Main Post for 11/30

These readings this week were really interesting but not surprising. The first reading in Cynthia Enloe's The Curious Feminist was Men in Militias, Women as Victims was about the how men are militarized to become aggressive and end up being perpetrators of rape and other crimes. She talks about a man named Borislav and how he was not a dangerous man but was on trial for murder and mass rape. The fact and how something like ethnicity can lead to killing and raping people is a problem in many nations. I think that because even now the military is so structured for men and not women that the armies have so many issues concerning gender and well as sexuality. "Buried in the story of the once unexceptional person are important puzzles - and political revelations- about how ethnicity gets converted into nationalist consciousness, how consciousness becomes organized, and how organized nationalism becomes militarized. None of the transformations are automatic. Nor is their sequence from one to the next. Each call for explanation. But exploring these questions, melting down the analytical iceberg, requires taking a close look at gender." The fact that boys are socialized for military in some way is an extremely important thing to look at. The draft that is enlisted in many countries at times of war look at men to draft into the homogeneous all male militias. The women who have been raped are not victims but victors to have survived and they will make sense of what has happened to them post war and rebuild their communities. In the "Spoils of War" it talks about the US soldiers being able to buy prostitutes in Japan instead of raping women but as we have seen in documentary's like "Very Young Girls" prostitution is not a lifestyle or luxury for most women. It is their only option and the fact that the soldiers being able to buy prostitutes as a result of raping a young girl is not okay they men need to find other ways to deal with themselves. This encourages prostitution and sex trade worldwide and the fact that this is a US military policy makes me feel really ashamed of my country. Women getting raped in the military is not uncommon but commonplace. One particular story my grandmother had me read in a newspaper was about this woman LaVerne Johnson who was raped and burned to death that the military covered up and made it like a suicide. This really stayed with me and i realized that the military has too much power when they can just cover up a murder and not be put on trial or even investigate. Many times women are raped by their fellow soldiers but it is not something that they put to the forefront we need to have better protection for our female soldiers across the globe.

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2010/01/26/13rd-of-women-in-us-military-raped/

http://www.truth-out.org/article/military-hides-cause-women-soldiers-deaths

http://www.socialistaction.org/love1.htm