Women in the Military/Prevalance of Rape and Gender Violence

I wonder if they've ever done any studies were putting women on the front lines might be better, because it might cause an enemy to pause before they'd shoot a woman, then they could just mow them down!

I think it is extremely sad that things like Don't Ask Don't Tell get more attention than this sort.

The idea that women are mentally inferior is so infuriating.

I would hope that if a soldier rapes a fellow soldier (male or female) they should be held to an even stricter punishment than if a civilian did this. As well if an enemy were to rape as soldier or civilian. How is it that any of these things could not be seen as acts of treason and/or war?

I think we should stop listening to insane people. Then maybe they'll go away.

Rape during wartime is considered a crime against humanity, so you'd think it would bear the same weight if committed by soldiers against their fellow soldiers.

And I agree. If we're going by Hobbes' theory of equality, we're all equal because we can all kill each other. A terrorist is no less dead if shot by a woman...

Also, I intend to join the military after college and it really irks me that I don't have access to the types of jobs I'm interested in and very knowledgeable about simply because I'm a woman.

that woman made my blood boil. WHY DOES SOCIETY BLAME THE VICTIM SO GODDAMN MUCH?

Maybe these incidences have increased since 2006 because of the relaxation of military recruitment standards that came with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This allowed for a larger pool of candidates from which to choose, including people who wouldn't have been considered fit for service in years prior (because of violent criminal records, for example).

Also, I don't think some paid asshat on Fox News is an accurate representation of society as a whole.

Actually, with the downturn of the economy, an increase in voluntary enlistment has been seen. This means that the standards have increased, rather than decreased, because of the larger pool of candidates. During a recession, a career in the military, however short, is far more lucrative than remaining a civilian.

In any case, the military has strict standards no matter what the economic climate is, in regards to criminal records. The soldiers who are raping their fellow soldiers aren't hardened criminals or convicted felons, they're ostensibly average citizens who feel that the US rule of law does not extend to them (which is slightly true-military tribunals are different than domestic courts/they have a different punishment system--which was initially set up when only men were in the military, so issues regarding women were never brought up). So criminal tendencies can't be blamed for the increase in sexual assault and violence.

Though I don't think she represents society as a whole, her views coincide with those of a few states who are incrementally chipping away at the protections of victim-like the states that require women to pay for their own rape kits.

Not to be argumentative, but it's a fact that the standards were lowered specifically for recruitment purposes for Iraq and Afghanistan. Admittedly, I have not taken an interest in recruitment numbers as they stand today, or what bearing the economy has had on anything, so maybe the standards were reverted back to what they were. Maybe there's been a significant statistical decrease in the number moral and medical waivers granted in the last couple of years.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/01/ING42LCIGK1.DTL&ao=all

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_721600.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/opinion/20tues1.html

I'm not defending anything this Liz Trotta person is saying because she's clearly wrong (and mentally unbalanced, based on what I'm reading when googling her).

This, from another article referenced in your first link:

Military leaders vowed this week to curb sexual assaults by and against U.S. soldiers after the release of a new report revealing that violent sex crimes committed by Army personnel nearly doubled since 2006. The majority of reported sex crimes occurred on U.S. soil, the Army said.

A U.S soldier committed a violent sex crime every six hours and 40 minutes in 2011, a rate far above that of the general population, the report found.

"This is unacceptable. We have zero tolerance for this," Gen. Peter Chiarelli, Army vice chief of staff, said at a press conference Thursday. "Army leaders take sexual assault seriously."

Chiarelli said the Army was confronting the problem by stepping up surveillance of barracks and cracking down on drug and alcohol abuse, a key factor in sexual assault.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also addressed the issue of sexual abuse within the military this week, announcing that the Pentagon was creating a database to track offenders and would provide increased funding to train sex crime investigators.

"Sexual assault has no place in this department," Panetta said in a press briefing on Wednesday. "It is a stain on the good honor of the great majority of our troops."

Nearly 3,200 sexual assaults were reported by service members in 2011, according to Panetta. But he said the military's actual estimate was closer to 19,000 because such assaults are "a very underreported crime."

Panetta added that steps were also being taken to increase reporting of sex crimes by military personnel, such as allowing victims who report an assault the option to rapidly transfer from their unit to protect them from harassment and other retaliation.

The rise in violent sex crimes was accompanied by a similar but not as pronounced rise in child abuse and domestic violence crimes involving Army personnel. Child abuse cases rose 43 percent since 2006, while domestic abuse increased more than 30 percent. Alcohol-related offenses, meanwhile, rose by 54 percent.

The rise in abuse cases can be partly attributed to the stress on soldiers of multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, now America's longest-running war, the Army report said.

A person diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder "is three times more likely to participate in some kind of partner aggression," Chiarelli said.

"That is why it is so critical to eliminate the stigma [associated with post-traumatic stress disorder]," he said, "and get people in for treatment for their alcohol problem, their drug abuse problem, prescription drug problem, or anger-management problems, spouse abuse and child abuse."

And this, from the comment section:

Being on active duty, I find it hard to believe that PTSD or multiple deployment­s are the main cause behind the rapes. The men and women we let in the Army has declined..­.dramaticl­y. It seems that recruiters are only looking for warm bodies to fill a quota. I've never seen so many gang members, wanna be thugs, x-drug dealers, power drinkers, and convicted felons. Waivers to get in are always done, and this is always the result. We just had a death not too long ago in Europe where a soldier died after he was beaten to death by other soldiers, as part of an initiation to join a gang. In Afghanista­n, a soldier had sex with a 14 year old prostitute while on duty guarding the front gate. His leadership just took a stripe away, he's still on active duty. Its a sad state, and won't get better unless the recruiting practices are improved, and recruits are better screened.

It's all pretty terrible.

Then I retract my initial claim.

But I still don't think criminal history is necessarily the only cause for the increase in sexual crimes. I think the numbers are attributed to two things: 1) An increase in reporting of sexual crimes. 2) An apathetic attitude for punishing offenders. If the crime isn't going to be punished, there's no incentive to not commit it-besides moral incentive, but that's not reliable.

Agreed...and it's really sad and messed up. And weird.

I think there's a reason more US soldiers take their own lives than die in combat.

Is that true? That's terrible.

They ought to go back to some Viking type of stuff. Just run screaming into battle stark naked except for a rifle. First guy to shoot an enemy, immediately starts sodomizing the guy as he lay dying. The rest of the platoon shooting and raping as they go. The sight of that would have to scare the shit out of an enemy.
All I'm sayin' is why don't they at least try it! They never try anything anymore!

You're a visionary, Nate.

Re: Nate's comment, I just tried finding to no avail the article about the commanding officer in Iraq who told his battalion that the first soldier to get a confirmed bayonet kill gets out of certain duties. While looking, I did find this. I knew nothing about this, but that doesn't surprise me.

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/dachauscrapbook/dachauliberation/BuechnerA...

That's US soldiers executing German POWs. None of this was known publicly until an officer there wrote a book about the war in the 80s. At least 520 were killed on April 29, 1945. The things they don't teach you in government school.

And the Holocaust didn't happen either, huh.

Giggan, your claim is true for two years, not all years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. For 2011, combat deaths have again surpassed suicide deaths. And it should be noted that suicide rates among soldiers are lower than civilian suicide rates.

Stories of atrocities commited by US military personnel during WW2 have been circulating, they are not secret at all for someone who is interested in the subject.

On a side note, wearing a Waffen SS uniform and expecting any kind of clemency when captured was quite optimistic I think.

More generally I recommend strongly the following book :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Killing:_The_Psychological_Cost_of_Learn...

Nothing about this post can be spun in a good way at all.

Even if you completely switched it all around to say the exact opposite of what it says, nothing good there at all.

I know none of it is good, but it's all accurate. I was correcting his false claim.

Extremely interesting book.

Amazon wishlisted.

It's inaccurate to say Bob has a beard when he has a medium-thick stubble after a few days of shaving abstinence. It is false to say that yo mama has a beard (I hope). Inaccurate and false are not the same thing.

Have I ever mentioned how I want to sex up a bearded woman before I die? Is that sexist of me?

It has to be a woman? SEXIST!

I, unfortunately, remember you mentioning that.

Isn't there a whole thread about Nate wanting to bang a bearded chick?

I had no idea how many women are sexually assaulted until I bought the book The Vagina Monolouges from a thrift store. Since rape is something rarely discussed most people probably have no idea how common it really is. It would take a very strong person to make it through something like that without completely losing their mind. The sad thing is that most of the time it goes unreported and the victims have no one at all to help them get through it and heal. Poor ladies

Well I'm sure one of those random threads is mostly about you banging a bearded chick

it was this one! Whoa!