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xssve -> RE: Liz Trotta On Women Raped In Military: 'What Did They Expect?' (2/16/2012 6:45:09 PM)
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ORIGINAL: BenevolentM
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ORIGINAL: xssve
Hmmm, you really care - about what, I have no idea. [:D]
The upshot of what I was getting at is that putting women on the front lines might be exactly the right thing to do in this case, one is much less likely to go out of ones way to piss off somebody who is supposed to provide cover fire for you - there are instruments blunter even than the legal system.
How do you undo a billion years of evolution? Naively a young man might argue that the root cause of the behavior is rape, but we are talking about rape going back a billion years. This is something that is ingrained.
How do police departments handle it? What you are suggesting is similar to a police officer with an opposite sex partner.
I do not feel your analogy to be a good one since no one would compare the front lines with a safety net, but some people seem to think the legal system is a rational place where truth and justice prevail. Lions are predators. Since lions are warm blooded, they burn a lot of calories. Crocodiles are predators, but require fewer calories. The net result is there is a tendency for there to be a lot more crocodiles than lions. The justice system is a predator that requires fewer calories than a lion. This analogy also holds true for rapists. There are the hardcore rapists and the softcore rapists. The effect of pursuing the hardcore rapists will have the effect of swelling the number of softcore rapists. It makes the world safe for softcore rapists. Instead of lions you get crocodiles. The situation does not actually improve. The world continues to be a hostile place. With crocodiles you get complexity. With lions you have simplicity. If you see a lion, run. If you see a crocodile exactly what you are to do becomes less clear.
I believe you prefer simplicity over complexity because if you have got to pick your poison, one might as well chose the poison that results in less complexity. This I believe is the point you are making, if I may be so bold.
In this case, yes, a simple solution is the preferable one, usually is when we're talking about spending tax dollars, simple and direct is usually cheaper and more effective than treating the symptoms - simplest of all would have been prosecuting every reported incident with extreme prejudice, although, as you intimate, false accusations are not entirely unknown, that's complicated enough, perfect justice is not really possible under those conditions, and by necessity it puts the burden of proof on the victim - but as a deterrent it would have probably led to more self policing.
Personally in such situations, I always recommend the buddy system, it was SOP on some bases with predatory and hostile civilian populations (here in the States!), they wouldn't even let you leave base unless there were Two of you together, that's simpler still.
I'm convinced the linchpin here is probably the culture in military academies - a complex problem: on one side, an institutionalized culture packed with both crocodiles and lions, and all of them with a sense of entitlement in varying degrees, and the political pull to back that up, a patrician system, based on feudal dynamics of patronage and mutual back scratching.
On the other side, you have field commanders trying to maintain an effective democratic fighting force - in the field, and under fire.
How complicated a solution is possible here?
I'm not quite sure where you're going with the "soft rape" thing, that would be like, date rape? I think that analogy bears further scrutiny.
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