Sunday rape linkspam
Happy Sunday, all.
Disclaimers:
1. Trigger warning! Links deal with rape; click with care.
2. I don't always agree with everything contained in the links.
3. Sometimes the linked articles will have interesting comment sections. Give them a read-through if you have the chance.
Cleveland, TX:
ECHIDNE's Trigger Warning: "The devil is in full control." (by res ipsa loquitur) - 3/2011
"The NYT is up with a follow-up to its shameful story about the gang rape of an eleven-year-old Texas child. (If you're blocked by the paywall, search for "New York Times" plus the headline ("3-Month Nightmare Emerges in Rape Inquiry") and go in via a search engine.)
You'll recall that the NYT's public editor declared that writer James C. McKinley's original story "lacked balance" (as though there are two, equally valid points of view regarding rape). So the first thing to note about the follow-up is the byline: McKinley has been given adult supervision in the form of a co-writer, Erica Goode.
The "boys" who elicited such sympathy from the community and whose plight so obviously touched the NYT have morphed into "an eclectic group of young men". Some phrases associated with these young men -- and the men in whose homes the attacks are said to have occurred -- include "on probation for burglary", "registered sex offender", "murder charges," "manslaughter", "robbing a grocery store," and "out on bond while awaiting trial on rape and robbery charges"."
NY Times' 3-Month Nightmare Emerges in Rape Inquiry - 3/2011
"The police say the girl was raped on at least six occasions, from Sept. 15 to Dec. 3. Nineteen boys and men, ages 14 to 27, have been charged in connection with the rapes, the most recent arrest last Wednesday.
Court documents and dozens of interviews over several weeks with the girl’s family, her friends and neighbors, as well as those who know the defendants, provide a more complete picture of what occurred as well as a deeper portrait of the victim. What begins to emerge is the nightmarish ordeal of a young girl over two and a half months involving an eclectic group of young men, some with criminal records, who shared a powerful neighborhood bond. "
Race:
Colorlines' After Cleveland, Texas: Eight Ways Black Men Can Fight Rape - 3/2011
"6. “We need to ask black boys and men to examine the various ways that they compromise their own safety, and the safety of their sisters and communities. As black men, we also need alternative ways to see power in our relationships with women. We need to consider how to have power with women, not power over them.”
7. “We need to examine how we define masculinity as well. We’ve latched on to the most superpowered image of white masculinity, what sociologist Michael Kimmel calls the Marketplace Man. The Marketplace Man is a successful businessman, he has power over his home and power over women. But since black men [don’t have] power equal to white men’s, we’ve created a perverted way to [compensate] for it. Women become our currency. If you have no money but you have five women, you’ll be all right.
You also see this in the stereotypes we don’t choose to challenge. If you say, ‘All black men are criminals,’ we’ll fight you on that. But if you say, ‘All black men have big penises,’ well we’re like, ‘Heh, heh…OK.’ Of course that’s not grossly different from how white American men think, but they have financial, educational, political and social capital that we don’t.”
8. “One easy exercise you can try with boys or even among your friends: Ask them to describe a ‘real man.’ You’ll likely get a laundry list like, ‘A real man is strong! A real man has all the money! A real man has the power!’ Next, ask, ‘Of all of those things, which do you have?’ In answering this question, boys realize how unreal it is to be a baller-slash-star-athlete-slash-rocket scientist. They begin to see how anybody can question their manhood because they don’t have all of these qualities. Finally, ask, ‘Of the men you know in your community, name the ones you respect and what you respect about them.’ This exercise helps boys create an alternate view of masculinity. That’s the first step in forming a model for healthy black male sexuality.”"
The Root's Why I Am a Male Feminist - 3/2011
"So when Katz explained that they were looking to hire a man to help institutionalize curricula about preventing gender violence at high schools and colleges around the country, I almost walked out the door. But during my interview, Katz asked me an interesting question. "Byron, how does African-American men's violence against African-American women uplift the African-American community?"
No one had ever asked me that question before. As an African-American man who was deeply concerned about race issues, I had never given much thought about how emotional abuse, battering, sexual assault, street harassment and rape could affect an entire community, just as racism does.
The following day, I attended a workshop about preventing gender violence, facilitated by Katz. There, he posed a question to all of the men in the room: "Men, what things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?"
Not one man, including myself, could quickly answer the question. Finally, one man raised his hand and said, "Nothing." Then Katz asked the women, "What things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?" Nearly all of the women in the room raised their hand. One by one, each woman testified:
"I don't make eye contact with men when I walk down the street," said one.
"I don't put my drink down at parties," said another.
"I use the buddy system when I go to parties."
"I cross the street when I see a group of guys walking in my direction."
"I use my keys as a potential weapon."
"I carry mace or pepper spray."
"I watch what I wear."
The women went on for several minutes, until their side of the blackboard was completely filled with responses. The men's side of the blackboard was blank. I was stunned. I had never heard a group of women say these things before. I thought about all of the women in my life -- including my mother, sister and girlfriend -- and realized that I had a lot to learn about gender."
Consent:
Yes Means Yes!'s Mythcommunication: It’s Not That They Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer - 3/2011
"If you read this blog, I’m going to tell you something you already know: rapes don’t happen by accident. We know that the vast majority of rapes are committed by the same relatively narrow sliver of the population, that they have multiple victims, that they avoid overt force, which is more likely to get them prosecuted, that they choose victims who can be bullied and isolated and that alcohol is their tool of choice.
One might read this and conclude that it doesn’t matter how women communicate boundaries, because rapists don’t misunderstand, they choose to ignore. That is pretty much Kitzinger’s takeaway, and I think from the perspective of moving the focus from what women do to what the rapists do that’s a useful thing to say. However, I think there’s more to it.
I’m no communications theorist, but communications are layered things. As we’ve seen, the literal meaning of a message is only one aspect of the message, and the way it’s delivered can signal something entirely different. Rapists are not missing the literal meaning, I think it’s clear. What they’re doing is ignoring the literal message (refusal) and paying very close attention to the meta-message. I tell my niece, “if a guy offers to buy you a drink and you say no, and he pesters you until you say okay, what he wants for his money is to find out if you can be talked out of no.” The rapist doesn’t listen to refusals, he probes for signs of resistance in the meta-message, the difference between a target who doesn’t want to but can be pushed, and a target who doesn’t want to and will stand by that even if she has to be blunt. It follows that the purpose of setting clear boundaries is not to be understood - that’s not a problem - but to be understood to be too hard a target.
(One might wonder what good that is, if the rapist just looks for other targets. But rapists are clearly rational and opportunistic, and if they have fewer targets who they can rape without repercussions, they’ll either have to rape less or risk getting reported and maybe prosecuted. )
I have no perfect solution. The only lasting answer is to change the culture. "
Rape culture:
Alternet's 11-Year-Old Girl Horrifically Gang-Raped; New York Times Article Blames the Victim - 3/2011
"Nowhere in this story is the following made clear:
- That an 11-year-old child cannot consent to sex. Even if she had not been "told she would be beaten if she did not comply," this would have been rape.
- That the victim also has to "live with this for the rest of her life." The boys chose to do the things they will have to live with. She did not.
- That the men involved were not "drawn into this," but made the conscious choice to rape a child.
- That our compassion and care should be directed first and foremost toward the victim rather than the boys, the school, the community, or anyone else.
- That just as we should not stand in judgment of the victim we should not venture to judge her mother. ("'Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?' said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record.") For all we know, the woman had been frantically trying to get someone, anyone, to listen to her concerns about her daughter. Even if she hadn't been, parental neglect does not give other people a license to rape unsupervised children.
My impression when I finished reading the article was that the reader was being admonished to feel compassion and pain for the town and the boys. The victim had disappeared from article just as she had fled the town.
As so it goes-today in rape culture."
The SAFER Blog's Take It All Off: How Rape Culture Lets Clothing Conceal Crime
"I thought I’d take a minute to talk about clothing. When it comes to the issue of sexual assault, I am sick and tired of talking about clothing. For a while now, there has been talk of the term “Skinny Jeans Defense” that reemerged after an Australian jury voted to acquit a man of rape arguing that the victim’s tight-fitting pants could not have been removed without collaboration, and therefore, consent.
The sad truth is that variations of this “argument” have used for over a decade now and yet it is still being thrown around as an actual reason for acquittal of a rapist. How is this possible? Let’s take a look."
Daily Record's Councillor said nine-year-old rape victim 'wanted it to happen', cop claims - 3/2011
"In her witness statement, the 36-year-old officer, who has 16 years experience, said: "My concerns were raised in particular by some of the questions asked and comments made by Councillor O'Rourke.
"Councillor O'Rourke asked if force was used during the incidents. I told him , 'No,' and his was reply was, 'So she wanted it to happen'.
"I replied that she was a child and was unable to give consent. I also briefly covered the grooming process and its associated elements.
"He began a rant on the age of consent and how it should be lowered, commenting on the promiscuity of children and their modern provocative dress sense, He further commented that you could walk into any high school and observe girls in short skirts coupled with their promiscuous behaviour thus giving weight to his argument about lowering the age of consent.
"Councillor O'Rourke continued his inappropriateness when discussing the complainer, commenting on her chaotic previous lifestyle at the hands of her prostitute mother.
"He hinted that she was not a typical innocent nine-year-old but was sexually older than her years and conveyed the attitude that it was not as bad to commit crimes of this nature on a child with this background."
The officer reported the matter to a detective chief inspector when she returned to work three days later. In her witness statement, she concluded: "I found Councillor O'Rourke's comments alarming and highly inappropriate.
"He had little understanding of child protection issues and again very little understanding of grooming and the process of sexual abuse.""
Numbers:
The Debate Link's On Bad Critiques of Rape Prevelance Studies (Part I) & Part 2 - 3/2011
"There is a significant analogue in rape cases, which incorporate many similar concerns. As in discrimination cases, the prevailing narrative about rape accusations being "easily made" means that many woman undoubtedly have internalized the belief that the only sort of person who makes a rape claim (at least, outside certain exceptionally outrageous fact patterns) is the slut who can't own up to the consequences of her own choices. Consciously refusing to define the event as rape enables one to reestablish agency over the situation, maintaining control of the future process as well as preserving a self-image as a person in control of their own destiny.
There are other reasons why potential rape victims have a strong incentive not to view the relevant act as rape but rather, attributable to their own choices. In prior work on the subject, I've made reference to the Just World theory, a cognitive bias by which persons systematically try to interpret events so as to confirm a belief that the world is fair and just. One prominent manifestation of this bias is that, when presented with injustice that an observer is unable to prevent, the observer is far more likely to blame the victim. For example, researchers ran an experiment where a "learner" was given harsh electric shocks for giving wrong answers to academic questions. The research subjects both observed this happening, but one group was made simply to watch, while the other was given the option to end the shocks at any time. The latter set nearly invariably elected to do so and then described the shocking as immoral. The former group (which was unable to stop the shocks) was far more likely to consider the victim to be to blame for her maltreatment.
Why does this phenomenom exist, and what relevance does it have to rape? One of the reasons we believe in a just world is because we want to believe that if we behave correctly, good things will happen to us (or at the very least, bad things won't). Hence, when something bad does happen, it makes sense for us to (if at all possible) interpret it as our own fault. Why? Because if it stems from something we did wrong, then it's something we can fix (from a rationalist perspective, it makes good sense for us to overestimate how much our own actions influence our destiny). The alternative, that it doesn't matter, that you can do everything right and still be raped, is too scary to contemplate. So we shut out that interpretation, and replace it with one in which I did something bad. And if I'm to blame, then I wasn't rape, for rape is something that occurs to the blameless."
The military:
RH Reality Check's The Military's Rape and Sexual Assault Epidemic - 3/2011
"On February 15, 2011, fifteen female and two male military veterans filed a class action lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and current Defense Secretary Robert Gates. A second round of plaintiffs will likely be announced in early April. These veterans have charged the defendants with the wholesale and systematic failure to protect servicemembers from being oftentimes repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted while serving in the military; and with a failure to investigate and subsequently prosecute and punish perpetrators.
The complaint reads like a horror story. One gruesome account after another detailing brutal assaults; sometimes repeated and sometimes committed by multiple perpetrators. Rapes and sexual assaults that are ignored and if not ignored so callously prosecuted within the Military Code of Justice as to suggest that rape is nothing more than a minor infraction deserving of little punishment, if any. A system set up to hide evidence, encourage victims to recant, and when the victim tries to receive some semblance of justice they are generally rewarded with demotions, harassment, and shockingly further rapes and sexual assaults as punishment. Victims are warned to stay quiet or face dire consequences. The brave victims are blamed - the women in particular were just asking for it. "
The Problem:
- "Also, I don't want to blame the victim, but I can't believe that the females could have had no idea that they were putting themselves into a high risk group by joining.
The army IS full of people who solve most of their problems with violence." - (link)
"But not every complaint in this thread is equal. Some of you *do* need to lighten up and take responsibility for your own good time. Nex time someone grabs you in the ass and you don't like it, punch him in the face. If you don't have the balls, don't blame DragonCon for failing to take care of you...you're not a baby." - ( link)
Disclaimers:
1. Trigger warning! Links deal with rape; click with care.
2. I don't always agree with everything contained in the links.
3. Sometimes the linked articles will have interesting comment sections. Give them a read-through if you have the chance.
Cleveland, TX:
ECHIDNE's Trigger Warning: "The devil is in full control." (by res ipsa loquitur) - 3/2011
"The NYT is up with a follow-up to its shameful story about the gang rape of an eleven-year-old Texas child. (If you're blocked by the paywall, search for "New York Times" plus the headline ("3-Month Nightmare Emerges in Rape Inquiry") and go in via a search engine.)
You'll recall that the NYT's public editor declared that writer James C. McKinley's original story "lacked balance" (as though there are two, equally valid points of view regarding rape). So the first thing to note about the follow-up is the byline: McKinley has been given adult supervision in the form of a co-writer, Erica Goode.
The "boys" who elicited such sympathy from the community and whose plight so obviously touched the NYT have morphed into "an eclectic group of young men". Some phrases associated with these young men -- and the men in whose homes the attacks are said to have occurred -- include "on probation for burglary", "registered sex offender", "murder charges," "manslaughter", "robbing a grocery store," and "out on bond while awaiting trial on rape and robbery charges"."
NY Times' 3-Month Nightmare Emerges in Rape Inquiry - 3/2011
"The police say the girl was raped on at least six occasions, from Sept. 15 to Dec. 3. Nineteen boys and men, ages 14 to 27, have been charged in connection with the rapes, the most recent arrest last Wednesday.
Court documents and dozens of interviews over several weeks with the girl’s family, her friends and neighbors, as well as those who know the defendants, provide a more complete picture of what occurred as well as a deeper portrait of the victim. What begins to emerge is the nightmarish ordeal of a young girl over two and a half months involving an eclectic group of young men, some with criminal records, who shared a powerful neighborhood bond. "
Race:
Colorlines' After Cleveland, Texas: Eight Ways Black Men Can Fight Rape - 3/2011
"6. “We need to ask black boys and men to examine the various ways that they compromise their own safety, and the safety of their sisters and communities. As black men, we also need alternative ways to see power in our relationships with women. We need to consider how to have power with women, not power over them.”
7. “We need to examine how we define masculinity as well. We’ve latched on to the most superpowered image of white masculinity, what sociologist Michael Kimmel calls the Marketplace Man. The Marketplace Man is a successful businessman, he has power over his home and power over women. But since black men [don’t have] power equal to white men’s, we’ve created a perverted way to [compensate] for it. Women become our currency. If you have no money but you have five women, you’ll be all right.
You also see this in the stereotypes we don’t choose to challenge. If you say, ‘All black men are criminals,’ we’ll fight you on that. But if you say, ‘All black men have big penises,’ well we’re like, ‘Heh, heh…OK.’ Of course that’s not grossly different from how white American men think, but they have financial, educational, political and social capital that we don’t.”
8. “One easy exercise you can try with boys or even among your friends: Ask them to describe a ‘real man.’ You’ll likely get a laundry list like, ‘A real man is strong! A real man has all the money! A real man has the power!’ Next, ask, ‘Of all of those things, which do you have?’ In answering this question, boys realize how unreal it is to be a baller-slash-star-athlete-slash-rocket scientist. They begin to see how anybody can question their manhood because they don’t have all of these qualities. Finally, ask, ‘Of the men you know in your community, name the ones you respect and what you respect about them.’ This exercise helps boys create an alternate view of masculinity. That’s the first step in forming a model for healthy black male sexuality.”"
The Root's Why I Am a Male Feminist - 3/2011
"So when Katz explained that they were looking to hire a man to help institutionalize curricula about preventing gender violence at high schools and colleges around the country, I almost walked out the door. But during my interview, Katz asked me an interesting question. "Byron, how does African-American men's violence against African-American women uplift the African-American community?"
No one had ever asked me that question before. As an African-American man who was deeply concerned about race issues, I had never given much thought about how emotional abuse, battering, sexual assault, street harassment and rape could affect an entire community, just as racism does.
The following day, I attended a workshop about preventing gender violence, facilitated by Katz. There, he posed a question to all of the men in the room: "Men, what things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?"
Not one man, including myself, could quickly answer the question. Finally, one man raised his hand and said, "Nothing." Then Katz asked the women, "What things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?" Nearly all of the women in the room raised their hand. One by one, each woman testified:
"I don't make eye contact with men when I walk down the street," said one.
"I don't put my drink down at parties," said another.
"I use the buddy system when I go to parties."
"I cross the street when I see a group of guys walking in my direction."
"I use my keys as a potential weapon."
"I carry mace or pepper spray."
"I watch what I wear."
The women went on for several minutes, until their side of the blackboard was completely filled with responses. The men's side of the blackboard was blank. I was stunned. I had never heard a group of women say these things before. I thought about all of the women in my life -- including my mother, sister and girlfriend -- and realized that I had a lot to learn about gender."
Consent:
Yes Means Yes!'s Mythcommunication: It’s Not That They Don’t Understand, They Just Don’t Like The Answer - 3/2011
"If you read this blog, I’m going to tell you something you already know: rapes don’t happen by accident. We know that the vast majority of rapes are committed by the same relatively narrow sliver of the population, that they have multiple victims, that they avoid overt force, which is more likely to get them prosecuted, that they choose victims who can be bullied and isolated and that alcohol is their tool of choice.
One might read this and conclude that it doesn’t matter how women communicate boundaries, because rapists don’t misunderstand, they choose to ignore. That is pretty much Kitzinger’s takeaway, and I think from the perspective of moving the focus from what women do to what the rapists do that’s a useful thing to say. However, I think there’s more to it.
I’m no communications theorist, but communications are layered things. As we’ve seen, the literal meaning of a message is only one aspect of the message, and the way it’s delivered can signal something entirely different. Rapists are not missing the literal meaning, I think it’s clear. What they’re doing is ignoring the literal message (refusal) and paying very close attention to the meta-message. I tell my niece, “if a guy offers to buy you a drink and you say no, and he pesters you until you say okay, what he wants for his money is to find out if you can be talked out of no.” The rapist doesn’t listen to refusals, he probes for signs of resistance in the meta-message, the difference between a target who doesn’t want to but can be pushed, and a target who doesn’t want to and will stand by that even if she has to be blunt. It follows that the purpose of setting clear boundaries is not to be understood - that’s not a problem - but to be understood to be too hard a target.
(One might wonder what good that is, if the rapist just looks for other targets. But rapists are clearly rational and opportunistic, and if they have fewer targets who they can rape without repercussions, they’ll either have to rape less or risk getting reported and maybe prosecuted. )
I have no perfect solution. The only lasting answer is to change the culture. "
Rape culture:
Alternet's 11-Year-Old Girl Horrifically Gang-Raped; New York Times Article Blames the Victim - 3/2011
"Nowhere in this story is the following made clear:
- That an 11-year-old child cannot consent to sex. Even if she had not been "told she would be beaten if she did not comply," this would have been rape.
- That the victim also has to "live with this for the rest of her life." The boys chose to do the things they will have to live with. She did not.
- That the men involved were not "drawn into this," but made the conscious choice to rape a child.
- That our compassion and care should be directed first and foremost toward the victim rather than the boys, the school, the community, or anyone else.
- That just as we should not stand in judgment of the victim we should not venture to judge her mother. ("'Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?' said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record.") For all we know, the woman had been frantically trying to get someone, anyone, to listen to her concerns about her daughter. Even if she hadn't been, parental neglect does not give other people a license to rape unsupervised children.
My impression when I finished reading the article was that the reader was being admonished to feel compassion and pain for the town and the boys. The victim had disappeared from article just as she had fled the town.
As so it goes-today in rape culture."
The SAFER Blog's Take It All Off: How Rape Culture Lets Clothing Conceal Crime
"I thought I’d take a minute to talk about clothing. When it comes to the issue of sexual assault, I am sick and tired of talking about clothing. For a while now, there has been talk of the term “Skinny Jeans Defense” that reemerged after an Australian jury voted to acquit a man of rape arguing that the victim’s tight-fitting pants could not have been removed without collaboration, and therefore, consent.
The sad truth is that variations of this “argument” have used for over a decade now and yet it is still being thrown around as an actual reason for acquittal of a rapist. How is this possible? Let’s take a look."
Daily Record's Councillor said nine-year-old rape victim 'wanted it to happen', cop claims - 3/2011
"In her witness statement, the 36-year-old officer, who has 16 years experience, said: "My concerns were raised in particular by some of the questions asked and comments made by Councillor O'Rourke.
"Councillor O'Rourke asked if force was used during the incidents. I told him , 'No,' and his was reply was, 'So she wanted it to happen'.
"I replied that she was a child and was unable to give consent. I also briefly covered the grooming process and its associated elements.
"He began a rant on the age of consent and how it should be lowered, commenting on the promiscuity of children and their modern provocative dress sense, He further commented that you could walk into any high school and observe girls in short skirts coupled with their promiscuous behaviour thus giving weight to his argument about lowering the age of consent.
"Councillor O'Rourke continued his inappropriateness when discussing the complainer, commenting on her chaotic previous lifestyle at the hands of her prostitute mother.
"He hinted that she was not a typical innocent nine-year-old but was sexually older than her years and conveyed the attitude that it was not as bad to commit crimes of this nature on a child with this background."
The officer reported the matter to a detective chief inspector when she returned to work three days later. In her witness statement, she concluded: "I found Councillor O'Rourke's comments alarming and highly inappropriate.
"He had little understanding of child protection issues and again very little understanding of grooming and the process of sexual abuse.""
Numbers:
The Debate Link's On Bad Critiques of Rape Prevelance Studies (Part I) & Part 2 - 3/2011
"There is a significant analogue in rape cases, which incorporate many similar concerns. As in discrimination cases, the prevailing narrative about rape accusations being "easily made" means that many woman undoubtedly have internalized the belief that the only sort of person who makes a rape claim (at least, outside certain exceptionally outrageous fact patterns) is the slut who can't own up to the consequences of her own choices. Consciously refusing to define the event as rape enables one to reestablish agency over the situation, maintaining control of the future process as well as preserving a self-image as a person in control of their own destiny.
There are other reasons why potential rape victims have a strong incentive not to view the relevant act as rape but rather, attributable to their own choices. In prior work on the subject, I've made reference to the Just World theory, a cognitive bias by which persons systematically try to interpret events so as to confirm a belief that the world is fair and just. One prominent manifestation of this bias is that, when presented with injustice that an observer is unable to prevent, the observer is far more likely to blame the victim. For example, researchers ran an experiment where a "learner" was given harsh electric shocks for giving wrong answers to academic questions. The research subjects both observed this happening, but one group was made simply to watch, while the other was given the option to end the shocks at any time. The latter set nearly invariably elected to do so and then described the shocking as immoral. The former group (which was unable to stop the shocks) was far more likely to consider the victim to be to blame for her maltreatment.
Why does this phenomenom exist, and what relevance does it have to rape? One of the reasons we believe in a just world is because we want to believe that if we behave correctly, good things will happen to us (or at the very least, bad things won't). Hence, when something bad does happen, it makes sense for us to (if at all possible) interpret it as our own fault. Why? Because if it stems from something we did wrong, then it's something we can fix (from a rationalist perspective, it makes good sense for us to overestimate how much our own actions influence our destiny). The alternative, that it doesn't matter, that you can do everything right and still be raped, is too scary to contemplate. So we shut out that interpretation, and replace it with one in which I did something bad. And if I'm to blame, then I wasn't rape, for rape is something that occurs to the blameless."
The military:
RH Reality Check's The Military's Rape and Sexual Assault Epidemic - 3/2011
"On February 15, 2011, fifteen female and two male military veterans filed a class action lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and current Defense Secretary Robert Gates. A second round of plaintiffs will likely be announced in early April. These veterans have charged the defendants with the wholesale and systematic failure to protect servicemembers from being oftentimes repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted while serving in the military; and with a failure to investigate and subsequently prosecute and punish perpetrators.
The complaint reads like a horror story. One gruesome account after another detailing brutal assaults; sometimes repeated and sometimes committed by multiple perpetrators. Rapes and sexual assaults that are ignored and if not ignored so callously prosecuted within the Military Code of Justice as to suggest that rape is nothing more than a minor infraction deserving of little punishment, if any. A system set up to hide evidence, encourage victims to recant, and when the victim tries to receive some semblance of justice they are generally rewarded with demotions, harassment, and shockingly further rapes and sexual assaults as punishment. Victims are warned to stay quiet or face dire consequences. The brave victims are blamed - the women in particular were just asking for it. "
The Problem:
- "Also, I don't want to blame the victim, but I can't believe that the females could have had no idea that they were putting themselves into a high risk group by joining.
The army IS full of people who solve most of their problems with violence." - (link)
"But not every complaint in this thread is equal. Some of you *do* need to lighten up and take responsibility for your own good time. Nex time someone grabs you in the ass and you don't like it, punch him in the face. If you don't have the balls, don't blame DragonCon for failing to take care of you...you're not a baby." - ( link)