Dropping “Female soldiers in Iraq died of dehydration” brought up several articles, all of which seem to be based on the testimony of Col. Janis Karpinski before the Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York. However in this text of the Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, former commander Abu Ghraib prison, examined by Marjorie Cohn, President-Elect, National Lawyers Guild an auto-search got no hits on the word rape. This article from democracynow contains a long quote "Because the women, in fear of getting up in the hours of darkness to go out to the portoilets or the latrines, were not drinking liquids after 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon. And in 120-degree heat or warmer, because there was no air conditioning at most of the facilities, they were dying from dehydration in their sleep. And rather than make everybody aware of that, because that’s shocking—and as a leader, if that’s not shocking to you, then you’re not much of a leader—so what they told the surgeon to do was, “Don’t brief those details anymore. And don’t say specifically that they’re women. You can provide that in a written report, but don’t brief it in the open anymore.”
Thanks, The Devil’s Grandmother. I was out of commission yesterday-cold weather has hit Texas early and I was winterizing the chickens.
(Do they call you DG for short?)
I don’t know how to do the nifty link thing but here’s are some articles that specifically reference fear of rape or assault. Col. Janis Karpinski is a source.
http://www.truthout.org/article/military-hides-cause-women-soldiers-deaths
Some do, but it makes vanity searching hard, so I discourage the practice.
“winterizing the chickens”? Insulating their coop, or making little jackets?
[tutorial hijack]
1.) Type out your sentence or phrase as you normally would.
2.) Copy the URL you want the link to connect to.
3.) Highlight the text that you want to turn into a link.
4.) Click the Insert Link button (looks like a globe with a few links of chain in front of it).
5.) In the window that pops up, paste in your URL under where it says “Please enter the URL of your link.” Make sure to delete the extra http: //. Click OK.
Congratulations, you have a link!
You can also replace steps 3-5 with surrounding the text you want to make a link with URL tags: [url=http://www.yourlinkhere.com]Your Link Here[/url]. (Green is the tags, blue is the URL, and orange is the text.) It does the same thing, just manually.
[/tutorial hijack]
This is the most hilarious accidental post placement I’ve seen in a long time.
Exactly this - I have also had stuff stolen, and everybody from the police on down told me that I was stupid and careless and should have expected the things to go missing.
I myself have berated people for putting themselves into stupid situations and having bad things happen. (never rape or sexual assault)
I agree completely
I also have a right to my own property, and not to have it stolen, but I keep my doors locked when I’m not home.
We all assess situations and take actions based on that assessment - I bet you behave differently at work to how you behave at home to how you would behave at a (hypothetical) swingers party. You should be able to walk through a prison riot naked if you want, and not be touched - but just because you should be able to doesn’t mean that its a wise risk to take.
If you knew that an average of four nights a week someone was raped because they walked though a particular alley in you town, would you walk through it?
If you did walk through it, and got raped the guy is still just as guilty - but you are also guilty of gross stupidity and should be called out on it.
I think this attitude encourages rapists. I think that it might even help them feel justified in their actions, self righteous in fact. The thinking might go something like this:
So, please help us out here, and explain *exactly *what “grossly stupid” behaviors we should avoid in order to not get deservedly raped.
There’s no such thing as ‘deservedly raped’ and the poster you quoted didn’t say that. Regardless:
Use common sense. Don’t walk around alone in dangerous neighborhoods at night. Don’t wander around alone while drunk, especially not without anyone aware of where you are (ie, going to the restroom alone in a club is probably much safer than saying “see you” and making your way home alone). If something feels wrong, say so vehemently and do everything within your power to get away - don’t sit there idly as your date starts to go a bit too far when you’ve gone back to his place. Too many women victimize themselves by not thinking about the dangers, and/or not resisting in every way they can.
Rape is often preventable. That doesn’t mean it’s the woman’s fault, but it does mean that there are common-sense ways to reduce the risk, and you’re an idiot if you don’t take them. It’s no different from being an idiot if, say, you leave your laptop out in the open at a table in the library, and wander off to the other side of the building, and being shocked when your computer is gone. No, it’s not your fault (because it does come down to the criminal’s choice), but yes, you were an idiot who opened yourself up to it.
Okey dokey, but I’d just like to point out that with the exception of
which I heartily agree with, the rest of your advice essentially boils down to “have a chaperone”.
After all “don’t walk alone in a dangerous neighborhood at night” isn’t really helpful advice to someone who happens to live or work in a dangerous neighborhood.
I was having a conversation with a girl I had met only a couple of times, and she mentioned, very casually, that she had been “raped three times. Once by one guy, twice by another”. She then continued on with whatever her actual story was.
Instinctively, something just didn’t wash with me when she said it. Follow up conversations with her revealed that she didn’t go to the police over any of the incidents, she was dating the guys at the time the incidents occurred, she still kept seeing the guys (not in a dating sense… just on a friendly basis) after the incidents had happened, and in at least one of the incidences she couldn’t give a clear answer when I asked her “Did you convey very clearly to the guy that you were not consenting to what was happening at the time?”.
I understand that women get raped. I get it. But are there women out there with extremely low self-esteem who like to recast events in their mind as rape? Absolutely.
bengangmo, the problem with your analogy is that people are not property. Rape is not theft, it’s assault. Assault that never, ever, has anything remotely approaching a justification in any context. This is contrasted with theft or physical violence, which in some circumstances can be understandable or even laudable. There is never an “understandable” rape or a “laudable” rape.
Remember kids, even though resistance may increase your risk of being additionally injured during the rape, keep on resisting! Because if you just give in to try to save yourself further injury, you’re just victimizing yourself. In other news, if there’s a burglar in your house, go confront them!
Plus, most people get raped by acquaintances, not strangers. What, should we wear chastity belts when we hang out with our friends?
Personally, I’m holding out for a human-sized hampster ball.
So what is this, KellyCriterion, if a woman doesn’t report it to the police, it isn’t rape? If she doesn’t care to justify and explain herself adequately to you, then she wasn’t raped?
Thanks, Shot From Guns.
Although given my posting frequency, I’ll have forgotten how to do it long before I need it. But I do appreciate the help. 
Brief digression - I’m a pastured poultry farmer,The Devil’s Grandmother. I knit little sweaters for the birds and then make them put them on when it gets cold.
It’s hard covering all the birds when you have 2,200.00 chickens going at any given time.
No seriously, we were repairing field pens and working on heat in the brooders.
If it’s too cold,they die. If it’s too hot, they die. And if they make it a full 8 weeks, we kill them anyway.
On a personal note, back when I was in college (about 100 years ago), I needed a place to stay-fast.
I moved into a house with another woman and two men-one that I’d known for at least a year because we worked together.
The other was part of a broad circle of friends.
I ran into them at the bar one night and we walked home together.
Admittedly, I was pretty toasty but I didn’t flirt or give the slightest suggestion that I was remotely interested in either one.
I passed out in my room only to wake up about half an hour later with the bastards next to my bed. One was unbuttoning my shirt. I yelled bloody murder and they both tore out of the room.
I confronted each the next day and let them know what scum bags they were.
I also broadcast the story far and wide.
If women were being repeatedly raped in a specific area and it was common knowledge, I’d be down at the local police station demanding to know why something wasn’t being done. Loudly and persistently. And calling the media.
And NinjaChick, your attitude makes me really sad because you seem to believe that the onus lies on the women, not the men.
Awww. You’ve shattered my fantasies that there are people knitting little cardigans for birds. Can I at least have my fantasy about the nonprofit that I run that helps little baby birds gain the confidence to fly for the first time?
I’m sorry that happened to you–those guys sound really scummy. From talking to other people, that is what rape is–not the mythical “stupid” woman who walks around town with a tube top and short pants in the alley where nightly rapes take place. It’s a woman hanging out in a room with a guy who thinks that he’s allowed to do what he wants with her body.
I think people often preface that, “Of course there are risks you shouldn’t take” because we like to think we can control the situation. Yes, there are some situations like that, but it’s really not that cut and dry. And honestly, I think most people are victimized by the people they assume are just good people. The rapists aren’t running around with big signs and shadowy silhouettes–they’re going to work, hanging out in bars, and spending time with their friends, like everyone else.
Yes. As I said up post, there really aren’t that many places where “Everyone knows rape takes place” and that a victim who goes there is being stupid. Seriously, I live in the world, too–where are these mythical alleys? If everyone knows rape happens there, why don’t we arrest the rapists and get on with it!
Everyone else seems to have seen it, but what I got was:
Weird, gurujlp, it worked just a few days ago. Basically it said something to the effect of, “Don’t rape people, don’t spike their drinks, don’t try to assault girls, etc.”