Posted on 04/18/2009 8:16:48 AM PDT by Zakeet
Female U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan have more to fear than roadside bombs or enemy ambushes. They also are at risk of being raped or sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers.
"The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq," a book based on 40 in-depth interviews, recounts the stories of female veterans who served in combat zones and tells of rape, sexual assault and harassment by male counterparts.
Some were warned by officers not to go to the latrine by themselves. One began carrying a knife in case she was attacked by comrades. Others said they felt discouraged to report assaults.
"The horror of it is that it is their own side that is doing this to them," said the book's author, Helen Benedict, a journalism professor at Columbia University in New York. The book was released in the United States on Wednesday.
One in 10 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are female, and more women have fought and died in the Iraq war than any since World War Two, according to U.S. Department of Defense statistics cited in the book.
Benedict said the book's title comes from the isolation female U.S. soldiers experience when combining the trauma of their combat duties with sexual harassment by fellow soldiers.
"Because women are under so much more danger now and actually in the battle, it's a particularly tragic situation because all soldiers are supposed to be able to rely on one another to watch their backs," Benedict said.
"And how can you feel that way if your fellow soldiers are harassing you all day or trying to rape you or actually even raping you?"
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
It must be all those military right wing extremists doing the raping. /s/
You said — And I suppose the same could be said of females in those situations. Maybe some are a little more inclined to see sexual harassment towards them where none was intended?
—
Perhaps true, too. It does seem to be the case that being in very intense and life-threatening danger *heightens* the senses all the way around and also makes one very “intense” in those situations, and “coming down” off of that can produce all sorts of strange behavior...
It doesn't let the rapist off the hook, rape is wrong.
Is it smart for a young pretty woman to wear provacative clothes and walk for a year through the darkest alleys in town at night? Odds are she will be raped within that year. It doesn't make it right, but the woman is not thinking either. She has to know there are some scum men out there waiting for her. She could have prevented the rape by simply not going for the alley walk.
The money quote, from the author’s own Internet posts, provided above in this thread by Erik Latranyi, says it all:
“I told them that I had chosen fiction because I believed it could get me nearer to the truth.”
No wonder she’s a professor of “journalism” and no wonder “journalism” is in the low state that it is.
“They’re now taking gang members and those with criminal records into the military”
And on what are you basing that?
May I ask what you know of real military life? Anything?
The argument that fiction gets closer to the truth than reality is older than the proverbial hills. Mark Twain, I believe, said much the same thing as your bolded quote. I would make too much of the quote as an indictment of Professor Benedict.
As if Gay men don’t rape.....
Very close relatives and immediate family members in the military, and believe me, things happen that you don’t read *ever* about in the papers, and this is *direct* from the people involved...
Fantasy.....
Ok, let's see here. There are about 140,000 soldiers in Iraq and 10% of them, or 14,000 are women Of these they have 40 (Forty) who claim to have been harassed, (whatever that actually means) or raped. That breaks down to .285% of the women serving, a statistical insignificance. Now I am not condoning even one case of sexual abuse in any form but only wish to put this in the proper perspective.
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Sorry, your defense of Benedict stinks.
First, she is teaching a journalism course.....telling journalists that fiction gets closer to the truth is how we have media outlets like The NY Times, CNN and MSNBC.
Second, her proud proclamation brings her non-fiction works into question.
More women are raped yearly in DC than have been raped in Iraq since we got there according to the statistics.
Maybe women should not be allowed in our nation’s capitol.
“What woman in her right mind would put herself into a situtaion where there is 9 guys for every girl?”
Some women would consider that a “target rich environment.”
Look up “desert queen.” (And I got that term from a woman who was over there).
I would think female soldiers would face more harassment from lesbos in the military (and don’t think there aren’t plenty of them there)
Rape is never to be defended, but neither is creating a situation which is attractive to evil.
Many women soldiers joined the military carrying water for the left, just as many homos streamed into the priesthood (and in lesser numbers, the military for that matter), with the idea of ultimately undermining the institution. And I fully expect the ‘I know so and so and she is a great American soldier’ posts, but the bottom line is, we don’t need women in the military. The plusses don’t nearly overcome the minuses.
You're avoiding the issue. If the solution is to remove the victims and not punish the criminal then if we take everyone's money away then nobody will get mugged. Right? The solution is discipline, not doing away with the victim.
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