'Women in the Military should expect to be raped, says Fox News'

[Trieste]

The only experience that seems to be the same across everyone who is in the military is that basic sucks a lot. Everything else is variable, so I'm not discounting your experience - I'm sure it was like that for you - but there is nothing to say that you didn't just get a bunch of immature crap at the HQ. There is nothing to say that another all male platoon isn't going to have a gossipy member or two (gay, straight, or indifferent; anyone can be a gossip) that disrupts the dynamic. I don't think it's too high of an expectation to ask for professionalism from the military, and considering the emphasis they place on 'military bearing' during training I'm not entirely sure why it's considered more difficult than in another workplace. The bottom line is that no job can be compared to it, and no other jobs come with the same intensive training period and high expectations. Those high expectations should not end where the genitals begin, period.

[Beguile's Mistress]

A male and female in a combat unit had an affair.  He refused to break up with his wife for her.  She ended the relationship after finding out he wanted to stay married.  He couldn't understand that because she said at the beginning she didn't want anything permanent and became more and more upset.  Training maneuvers were scheduled for the day that would have been a six-month anniversary for them and because that was on his mind and he was arguing with the female soldier during the maneuver he failed to pay proper attention to some navigation he was responsible for and their vehicle went off course and was struck by a live round.  Everyone but the driver died.  One of the everyones was my fiance. 

I would have been really happy for a gender divide at that point.

[Callie Del Noire]

I had one command where one of the senior POs was married to a junior PO. It was even WORSE since they were in the same rating. It drove me NUTS at time. She got away with shit none of us, her peers, could. I spent an entire weekend working my ASS off upchecking a plane and having three maintenance cheifs and the Assistant Maintenance officer screaming at me to sign the shit off. I did.. she wouldn't expect it because she was <qoute>'Afraid of heights'<unqoute> and then because 'she had personal issues' when EVERYONE knew she was just not wanting to spend the last 3 hours of shift on a manlift tension checking wires.

I got written up for 'falling behind' and she got sailor of the quarter. We had THREE other POs threaten to pull their own inspection quals in protest.. and all that happened was my write up got pulled.

So, yeah.. I know about nepotism and the potential conflicts between genders. Same command I had three junior workers do the entire shift load who just happened to be female while the seven airmen who were assigned to us pissed away their time. They got bent out of shape when I demanded my 3 female workers back.. tried to play the gender bias card.. I hammered them all with the fact that the girls BUSTED their ass to get quals that they (with more time in shop) hadn't bothered to do.

[SinXAzgard21]

I'm not in the Navy anymore, but I  was also on a small boy (frigate).  All male ship, only 250 or so on deployment and no real issues.  Goldie's current time is so much different, I'll have to tell her about this thread so she can post things that she has experienced from her time in the military.   I can just say that the way her squadron is, it sucks if you're married.

[Callie Del Noire]

I'm not in the Navy anymore, but I  was also on a small boy (frigate).  All male ship, only 250 or so on deployment and no real issues.  Goldie's current time is so much different, I'll have to tell her about this thread so she can post things that she has experienced from her time in the military.   I can just say that the way her squadron is, it sucks if you're married.

I can tell you.. having worked carrier squadrons and non-carrier aircraft, it can AWESOMELY suck. The woman I mention earlier.. she could be a cast iron bitch.. but they were trying to have a baby and for like 14 months she and her husband were bounced back and forth on detachments. I once saw them spend SIXTEEN hours together before her husband was sent back out on an emergency cycle change (he wound up sitting two weeks on a road in the literal middle of nowhere waiting on a TOI to move)

But when you hit the wall o' favoritism. It can epically suck.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

The military is not the only institution to act in this way when faced with the prospect of allowing women into their ranks.  When women first started attending universities for the purposes of actually becoming educated, they were raped.  Women entered corporate America in a capacity that was not secretarial and they were raped.  Women entered military universities and were raped.  Women are also threatened with rape consistently to scare them away from certain careers.  When women started becoming active police officers on the police force, they were told that criminals would rape them.  Women still get told that they will be raped if they go to college.  If women ran away every time they were threatened with rape, we would all still be sitting at home.

A woman entering in a real capacity to the military is relatively new.  There will of course be problems such as the two married personnel and the prostitution ring.  This is a failure of administration, not of allowing women into the armed forces.  The military, an institution renowned for keeping tradition, has to adapt and change with the times.  Part of that adaption will be in preparing their male soldiers for working alongside a woman and also in adapting to the problems that women will present such as the prostitution ring.  There are issues that both sides bring to the table.

[Beguile's Mistress]

I still believe that women entering the military should not expect the military to change for them.  Women should be given the training, counseling and tools to adapt to this new environment they've decided to join along with men being given the training, counseling and tools to work with women.  Each side had their own issues and each side had to adapt. 

[RP7466]

I get tired of people talking about the reasons about why there is opposition to women's role in the military. It has nothing to do with tradition. The military is not college, corporate America, or the police force. Your job in the military is to kill people or help people kill people. It's not getting job training, or strutting around in a uniform. Combat has got to be simple or people die! You can't have something as difficult, stressfull, or insane as combat and then complicate it with that kind of administrative bullshit. A big problem is loudmouths and policy makers who don't know their asshole from there ear hole when it comes to the realities of combat and the military. 

I'm done, every time I read this thread I want to turn this laptop into a 4lb Frisbee

[Trieste]

Combat has got to be simple or people die!

... so keep it simple! It takes more than one person to create drama and sexual tension, for fuck's sake. But noooo... it's those damn women... :P

[Beguile's Mistress]

It takes two, two women, two men or a man and a woman.  Yes.

But...

The military is the military first and foremost.  Men who can't cut it are removed.  The military doesn't adjust for them.  Women who can't cut it should be removed, too.  The military should not adjust for them either.

That is what this is about since we've gone so far off topic.

Women who want to enlist or attend the academies and ROTC programs to enter as officers in today's military need to acknowledge that they are joining an organization that has a specific purpose and if they don't want to support that purpose they have no business being in the military.  Women have been associated with armies since day one and have come a long way from being camp followers in the worst sense of the word to becoming trained technicians and soldiers operating in a kill or be killed environment.  Women have performed heroic acts that have saved lives and they've done their jobs the same as their male counterparts and lives have been saved because of that.

I don't believe things should be made harder for women any more than I think they should be made easier.  I also don't believe one sex should bear the burden of the current gender issues in the military over the other.

EVERYONE should put on their big girl panties and man up.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

I am not aware that I attempted to compare the experience of going to college with combat stress.  The assertion I made is that women often encountered this kind of violence against themselves when entering previously, male dominated fields.  Here are other examples of how male dominated groups have tried to resist the influence of women into their ranks.  In those fields women have persevered and are moving to equal footing, at least in the sense that the incidents of rape and assault have lessened.  My point was to show that this has happened in the past and women will continue to advance themselves into new careers despite the adversity.  This woman on Fox News obviously has a short memory if she thinks this tactic, employed by so many others, will work to deter women.

As for combat, women are not being raped in droves in combat.  Women are being raped in combat zones, in foreign bases, in domestic bases and in many other areas.  The sacred right of combat is not the only place where rape occurs and so there is no reason to run behind that wall.  Rape is not an act of sexual attraction; rape is an act of dominance.  These male soldiers are seeking to dominate and degrade their female counterparts through physical violence.  This is not a matter of the men being horny, but a matter of the men wanting to dominate a weaker member.  Rape is about power, not sex.  That point is made over and over again by many different fields from medical to psychological.  The military has had this problem in the past with male soldiers being bullied, hazed and even raped before.  Women are not the cause of this treatment; rape is simply an act that can be performed on them more readily.

Also, I do not buy that someone being a different sex is suddenly a distraction from being focused on the task at hand.  I cannot do my job because the person next to me has tits is not an excuse accepted anywhere that I am aware of and should not be tolerated by the United States military, one of the most elite in the world.  Having trouble working with someone just because they have breasts and a vagina is something I would expect from a thirteen year old boy and even then he would be told to suck it up and get the job done.

The military needs to change if they are an institution with this amount of rape going on in their ranks.  Any other institution that had a 64% increase in rape and violence against its own people would be dismantled immediately.  This is obviously an institutional problem.  Men are not born rapists and so there must be something institutional going on that promotes a willingness to victimize a woman in that fashion, to victimize a fellow solider.  Educating women is not enough if the institution they are being sent into is actively hostile toward them and does not alter its behavior to accommodate the people.  The same had to be done when men of different races entered the ranks of the military, there had to be education for the troops and an alteration in how the military viewed racism in its ranks.

Yes, women that enter the ranks of the military need to understand that they are entering this kind of culture and institution.  They should be aware of their surroundings, develop a thick skin for the comments being made and “put their big girl panties on” to get the job done.  By the same token the men need to learn that they cannot victimize these women, that they cannot go out of their way to harm these women and that these women deserve respect as soldiers.  The administration needs to be aware of what is going on and take lessons from other institutions that handle men and women interacting together in this manner.

[Beguile's Mistress]

Ms. Trotta's remarks would have read better if they had been stated in the terms of women needing to be aware that there is a high incidence of rape now being reported by women in the military.  The likelihood of a rape or attempted rape occurring is greater and therefore women need to protect themselves. 

I'm not sure that is what she meant though and that is what this discussion should be about:  her statement.  We've digressed into other areas of whether or not we agree on having women in the military and how gender diversity affects some of us and perhaps that along with a discussion of rape in general should be kept to other threads.

[Shjade]

Women who want to enlist or attend the academies and ROTC programs to enter as officers in today's military need to acknowledge that they are joining an organization that has a specific purpose and if they don't want to support that purpose they have no business being in the military.

Unless that specific purpose is rape, which I would hope it isn't, I'm not sure I see your point here.

[Beguile's Mistress]

You need to read that within the context of the entire post.

The point is that men and women both need to adapt to the needs of the military and not expect the military to adapt to them.  This is in context with the fact that both men and women need to be trained and counseled to work with and respect each other.

The conversation was getting off topic at that point.

[Will]

Ms. Trotta's remarks would have read better if they had been stated in the terms of women needing to be aware that there is a high incidence of rape now being reported by women in the military.  The likelihood of a rape or attempted rape occurring is greater and therefore women need to protect themselves.

This still puts the onus of responsibility on women, to avoid being raped.  Should women avoid doing things that will put them at risk?  Of course, that is a good idea.  But focusing on that, to the exclusion of all other factors, is just another instance of victim-blaming.

The point is that men and women both need to adapt to the needs of the military and not expect the military to adapt to them.  This is in context with the fact that both men and women need to be trained and counseled to work with and respect each other.

I'm not sure how the needs of the military have anything to do with people being raped.  I think misogyny, bullying, and rape are just so deeply ingrained into the culture of our military that any suggestion of change gets met with hard-headed resistance, either by words or by action.  People try and claim that things are the way they are, and they simply won't work any other way.  So, women have to deal with the danger of being raped, or not join the military.

And as Pumpkin Seeds explained, the arguments are the same in any given part of our culture.  The military is no different, just the latest.  I don't think that's off-topic at all.  It makes a comparison to show that the military isn't special, that we've had this conflict before, and that it always ends the same way. :P

[Shjade]

Further, it isn't really that women are expecting the military to change to suit them. It's pointing out the military has always needed better control; having friendlies in the ranks being targeted just brings it to public attention more overtly. It's not as though this rapacious behavior would be "okay" if women weren't in the army; they'd be venting it in other ways, at other targets, in equally inappropriate fashion. This shit's unacceptable regardless of who it targets.

[Caeli]

I find it very hard to stomach the idea of women having to expect rape to happen simply for joining the military. This isn't a problem of women and men not being able to get along with one another - it's an issue of respect for women.

I agree with Pumpkin Seeds that this is an institutional problem. When these rapes happen, they're not investigated, and the victims are further victimized by the treatment of their fellow soldiers and by the military bureaucracy, which systemically covers up the rapes. This isn't a case of female soldiers needing to 'adapt to the military' and expecting the military to adapt to them. This is an abject failure by the military to treat these crimes as seriously as they should be treated.

Relevant: The Invisible War, a documentary that sheds light on rape in the military, screened at Sundance this year. It's said to be exceptional and stunning. The topic and some of the reviews I've read make me hope for DVD distribution or a local film screening.

[Zeitgeist]

So let me get this right. Recognizing that rape happens is somehow condoning it?

In my opinion the article's title is gratuitously misleading. Liz Trotta did not say military woman should expect to get raped. What she said quoted from the article's transcription is this:

Just a few weeks ago, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta commented on a new Pentagon report on sexual abuse in the military. I think they've actually discovered the difference between men and women! And the sexual abuse report says that there's been, since 2006, a 64% increase in violent sexual assaults. Now, what did they expect? Uh, these people are in close contact.

In the context of the report (context is important!) she was referring to the burgeoning role of woman in the military, and that whenever you bring together large numbers of men and women, a lot of things can and do happen. Rape included.

Recognizing that is not the same as condoning it. Any sensible human being, even Liz Trotta, recognizes rape is a monstrous crime. To suggest she thinks otherwise is ridiculous. The article's title was written the way it was to illicit outrage, but it is a mischaracterization of what was said, implied and spoken of.

[gaggedLouise]

I would say she is half condoning it: she is gratuitously urging people to accept the occurrence of rape by one's own peers in the military as a fact of life. Eat it, or don't get in there. She pretends to be answering a moral or societal argument  but her phrasing of the issue, as she does so, is sliding between the ethical level and loose injunctions about how things work in nature, in the state of things ("What do they expect? Uh, these people are in close contact", "Women /feminists/ want to be both warriors and victims" and so they are screwing up and faking the real issues). The natural (biological) order and its offprint in a stressful situation, ultimately in war, becomes the excuse for saying "that's how it *ought* to be, morally, and if you have issues with that, just piss off, wimp!" That way of equating "the way it happens in nature, or by tradition" and "what is right to happen" is, well, a fixture of social darwinism.

If she had said "people who join the military need to acknowledge that sometimes in combat, soldiers get killed by their own, by friendly fire, and you know you don't argue with your superiors about this, especially not if you want to do your duty or have a career" I think few people would have bought that argument. But it's a fact that soldiers do get killed by friendly fire in the roughness and chaos of combat situations, and because of logistical mistakes. It actually happens in most armies that go to war. The main reason it hasn't happened more often with the US or British armed forces in recent decades (there's been a number of instances in Iraq though) is that the amount of real ground contact on a large scale and heavy exchange of fire with a "battlefield equal" enemy has been almost none.

In both world wars there were many occurrences of infantry units getting mowed down by the cannon of their own side, because of errors in assessment of where the forces were placed or of the angles of guns getting fired. This was regularly getting hushed down of course. There were lots of times, too, when troops were wasted in misguided operations. If there had been more close-up contact and combat betwen equal armies in some recent wars that kind of thing would no doubt still be happening more frequently. But this wouldn't be any kind of excuse, though some colonels and tacticians might like to think it was.

[Zeitgeist]

I agree with you gaggedLouise that to imply it is human nature that we throw up our arms and say "Oh well! That's just human nature!" or "Boys will be boys!" is wrong-headed. I don't know if that is what she's saying. I find it unlikely this woman, Liz Trotta, no matter how much people may disagree with her politics or Fox News, that they condone or even half-condone rape.

I'm sure we would all agree that if anything women should feel safer in the military. And while I don't have the statistics to back it up, I suspect they in fact are safer than in the general population.

[Pumpkin Seeds]

I am not sure if the news report that I watched is the same that you are watching, Zeitgeist.  The woman openly ridicules the amount of money being spent on rape prevention and crisis centers in the U.S. military.  She makes a crack about the military supposed to protect the people of the United States and not the people in the military.  I doubt she is condoning rape, but she is certainly blaming the victims of rape in the military for being in that predicament.  Then further blaming “feminists” for seeking to have women protected, although what she fails to realize is that men are also victims of rape in the military.  Those same centers are for the men as well.

http://articles.cnn.com/2008-07-31/us/military.sexabuse_1_sexual-assault-sexual-abuse-military-service?_s=PM:US

Highlights:  41% of female veterans state being sexually assaulted while in the military.  29% state being raped during their military service. 

A woman is more likely in Iraq to be attacked by a fellow soldier than by enemy fire. 

40% of accusations in the civilian world are brought to court, 8% in the military.

Military ordered their top official on sexual abuse in the military, Dr. Whitney, to not obey a Congressional subpoena.

[Shjade]

I agree with you gaggedLouise that to imply it is human nature that we throw up our arms and say "Oh well! That's just human nature!" or "Boys will be boys!" is wrong-headed. I don't know if that is what she's saying. I find it unlikely this woman, Liz Trotta, no matter how much people may disagree with her politics or Fox News, that they condone or even half-condone rape.

It's not exactly that they condone rape in the military any more than they condone rape as a method of procreation when certain parties suggest that even the children created from such a "union" have a right to live and women shouldn't kill them blah blah. That's just a consequence of their actual arguments, specifically that abortion is always wrong and that women don't belong in the military.

It's not that she was saying, "They deserve/should expect to get raped; it's the army." It's more like, "You shouldn't join the army; you're a woman," with the rape just a convenient demotivator used to support the point.

[Zeitgeist]

A woman is more likely in Iraq to be attacked by a fellow soldier than by enemy fire. 

I wonder what the numbers are for men. Didn't we loose more soldiers to friendly fire in the opening salvos of the Iraq War, and in Desert Storm?

In any event. These numbers are grim. It is a wonder women join the military at all! I wonder how now that homosexual men and women can serve openly, how these numbers might be affected. I mean, that is genuinely worrying.

In retrospect I think I have to say, and agree with others that Trotta's commentary was wholly inappropriate. I do think the article's title worded as such took license with what was said. But any which way, the emphasis should be to demanding all soldiers in our armed forces respect and treat one another appropriately. The number of assaults and rapes is extremely disheartening and unacceptable. 

[RubySlippers]

My father was a carrer NCO leading to Warrant Officer in the Army Intelligence division and I had him watch the video and read the posts here. I think his decades of service to this nation and his security duties would make him privy to the real things going on. I was right.

His view is simple the military is to do three things serve the people of the nation, protect the people of the nation and to make our enemies pay dearly for threats to the people of this nation. That is not always war covert actions and ending a threat with learning about them and working with other nations is also vital. And women he served with and were under him had to understand that their job may be seeing our nation sacrifice him or them for the greater good in the defense of it. He couldn't give details due to his obligations but I suspect he ordered people to die and make reports that forced us to sacrifice covert assets.

But if your in uniform your here to serve, protect and die for a citizen or to help those we deem in need of help thorugh the civilian government, even if those orders you don't agree with. That is how the system works the military is the sword, the covert services the shield and the domestic agencies the armor and the civilians the will. When they are together we destroy all in our way look at WW2. When not we have a Vietnam.

So the case is then do women have the right under this contract to serve the nation of course. Does the nation owe them safety in the service for their person of course yes. But if things are as bad as in the video and here then maybe we need to break up the genders to a womens service like the old days and a mens service in the main military and limit womens roles to support far from enemy lines. That is my take on this if its really a serious issue then women should serve in their own branches of service attached to a main branch. It won't solve all the issues but some.

My father thinks women are in his experience fine soldiers if your interested and he was honored to work with them but there are issues most in violation of the military code and that are disruptive in some cases but not all. That though he blames on the leadership if he was overseeing a couple having issues he would talk to them, then reassign one to another post maybe in Alaska if they didn't get straightened out. Why blame the enlisted soldier or officers not in a position of authority its top down the buck stopped as his desk for anything going on under his leadership. Any failure of a subordinate was his failure and if they did well he did well.