It’s become so normalized in the military
The Washington Post reports that the Marines-sexual shaming scandal is spreading throughout the military.
Sunday, March 5:
The Naval Criminal Investigation Service, or NCIS, said it was launching an investigation into the drive, while Marine officials said the drive had been taken offline. Additionally, the Marines’ highest-ranking officer, Gen. Robert B. Neller issued a statement calling the incident “distasteful” but did not address the investigation directly.
“Distasteful”? My god, that’s feeble. It sounds as if he’s concerned about the nakedness instead of the lack of consent, the stalking, the degradation, the loathing.
Tuesday, March 7:
Female Marines subjected to online harassment on Marines United and other pages began to come forward, detailing that the problem was larger than any one group.
“It’s Marine Corps wide,” Marine Pvt. Kally Wayne, 22, told The Washington Post. Wayne joined in 2013 and was removed from the service three years later for disciplinary problems.
Erika Butner, a Marine who left the service recently, told American Military News that “this scandal has never been a new incident within the military, but I am glad it is finally getting the recognition it deserves.”
“As a rape survivor, I can tell you that this exact behavior of sexualizing and objectifying women is why so much sexual harassment runs unchecked in the Corps. It’s become so normalized in the military that women just have to deal with it alone,” she added.
Sexualizing and objectifying and at the same time expressing hatred and contempt: eros linked to loathing – that too is normalized.
Wednesday, March 8:
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat of the House Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel, said on the House floor that “heads should roll,” and called on Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis to remove the Marines who participated in the incident. Speier had issued a similar statement Saturday. After another incident in 2013 involving unofficial Marine Corps Facebook pages, Speier called for greater oversight.
Neller also issued a video message Wednesday to the Marine Corps, saying that the incident is “embarrassing to our Corps, to our families and to our nation.” Neller mentioned the guiding ethos of the Marine Corps and that “unfortunately, it appears that some Marines may have forgotten these fundamental truths, and instead have acted selfishly and unprofessionally through their actions on social media.”
Jeezus, he really has no idea what the problem is.
Thursday, March 9
James LaPorta, a journalist and former Marine, shared with CNN that the Marines United Group had splintered and formed another group, called Marines United 2. LaPorta also said that the original cache of photos that Marine officials said were taken down had actually migrated to a new Dropbox folder and was still being shared.
Semper fi.
The military site Task and Purpose also reported Thursday that service members and veterans from the Marines United page had begun uploading images and videos to pornography websites following the War Horse’s initial report Saturday.
I guess that’ll teach those bitches not to make a fuss.
Semper phooey, seems more to the point.
Distasteful. That’s how you describe behaviour that is a bit past the edge of polite norms, but nowhere near bad enough to actually get you more than a disapproving look. Maybe someone should sit down the Marines Corp leadership and make them watch the address given by Lt Gen David Morrison.
It’s even weaker than the stance taken over here when two pupils at a private boys school joked on facebook “If you don’t take advantage of a drunk girl, you’re not a true WC [Wellington College] boy”. At least then the head of the school pretended to be outraged, even if they then closed up about the process of determining punishment for the boys. At least one is rumoured to still be representing the school at a national sporting event where girls will be present as both spectators and competitors.
And, to prove that things happen in threes, another private boys school in the same city has disciplined a number of pupils who photographed and filmed female teachers in inappropriate ways and posted to Instagram. Then girls from nearby single sex schools who gathered to protest outside WC were allegedly threatened with being run over by boys arriving at the school. Clearly none of the shame and remorse the head master claimed was being felt.
Damned uppity girls protesting our rape culture jokes…
This is why my teeth get ground to powder every time some idiot tells me three is no real sexism or rape culture any more and that women have a level playing field and that any gender pay gap is because women make poor choices etc etc.
This this this. It’s so normalized people barely notice it. It’s part of the air we breathe.