Our government lied to us, used her and the others involved in the rescue for propaganda, and may or may not be lying about sexual assault, and all we can talk about is her showing her titties at a party?
Of course I wish I’d been there (the party), but sheesh. She invited those people. She hasn’t invited all this speculation, has she?
Legal cite? Since when is a private party = to the world?
No, but my sister is enlisted in the Navy (a Seaman). She never told me it was considered professional and a good idea to strip off for the male seamen when she’s off-duty but still in the barracks or on board a ship. I think that she’s going to be REALLY surprised when I tell her it’s considered a fine thing for her to do by a bunch of supposedly intelligent people. Then again, maybe she already knows about this and has just failed to write home about it.
Of course, she’s 23, so maybe she’s past that “magic age” at which it suddenly becomes not OK and something she should know better to do? I wouldn’t know–nobody’s stepped up to reveal what age an enlisted woman has to be before she can properly be considered an unprofessional ding-a-ling for doing such a thing.
For the record, my 23 year old enlisted sister thinks Jessica Lynch’s actions in this regard are, at the very least, unprofessional and an example of bad decision-making on Lynch’s part. In fact, Seaman Sis thinks Lynch a total dimwit sellout tramp who is a disgrace to women in the armed forces–we conversed about this the other day–so she’s a tad harder on the gal than I am.
Then again, maybe she’s just jealous because she’s afraid that at age 23 she’d be considered “too old” to get away with such a stunt and have it dismissed by others as antics appropriate to her age and professional situation. Who knows?
As I said over in this thread Unless you personally have been enlisted, stationed someplace either overseas, or in the middle of noplace, you don’t have a whole lot of understanding about this situation at all. Now in that other thread, Sgt. J disagreed with me, and said he had never seen, or participated in behavior such as that. And it may be true that things like this aren’t the norm, I just find it hard to believe that I personally witnessed things much more outrageouse than this at every single place I was ever stationed in the 6 years I was enlisted.
And let’s make sure we understand the terms being used here. A barracks is not a ‘place of business’. It’s a residence. It’s their home. Depending on the base, rank, and command stationed at, it can vary from the long room with bunks you see in the movies, to a two-person room with it’s own shower, to a whole room for one person, with private shower. This is the place they sleep, eat, read, watch tv, and yes, sometimes party with thier friends, and do stupid stuff. Just like a lot of us do in our homes.
So, Q.N. Jones a better analogy would be for you to be in your house (or apartment), invite a few friends over for a few drinks, and hanging out, and then do something stupid. It still might be something you personally wouldn’t do, but it’s a far cry from stripping off in the office as per your example.
And as far as your sister is concerned? Well, no offense, but she’s an E-3, onboard ship. It’s not nearly the same environment. And no, if she does go out and have a good time someplace overseas, I highly doubt those are the types of stories she’ll be sharing with her brother. I don’t know the details of her enlistment, but she’s also several years older than Jessica. By the time I hit E-5 at 24, I had left a lot of the stupid behavior behind. Or more accuratly, I had learned when and where it was safe to relax, and be stuipid with my shipmates, and when it was a better idea to be careful of the people around.
I’m not saying that she didn’t perhaps have a momentary lack of judgement, what I am saying is that she’s a young, enlisted girl that had no incling that she would ever ever be in this situation. I see nothing at all wrong with her actions, either now, or in the past that is shown in the topless photos. She deserves everything she can wring from this moment, as it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. She cannot pursue a career in the military now, so she needs to make sure she can support herself for the rest of her life.
Sorry, Atrael, but a barracks IS a place of business (if you are injured on base it is the military equivalent to a Workman’s Comp case, right?) and as long as you are on your base you are MY (taxpayer drop’s) employee. I’m not paying you to fuck or run around half naked.
So you think they shouldn’t have any downtime? What about the guys who go off and get drunk and screw prostitutes? Isn’t that what sailors do?
Actually, a better example (though still not precise) would be a residence hall in a strict Christian college – not really “yours” and subject to tight rules of conduct, but stupid stuff still goes on all the time (sex, gambling, booze smuggled in). In any case, yes, the guys (and gals) are aware that if caught, they are in a much bigger heap of trouble (a Dean of Students cannot bust you on an Article 15!). OTOH, the general expectation if you do get caught and punished is that you take it like a soldier and “get up and continue to march”, and after discharge it doesn’t follow you to civilian life.
Of course, as some earlier poster mentioned, now that the star-spangled fairytale story of her rescue has been discredited, there are those who will see that as the signal it’s open season to disgrace Lynch and denounce her as some sort of skank ho. That’s pathetic. Not only do we have zero evidence to that effect, it also means that right now there must be some tabloids chasing after members of ther unit looking specifically for “how much of a goldbrick tease Lynch was while the real heros are ignored” quotes and stories; and it perpetuates a double standard since few would care about the after-hours barracks activities of a PFC Jerome Lynch, and fewer still would get all up in a twist over how this reflects on all other male soldiers in that age group.
I find it interesting how until now NOBODY who was a witness to the incident thought it unprofessional and unbecoming enough, to report it to the proper authorities at the time. (Likely, anyone who knew let it pass as just blowing off steam, “work hard, play hard”, don’t let yourself get caught doing stupid s**t like this, and all that. Which doesn’t make it “right” but it serves to remind us she was not the ONLY one breaking rules here) Nope, they waited until she was part of a big media story and tried to sell her out to Larry Flynt. Classy, huh.
Q.N.Jones, your sister is your sister, Lynch is Lynch. If your concern is that giving a pass on this to Lynch aids in creating a hostile work environment to your sister or military women in general, well, if it does it’s due to ignorance and bad leadership in the units. No woman has to take any s**t from anybody on account of Lynch no matter what she did. OTOH, she’s entitled to the opinion that “Lynch is a dimwit sellout tramp” but unless she has more info than we do, that’s quite some exercise in sitting-in-judgement.
The kind you see right now.
As a counselor for disabled veterans (15+ years and counting) I have seen hundreds upon hundreds of military records and have heard at least that many stories. I can assure you that this type of behavior has been happening at least since WWI in every type of setting from barracks in Texas to the jungles of Vietnam and will continue to happen.
I should clarify - I am not saying that I have seen hundreds of records depicting wild college kid-like behavior, but that I have seen enough records to know that things like that happen. A lot.
That happens OFF the base, not in a barracks. When you are on the base, awake or asleep, on duty or off, you are on the clock and are expected to comport yourself in a manner befitting a member of the US military.
A big roll-eyes to the folks who go out of their way not to “sit in judgment” of people who violate all notion of basic common sense and professionalism by taking off all their clothes for their male colleagues at work.
How freaking smart do you have to be to know this is a dumb idea?
And yes, a barracks can properly be considered part of your “place of business.” It’s unfortunate and the hard part of being in the military, but you live at work a lot of the time. This is a hardship that folks like Lynch and my sister accept willingly when they go into the military. I’m sorry if Lynch didn’t consider herself up to the challenge of maintaining even a modicum of professionalism.
For the third time, all I said was that she showed she’s unprofessional and has bad judgment. How is this even arguable?
To answer some other points:
Atrael, you find nothing wrong with stripping for co-workers in the workplace? At any age? Hot damn, why haven’t the folks at my job (or, for that matter, in the Navy) heard about this wonderful “new professionalism”?
I find it laughable that my enlisted sister is considered to be in a “totally different situation.” Give me a break. She lived in barracks during basic and her specialized training. She’s also in close quarters on her ship in the Persian Gulf. That’s the equivalent of living in barracks in the Army. And, as my sister is an E-3, most of her fellow E-3s are in fact ~18-20 years old. And she tells me they’re all well aware that “stripping naked for enlisted men in barracks/on ship while off duty” = “damned stupid idea, career-wise.”
In an email she sent me today, she told me she’s offended by the suggestion, made in this thread repeatedly, that she and her friends haven’t got a lick of sense just because they’re young. (Heh, I copied everyone’s lovely comments into an email and figured I’d light her short fuse with them.) In her opinion as a young enlisted woman, MOST young enlisted females (that she knows) have far better sense than Lynch displayed.
Why? Because they learned in no uncertain terms during basic (heck, from the time they began to be recruited) that fraternizing is not tolerated. In her words, it’s “such a big no-no that you’d have to be a (bleep)ing moron not to know it.”
And, for the record, I’m a woman and very close to my sister. And yes, when she has a wild time, proud of it or not, she usually tells me all about it. She’s not telling me this because it’s what I want to hear.
JRDelirious, I agree that my sister is, in the “dimwit” and “tramp” respects, sitting in judgment of Lynch without all the facts. But as far as being unprofessional and possessed of bad judgment? Sorry, this incident is all we need to know about to be sure she’s guilty of those faults.
Lynch’s behavior in this respect does reflect on my sister’s situation. Does she have to put up with any bull because of what Lynch did? Not directly, from what I hear. But the armed forces are still working on integrating women into more and more stressful/demanding duty assignments, and when women like Lynch prove that some gals can’t hack it without acting in a grossly inappropriate manner, it does–and rightly so–get factored into the decisions about what her opportunities will be. If every enlisted woman were stripping off for their male colleagues while on a ship or in barracks in their down time, you can bet women’s opportunities in the military would be scaled back in a hurry.
Bottom line: Lynch displayed spectacularly poor judgment. Whether it’s because she’s 19 or under stress or just dumb or a combination of the above, it doesn’t change that fact.
Wrong on the “my employee” part, dropzone. People in the military are not employees of taxpayers. I work for an oil company. Do you think that if you spend a couple hundred bucks a month for gasoline that makes me your employee? You pay your taxes. It ends there. You have no authority over military personel. You can try to vote for change. Or write your congressional rep, who does sort of work for you.
And now we’ve gone from posing naked to fucking? Maybe you mean you don’t want military people in general to fuck. I don’t know.
Has the subject of all this discussion had her say yet in regard to all this running around naked and fucking?
My understanding is that the explicit rule in the military is that there is to be no fraternizing between military personnel who belong to the same command.
So no, they’re not allowed to fuck each other OR to strip naked for each other.
Again, is she being accused of fucking? Or is exposing her breasts considered to be the same thing.
Where have all these people seen this photo?
According to other threads, she quite possibly wore nothing under her camos while on a mission. (Going commando)
Actually, I never even argued this point with you. My response was sarcastic, but essentially said, “Kids do stupid stuff all the time. So what?”
Bull…plain and simple, bull. There is no such thing as “workman’s Comp” for military. Every injury that a military member sustains, no matter what the cause is treated at the base facilities, unless there is no military medical facility available. And they are in no way shape of form your employee. You cannot hire/fire/discipline/or order a military member to do anything. You have no control over them, their pay, their living arrangements, their promotions, or their punishments. Just because you pay taxes, you have no say in how individual military members conduct themselves, just like you can’t order a cop to stop eating a donut, just because you pay taxes. That’s a ludicrous statement.
I’m not sure if you were sort of joking there or not, but as a former sailor, I sort of take just a little offense to that. While a certain amount of partying is normal in all services, I can’t think of many of my buddies that paid a prostitute.
And Q.N. Jones there are so many things I disagree with you about, I’m not sure where to start.
And I’ll say this again, it is not NOT their place of work. It’s their home. By your way of thinking, they shouldn’t be sleeping, drinking, or having sex in the barracks either. However, since the barracks is not where they work, but where they live, those things are allowed. And just so you know, it is very very common for people to live together, that don’t work together. So there is no evidence that I know of that shows the guys she was with were co-workers.
The parts I disagree with is you calling her unprofessional. It would be like me saying that if you’ve ever gotten drunk, you’re unprofessional. Regardless of the fact that you were on your own time when it happened, or maybe even in your own home.
I’m going to address these all together, rather than break them down, simply because it’s the end of my work day, and I don’t have the patience that I should.
Part the 1st.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I can say that the situation is totally different, as I was an enlisted Navy member for 6 years, and served on board both ship, and shore duty, both in the US, and overseas. Basic training is so far from the “Normal” life of most Navy members, you can discount that completely. Everyone is kept segregated from pretty much anyone not in their company. Her class “A” school is very structured to. They do that for a reason, as many of the younger enlisted that attend those schools are right out of boot camp, and it’s their first time living basically ‘on their own’. So more control is kept over them to make sure they don’t get in (much) trouble.
And as a junior enlisted member on board ship, she doesn’t have the rank, experience, or time to have much freedom, and she’s low on the list of liberty grantees when they are in Port.
Part the 2nd.
She’s entitled to her opinion. Just as you are to yours. However, I’ll point out that what most of us are saying is that what Jessica did by posing isn’t that big a deal, whereas what you’re saying is that our position is that all young female enlistees are wanton sluts, and the behavior should just be written off as “irresponsible” See the difference? I am saying that she was young, having a good time with friends, and perhaps made a slight judgment error. As a former E-5 in the Navy, that was stationed on both coasts of the US, as well as being deployed to 7 countries overseas, I think I have a pretty good leg to stand on when I say that while perhaps not “common”, her behavior is not in anyway unusual, and shouldn’t be cause for her to be blasted.
Part the last:
Your sister needs to pay more attention in her training. Fraternization take place with two people that have a superior/subordinate relationship. So I can’t bang my supervisor, but I’m free to have a relationship with someone in a different department. Or in a different command. As far as I know, she was on a shore command when this happened, so there is no indication that she was “fraternizing” with anyone. Learn the terms before you throw them around.
And just for her information, the reason that is preached so much more strongly to the shipboard members is because pregnancy at sea is a complicated issue. Not only because of health concerns, but also because the woman in question has to be transferred to a shore command fairly quickly. Which causes manpower issues.
And your understanding about Fraternizing is wrong. Or rather, the policy you stated is correct, you just don’t know what fraternizing is.
No, she isn’t being accused of fucking, though IF the reports of rectal damage similar to that brought on by anal rape or anal sex are accurate and IF her claims that she hadn’t been raped are accurate some conclusions can be drawn. :rolleyes: However, my use of the word “fucking” was hyperbole. (double :rolleyes:)
And yeah, as your customer I am your boss and as taxpayers you and I are bosses of the military.
OTOH, if she was stripped down to thong panties in the photos, as some reports have it, I was being generous when I used the phrase “half naked.” She was, in fact, more like 98% naked.
As for comments that the American People are not the bosses of the military, see what happens if enough of us object to an increase in your budget.
Atrael, you seem to enjoy twisting my words to paint me as some kind of prudish, judgmental witch.
I never said that you thought all enlisted women were wanton sluts and should get a pass for being that way.
But you have stated that she did “nothing wrong” and “nothing unprofessional” by stripping nude in front of male co-workers in Army barracks. I disagree. I think most civilians would disagree. I think most military persons would disagree. And I think the rules and regs enlisted personnel like Lynch do disagree.
Finally, if there was any misstatement in the rules of about “fraternization,” or the terminology, they were my fault and not my sister’s. So take care before you pop off telling her to “pay more attention in training.” Furthermore, the last thing she needs is some man like you warning her about the dangers/problems of pregnancy on board a ship. Gimme a break. You seem to think that because she and I disagree with your lackadaisical stance about this issue, and because I misstated the rules about “fraternization,” that this is evidence that my sister is an idiot. Guess again.
Finally: just because some behavior is common among the enlisted ranks, it does not make it right, does not make it professional, and does not mean it’s okay under military rules and regs. Trust me, I’m well aware of what many (not most, in my sister’s experience) enlisted men and women get up to. Drug use, sexual misconduct, et cetera ad infinitum. Just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s OK.
Were we talking about a woman who was on leave, and not on military property at the time, I would think the issue was somewhat different.
Think I’m going to call up my friend who was enlisted in the Army and ask whether what Lynch did would have got her disciplined if she’d been caught. My sister says yes; you seem to be saying no. Both of you are/were enlisted in the Navy. Perhaps it’s time to get the info from the horse’s mouth?
Augh, said finally twice and forgot this simple explanation of my position:
If a person strips off for fun in front of co-workers on property that the employer owns, that’s unprofessional.
If the workers have to live on property owned by their employer because of the demands of the job (as when an enlisted person is staying in barracks or when a fireman is at the firehouse), stripping off in front of co-workers is unprofessional because you are both living and working at your job–essentially, you are on the job at all times.
If a person strips off for fun in front of co-workers in another place or in their own home, well, let’s just say I recognize that reasonable minds will differ about whether it’s unprofessional or not.
If a person strips off for fun away from property owned by their employer and not in front of co-workers, it’s got no bearing on their professionalism at all.
So, no, it’s NOT like saying I’m unprofessional for getting drunk in the privacy of my own home (which I, and not my employer, own).