Alliana Guitron; Ms. Veteran America
According to YNN, Alliana Guitron, a Syracuse native and the President’s videographer was named Ms. Veteran America;
Guitron has been serving her country since 2000. She is a Combat Documentation Production Specialist and has traveled the world with the President, Vice President and First Lady as their videographer.
Guitron currently lives in Maryland where she is working on a degree in criminal justice.
The Ms. Veteran American website explains the award;
The purpose of this event is to showcase “The Woman Beyond the Uniform“. As women, some of our femininity becomes lost when we wear the uniform; because we have to blend in with the boys. Our grace, poise, beauty and talents become camouflaged during our military service.
Along with being Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, and Sailors; we are also Mothers, Wives, Daughters, and Sisters!
Proceeds from this event provides housing for homeless female Veterans and their children.
Last year’s winner was Denyse Gordon whose focus was on sexual violence in the military during her reign, according to National Public Radio;
Gordon first experienced harassment early in her career, from a high-ranking civilian in her squadron who touched her and spoke to her inappropriately. She told her superiors, who questioned her story and warned her that coming forward could affect the perpetrator’s retirement. She felt blamed and never filed a complaint.
Later in her career, a man in another branch of the military physically assaulted Gordon. “He was an officer, and I was enlisted,” she says. “So if you tell, you get in trouble, and I didn’t want to feel the scrutiny that I felt at my first base, so there was no way I was telling. There was no way.” So she buried it, stayed in the military and threw herself into her schoolwork, earning multiple degrees.
Gordon says she blames the men who harassed and assaulted her, but not the military as an institution. “There are individuals that are flat out not going to believe you. And it’s a hard pill to swallow when it’s your superiors, when it’s your close friends because if they feel if you come forward you will ruin unit cohesion, you will ruin that esprit de corps,” says Gordon. “And I hope one day that the leadership would put so much pressure on any offenders that they would think twice, three times before even venturing into that arena.”
That’s probably the most mature view of the problem that I’ve read – she blames the men who harassed her and not the military, in general, like most of my liberal friends seem to do.
Category: Veterans Issues
I have to tell you, it bothers the shit out of me to see this and here is why: I have been attending Sexual Assault Prevention training since Tailhook in ’91. Been told that since I am a man, I am just a rapist waiting to happen. Been told not to objectify women, because they can do everything that I can. And then I see the military holding a beauty pageant where they trot these ladies out like show ponies. Now what is it going to be? Are they my equal or do I need to rate them on the swim suit competition?? I am a little confused with what the end state here is.
Nothing against the young lady but the presidents videographer?
We have no other females in the Armed Forces serving around the world more suitable than a glorified picture taker for the most heavily guarded man on the planet ie: the safest job on Earth?
My daughter spent a year in Korea and is now going to Kuwait for 6months. Guess she should have taken up a camera.
What MyGySgt said. No inherent contradiction here is there? This woman complains about being objectified, not taken seriously and nearly sexually assaulted by her superiors and then whines about it after winning a ‘beauty pageant’ which is designed to objectify her? Umm…what? I can’t begin to count the number of finger wagging training sessions me and my soldiers were subject to admonishing us that we were pigs and ‘potential rapists’ for listening to our biology. To the point where male soldiers were afraid to give a genuine compliment to a female for fear of it being misconstrued in some crazy ass way and having the hyposensitive Chicken Littles in higher headquarters lowering the boom. Because once you’re in the that machine, it’s going to chew you and your career up and spit you out in bloody pieces on the other side. It demands sacrifice.
So kudos to you, honey. Dress up in an evening dress and swimsuit to accentuate your femininity and then tell every male soldier they better take you seriously. Hypocrisy much?
Well, I certainly cannot disagree with comments 1 or 3 BUT, here’s the thing: Unless you both are in favor of the nonfeminine woman, and I am quite confident you’re not, this is a good thing. Why? Because it pisses the lefties and feminazis off so much. The last thing they want to see is a woman plying her sexual charms for us rapists and would-be rapists. Nontheless, your points are well taken.
So women can be in the infantry now… does this mean men can be Ms. Veteran USA?
We had a rather long, multi-thread discussion in January about sex in the trenches.
Stuff like this does not help put an end to sexual harrassment on the job. Are we going to see ‘Hunk of the Year’ from the Army? Are we going to see some eye candy for us girls?
Let me know when the jackasses in the PR offices at the Pentagon grow the fuck up, will you?
@6. The audience for Hunk of the Year would be quite limited. For some reason, women and men like watching Miss America and other beauty pageants but, when it comes to guys, aside from half the population of San Francisco, the audience just ain’t there.
2/17AirCav, not as much as you think.
If the emphasis is on physical attraction and not on what the person does and accomplishes, what does that say about this whole charade?
And who do you respect more, the girl in the swimsuit with a sash across her chest, or the woman in the squad carrying her share of the load and not complaining about it?
Frankly, I would rather be the gal in the squad than the twinkie in the swimsuit.
I’m not certain this is a military function…I think this is a non-profit designed to provide income for the Final Salute organization….regarding the competition here’s the info from their website:
The categories will be Interview, Talent, Evening Gown and Military History (yes, no swimsuit).
Because she didn’t wear an evening gown to her workplace I don’t see an inherent contradiction in any of this, is she not supposed to ever dress up again because two guys in the military are sh1tbag rapists? If by wearing an evening gown and answering some military history questions she gets to tell her story and have the subject illuminated what’s wrong with that? Or are we suggesting that because she now decided to play dress up in a talent and beauty show that her opinion and words are suddenly without merit or that they are somehow lessened because the women who get raped should continue to dress like combat troops and never again desire to dress up in some pretty girly things?
Or are we saying because she dressed up in a gown her words and opinions no longer have any merit because beauty pageants are frivolous? How many frivolous and f@cking idiotic things have been done by men when they are not at work who expect to be taken seriously when they return to work?
The opinion that a beauty pageant makes sexual misconduct expected or explainable is distasteful at best and contemptuous at worst as it suggests that all of us who are men are unable to control ourselves after seeing a scantily clad woman. The reality is that sh1tbags are sh1tbags, and always will be. If we learn nothing else from our daily poser dose it’s that the kind of people who are prone to misconduct will be prone to that dishonorable misconduct regardless of rank, privilege or circumstance.
Duh-feminists say that men are not supposed to pay attention to women’s sexuality right up to the point that women use that sexuality to their advantage, then it’s okay somehow. Anyway, feminism was never about “equality”, it was always about preserving whatever advantages women had in gender relations while destroying those that men had.
I’ll say this again-sex is more primal than discipline. We have to be inculcated to accept almost all aspects of discipline (which is what basic training is all about), but sexual attraction comes perfectly naturally to almost all of us. Feminists want to believe that this isn’t true as well, because then their carefully constructed fantasy world starts to fall apart, so they force the rest of us to play pretend along with them.
I am the Hunk of the Year!
@VOV – good point, but the disparity is there, and it won’t go away until it is forced out.
And 2/17AirCav, in case you think I’m completely unesthetic, Playgirl magazine is the ‘hunkie eyecandy’ magazine (nekkid men, penises, full frontal everything) for heterosexual women.
It started in 1973 and I used to go get it every month at the corner drugstore because the PX didn’t carry it. It made the men I worked with very uncomfortable, but I told them as long as they were going to leave Playboy lying around and I had to look at their porn, well — right back at you, guys. Deal with it.
They had Michael Nouri as the centerfold one year.
Playgirl is still published quarterly. I may restart my subscription.
But VOV makes a very good point. Idiots are idiots, and men who act like idiots give the rest of you a decidedly undeserved bad name.
EX-PH2. I am your Navy “Hunk of the Year.”
@9, I have no issue what so ever with beauty contests. I just get tired of being told on one hand not to objectify women, they are my equal and then on the other hand, we objectify them in a beauty contest that obviously has the support of the military.
Oh, and the whole “you have a penis, you are a rapist” is getting a little tiresome too.
@10 I have a primal urge to choke the f@ck out of some co-workers at times, but thanks to self-discipline I have not yet made the evening news.
Make no mistake about where I am coming from regarding this issue, some women clearly place themselves in a dangerous position or a compromising position and get victimized as a result. That doesn’t make the result acceptable, it only makes it predictable.
Ex-PH2: the Army actually does that – in a way. I seem to remember a few of our “fairer sex” TAH readers salivating on their keyboards (at least that’s what the comments implied) over photos of competitors in the “Best Ranger Competition” a few months ago. (smile)
@12 I think beauty pageants are f@cking stupid as sh1t bro, I wouldn’t waste my time for one second watching any of that crap. We’ve all seen some of the dumb sh1t that the contestants say during the interview process, YOUTUBE is alive and well thanks to countless replays of Miss America responses to simple geographical questions.
The objectification of women doesn’t come from just a beauty pageant though, it’s pervasive throughout the culture. If you have a daughter I suspect you are thoroughly alarmed at how the advertising culture has brought the issue of sex to an ever younger female audience. With every media ad using sex and the female body to sell us everything from cars to beer our culture is awash in the debasement of women. Modern music has transformed women from an ideal to chase after to “ho-s” to be used as chattel, a current popular song by the mediocre singer son of a mediocre hack actor has women as little more than props for male gratification. Our culture objectifies females at every turn. We even belittle women whose primary jobs were never about looking good because they are old, fat, or ugly…no one talks about Biden being an out of shape old turd, but we talk about Hillary Clinton’s hair or weight as if those somehow have anything to do with her ability to do her job or not do her job.
Objectify women? Our culture is based on devaluing women at every turn, for those of us who have daughters that should be a concern at every level because it means your little girl is already being considered as nothing more than meat without merit before she’s even entered society as an adult…sobering thoughts to be certain.
VOV-you aren’t biochemically inclined to fight your co-workers are you? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-d-braunstein-md/the-biochemistry-of-loves_b_822781.html
Come on! The two situations are not comparable. We are innately predisposed to sexual attraction by evolution and most of us will act on it in some way. Some will do so in socially inappropriate ways-especially the young who struggle to control natural impulses that they don’t understand (that are frankly poorly understood by most of us). Feminists play a cute game with all this-“we thought soldiers were disciplined”, but there are limits to what discipline can achieve. Earlier generations understood this and shaped policy accordingly.
I’m a little tired of hearing and reading about rape in the military too. Not sure what her being selected as Ms. Veteran of the Year has to do with anything but, videographer for POTUS. Excuse me for feeling that something isn’t quite right here…Back to rape in the military. Its a society and no different than civilian society, the military has criminals same as civilian. Maybe the bellringer’s are being successful at raising their so-called awareness because of the percentage of population that makes up our military. That said, I really don’t pay too much attention to the stat’s feminazi’s peddle. Its horrible,I get that.
Let me say this also VOV-you are perfectly correct in discussing how society treats women. I think earlier generations understood things that they could not articulate (partly because they lacked the means to explain the process) and one of those things is that sex is a very powerful force and should be treated carefully.
However because those earlier generations either couldn’t explain that or the explanations were insufficient in the face of that powerful force we have let those previous constraints go by the wayside, which is how we have gotten to the situation (that you accurately describe above) we have now.
@16 Harassment isn’t about sexual attraction, any more than rape is about a need for sex. Both are about dominance and control.
#21 was in response to #18, not #16. Sorry.
PintoNag-baloney! It has been clear for some time that our sexual harassment briefs have targeted male sexual behavior. What gets defined as “harassment” is often vague-the same can’t be said of rape. SNL (despite years of decline) pretty much nailed it here http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f76_1323277426&comments=1
@18 my urge to choke my coworkers was a joke…in poor taste perhaps, but the fight or flight mechanism (acute stress response) is primal in our wiring as well, it is the simple firing of neurons in the hypothalamus if my biology 101 memory is worth anything….the point being our bodies are designed after millennia of evolution for many things to keep us safe and alive from running away to sex.
Our ability to understand and act upon that knowledge as opposed to being unable to control our urges is what separates us from the lower members of the food chain.
Our ability to understand and act upon that knowledge as opposed to being unable to control our urges is what separates us from the lower members of the food chain.
I don’t really disagree with that, but I think it is more complicated than that. I think that it was always understood that those urges were present and our culture was constructed in such a way as to help us keep those urges under control (to make acting on them socially unacceptable except under certain circumstances), without those cultural barriers we shouldn’t be surprised that individuals are less inclined to suppress those urges. And “fight or flight” only occurs under certain situations, sexual attraction is a more common occurrence-or at least it always was to me.
@23 AGREED!!
I have two young daughters and I hope by the example that I set for them by the way I treat their mother and the other women in our life they don’t have to fear men as a bunch of hormonal rape machines.
That is not the tack that military training takes these days. The training that is given (and I just went through SAPR last month) is pretty much telling men that we are just one beer away from going on a 5 state rape spree. Oh, and women are not responsible in any way, shape or form for anything that happens to them. Sorry, I am not teaching that to my daughters. I teach them personal responsibility. As they get older, we will talk about putting yourself in compromising positions and situational awareness.
@12. Ex-PH2. Playgirl, huh? I went to school with one of the fellas who did a photo spread for that mag in the 70s. It’s true. Very good looking guy. Girls flocked to him. The problem was that he and a three dollar bill had something in common. I kid you not.
@23 Accusations of harassment by women are also about control and dominance. You’re right, men are targeted for their sexual behavior. Once males get too big to spank, they frighten most women. Women use mental and emotion techniques for control, as well as superior numbers. I would think you as soldiers would understand those tactics.
And out of curiosity…did anyone in any of your briefs bring up the women’s role in male sexual behavior? Or is that a forbidden topic?
PintoNag-almost never. I won’t say it is forbidden, but it is at the very least ignored. And I don’t think most men understand how women process issues of sexual attraction (there are all sorts of websites out there that attempt to teach men “how women work” using varying techniques, but almost none devoted to teaching women about men, because it is largely unnecessary), most men don’t even understand how this works internally, much less the mystery (to them) that is women.
I will say this: this discussion is what should be going on at the SHARP programs, and NOT that men are rapists waiting for a victim. That is completely false. And what the hell happened to ‘NO means NO’?
@16, Yes, Hondo, but those men weren’t labeled ‘Mr. Army Vet America’, were they? They were labeled ‘Best Ranger’. And why were there no women in that? Because there are no women Rangers yet.
PN is right, and this ‘harrassment’ is nothing new. It goes back for millenia, the process of putting women ‘in their place’ and squelching what they did. It is about dominance and control.
Can you think of anything more embarrassing to a Roman army under Suetonius, the then governor of Britannia, than the very real possibility of being beaten in warfare by Boudicca, a mere woman, who happened to be the widow of Prasutagus, the Kind of the Iceni?
@68W58, it is frequently, and increasingly, difficult to define a line between someone being ‘hit on’ at work, and actually being harrassed at work. It used to be that harrassment was clearly the result of a co-worker or a supervisor making threats of reprisal, such as job loss, if you didn’t ‘cooperate’ with a date and maybe sex, or otherwise intimidating you in some way that made you feel threatened.
This isn’t just in the military, it is everywhere, and it includes women doing it just as much as men. It may as much to do with parents not teaching their children to have good manners, as well as what is appropriate and NOT appropriate, as anything else.
But now, we’re back to telling girls it’s okay to BE a sex object and it’s okay for boys to look at them that way, all before they’re even 12 years old. This is NOT okay, and never should be okay, but it is definitely part of the problem, and frankly, I blame the media in its entirety for it.
Did you know that if you are a male and you control household spending, this is a form of abuse. And, no, if you respond that your wife is happy that you keep the books, it is not okay. She has just not yet becone enlightened. And if your wife controls the household budget, then that’s abusive, right? Wrong. That’s not abusive at all b/c she has wrested one of the tradional tools of male dominance from you. And that is a good thing. See how this works. Put another way, Male = Bad and Female = Good. End of class.
2/17AirCav, yes, that rag is/was very heavily perused by gay men, and I stopped subscribing to it because of that.
Besides, I spent one full year in college, and many weekends later on in Chicago, taking figure drawing and studio classes, and frankly, if you’re embarrassed by the sight of a naked human body, you get over it very quickly in those classes.
@29 The one thing that would teach men the most about women is the one thing men generally are weak at — talking. Women are verbal creatures. Learn how to talk to and listen to women, and you’ve got the inside track.
It would behoove women to learn how to talk to men, also. Most only know how to give orders or wheedle favors. That’s not talking.
What MGySgtRet said is correct: women need to own up to personal responsibility and understand about compromising situations and situational awareness. I’m aggressive and forward, and I admit it. I also take responsibility for my actions.
I have to say I am thoroughly enjoying this discussion, I appreciate the opinions and viewpoints. It is one of my guilty pleasures to come here and read everyone’s words and consider a variety of opinions.
Oh, this takes me back. In the 1960s, when all those civil rights movements were underway and the book “Our Bodies, Ourselves” was published, it was supposed to be a breakthrough for women, to get better pay for work, and to get the same opportunities for promotion that men got.
Unfortunately, those who are now feminazis and mostly lesbians, co-opted the entire women’s liberation movement for themselves, while the rest of us just kept on chugging away and working, and hoping for a little respect.
That seems to have gone by the wayside. Women still do not get equal pay for equal work, UNLESS they’re in the military where pay rates for time in grade are posted for everyone to see, or used to be. It was, in fact, the only place I could count on getting the same pay as anyone else and have the job I had, because in the civilian world, the number of women in photography were then, and still are, few and far between and they certainly didn’t make a decent living at it.
Ex-PH2: I addressed the issue of culture (i.e. teaching your kids to have good manners) in my reply to VOV. “Good manners” are defined and, more importantly, reinforced by the larger culture. As we have largely allowed those mores and values to go by the wayside, we have to deal with the ensuing chaos. I don’t presume that previous eras were perfect in this regard or that people then always lived up to those expectations, but there was a pretty clear line between what was acceptable and what was unacceptable. Now we’re attempting to replace that previous normative order with a coercive legalistic order and that is a potential minefield that individuals have to try and navigate with serious repercussions for failure.
Then there’s this article, well worth the read:
http://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/article/sexual-assault
68W58: Must argue with you about feminism because it began all about opportunity, not outcome. The cause within a few years morphed into what we see today – a power struggle inappropriately and destructively driven by the “femi-Nazis” which seems to only benefit the attorneys filing the stupid law suits. The rest of us end up confused, and sometimes actually hurt by them.
Intellectually, I am all about choices. If women and/or men want to do beauty pageants, fine with me. I just don’t care. Not my cup of tea, but your wanting to watch or participate has no impact upon my life.
Personally, this absolutely disgusts me. How DARE anyone sully a military uniform by associating it with a beauty pageant, or anything else (like political activity) which adds no value to the military and could interfere with mission effectiveness.
How can someone still serving in the military be allowed to do such a thing? Are there prizes or such for the winner? Isn’t that using your uniform for personal gain?
I just don’t get it.
OWB-perhaps, but it strikes me as just as likely that the issues of opportunity and equality were the face put on the movement by the radicals to gain broad (if you will forgive the pun) public acceptance so that they could use what seemed to be a fairly benign movement as a trojan horse for a more radical agenda. Lefties often use a similar technique for other issues dear to them (socialism, multiculturalism, etc.). I don’t put anything past them.
Actually, Ex-PH2: when experience/education/work history/occupational fields are equal, men and women do today earn the same. That’s been the case for quite a while. In fact, childless unmarried women who’ve consistently pursued a career actually in general tend to earn more than their male colleagues today.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-28246928/the-gender-pay-gap-is-a-complete-myth/
The problem is that in the real world, “all things are not equal”. The article discusses the majority of the reasons that an apparent “gender pay gap” exists. In essence, it’s because men and women still tend to make starkly different career choices – even in career fields that employ both males and females.
One thing the article does not discuss is the impact of child-rearing. Many more women than men opt to scale back or take time off from a career, or change to jobs that demand less time, when they have small children. Doing that indeed has an impact on one’s earnings, regardless of gender.
Yes, a raw “gender pay gap” exists. But today it’s essentially based on voluntary career choices vice any “male conspiracy” to “dominate” women. Fifty years ago when the meme originated, that wasn’t necessarily the case. But it is today.
@37 GREAT LINK, GREAT ARTICLE….
Am telling you the facts as I lived through them, 68W58. Not only was I there, and most assuredly, the lefties were active in the movement from the beginning, with a clear agenda, but many of us thought at the time of ourselves as “liberal” but in those days it meant equal opportunity, personal responsibility, Constitutional freedoms for everyone, etc, things today which define me as an uber-conservative.
But, the commie/lefties became the face of the movement only when the rest of us took jobs, worked through the worst of the issues of equality put into action, developed opportunities into successful careers, rewrote job requirements to test actual needs for performing jobs rather than arbitrary means for eliminating otherwise well qualified applicants, succeeded and failed on our merits, Yes, I even had a promotion held up by one of those frivolous lawsuits. In other words, we took advantage of new opportunities, and went to work.
Yes, I still consider myself a feminist, but as we originally defined the term. And I earned it. I was given an opportunity (actually, more than once) and succeeded because I learned my trade, performed it well, and reaped the rewards of doing so.
Unfortunately, many of us also feel the disdain of those who assume that we did not earn what we got the old fashioned way – through parlaying an aptitude for something with an opportunity to do it using hard work to achieve something worthwhile.
I haven’t watched a beauty pagent since puberty.
I am also sick of getting told every quarter that I am a possible rapist because I pee standing up.
Let me say one more thing honestly and for the record. When I was younger and I saw an attractive female my first thought was generally along the lines of “how can I get her into bed”. Usually the answer was-“You can’t bub, move along”. In a few rare instances the girl was actually interested (though I was almost always able to squelch that in short order), but sometimes a girl who wasn’t interested would feign interest because, I suppose, she believed that it was advantageous for her to do so. Maybe she thought I could help her in some way or maybe it was just an ego boost for her, but it was always confusing for me.
Now, I don’t really think that was unfair of those women (at least in retrospect), I understand that that is how the game is played, but the point I am trying to make is that it isn’t always clear to the young, dumb and (you complete that statement) how he is to proceed in matters of the heart.
@43 then sit down next time and read a book and relax (hehehehe)
@37 Believe me when I say this, I think that anyone who sexually assaults a woman is beneath contempt and needs to be put under the goddamn prison. But I also believe that the sexual assault problem in the military is no worse than in civilian society. I also believe that politicians with a political axe to grind use the military to “test” their theories because they have a captive audience that relies on said politicians for funding and are therefore compliant when they are told they have a sexual assault problem. Anecdotal evidence is used, hearings are held, a parade of women are marched before committee’s to tell their horror stories and viola, you have a culture of rape and sexual assault. And spineless military leadership goes along with it instead of fighting the charges. Now does sexual assault go on in the military? Yes it does. Saw quite a bit of it when I was a senior enlisted advisor at the Naval Academy. And I was the first one to go to bat for my female midshipmen if they were victims. I saw first hand how a chain of command will try to make an alleged assault go away by questioning the character of the victim. But I do not think this is an institution condoning rape and sexual assault. I think it was part of a zero defects mentality that creeps in and makes a command just wants bad news to go away. I still shake my head at some of the training I have received through the years and continue to receive as a DOD civilian. The onus is still being placed on males not to be all rapey. That is pretty much the extent of the training. No honest dialogue, no looking at gender differences, nothing, just “hey guys, not so rapey, O.K.??”. Lets look honestly at the problem, identify if there is indeed an epidemic and figure out the cure. We have to get away from this political theater where everyone with male junk is out to use it for evil. And in conclusion,… Read more »
OWB-I don’t say that your perception of the events is wrong, but that radicals had their own agenda for supporting, or even pushing to the forefront via their control of the academy and media, a movement that had all of the goals that you describe. And it almost certainly wasn’t to promote those goals, but rather an agenda that they couldn’t get popular support for without aligning themselves with a more mainstream movement. The lefties knew that once you got broad social acceptance of the more reasonable aspects that you describe they could move in and supplant those who promoted that agenda with more radical voices.
The same idiots who piss and moan about how men objectify women have no fucking problem putting on television shows like, “Toddlers and Tiaras” and “Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo.”
Got it.
The women’s lib movement started as a means of gaining equality with men in pay and benefits. It quickly became a way to segregate women from men, as I saw when a great many women who termed themselves ‘feminists’ refused to have anything to do with their own fathers and brothers. This was not what I had expected or wanted from it. And here’s the difference in how the perception of rape has evolved. Prior to 1965, if women were raped or the subjects of domestic violence, the police seldom took it seriously and labeled it a ‘lover’s quarrel’. Women were, in fact, told to ‘just lie there and enjoy it’ and you know damned well there is nothing enjoyable about it. During the latter part of the 1960s, it became taken more seriously, especially when women reporting either rape domestic violence refused to let it go. Self-defense classes for women grew in numbers and we were all told that we had a right to defend ourselves against violence by anyone. It was still difficult to get the police to take it seriously unless it happened to someone they knew personally. The movie “Victim” was based on this concept, that women brought it on themselves. Up until about 2002, or maybe a little earlier, women were finally taken more seriously and the idea that men could also be raped was more visibly discussed. It still is NOT discussed although it should be. But the police, at least, began to take this kind of violence seriously, and we were told to do whatever was necessary to defend ourselves, that ‘NO means NO’. One unforeseen benefit was the victims of childhood molestation and assault by priests finally standing up for themselves and refusing to make it go away. And whatever you may think of Oprah Winfrey, when she had an entire show focusing on sexual violence against men as children and as adults, I watched both of those episodes. It takes a hell of a lot of intestinal fortitude to face that and talk about it in public, and it needs to… Read more »
@ 44: I hear ya! Not at all certain that I could succeed myself in today’s world. It is just too confusing and complicated. Being on the leading edge of it all, ahead of all this mess, I had a distinct advantage, I think – all I had to do was meet the already accepted (often referred to as the “male”) standard and do it well, figure out how to fit into the workforce, put my head down and do the job.
Funny thing was, back in the day, I make a conscious decision to never act hatefully to some sort of advance – I learned how to say “No,” and have it accepted gracefully. If it was crass, I would act shocked. If it was a more discrete inquiry, I reacted sweetly. Cannot tell how many times I offered some variation on, “Oh, if circumstances were only different, you would top the list. Thank you for offering!” Almost always, once was all it took. Different times, though. Not sure that approach would work these days.