readiness group) Briefings and any number of other topics. Sure every time we have a safety briefing, which is every day now there is always the proverbial no means no comment, but as for actually having a briefing on sexual assault prevention. I had one in January and have never had one since, it strikes me as odd that as prepared the military is on every possible thing that could happen to you they forget this. Either it is negligence or they think it is common sense, either or Bitch PHD your article has inspired me to give my unit a briefing on this topic, thanks again.

+1. ( and yeah, I also think he just chose his words a bit poorly there and his intent was sincere.)

While I don't often agree with Mr Huxley,( though, in this case I think he's said a lot of valuable stuff.) I think he has been contributing some good stuff of late and keeps a very level head in spite of some people unfairly attacking him. He's earned a lot of respect from me lately.

I particularly admire your contribution to this thread aldoushuxley. Thank you for sharing.

I for one AM shocked and saddened by this. It's so outrageous I really don't want to believe it. But I do, and it makes me awful angry. All I know I can do is not rape and call men out when they make weird little comments that indicate less that decent respect for women. I do my best to lead by example, but nobodys following me anyway.

This really makes me angry on a deep level. Not happy right now.

yeah...and uh...you DO know that Saddam basically asked for permission from the Bush administration before invading Kuwait, right?

Or did they not tell you that on CNN?

+1 (or is it +4 by now?)
Especially after what I said about him the last time I commented somewhere in these threads.

In addition to locking the S.O.B.'s who pull this kind of crap in military prison for 20 plus years and labeling and monitoring them as sex offenders for life, I suggest that the military services specifically train female recruits in self-defense tactics for rape. Allowing these women to carry sidearms, mace and other weapons at all times during their deployment seems like a secondary option. Perhaps stories about these women effectively neutralizing a few would be rapists would make a few of these sick bastards think twice before they tried to pull anything.

i actually agree.
i was pleasantly surprised.

+1

These two points are the heart of the problem. One exacerbates the other; if you have a culture which makes women less powerful than men, and you train young men to be aggressive, don't be surprised if those young men are aggressive towards women.

Seriously, don't you think that if there's any woman who knows how to defend herself, it's a damn soldier? This kind of gets at the heart of discussions about rape: the solution isn't to teach women how to avoid it. It's to have a zero-tolerance policy for asshole behavior from men.

This is true of rape generally, and is yet another reason why 'warning" women not to drink among strangers, etc., has very little to do with preventing rape.

That right there is what I mean by a zero tolerance policy for asshole male behavior. Guys like that shouldn't be in the services. Period.

Good luck trying to get that changed. Guys like that are usually considered the "Stellar Marines". It's not necessarily because of that opinion, but the domineering asshole type tends to get the accolades and promotions, so opinions like that tend to get a free pass. The worst punishment I've seen for it is a hand-slap, even when it manifests as sexist behavior. Hell, it wasn't until a few years ago that referring to Women Marines as Walking Mattresses was even considered "bad".

No , that has ALWAYS been considered bad. Where the fuckin hell have you been ? If you don't have the mental capacity to understand that is disgustingly reprehensible, I wouldn't want you to even have a drivers license let alone a gun. VILE !

i agree with everything that aldoushuxley has said so far. my best friend who is a female is serving over here with me and myself and a good friend of both of us have to make sure on a daily basis that she is doing good not only because of the incidents that happen from those in the military but also from the civilians that we have here. i know that there have been multiple incidents of attempeted assualts and actual assualts made on the females here by the security forces that we have from other nations. i know that she is now having to carry around a knife that was given to her everywhere she goes, even to the shower. and ive also seen first hand how alot of the people i work with dont really take alot of the things that were put in place to prevent alot of these things from happening seriously. alot of the classes that i have been given on these subjects have mainly just been given by means of "read this and sign here that you read it, but we dont really care if you read it because we just need your signature" and its not doing anything to better the situaution of anything. hell, i remember when i got to my first unit years back when there was hardly any females where i was stationed and the few that we had would be sometimes treating the guys like men are portayed to view women. ill say that it wasnt right but most of the time no one will say anything because of the stigmas that are sometimes attached to doing what they know is right. they general rule that i have constantly heard is that you shouldnt do anything unless you really want the backlash for the rest of your career. i personnaly know many people who are in now and who are not in for various reasons because of false reports that were made against them. i currently work with females who feel that the incidents that have occured that have made them take extra precautions are just the result of one female's drama. how this stuff continues is in my opinion simply put that people dont really care about what they are taught until it happens to them. i feel bad just knowing that this stuff is still happening to the females who serve and i say we start publicly beating the fuck out of the assholes who do this shit before we send them to jail so whoever is thinking about trying it knows what they got coming to them before they become someones bitch.
and as far as us going to iran is concerned, i say we need to get ourselves in a better position to judge what a corrupt government is before we start invading anywhere else. i dont get why we are going half way around the world to die for people who arent even fighting for themselves. i think we just seem to bring in more problems then we fix and then have no way of fixing anything. i know that we have done some good things, but when we say we are going to do one thing for the people of a country the we "help" and then end up doing to them what i have seen the cops do for battered spouses by releasing the abuser to go back and beat the fuck out of the person again then we are not doing any good in my book

The one thing the military has going for it with sexual assaults, is in the cases I have seen or heard about they always punish the person for the crime. Very rarely do we have soldiers get away with rape in garrison, while deployed it is a lot harder for me to give an over all judgment. Like I said previously I have always had good companies that took care of their soldiers, the bad companies will look the other way, they use excuses like we need ever man we have or He is a good soldier to justify the obstruction of justice. In any case the military does enforce the law on rape, the only time I could think of any one getting away with rape in the military is if it wasn't reported. The average of rape in the military is higher than the civilian average, however the military takes judicial action against rapists more often than the civilian world. We are weeding them out and hopefully in the near future we can have a military that cares mutually about its soldiers and enforces its standard of conduct better.

I know. But the military managed to force itself to integrate (and is actually, I think, the *best* integrated part of Amerca, although there's still a class division between officers/enlisted that echoes the racism of the larger society), so they can do this too.

And on the "good luck" front, well, why do you think I'm such a feminist bitch? It's my mission in life to slap people's hands until they wake the fuck up and learn to fucking share.

Bitch_PhD said:
[/QUOTE Seriously, don't you think that if there's any woman who knows how to defend herself, it's a damn soldier? This kind of gets at the heart of discussions about rape: the solution isn't to teach women how to avoid it. It's to have a zero-tolerance policy for asshole behavior from men.]

My military training with the U.S. Army took place over 20 years ago. There was very little to nothing offered to women (who are barred from direct combat specialties) in the way of hand to hand fighting etc. So the short answer is that female soldiers play combat support roles, and have very little to nothing in the way of formal training in terms of defending themselves in a fight that doesn't involve shooting at someone several yards away with a basic issue rifle. I understand that the Marines dedicate more time to hand to hand combat training, but female Marines are a very small fraction of the fighting force, and I'm not sure if they get the same hand to hand combat training that the men get. If the training in the Army and other branches has evolved since I went through 20 years ago, someone feel free to chime in.

I was heavily involved with martial arts for a few years, and the school I trained at was owned by a woman who offers an intensive weekend self defense course for women called "Strike Back". Many of the women who commented on the course after taking it said it changed their perspective on their own ability to be proactive in terms of defending themselves, and a few mentioned that it changed the way they related to men in general.

15 to 20 hours of self defense for women soldiers seems reasonable considering that many of them are scared to the point that they won't even go to the bathroom for fear of being assaulted. On the other side of the coin, the men should get several hours of training on gender issues that would not only be directed at discouraging sexual assaults on female soldiers, but address the manner in which they approach women as a whole. Domestic violence within the military is rampant, as is sexual harassment that doesn't rise to the level of rape.

Teaching women to kick ass and fight back on a physical level is a part of the zero tolerance for asshole behavior by men. Being an asshole is one thing, but being a degenerate sex offender is another. No matter how much we talk about weeding out the bad eggs and so forth there will always be rapists in our midst. Deployment into a combat zone brings out the worst in certain people, and even though zero tolerance sounds great in theory, things can and will go down in a bad way during deployment. Being prepared to encounter an unavoidable situation is much better than sitting back in an ivory tower and insisting that it should never happen to begin with.

I don't know how things like this work in the US military, but generally it seems that most rapes go unreported.