Article in The Nation on KBR, Rape, and the U.S. Government

The Nation posted an article about the problem of government non-involvement in prosecuting contractor rape, specifically in reference to the KBR rape stories from the last 2 years. (see my recent post on this topic)

Worth a read, although it's appalling, but a few points stuck out to me:

In fact, there are several laws on the books that would allow these cases to proceed: the problem is not a lack of legal tools but a lack of will. [...] But somebody has to want to prosecute the cases.

The article points out the obvious reason why the defense contractors threaten the rape victims with repercussions to keep rapes hush-hush: big $$. Not to mention, the "fine print" of many contracts require the employees to settle through private arbitration rather than through the court system. But as author Huppert points out,

such a financial incentive cannot explain why the Justice Department has failed to act. Although it has the authority to pursue criminal cases involving US military contractor employees, it has hemmed and hawed over even the tiny fraction of cases that have made their way through the maze of obstacles to land in the Justice Department's offices: [...] "we do have active investigations...somewhere about...somewhere upwards of...somewhere between four and six, I believe is the number."

Wow, nice work, Justice Department! "Between four and six"? When out of the 684 complaints within it's jurisdiction, they only court marshalled 83? Unbelievable. This is the big question for me: big business is at stake for the contractors and though deplorable and inexcusable, I at least understand why they try to cover this stuff up. But the government has no direct financial incentive to do so, although much political incentive (they need to keep contractors interested in doing the work!). The thing is, the government has the ability to make the "private arbitration" problem a non-issue:

At the hearing, Nelson dryly observed that there was a very quick way to make sure US contractors did not force employees into private arbitration, and an easy way to force contractors to follow established protocols for sexual assault and harassment: "This might be something you want to require and include in your contracts--before you award them," he said.

Interfere with the market to protect the interests of rape and sexual assault victims? Our government? Nah...

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I think rape is funny, and all I get is this lousy t-shirt: WTF

The Lizard Queen has a good posting, piggybacking of of Cara's post at The Curvature; they are both worth a read.

They are responding to the awful rape-endorsing t-shirts that are available at CafePress (and no, I'm not going to give them the benefit of linking to them).

While you might be tempted to sidestep the issue by saying that people have a right to print whatever they want on a t-shirt, Lizard's commenters point out that the "free speech" argument refers to censorship by the government, not by a company.

Further, The Curvature cites CafePress' own content policy:

General Guidelines for Prohibited Content

• Content that may infringe on the rights of a third a party.
• Items that make inappropriate use of Nazi symbols and glamorize the actions of Hitler.
• Use of marks that signify hate towards another group of people.
• Hate and/or racist terms.
• Inappropriate content or nudity that is not artistic in nature.
• Content that exploits images or the likeness of minors.
• Obscene and vulgar comments and offensive remarks that harass, threaten, defame or abuse others such as F*** (Ethnic Group).
• Content that depicts violence, is obscene, abusive, fraudulent or threatening such as an image of a murder victim, morgue shots, promotion of suicide, etc.
• Content that glamorizes the use of “hard core” illegal substance and drugs such as a person injecting a vial of a substance in their body.
• Material that is generally offensive or in bad taste, as determined by CafePress.com.

The list outlined above should NOT be construed as an exhaustive list of offensive material but rather as a general guideline for you to follow.

Cara says further:

I think that these shirts pretty much have to fall under at least one of these guidelines. Cafe Press says that if something breaks the usage policy to email them at cup@cafepress.com. So, below the jump, I’ve compiled a bunch of links for the shirts I found, roughly though hardly scientifically in order of most to least offensive. I suggest sending off an email with these URLs and an explanation as to why they violate the content policy. Trigger warning: all of these shirts are very disturbing and offensive.

one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten (Note: this shirt is particularly offensive as “rape.com” redirects to rainn.org)
eleven
twelve

Lastly, I’d like to note that many of the most offensive shirts (”I put the sensual back in consensual”) can be seen during searches but are no longer available — though I don’t know if it’s because they’re sold out or because Cafe Press removed them. If you do find something that I’ve missed, leave them in the comments. I have no illusions that this will somehow stop rape jokes, but we can at least try to keep fuckers from making a profit off of them.

I've emailed CafePress, and I'd encourage you all to do the same. Let's not let anyone profit off of rape and our culture's refusal to take it seriously.

UPDATE: Most of the shirts have been removed-yea! Item 8 and 10 are still available. I want to leave my post up though, because we need to be aware that this crap exists and that speaking up works! There is plenty more of this b.s. out there, believe me, so keep your eyes opened and when you see it say something and spread the word.

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Recommended Reading: Blogging Against Sexual Violence

Abyss2hope, the sponsoring blog, is doing an excellent catalog of all the blogs posting on Blog Against Sexual Violence, so rather than reinvent the wheel, please check them out here.

(NOTE: nothing more after the jump)

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Blog Against Sexual Violence Day: Rape in the Military and War Zones

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and today, April 3rd is Blog Against Sexual Violence Day. At the end of the day I will be posting a roundup of some of the blog posts done by those who participated.

I want to bring attention to the issue of sexual violence and war/military. It is pretty common understanding that the rape of civilian women and girls is used as a weapon of war, and is "even" used by "civilized" countries such as, I don't know, the U.S.

But I want to bring up two stories about rape and the military/war--as in, rape in the military and in the context of war. Last week, via Think Progress:

In today’s LA Times, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) sheds light on the staggering number of sexual assaults within the military, stating, “Women serving in the U.S. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq,” and calls on Congress and the military to do more to protect servicewomen:

At the heart of this crisis is an apparent inability or unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks. According to DOD statistics, only 181 out of 2,212 subjects investigated for sexual assault in 2007, including 1,259 reports of rape, were referred to courts-martial, the equivalent of a criminal prosecution in the military. Another 218 were handled via nonpunitive administrative action or discharge, and 201 subjects were disciplined through “nonjudicial punishment,” which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist. In nearly half of the cases investigated, the chain of command took no action; more than a third of the time, that was because of “insufficient evidence.” […]

The absence of rigorous prosecution perpetuates a culture tolerant of sexual assault — an attitude that says “boys will be boys.”

A Department of Defense report released this month found 2,688 reports of sexual assault in the military in FY2007. According to Harman, the number of reported military rapes jumped 73 percent from 2004 to 2006.

WOW. The percentage of reports actually pursued is pathetic and discouraging for women who may be unsure about if they want to go through the emotional trauma of coming forward. Add this to the Haliburton rape-coverup and the unprosecuted rape of another Haliburton employee in Iraq from 2007, and sexual violence against women seems to more the rule in war-zones less than a deviation, and the common resolution is...nothing.

In August 2007, a female Air Force Airman 1st Class who had reported being raped, then decided not to testify at the court martial was then charged by the Air Force with committing indecent acts with the men she had said raped her.

In written statements to her attorneys, the three accused airmen call the sex consensual. One said Hernandez wore "skin tight" clothes, danced in a "promiscuous way" and later stripped naked.

Hernandez said that is not how it happened.

“What those guys did was wrong. There's nothing worse than being raped and people not believing you,” she said.

A book author and researcher on rape issues who is helping Eason and Ashmawy, John Foubert, said that charging a rape victim with having consensual sex “when the evidence clearly points the other way is an insult to every American and every individual who has worn the uniform.”

What's makes this even better is the slutting of the rape victim by her perpetrators. They pull the classic victim-blaming: "her clothing and behavior meant she was asking for it" line, a misconception about rape that continues to persist, and perpetuates the (wrong) assumption that rape is about sex, or it is just sex (so without any "actual" violence--as if rape as forced sex isn't violence itself--it's not "that bad"), or that it's sex "gone wrong." NO: rape is about power, control, dominance, and male privilege. Rape is not sex; in rape, sex is the weapon.

And as other bloggers have suggested, the default assumption regarding sex is "no." Radical, huh? Shouldn't be, but in a culture where we think a woman's clothing and "flirtations" trump actually, I don't know, asking if she wants to have sex, I suppose it is. But I guess this is how women look when it is assumed that their sexuality revolves around the desires of men--that sexual availability is assumed unless you are wearing a potato sack, and that women who dress or act sexual are doing so for the benefit of the men around her so that she doesn't have the right to say no. Men not being privy to a woman's blatant sexuality, and therefore taking it by force? That's an issue of power, not sex.

And when the military is the beacon of masculine power, it's no wonder the ladies are "put in their place," and the argument against women in the military is reiterated. Not that it's the military that needs to change, no, never...

UPDATE:Today The Nation posted a web-only story on another rape by two defense contractors for KBR/Haliburton who was told by her supervisor to keep quiet about the rape.

Currently, she has forty US contractor employees in her database who have contacted her alleging a variety of sexual assault or sexual harassment incidents--and claim that Halliburton, KBR and SEII have either failed to help them or outright obstructed them.

Most of these complaints never see the light of day, thanks to the fine print in employee contracts that compels employees into binding arbitration instead of allowing their complaints to be tried in a public courtroom. Criminal prosecutions are practically nonexistent, as the US Justice Department has turned a blind eye to these cases.

Another UPDATE: I wanted to pass along these disturbing stats posted from RAINN in a post from Shakesville,

But seriously -- why is it that whenever legislation comes up that might ameliorate the appallingly low rate of rape convictions, the first thing we hear is "But what about false allegations?!?!?"

Get real. Get informed. Here are some handy nauseating facts about rape/sexual assaults in the US:

There were 272,350 sexual assaults (64,080 were completed rapes) reported in 2006, according to the DOJ National Crime Victimization Survey (these numbers do not include victims 12 years or younger).

60% of rapes/sexual assaults not reported to the police.

If a rape is reported, there is a 50.8% chance of an arrest.
If an arrest is made, there is an 80% chance of prosecution
If there is a prosecution, there is a 58% chance of conviction
If there is a felony coviction, there is a 69% chance the convict will spend time in jail.

So, even in the 39% of attacks that are reported to the police, there is a 16.3% chance the rapist will end up in prison.

Factoring in unreported rapes, about 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail -- 15 of 16 walk free.~ www.rainn.org

This is pathetic. And depressing. And more reason I get sick over the rape apologists who say feminists have us in a tizzy over nothing, and that the fact that women can ruin a man's life over false rape allegations is improperly addressed by feminists ('cause I guess the fact that some people lie about stuff sometimes needs feminist theorizing), and that it is in some way feminists fault for "creating" a rape epidemic over "sex".....yeah, it gets me.

cross-posted at The Reaction

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