More about the military's problems treating women as people

[catsittingstill]

Found yet another article about the military's attitude toward women, in this case domestic violence.

Read about it here.

The article says they have made noticeable improvements, which is both great (improvement is good) and appalling (if it's this bad after the improvments, just how bad was it before?).

I wonder if this goes back to the people-comfortable-with-violence vs people-not-comfortable-with violence divide.  The military is just naturally going to be populated with people who are more comfortable with violence, because violence is part of the job.  So maybe it's natural that they're also less repulsed by violence against women.    And this is why they don't prosecute (and thus effectively shield) wife-beaters and (not brought up here, but mentioned in posts from earlier in the year) rapists.

Maybe it's natural.  But it surely makes me mad.

Comments

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I think things have actually gotten worse in the past 20 years. After 'nam there was a lot of house-cleaning. Also, because it's now a volunteer military fighting an unpopular war, a lot of the officers are reluctant to take steps which might lead to the discharge of any solider, even for serious offenses. Then, too, a lot of people who volunteer are people who can't find other work--people from broken families with problems in intimacy, or with other psychological disabilities.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be so upset about a high rate of domestic violence if the military appeared to be *prosecuting* it. What really bothers me is that they're not; they're shielding the perpetrators--because the civilian government would prosecute it except that that military says "don't worry; we'll take care of it" and then *doesn't*.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

It's not just that the people are more comfortable with violence. They are made to be comfortable with violence, because that's perceived to be the way you need them. "Society has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns," as the man said. And in these days of total war and suicide bombers, there's no room for people who are uncomfortable about offering violence to women or children. Any scruples they have must be cleared out of the way, to make them more efficient soldiers and more able to protect the others in their unit.

Unfortunately, I don't think we've put enough effort into working out how to put them back again.

[(Anonymous)]

Err, no. The military is not trying to desensitize Soldiers to facilitate killing women and children. The war is doing that to some extent, because of the suicide bombers, but to try to win a counterinsurgency you have to try to get the population on your side and indiscriminately killing people in general, let alone women and children is a poor way to do that.

As for your larger point, yes conditioning violence is part of the process of turning a civilian into a military person. However, it is supposed to be disciplined and controlled violence, with the emphasis on the discipline.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

I take your point, but I stand by what I said: that it is not part of military training to teach soldiers only to offer violence to males their own age and size. In the days before the Great War, when battles were fought on battlefields between armies, then maybe, but not now.

And yes, I'm sure disciplined and controlled violence is what they teach. If it were not, then the woman who says the wrong thing or is late with the beer or might have been with another man...might very well end up dead, rather than just bruised or bleeding or half suffocated. My point is that that genie does not go back into the bottle on its own, if at all, and not enough attention is being paid to the problem of getting it there.

[durconnell.livejournal.com]

Actually, yes it is still taught, in civilized military forces, within the limits of the weapons used. For example, a bomb or missile from an aircraft can be dropped as accurately as possible, but you can not guarantee that no non-combatants will be harmed. Instead, you have to rely on making the weapons as accurate as possible, and that your intelligence has found the correct target. You can see from Afghanistan that although we try, we are not as successful as we need to be. You can also see why we try, because excessive and indiscriminate use of air power or artillery tends to turn the population against the user.

As a Soldier on the ground, I was (and am still) taught what legitimate targets are and are not. Active combatants are targets, but once they surrender, they become non-combatants and I will be committing a war crime if I continue to kill them. Women and children are non-combatants, though if they are shooting at me or moving toward me with a vest full of explosives, they lose that protection.

As for your larger point, yes we do need to work on better reintegrating Soldiers into civilian and peacetime military life. In addition to reducing domestic violence, there is much to be done on reducing PTSD and suicide.

Donald Clarke

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure part of military training is not just desensitizing people to violence but making sure they apply the violence only to the right targets. That would be part of the difference between an army and a mob, after all.

Otherwise I would expect that soldiers robbing a liquor store when they're on leave would be winked at, in somewhat the same way that soldiers hitting their wives seems to be winked at. And I don't think it is.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, if you have some jobs that involve violence and some that don't, people who are uncomfortable with violence will tend to end up in the less violent jobs. If you then turn around and deliberately make people in the more violent jobs more comfortable with violence, I suppose you could be exacerbating the problem, yes.

But my point is that people who are more comfortable with violence for whatever reason, whether to begin with or after job training, may be more comfortable with violence against women--and more likely to see women as second class citizens *anyway* since women tend to be less proficient at violence.

And this comfort level may be why the military doesn't take violence against female family members very seriously.

[moshez.livejournal.com]

My experience obviously pertains to the Israeli Army, but I think there's a force at work that reduces the "violence" issue to noise, if it existed at all: the army's tendency to sweep things under the carpet, stemming from the feeling of camadarie (taken to extremes). "He is our brother in arms" is the common attitude.

(Not, of course, to defend violence towards women or to excuse the army for not treating it seriously: this is an explanation, not a reason.)

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The problem with this is that it seems to me from the previous articles description of attitudes towards women raped in the military that there is no corresponding "she is our sister in arms" reaction when a woman soldier is hurt or in danger.

If there were, I would expect the reaction of rape victim's squad mates would be to castrate the rapist. Instead it seems to be to punish the victim.