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
Salon has published quite
a bit
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.
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
Tillman's 2004 death in a friendly fire incident. Unlike Tillman's widely
reported story, however, outside the blogosphere -- where writers like Philip Barron 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
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
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
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