They can’t end the war, so they’ll end troops’ futures
Does this sound like the military you guys served in;
It’s a place where drug abuse is rampant, suicide is common, and mental health is severely placed at risk. One in three women stands a chance of being raped — as do one in four men — and the violence directed toward each other undercuts the real fight against the enemy.
Not mine. But that’s what’s being described by “IV”AW members Cherish Summer Ray Hodge and Brigitte Wooten to their local media in Ventura County, CA.
What sounds like a prison environment in theory was a near reality for people like Cherish Hodge or Brigitte Wooten, members of a local peace group formed by recent veterans of the Iraq Conflict.
Their search for new members willing to come forward and join the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) punctuates the proud military sentiment set forth this season, after the passing of Veterans Day, with a sharp caveat: awareness of the injustices and dissent within the ranks of the U.S. armed forces’ own soldiers.
“It’s different for us to be in an environment where there’s so much racism and bigotry and homophobia,” says Hodge, 26, president of the IVAW Ventura branch. “The military is a melting pot of all of those things. Suddenly, you’re exposed to that.”
Of course, both of them have never been to Iraq or Afghanistan, that’s a membership requirement now, apparently. So they’re not speaking of the war, although they’d like to think they are. Here’s Cherish Blah Blah Blah’s profile from IVAW;
Brigitte doesn’t have a profile on IVAW, but in the article she describes her military service;
Wooten was discharged from the Navy one year ago this month after a five-year stint in the Navy that sent her to Kuwait for about eight months. Having served as a hospital corpsman, she, too, was witness firsthand to blatant drug and alcohol abuse, which, among other soldiers, led to medical problems from drunken brawls, near overdoses and attempted suicides.
“I went in knowing I would be seeing some things. I didn’t think I would have seen as many rampant things,” Wooten said. “When you go to boot camp, you’re taught to look up to your officers and enlisted; you expect a certain amount of professionalism and a family-type bond. But you don’t see that very often.”
Someone buy Wooten a dictionary, or tell her what “rampant” means.
And, of course, they have Dahr Jamail and his useless contribution to bolster their yammering;
Jamail recounted stories about women GIs stationed in the Middle East, so afraid to use latrines after dark, for fear of being jumped and assaulted by their fellow male soldiers, that some died of dehydration.
Yeah, that story came from Col. Janis Karpinski and her useless testimony to the Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration which has been thoroughly discredited for nearly four years by Greyhawk and Soldier’s Dad.
“A lot of veterans, the last thing they want is to get back into these problems,” [Cher-blah-Summer-blah-blah] said. “Just because there [aren’t] a lot of outspoken veterans, doesn’t mean we aren’t here.”
Or, maybe, you just like wearing a shirt that says “Iraq Veterans” on it. The lie that IVAW has 1700 active members is false – with all of the resignations, has anyone seen the number fall even a hair? What was it 79 members who showed up at Silver Spring? 1621 were busy that weekend? Only had enough money to provide Carl Webb with free transportation?
Out of the hundreds of thousands of men and women who’ve served, IVAW can scare up 79 for their annual convention. Well, 78 and Carl Webb – as long as IVAW pays.
Category: Antiwar crowd, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Phony soldiers, Usual Suspects
These folks have nothing else of value in their lives. They have no self-esteem, no pride, no compassion, and especially no values. At least none positive.
They are nothing but attention whores. Parasites. Worthless. I won’t say they are pathetic, because that would indicate they are worth some small amount of sympathy. I’ll not give them even that.
Hmmmmm; where to start? I have to ask myself: Self, is it worth the time to respond to these worthless morons?
The answer is: Nope, they aren’t worth it. Same shit different dumbasses.
“It’s a place where drug abuse is rampant, suicide is common, and mental health is severely placed at risk. One in three women stands a chance of being raped — as do one in four men” Really? I just wonder where those statistics came from. Pravda?
Marine 83: They can say whatever number they want, since they put in there “stands a chance”, that way any number they use can be explained away. They could have said 300 out of 400 smurfs stand the chance of being gang raped by billy goats and there’s no way to disprove it.
Per Claymore style-
“I remember it, like it was yesterday, man. I couldn’t wait for COB so I could go and score me some shit. And If I couldn’t, I knew I could find some ETOH. Yeah, us medical types. Heh. We see sooo many drunks and druggies coming through the ranks, I shoulda reported myself. After all, isn’t that what happens? You join the service to go to an illegal war and then you learn how to get drunk and high to forget all the pain? I am so much smarter than those who command me, after all.” Sarc/off
That little girl thinks she’s been around the world and she hasn’t been around a tea cup. It would suck to be her.
Old Trooper… so true and so funny.
OHHH, it’s code!
You see “drug abuse” is class six and caffeine.
“mental health” You will be called every name under the sun, including things you haven’t heard on South Park.
“physical health” I think that would be a little wall-to-wall counciling.
“raped” means being selected for a detail. You know, as in: “1SGT totally raped my squad with those taskings.”
as for violence directed towards each other: combatives training!
See when you are a dirt bag – Blue Falcon, the world just looks different.
Cheers and happy hunting.
So, just askin’ but how did Cherish “exit” the Army? And she left because she couldn’t finagle her way into a unit that would like, totally, make good use of her unique skills? That would be making lattes, or what?
Wonder if she knows that 3 in 3 women stands to get an honorable discharge if they finish their enlistment honorably? Or 4 in 4 men?
As my first Platoon Sergeant use to say,”You always have some shitbirds.” And it seems like IVAW draws them like a magnet.
Sound like the military I served in.
Fort Dix
Fort Lee
Aberdeen Proving Ground
Korea
Fort Campbell
Germany
Ah, the poster child of shitbirds, I mean IVAW speakth.
Carl Webb got booted from IVAW.
Also, yes, numbers are accurate even including resignations. The reason not as many came to last convention is because of the tough economics, as IVAW didn’t pay folks way that time.
Homophobia is definitely rampant in the military, as is attempted sexual assault. More later on that.
It’s a place where drug abuse is rampant, suicide is common, and mental health is severely placed at risk. One in three women stands a chance of being raped — as do one in four men — and the violence directed toward each other undercuts the real fight against the enemy.
Talk about a bunch of made up shit…….these people have obviously never been to a college campus where “drug abuse is rampant” and I can make up a statistic too. Where I work EVERY woman stands a chance of being raped…..I’ll just leave out the part where the chance is 1:100,000
Not sure which Army you served in Carl but chances are 1:1 that you’re a dick…..
Made up horse crap. AS, don’t you start your secret squirrel “I wish I could tell you, but I can’t” fertilizer again….
AS: So, in the Army, right now, attempted sexual assualt is rampant? What constitutes an attempted sexual assault, in your definition? Please explain it for us know nothings that have never been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
Oh, Carl; I was at Ft. Dix and I guess I must have missed that whole thing that you believe happened as these two morons described it. Also been to Benning, Bragg, Stewart, Irwin, Campbell, etc. and was actually born in Germany in a military hospital. Been to quite a few Air Force bases and a couple of Marine Corps Camps as well. Funny, I guess because I wasn’t a waste of oxygen, such as yourself, I missed out on a few things that were oh so horrible.
I got to go with the “Old Trooper” on this one. I’ve been to all those places and after a 25 year career, I have no fraking idea what these two are talking about. You would think after all that time I would, statistically speaking, run into quite allot of this stuff.
Sucide is COMMON??
CNN: Army officials said that if the trend continues this year, it will pass the nation’s suicide rate of 19.5 people per 100,000, a 2005 figure considered the most recent by the government.
So, suicide in the Army is still lower than the national average.
Meaning that with missing their families, being in a state of repeated deployment, not even an occasional beer to let off some steam, fighting a WAR, no sex for a ton of them, people like this chick disgracing thier buddies funerals,… Army personel are coping BETTER THAN THE AVERAGE AMERICAN.
..
And What about the board elections? I thought there were absentee ballots. Economics so bad that you still only got 79 ballots?
“Homophobia is definitely rampant in the military, as is attempted sexual assault”. So, which study quantifies your statement, AS? There must be a published study somewhere, by somebody with lots of initials after their names that verifies your blanket statement.
So, yeah, like OldTrooper, I’d be interested in your definition of “attempted sexual assault”. As in reported attempts to the proper authority, as opposed to what someone might be thinking? Or is that anecdotal?
As to homophobia, is that an Army-wide policy, or just personal observation. If the latter, how big a sample are you referring to? One unit? Or did you do an Army-wide survey?
On the bright side, they are learning from the winter soldier thing back in the 70s. Don’t mention specific atrocities, just hint that it MIGHT be going on so you’re in the clear when someone calls you on your nonsense.
And hey, it diverts attention from the fact that the person making these claims are shitbirds that couldn’t handle actually doing the job in the military that they volunteered for.
All valid questions UpNorth and OldTrooper. But you don’t have the clearances to know that AS “knows”.
Thought that I would make a pithy comment, then read #1 and it sums up my feelings quite adequately.
“AW1 Tim Says:
December 22nd, 2009 at 6:51 pm
These folks have nothing else of value in their lives. They have no self-esteem, no pride, no compassion, and especially no values. At least none positive.
They are nothing but attention whores. Parasites. Worthless. I won’t say they are pathetic, because that would indicate they are worth some small amount of sympathy. I’ll not give them even that.”
And, I still think that IVAW et al are a bunch of sissies!
“Never Forget Ft. Hood Texas, 11/5/09!”
Oh, but I do have the super-secret squirrel crypto word level clearance, Clarence. Roger, Roger; what’s our vector, Victor?
AS is doing what she does; defend the negative and an organization built on the negative.
The turds I had to deal with in the MC are nothing compared to the turds I see in the civilian world on a daily basis.
And the turds I keep seeing speaking for the IVAW are the same turds that were standing tall in front of my desk for being turds. Bunch of 10%ers
1stSgt,
Agreed, these are the same s*birds that we all had to put up with. It used to be sick call or profiles lasting longer than the paper it was written on. Now they just hide behind being anti-war.
IVAW, the run at your own pace and PT shoe profile of U.S. Veterans
“Sound like the military I MARGINALY served in.” Fixed it for ya eternal E-4, komrade Carl Marx Webb, hat tip to whoever it was that mentioned how he rocketed up the ranks to Command Specialist Major…
Let’s take up a collection to send this oppressed fry cook to a proper worker’s paradise like North Korea!
@Junior AG,
I’ve got five bucks I can add to that fund.
Aw, [sniff] man, it was so hard… I had to do PowerPoint! That’s it, man! Game over, man! Game over!
BNG, I’m closing in on mastering my Obama magic decoder ring, the one that makes a deficit “budget neutral” and Medicare cuts not be cuts, does that give me clearance?
I have been getting flight physicals since 1991. And since that means I get the pleasure of having my balls handled and a finger shoved up my ass each yr, does that mean I am victim of sexual assault or homophobic because I did not enjoy my annual “Still-not-gay” test? Or maybe I am a racist because one time the flight surgeon was black and I did not enjoy having another man’s finger stuck up my starfish. Just trying to pad AS/Carl Webb statistics.
Carl put the crack pipe down, you’ve had enough. AS, I wonder what the troops really think of you after reading some of your BS. Good grief, High Schools have more attempted sexual assaults and homophobia. Rampant, aw bullshit.
In my world, the military is supposed to be more honorable than the civilian population. We’re supposed to have far LESS sexual assaults than the average. Less than college campuses, and less than high schools. In what world is “it happens in high school, so it’s cool” an acceptable excuse? Yes, I know there’s a lot of drugs and sexual assault anywhere you put young people who don’t know any better in a situation where it happens. But the MILITARY IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW BETTER. We swear an oath and we are supposed to do the RIGHT thing. Homophobia? Come on, really? You really think you don’t see it in the military? Have you been to some of the AKO forums lately, or even just standing around? There are more gay jokes in the military than you can shake a stick at. I don’t need a study by someone with letters after their name to know that I saw more prejudice against gays in the military than I saw in the civilian world. In my world, attempted sexual assault is when someone initiates unwanted sexual contact and does not stop once the other party makes it clear said contact is unwanted. No does not mean yes. If someone says no, that means it’s time to stop, and if you don’t, you are committing or attempting sexual assault. If the woman says no and the guy tries to grab, touch, or do whatever anyway, but she shoves him away? Then it’s an attempted sexual assault instead of an actual sexual assault. It doesn’t have to be sex to be sexual assault. BNG: It’s not my fault if TAH keeps published incorrect vote totals of a vote they’re not even party to in the first place. And it is not my responsibility to publish IVAW member numbers, vote totals, vote percentages, etc to you. You are not a member. I come on here and comment, but I don’t owe you a damn thing. You’re not entitled to a response. If you want me to read what you write, email me and I’ll… Read more »
Funny, but the vote count has never been questioned before.
From Webster’s: Rampant-b : profusely widespread. My head must have been in the sand for 23 years or was just another racist, sexist homophobe.
Hmmm,let’s see, what are some other organizations or professions to which large numbers of A+ type personalities are attracted?
A- Professional Sports (Pick one)
B- Law Enforcement
C- Firefighting
D- Military Service
Now which of these are known for their open acceptance of homosexuality? Notice a common theme? None of these professions claims to represent a true cross-section of society. They have tests, entrance exams, qualifications, etc. that must be met before acceptance to join. You have to better than the average bear to join these groups.
All of them involve being part of a team. There is no I in team. Joining any of these teams means one must adapt to values and mores of that group. It is not so much that the members of these teams hate gays, it is the fact that gays use their mouths as cock-holsters.
When you join one of these organizations, you are giving up part of your former lifestyle. Which of these lifestyles is incompatible with military service?
A- GLBT equality activist
B- Heroin addict
C- Violent felon
D- Grand Dragon of the local KKK
Answer- all of them. We have drawn a line on personal conduct. We expect our members to meet a minimum threshold. No pot smoking, no pole smoking, no beating your wife, no stealing cars, no lynching of other races, etc. We tell you how to wear your hair, what color nail polish is allowable, how long your mustache can be, what piercings are allowed, where you can have visible tattoos, etc, etc, etc. We give up certain rights and privileges when we take that oath.
So yeah, there are certain behaviors that are not appealing to the majority of service-members.
Please show me the statistics on the rampant sexual assault in the military as compared to the civilian world? Guess I have been missing all those courts-martials, UCMJ actions, chapters, blotter reports, etc. Granted, one sexual assault is one too many. That is somebodies sister, daughter, mother. And one of my fellow troopers.
Well said Matt. Night. merry Christmas.
Matt: On gays in the military: you make exactly the wrong point. It is not so much that the members of these teams hate gays, it is the fact that gays use their mouths as cock-holsters I will never understand why guys, who presumably enjoy receiving oral sex, love degrading it so much. News flash: there are a lot of other people in the military who are more likely than others to engage in that sort of activity. At last count, about 14% of the population. You know, the women? I haven’t heard any complaints about the fact that their presence means oral sex may happen. And unfortuntely, I don’t think that wife-beating has the stigma you think it has in the service. You are right that there aren’t a lot of chapters, blotter reports, court martials, etc. But that doesn’t mean these things aren’t happening. It means that often, commands are unwilling to prosecute unless it is a clear case of rape. Women are often unwilling to come forward unless it is a clear case of rape. And when they do, they are often reviled as ‘destroying a good soldier’s career’. I once had to deal with protecting one of my soldiers who suffered an attempted sexual assault and was able to call the MPs, which is what stopped it. This other soldier was tearing her clothes off in front of her child and preparing to assault her. But because no assault had actually taken place and she had formerly been involved with him, the command did not want to hear it, and I actually got orally reprimanded when I took her to court and helped her get a restraining order against him. Their reasoning: because I had ‘destroyed his career’ in doing so. Currently, being convicted of domestic violence or sexual assault on someone you have been involved with (date rape or domestic rape), or having an ex parte restraining order against you, means that you cannot own or use a weapon. This means that a soldier convicted of sexual assault that is not ‘stranger rape’ has forfeited… Read more »
“Many commands are unwilling to lose the bodies like that, and so don’t tend to prosecute unless (and sometimes not even if) the female is demanding it.”
The Command has nothing to do with choosing or not choosing to prosecute in the military.
TSO–funny how the UCMJ works like that, eh?
AS: Waaaaaay back, when I was just a little ‘ol PFC in a combat unit (no females, as you know), the Army instituted a policy of No Means No, and I had to go through 4 hours of class on the new policy, because I was a guy. We didn’t have females in our unit, but it didn’t matter, because the policy wasn’t designed for just co-ed units. It was designed for everyone. We had posters up in the orderly room, and all around the unit area. In fact, there were posters up all over the fricken Post. We covered the UCMJ, what action would be taken, where the command structure fit into all of it, etc. The funny thing is, a female didn’t have to go through the chain of command, she could go right down to the PM’s office and file a complaint.
Top even made a point of telling us that if we were implicated in anything like that that the last thing we would feel before the cell door shut was him pulling his foot out of our ass. Funny thing about Top; he had a class 3 profile but was out there every fricken day running PT with us. He didn’t have to, but he lead from the front and basically shamed any whiners into either walking the walk or getting the fuck out of his unit.
There were “problem” troops that made their way into our unit and they either shaped up, or were jettisoned from the Army. Their last stop in our unit, more or less their “last chance” was they were assigned to my room. Top would put them with me to try and get them into shape. Some made it, some didn’t, but I could imagine had IVAW been around when I was in, that some of those sent packing would have ended up in that group, just by what I have heard coming from the pieholes of some of those members, these two as well.
Selena, Oral sex is not the problem. Feeling beard stubble against my sack is the problem. I have known several homosexuals in the military. I was the first person one of them came out to. She served 20yrs to the day honorably. She kept her private life private and did her job. DADT works. It is inappropriate for me to come to work and describe my latest conquest. I will be accused of conduct unbecoming, sexual harassment, etc. So I choose to keep my mouth shut. Had a cock-holster in my last unit. He got caught servicing a pair or roommates. They were not “gay”, but the cock-holster was. The command dismissed it as “experimentation”. Did not want to lose three critical skills while in the fight. Already at 90% or below in those jobs. But the harassment and comments we took as a unit destroyed morale. For everyone. This may come as a surprise to you Selena, but the military is pretty selective when it comes to who we allow in our ranks. We don’t allow into our ranks most felons, admitted drug users, alcoholics, pedophiles, communist revolutionaries, the retarded, the lame, the sick, etc. We openly discriminate against those with disabilities, bigots, those who can’t finish High School, gangbangers, those who score below 30 on the ASVAB, and those who have sickle cell anemia. We are not like the rest of society. But we are not perfect. We have our share of problems and problem children. Stripes or oak leaves. Rockers or bars. Take your pick. As an institution, we attempt to remove those who fail the to live up to the standard. I tried to get a guy booted from flight school back in 2002. Call it a gut feeling, but something was not quite right. I was not the only one. Fast forward to 2009- Chief warrant officer sentenced to 15 years confinement On Jan, 21, at a general court martial, CWO 2 Matthew D. Howard pleaded guilty to several specifications of violating the UCMJ. Among those were: (1) twice violating Article 92, by violating a… Read more »
“I’m not saying it happens more than the civilian equivalent, (frat house), but I’m saying that it is in fact widespread. It is ALSO widespread in the civilian population.”
Sexual battery and domestic battery are not widespread in the military or civilian community. I did 22 years of active duty and have been a PoPo for the last 10 years (minus a year when recalled)in a SoCal city with a population of about 200,000. Does it happens, sure does and is one incident too much, yes, but widespread, not even. Actually, felony domestic battery incidents have gone down. As far as statistics on how many of these crimes are actually false reports; from experience it is higher than many people would realize especially concerning rape. This is not to say it isn’t a problem and that alot of these men and women shouldn’t be locked up and have the keys thrown away.
Jonn: Were you missing for that whole controversy or was Peskoff only ranting on mine and TSO’s facebooks? TSO: I will admit I don’t know all the nitty gritty of the backdoor stuff that winds up with these guys not getting charges, but I’ve seen it happen all too often. And the command may not be the only one who can open charges, but they certainly have the ability to do so and all too often do not. Matt: I would completely, /completely/ agree with DADT if it applied to both heterosexual and homosexuals equally. If it was really a situation where /no/ one came into work and talked about their conquests, I’d be completely down with it. But that’s not the military I encountered. I’ve heard a lot of guys talking about their encounters (even illegal encounters with prostitutes) and it was just what everyone did. I guarantee however had one of them opened up about a gay partner, they would have been hemmed up faster than they could blink. I agree that we’re somewhat selective when it comes to who we allow in our ranks. I personally feel we should be more selective, but that’s a personal quibble of mine. My problem though is that once they make it in, it is currently really hard to get them out. I remember before the war, it was easy to get people chaptered out for misconduct. After the war started, they had to commit serious, serious offenses for it to even think of happening. And there were some things people let slide-wife beating was one of them. Admittedly, this is a subject near and dear to my heart, and so I’m somewhat biased. But I’ve still seen too much callous behavior from people in charge to have full faith that this is really disapproved of in a serious way. YatYas: First, felony domestic battery may be down, but what about other domestic battery? And how are you judging it? By when a woman comes into the cops? By when a formal report is made? US studies suggest that 25% of… Read more »
AS: Get over your “victim” mentality; would you please? I understand your personal stake, but it makes you less objective in the argument. In this day and age, if a woman is battered or raped, they have many more outlets to report such things and get help. It’s been on the rise in resources for a couple of decades. I hate to burst your bubble, but domestic violence against men has been going up, also. Some of us older types are of the mind that you don’t hit women, no matter what, so women who are batshit crazy have had opportunities to use that to their advantage. That is something I have personal experience with. Are either of these two losers claiming victimhood based on being raped? I haven’t seen anything claiming that from these two; so why did you inject it into the subject? Why do you think it’s necessary to defend these two with that line of commentary when it’s not part of the issue? Are you suggesting that men and women be segregated in the military, since you believe that all men in uniform have either committed rape or sexual assault, or it’s only a matter of time before they do? Or, if it’s so fucking horrible in the military for you, because you are a woman; why are you still there?
They are two former military types that were either in the military for the wrong reasons, like the cupcake Cherish, or they weren’t expecting what military life was like and biased their opinion of everything military based on their own prejudices.
If they were men and assigned to me, they wouldn’t have lasted very long, that’s for sure.
Hmmm, seems that Selena only offers anecdotal “evidence” to back up her claims. As in #32. But, again, if you don’t cite something more substantial than “There are more gay jokes in the military than you can shake a stick at”, it makes it seem that you’re just pursuing an agenda. Citing jokes is not exactly evidence.
So, if we are to accept your statement that 1 in 4 women is a victim of “domestic assault”, that would mean that out of a city with a population of 1 million, and given the male-female ratio in the general population, that 6 in 10 residents are women, 150,000 women in that city were a victim of assault? Do you define assault as a physical touching? Or, do “verbal” assault count too? We better stop paying for health care and start building more prisons, if those stats are even half-way correct.
As to DoJ stats, you might want to reconsider your reliance on them, as there are all kinds of problems with reporting, definitions and qualifications of the crimes. If a report is not made sometime, there is no way to count domestic assaults, or “attempted sexual assaults” unless projection is now an accepted way to count crimes.
FBI press release June 1, 2009
“According to the FBI’s Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report released today, the nation experienced a 2.5 percent decrease in the number of violent crimes and a 1.6 percent decline in the number of property crimes for 2008 compared with data from 2007. The report is based on information that the FBI gathered from 12,750 law enforcement agencies that submitted six to 12 comparable months of data to the FBI for both 2007 and 2008.”
“In 2008, all four of the violent crime offense categories declined nationwide compared with data from 2007. Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter declined 4.4 percent, aggravated assault was down 3.2 percent, forcible rape decreased 2.2 percent, and robbery decreased 1.1 percent.”
This doesn’t mean that even one case of DV or rape is acceptable whether committed by a man or woman. Now days, people especially in cities call the police for everything even when they don’t get their food order the way they want it.
AS: You are right, you don’t owe me anything nor do you need to reply to my posts.
Who you do owe something to is the members of the military that you continue to degrade with your hyperbolic statements.
“Homophobia is definitely rampant in the military, as is attempted sexual assault.”
Attempted sexual assault is “occurring unchecked: happening in an unrestrained manner”? Really? You really need to get out if you actually believe that. The military I was in was very paternalistic and did not allow that sort of activity to occur much less occur unchecked.
And for every infantry Battalion, one entire company “stands a chance” (4 companies in a Battalion, all males, 1 in 4) of being raped? I know it is not your statistic, but you came here to support it with your “rampant” statement.
I had to sign a witness statement on my 2nd deployment for a Female Soldier that was harassed. Other than that, I never saw anything to the level at which these other folks describe. If I did, I would have made a movie about it. lol
No really, I would have. People in the “Movement” seem to think I have no respect for women, but if it was as bad as they say it is, I would have done something. I just didn’t
see it. I talked one on one with Females and it isn’t always rosey for them for sure. But on
the other hand I saw dozens of women get knocked up to get out of deployment. It wasn’t because they were against the war, they just didn’t want to go. For most, it would have been their first time.
The worst types were the ones who screwed everything on the FOB, and admitted to it openly, often times without protection, then got pissed when a guy would not sleep with them because they where “Wh*res”.
In my 1st deployment we had a Soldier that was gay, as far as I know no one ever ripped on him for it. But as far as racial and gay jokes go, yeah, they are everywhere. However, would we be having this debate if jokes against white people were out of control? I got busted on, and gave equal amounts back, of foul jokes with my 88 crew. A mixed race crew, so it got fowl. But we never hated each other for it. it was jokes and that was it.
Selena, I am not going to give you a hard time, but remember, you have a rapist on you Board of “Directors”. He was also a witness to rape, and blames it all on the Army because they made him so evil. I hate what the Army did to me and my friends, but that isn’t their fault, it’s his and the people who carried out those sick acts.
From my Blackberry, so shorter: These aren’t my statistics. I think the reason you folks deny them is that you do not want to accept the current definitions. Who knows why? Maybe you wish for the bygone days when date rape wasn’t a crime, or if it wasn’t penetration, it wasn’t a crime. Or if the woman didn’t come in with a black eye or a broken arm, it wasn’t a crime. Nowadays it isn’t just ‘no means no’, it is ‘yes means yes’. If you don’t get an enthusiastic ‘hell yes’, maybe you ought to stop and not just worry about whether or not you’ll get some. And maybe so should the broad male populace. If a woman seems reluctant, the answer is not ‘buy her another drink’. Domestic violence covers a lot. It covers punching, it covers shoving, it covers locking your girlfriend in the bathroom. It covers refusing to let a woman out of the car until she agrees to something. It covers intimidating women that they’d better not tell if they know what’s good for them. It covers slapping and hair pulling and punching a wall instead of a woman in an attempt to intimidate: next time it could be your face. And yes, it often goes hand in hand with verbal abuse. You slut. Why were you looking at him/wearing that dress/you whore, you’d better not leave, I swear to God I’ll kill you if you leave. Domestic violence and sexual assault are linked, because in both cases, the perpetrator sees the woman as simply an object, something lesser that they can possess, control, and dominate. What I am suggesting is not that we fill the jails. What I suggest is that we change the culture, and stop talking about women like they’re dirty for engaging in sex. (Cockholster), stop calling them out for engaging in unprotected sex unless you’re calling men out for doing so. Educate people about what domestic violence is and what sexual assault is until you don’t have this shit anymore because anyone who did it would be shunned like the… Read more »
“Domestic violence covers a lot”. Yes it does, and no one has denied it happens. But, again, all of your “evidence” is anecdotal. But, “disrespect” is not necessarily “domestic violence”. Nor is a leer necessarily a “sexual assault”. It’s all context, AS.
The problems can NOT be dealt with by making charges that everyone is either a victim or perpetrator. That’s what I took away from your posts, if I’m wrong, sorry bout that.
AS: What a load of liberal PC BS. I have sat through some very long, boring classes on sexual harassment in the corporate world and you sound like one of the females that was giving a class at one of my former employers. She constituted everything said negatively by a man to a woman is considered sexual harassment. You are changing it up and using blanket interpretation to cover every interaction between a man and woman that doesn’t go the woman’s way as domestic violence or sexual assault. That is how you arrive at your numbers on domestic violence and sexual assault, by the sounds of it. Using your definition, there’s just as much domestic violence and sexual assault against men, too.
Stop playing the victim for once, huh? You seem to be tough enough to defend those losers in IVAW all the time, but now you want to turn a thread about said losers into your own personal campaign to get all men labelled as aggressors and all women labelled as victims. Knock it off and grow the fuck up.
Jeezus, there is no discussing this with you, because you are one of those that will go through life convinced that any guy that looks at you is either sexually assaulting you, or determining how he’s gonna exact domestic violence on you by telling you you can’t buy the Louis Vitton purse with the rent money. Since you opened this can of worms, I will say it flat out that I pity the fool that ever thinks of dating you, because, by your standards, the poor bastard is gonna be charged with something depending on your mood that day.
Try being rational for once and remember that respect is a two way street and right now, by your responses, you have no respect for men, yet you are demanding respect from them. It don’t work that way, sweetie…..oh shit, don’t turn me in for sexual assault for calling you sweetie.