Several US Air Force bases have started teaching Gracie Jiu Jitsu under the umbrella of “resiliency training,” which is team-building/suicide prevention. Rumor has it that there’s some hesitation about bringing it in under the umbrella of sexual assault prevention training.
I think the USAF may be unique among the branches in not having any sort of mandatory hand-to-hand combat training at any level. I think they should make self-defense training mandatory in basic training, but if there is indeed hesitation, I understand it. It puts the onus on the sexual assault victims, and could make it appear that they’re unable to prevent men from committing assaults.
Being the only military branch that doesn’t require lessons in unarmed combat, has the Air Force been subject to more sexual assaults than the other branches? Because if not, I’m not sure how this is going to help.
That’s an excellent question. I should point out that as far as I know, the hand-to-hand combat taught by the other branches is ostensibly for killing the enemy. The Gracie self defense course is designed to allow a small person to extricate themselves from a sexual assault and run away. I don’t know how relevant a direct comparison would be.
Thoughtless and stupid. Parachutes solve a problem. Teaching a service member how to disengage from an attacker and run away in a context where there’s more often than not nobody to run to is just a policy of pretending the problem is something other than what it is.
Yes, and if the Air Force bought a jet that was extremely crash-prone, and their solution was to hand out parachutes rather than fixing the jet, they’d be rightly criticized.
To be fair, having somebody to run to is one area that the military has been making massive improvements. The problem is that while increased reporting and prosecution is a good thing, it doesn’t necessarily help prevent sexual assaults in the first place. This self defense training might.
eta: To continue the analogy, they should really try to fix the jet AND hand out parachutes.
No, it’s quite similar. Parachutes do not solve every crash problem, and do not shift the onus for crashes to the pilot.
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Yes, and if the Air Force bought a jet that was extremely crash-prone, and their solution was to hand out parachutes rather than fixing the jet, they’d be rightly criticized.
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Fallacy of the excluded middle, same as Jimmy Chitwood. HtH training is not what the Air Force is doing instead of addressing the problem, but one part of addressing the problem. Certainly the issue is a difficult one, but the idea that the Air Force is simply throwing their airmen into jujitsu school and washing their hands of the problem is a silly one.
In an environment that has been shown to favor the male of the species, a situation where there is fighting between a female enlisted and a male enlisted or officer might not be to her advantage if the situation is investigated.
From the Wiki on sexual abuse in the United States military:
Czarcasm, I don’t disagree that things are still bad; I simply said that the military has been making massive improvements. I’m not sure what point you’re making.
The question was whether the military should implement self-defense training to prevent sexual assault. This is only something other than a non sequitur if self-defense training does, in fact, prevent sexual assaults in some significant way; otherwise the answer ought to be “no: given that the military in fact has finite resources and a finite level of rank-and-file tolerance for such measures, the military should only do things that are significantly effective.” Agreed?
The next question then is whether, other than the self-serving suggestions of hyper-rationality and cold hard logic, you have any reason to believe it’s a significantly effective approach.
I don’t want to play too much devil’s advocate here, but it’s unclear to me if the increase is due to more sexual assaults, or a better understanding of what constitutes a sexual assault leading to more people realizing that they were indeed sexually assaulted. I also don’t look too harshly on the abysmal conviction rate, because the conviction rate outside of the military is also abysmal. Sexual assaults are notoriously hard to prosecute, since there’s rarely any witnesses or physical evidence.
All I know is that I’ve seen a shift in attitudes with my own eyes, at least a the upper levels of management. There’s still a huge cultural problem at the lower levels, but I don’t know why that would preclude the teaching of self defense methods.
Do the emergency medical facilities at AF bases keep Kits in stock? Considering the way the AF ignores religious discrimination at their academy, I can’t see them caring much about their female personnel being raped by their male personnel.
I’d still like to see some evidence that they fixed the jet…beyond the fact that they bought a shiny new tool box. If reporting sexual assaults is up by 50%, but convictions are only up by a fraction of that amount, that tells me that the conviction rate is getting much worse in proportion to the report rate.