Earlier this week, we had a course on sexual assault. We do this every year, but for some reason, this year our lesson made me a little mad. I realize that there is a strong gender bias in the perspective of sexual assault. In class we watched a video about sexual assault in the Air Force; it was a short film and as a class we had to decide whether or not it was sexual assault. The biggest issue was identifying whether the female’s actions could be considered as consent. Consent is a verbal agreement or overt actions that relate to any type of intercourse. In this film, the female's actions were very overt, but she was raped at the end. It doesn’t matter whether she was initially giving consent or not, it is unacceptable if she said no at any point. There is a zero tolerance policy on sexual assault in the Air Force. The persecutor is fined and sentenced to time in jail, as well as being dishonorably discharged from the Air Force.
In our society, this issue has leaned on making sexual assault a “women’s issue;” this can be because the majority of the people in the military are men, therefore the percentage of men getting sexually assaulted are diminutively less. Nevertheless, from this film, I realized that the female’s actions leading up to it were overt, and I argued that the male shouldn’t go to jail for it. I understand that you should never blame the victim, yet her actions made it clear that she knew exactly what was going on. This made me think about the gender bias, because it can be so easy for a women to feel victimized and be seen as the victim despite knowing what they were getting themselves into. Of course, I can’t generalize this to every situation, but in this particular experience, I realized that the mentality of sexual assault being a “women’s issue,” makes it really hard for men to get out of if accused. I try to be as fair as possible, and I’m trying to see both sides of the story. I see how this is damaging to a woman, and I agree that there should be a zero tolerance policy. But what I disagree with is the degree of punishment that the persecutor receives for something that the female was initially down for.
This issue might be specifically addressing the Air Force, but it exists in every community and organization we have. Advocacy for zero tolerance has been prominent in our modern society, but we can’t say that it has stopped sexual assault. It continues to be a big issue.
http://turner.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=337127
Observation: I saw a homeless man unconscious off of his wheelchair. He was bleeding. This was my first time calling 911.
This film sounds interesting. I believe that sexual assault is not only a "Women's Issue" because some men are also victims of sexual assault. However I can see how it could be a "Women's Issue" because most of the people who experience sexual assault are women. In some cases I feel that women don't consent to having sex or being a victim of sexual assault by an individual, but however I do agree that some do know what they are doing then accuse people of having sexually assaulted them. I also like this posts because I never knew how sexual assault works within the Air Force.
ReplyDeleteComment 7: This was a very interesting post because I also did not know about how sexual assault works within the Air Force. I see how sexual assault is described as a "women's issues" because you normally only hear about stories of women being the victim. This made me think about how men might react to being sexually assaulted by keeping it to themselves because of the stereotypes that exist. Men are stereotyped as being strong and powerful so they might be embarrassed to tell or report a case if they were the victim.
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