Wednesday, March 15, 2017

MALE MARINES UNITED TO PROTECT THEMSELVES AND THEMSELVES ONLY

MARINES UNITED was the name of a facebook page that male marines used to prove they have no honor and that they only only respect and protect other male marines, leaving female marines to fend for themselves.

"Marines United" was the name of a now-defunct men only facebook page where United States Marines shared nude photos of women without the women's consent. Apparently the photos were hacked from various places the individual women owned or boyfriends own.There were also nude and suggestive photos of the men's ex-girlfriends that were shared in a revenge porn sort of way. 




I am not surprised, not with judges so worried about a rapist's future that he sends him to six months after he shoved a foreign object into his victim that it left dirt behind. This latest military sexual harassment scandal is just the top of a very large iceberg


Last week I was listening to a public radio broadcast where a woman said that a tag that male marines used to identify female marines is "WM" which stands for "walking mattresses." That doesn't sound like much. But it says volumes about the men in marines and how women are seen in general. Furthermore, it's not like the marines have had problems over and over again with sexual harassment and sexual assault.

PFC LaVena Johnson was in the army but their reputation isn't much better. Johnson's body was sent home in 2005 after she reportedly committed suicide with a very long rifle considering the small frame she had to go along with her 5 foot 1 inch height. Suspicious, her pathologist father examined her body when it returned home only to find that the body had gloves glued on to cover severe burns-- that nobody could explain at the time. It took a FOIA request and a lot of time to Army to come up with a story that explained the burns -- but never the abuses her body seemed to have suffered.  A number of reporters who saw the second autopsy thought it was possible that Johnson was raped and murdered.

"Johnson's death was officially ruled a suicide by the Department of Defense.[3] However, her father became suspicious when he saw her body in the funeral home and decided to investigate. The Army initially refused to release information, but did so under the Freedom of Information Act after Representative William Lacy Clay, Jr. raised questions about it at the congressional hearings over Pat Tillman's death.[4]
The autopsy report and photographs revealed Johnson had a broken nose, black eye, loose teeth, burns from a corrosive chemical on her genitals, and a gunshot wound that seemed inconsistent with suicide. Several reporters have suspected that the chemical burns were to destroy DNA evidence of a rape.[2][4][5][6]
...Christopher Grey, chief of public affairs for the U.S. Criminal Investigative Command for the Army has said that the case remains closed as far as they are concerned.[7] "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_LaVena_Johnson

http://thesource.com/2014/01/21/justice-for-lavena-johnson-raped-murdered-or-suicide-the-evidence-says-one-thing-u-s-military-says-another/


Not so long agao, during the last years of the Iraq War, a friend of mine told me that she came across a man who worked at a nearby Veteran's Hospital. They got to chatting while riding the bus. He told her that the news covered the dead but barely mentioned those physically maimed, mentally scarred for life, and dozens and dozens of female rape victims  -- not raped by the enemy but raped by their fellow United States Serviceman. 


So no, this latest sexual harassment accusation against thousands of male marines that were members of that MARINES UNITED facebook page is not a surprise to me


Last weekend, news broke that the Marines were investigating a stomach-churning violation of trust in the ranks: personnel were found to have shared [nude and suggestive] photos and personal information of female Marines and veterans, without their consent ― in a Facebook group with over 30,000 members. The photos have garnered 2,500 comments and ratings in what amounts to a breathtaking demonstration of entitlement, exercised in this case via technology. For a month, hundreds and possibly thousands of pictures of female service women have been posted and commented on. The comments are specific and contain details about residence, rank, and contact information. Some comments included encouragement of specific acts of violence against specific women. The private Facebook group is limited to male Marines, Navy Corpsman and British Royal Marines, according to Thomas Brennan, a Marine veteran and journalist who first reported on the photo-sharing scandal.
Against a backdrop of persistently high rates of sexual assault and sexual harassment in the military, these postings indicate that the policies of zero tolerance have failed to be applied or enforced. There are no current consequences sufficient to deter harassment and misconduct within the armed forces.

These accusations are just the latest proof that military men in power have found a myriad ways to protect rapists and men that violate women by refusing to impose consequences on those that commit "boys will be boys" type offenses. Every time a woman complains, each men in charge must think that's just natural behavior she's experiencing. Every time a woman is raped, it's an abberation instead of a natural consequence of the behavior the military refuses to stop normalizing.

Inside the military and out, we need to come up with a new criminal charge for revenge porn and sneaking nude pictures to post online. Something like "non-physical sexual assault" ought to do it. 




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