How our military institutionalizes sex discrimination.

[Senior citizen]

Just started reading a good book on this subject:

"Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-Tight: Gender, Folklore, and Changing Military Culture," by Carol Burke.

From news stories, I've gotten the impression that more of our female military personnel are raped by our own male troops than by the enemy. This book goes a long ways towards explaining why.

[qazplm]

1. i thought my understanding was that

percentage incidents of rapes by miliary members was no higher than "average", I know that's the case for spousal abuse despite the misperception that military soldiers are more likely to abuse their spouse.

Considering there are very few places where the enemy even has access to female soldiers, I would think it almost a guarantee that our female soldiers are more often raped by our own male troops.

But please dont for a second think that somehow if female soldiers were to just walk the streets of Baghdad they would be safer than in their own barracks.

[Senior citizen]

2. This USA Today editorial seems to speak directly to you!

Sexual assaults in military bring shame, not action

Mon Mar 28, 8:03 AM ET


"Ask a question, and the Pentagon can drown you in numbers.

How many are serving in the armed forces' four branches? In January, 1,409,564. That was 1,723 less than in December. The Pentagon has figures going back to the 1950s.

Now, how many military women reported sexual assaults in the past few years? How many people were arrested or punished?

Despite a succession of embarrassments, the Pentagon lacks answers - at least publicly. It says the numbers are almost ready and will be reported to Congress on May 1. Less clear, though, is whether the problem will finally get the priority that it deserves.

Since the early 1990s, studies, scandals and news accounts have shown that women in uniform are plagued by sexual abuse. The disclosures led to a succession of investigations but only minor policy changes.

Then, two new embarrassments drove home how pervasive the problem is.

The first suggested that abuse includes the military's elite. Several female Air Force Academy cadets went public with allegations that they had been assaulted by other cadets and that the academy brass had punished them for daring to report the incidents.

The second suggested that abuse was also common on the front lines. Female soldiers serving in Iraq sought help from an advocacy group and Congress after their internal complaints were ignored.

An embarrassed Pentagon promised reforms. Instead, more problems were uncovered. A Pentagon task force looking into the Iraq complaints reported a year ago that data about sexual assaults and military follow-up were inconsistent and incomplete, compromising accountability. Congress then ordered the report due May 1.

Ten days ago came more evidence, when a 2004 Pentagon survey of the three military academies was released. One in 7 female cadets said they'd been victims of sexual abuse - ranging from unwanted advances to rape - during the previous five years. Only a third of the incidents were reported.

The Pentagon seems to take comfort in noting that the academies' experience mirrors the rest of society. David Chu, undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, said that the figures reflect the underreporting of rape at colleges across the nation: The academies "are about where the college campuses are, tragically."

That's true, but it misses the point.

The problem is that the military does not provide women some of the common protections they get in civilian society, even though they have nowhere else to turn.

Outside the military, a woman can report a crime to police without fear that colleagues at work will find out. Independent prosecutors determine whether a suspect will stand trial. In the armed forces, commanders make those decisions by weighing evidence involving personnel under their supervision, including, at times, the rape victim. That makes women wary of filing complaints.

Further, military sexual assault laws are outdated. Since the 1970s, civilian laws on rape have changed to recognize a broader range of conduct as sexual assault, such as date rape. But the half-century-old military rape statute has not kept pace, making it more difficult to prosecute some cases.

Last year, Congress ordered the Pentagon to propose revisions of assault statutes by this month. Military officials say that, too, is in the works. But, like promises to collect basic data, the push came from outside.

For reform to work, the brass will have to take these crimes seriously. The Pentagon's track record suggests that has yet to happen."

[politicat]

3. Please remember, per DU rules, to only post 4 paragraphs.

DU can get in trouble for unauthorized reproduction, and Skinner, et al. can't afford to fight a battle and keep DU running....

Sorry for being nit-picky, but we need to be responsible consumers of information.

[TomPaine77]

4. Foreign Civilian Females Come Off Much Worse....

If you have read the Canadian journalist Victor Malarek’s recent book The Natashas (2004), then you know that since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, probably in excess of one million Eastern European women and girls alone have been lured, coerced or kidnapped from their countries and forced to perform sex with strangers for little or no remuneration. Many of these young females are beaten or tortured into compliance, while many others have been murdered because they’ve refused to submit to such treatment. Large numbers have committed suicide during or after their captivity. Many of those released after they have outlived their usefulness to their captors die or will have greatly shortened lives due to injuries, illness or diseases such as AIDS and Hepatitis C. Many of these women are kept in off-post brothels, or are forced to turn tricks near U.S. military posts in Bosnia, Kosovo, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Germany is the worst national perpetrator of sex slavery in the western world, with a legalized prostitution industry of 400,000 women a year, an estimated two/thirds of whom are unwilling trafficked slaves. Coincidentally or significantly, the nexus of German prostitution is in the Frankfurt-am-Main area, which is also the site of numerous U.S. military bases.
Malarek wrote at length about U.S. military and contractor sexual abuse of young Eastern European and East Asian females in Bosnia, South Korea and Kosovo, and how the U.S. military command in Kosovo not only knew about, but tacitly encouraged the sex slave trade, as a way of placating Kosovar Albanian warlords/sex traffickers. He described these off-post brothels as packed with off-duty American servicemen and civilian contractors every night. According to Malarek, US servicemen customarily refuse women and girls the right to use their clients’ cell phones to call home, police or an anti-trafficking hotline, even though such requests make it obvious that these women and girls are being held against their will. The bruises and cigarette burns on the bodies of the females are likewise obvious. Clients not only customarily refuse to help their victims, but often tell the girls’ pimps about their requests. The pimps then beat, torture, rape or murder the females in retaliation.
And both Malarek and the American journalist and writer Robert Kaplan, the latter in his recent book Imperial Grunts, have said that the United Arab Emirates have large numbers of Eastern European prostitutes. I’ve confirmed this on the website of the anti-sex trafficking and women’s rights NGO La Strada (lastrada.org), which says that the UAE is now one of the top destinations for sex slaves. I have read that the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are the favorite “R and R” destinations of U.S. servicemen in Iraq. It is pretty easy to guess why U.S. servicemen would go to these destinations, and it is also easy to see, based on the facts about the sex trafficking industry, how the majority of young women in these foreign countries are not there by choice. A recent Stars and Stripes newspaper article (Jan. 2006) described the human waste of the sex slave trade near a large U.S. Army base in South Korea. This seems especially damning, since The Stars and Stripes is the official, though non-governmental, newspaper of the United States armed forces.

[Triana]

5. It's the same institution that rapes and sexually abuses prisoners...

...in places like Abu Ghraib.

Stan Goff has a lot about this on his website:

http://www.stangoff.com