We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Military Sexual Violence: From Frontline to Fenceline

Click here to access article by Annie Isabel Fukushima and Gwyn Kirk from Foreign Policy in Focus.
To locate the root of the problem means looking beyond the assaults on U.S. military women—appalling as they are—to the routine incidents of military violence against civilians in combat situations and outside the fences surrounding U.S. bases overseas. Given their mission, soldiers are trained to kill. This means seeing “others” as foreign or less-than-human. Gender and masculinity are at play; so too are racism and national chauvinism.
Military training is perfect preparation, and enhancement of previous civilian indoctrination, to view women as mere objects of sexual gratification which is a form of dehumanization. One cannot kill, or rape, another human being without dehumanizing that human being. Hence, words like gooks, ragheads, cunts, etc reflect this process.
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