All: This seems to be of a piece with the sexual harassment and rape issues at the Air Force Academy, as well as the long history of sexual harassment of female service personnel. I don't know whether it's a result of more women in the academies and the armed forced or (inclusive) the anti-feminism backlash or (inclusive) the tendency of men in patriarchal systems to use sexual harassment, intimidation, rape, and violence to try to enforce traditional work-life patterns on women breaking into male-dominated fields. A 1997 article in Social Psychology Quarterly-".some men still may resort to covert gender harassment to express their disapproval of women's participation in the military."-suggested exactly this latter reason. But there is a pattern above and beyond the female "suicides" raised in the LaVena Johnson case. For more along these lines, current and recent history, see: MSNBC.com, AP, "Pentagon releases sexual harassment data: Survey finds more women feeling harassed, but fewer reports were filed," March 14, 2008. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23636487/ Defense Task Force on Sexual Harassment and Violence at the Military Service Academies, 2004. http://www.dtic.mil/dtfs/ Online NewsHour, PBS.org, "War on Harassment," September 11, 1997. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec97/harassment_9-11.html CNN interactive, "Senate panel holds hearing on military sexual harassment," February 4, 1997. http://www.cnn.com/US/9702/04/army.sex/ I was applying to the Naval Academy when the Tailhook investigations wrapped up, ironically for the purpose of seeking naval aviator status. More on those events can be easily found with a Google search. If you want more scholarly sources, Springer and Elsevier publish numerous journals in which articles on sexual harassment in the military can be found. The simple expedient of using scholar.google.com (Google's scholarly search engine) reveals hundreds of hits for the search term "military sexual harassment." One of the most recent: H. Antecol, D. Cobb-Clark. "The sexual harassment of female active-duty personnel: Effects on job satisfaction and intentions to remain in the military." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 61(1): 55-80. September 2006. The LaVena Johnson case sounds like an appalling example of extremely violent sexual murder followed by a systematic coverup. But I confess to not being surprised, though still being dismayed and appalled, by sexual violence against women in the military (not just by military men against civilian women) followed by attempts at coverup. There's an old saying, adapted into many a song lyric: all of this has happened before; all of this will happen again. All of this has happened before (in some form). will all of this happen again? Best, Alison Reiheld From: Feminist ethics and social theory [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Hilde Lindemann Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2008 9:26 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: LaVena Johnson In case you haven't been following this: The tragic story of LaVena Johnson Salon has published quite <http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/07/women_in_military/> a bit <http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/05/27/female_ptsd/index.html> about how American women in the military sometimes face more danger from their fellow soldiers than from their enemies, but the stories never seem to stop. And all too often, they go largely ignored by the media, as with the case of Pfc. LaVena Johnson. <http://www.lavenajohnson.com/> In July 2005, 19-year-old Johnson became the first female soldier from Missouri to die in Iraq. She was found with a broken nose, black eye and loose teeth, acid burns on her genitals, presumably to eliminate DNA evidence of rape, a trail of blood leading away from her tent and a bullet hole in her head. Unbelievably, that's not the most horrifying part of the story. Here's what is: Army investigators ruled her death a suicide. Beyond the obvious evidence of abuse, there was no sign of depression or suicidal ideation in Johnson's psychological profile. The bullet wound was in the wrong place for her to have shot herself with her dominant hand, and the exit wound was the wrong size to have come from her own M-16, as the Army suggested it did. The blatant lie the military has tried to sell Johnson's family is on a par with the cover-up surrounding football star Pat <http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2005/06/15/tillman2/index.html> Tillman's 2004 death in a friendly fire incident. Unlike Tillman's widely reported story, however, outside the blogosphere -- where writers like Philip Barron <http://www.waveflux.net/lavena-johnson/> have worked tirelessly to keep Johnson's name in the spotlight -- the LaVena Johnson case has rarely been noted. And sadly, it is far from unique. In a story in the New <http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10518131> Zealand Herald on Wednesday, Tracey Barnett writes, "[LaVena's father] John Johnson has discovered far more stories that have matched his daughter's than he ever wanted to know. Ten other families of 'suicide' female soldiers have contacted him. The common thread among them -- rape." Regarding the runaround her family got from the military, Pat Tillman's mother said <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/politics/21tillman.html?pagewanted=print> to the New York Times in 2006, ""This is how they treat a family of a high-profile individual. How are they treating others?" LaVena Johnson's story is just one tragic answer to that question. -- Kate Harding Salon.com Hilde Lindemann Philosophy Department 503 South Kedzie Hall Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824 tel: (517) 353-3981 fax: (517) 432-1320 [log in to unmask]