Add Comment

FORMATTING HELP

All Comments Hide marked as read Mark all as read

  • Posted by Zero 10 years, 4 months ago
    I know it's satire, but surely Trudeau isn't suggesting that the woman has no recourse?
    The UCMJ is very clear on the subject. If the problem is with your superior officer you simply inform them that you are reporting them to THEIR CO, then you do so.

    But you must inform them first else you have broken the chain of command.
    Theoretically you can take this as high as you like, but in practice you better damn well have a good reason to go over someone's head.

    Accusing your boss of rape is a pretty good reason in anyone's book.


    Not saying shenanigans don't occur but implying there is no system in place for reporting such things maligns the armed forces.

    The thing is, most soldiers don't care much for rapists either.
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 10 years, 4 months ago
    One of the most powerful leitmotifs in "Battlestar Galactica" is military men and women showering together: rape is not a foregone conclusion, but unfortunately peculiar to our species of humanity.

    (And communal showering also appears in the original "Robocop.")
    Reply | Mark as read | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Posted by Zero 10 years, 4 months ago
      I've probably misunderstood your comment, but you know that rape in well documented among animals.

      I don't know of any evil still considered exclusive to us. Once we went to go live with them all kinds of things came to light.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
    • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
    • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 4 months ago
      Okay, here's something interesting for you, maybe.

      communal showering takes place in Robocop? It also takes place in "Starshit Troupers", the movie made from Heinlein's book. In fact, that's the point where I'd had enough of the perversion of the story and walked out... only time I ever walked out on a movie.

      So what do "Robocop" and "Starshit Troupers" have in common?

      The leftist scumbag Paul Verhoven.
      If you ever see a news report that someone was suddenly punched so hard his parents felt it... you'll know I recognized him on the street.

      Battlestar Galactica didn't have women in the military, iirc, until the 2nd or 3rd season, after they had an epidemic that left many of the male pilots unable to perform.

      Strangely, later, when they enounter an out-of-touch Battlestar, that Battlestar has already stooped to using women as pilots.
      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
      • Posted by khalling 10 years, 4 months ago
        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
        • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
        • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 4 months ago
          I double checked... that is indeed what I typed, no error.
          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
          • Posted by khalling 10 years, 4 months ago
            oh you err alright
            Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
            • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
            • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 4 months ago
              I told you I was no Objectivist.
              What, that news article was supposed to sway me?

              If you show me a news article of people setting themselves on fire, would you expect that to give me a positive attitude toward self immolation?

              Women don't belong in the military, let alone combat. I don't care how good they allegedly are. Any nation willing to put its females into harms way *as some mythical, non-existant "right"*, or any way other than as last ditch to save the children, not only isn't worth enduring, it won't endure for long.

              I can see the world of the 22nd century. If any males exist, they will be living in breeding quarters, because that's all the role they'll have. Women can have the babies, build the businesses, fight the wars, and have a nice game of chess in the evening; nobody needs men.

              The only reason for war is to provide for and protect the females and children of a society. If a nation is going to put them on the front line because they are STUPID enough to think it's a game, that nation is already too far gone to be saved. Let the barbarians have it and start over.

              http://www.xtimports.com/text/watchman00...
              http://www.xtimports.com/text/watchman01...
              Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
              • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
              • Posted by $ 10 years, 4 months ago
                Personally, I think women should only be allowed in front line combat positions if they can meet the same physical standards as men. Naturally this will create a disproportionate number of men to women, but when there's a job to do and people's lives are on the line, it would be unwise to lower the standard for anyone.

                But for something like a combat pilot, where success is purely a matter of skill and one's physical size and strength don't particularly matter, then yeah, full equality all the way (same goes for other non-combat positions).
                Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
                • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 4 months ago
                  Well, we'll forget the physical endurance necessary for a combat pilot (pulling "g"s ain't no picnic)... but pilots tend to get shot down behind the lines a lot more than ground troops.

                  Why not just round up a bunch of our women and parachute them into the enemy capital for their amusement?

                  You know, the Greeks experimented with a military unit made up entirely of homosexual lovers. The idea was that they would fight more fiercely with their lover's life on the line It was wiped out to the last one in the first battle... because they wouldn't abandon their lovers when necessary. (my point's not about homosexuality, it's about what lengths male pilots and ground troops will go to to protect their females, orders to the contrary notwithstanding).
                  Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                • Posted by $ Susanne 10 years, 4 months ago
                  +1 for that, thank you.

                  In some other countries gender is not a bar to combat service, and they seem to perform admirably. I hate using the example of the Soviet Women snipers in WW2, but their record speaks for themselves. Being a trap & skeet, as well as a distance rifle, competitor (and doing rather well at it, thank you) I read their stories and smile... not for the system they lived under (God no!), but their ability to excel - and to be ALLOWED to excel - in something they did so well at (and in something I enjoy doing as well...).

                  The women in the service nowdays have opportunities I would have loved to have... maybe it's one of the few bits of good that have come out of these otherwise tumultuous times we live in...
                  Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                  • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
                  • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 4 months ago
                    21 million dead Russians. You left out that part.
                    If we had left Europe to the Russians (would to God we had), there would have been no Soviet empire.
                    The Russians did a lot of incompetent things, and you go ahead, put your female snipers against the Wehrmacht. Let's see how well they do against German tanks with no supports, just their rifles.
                    Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                    • Posted by $ Susanne 10 years, 4 months ago
                      Who won the war? IIRC, in the real world, *your* Wehrmacht ended up losing that war (maybe not in some fantasy world where people forget history)... and strangely enough, it was the incompetent Russians who, with 21 million dead and all those awful female snipers, infantry, artillery officers and tank drivers, ended up in Berlin. Not the other way around. Funny, that.

                      I'm not a Commie apologist, a long way from it, but I'm also not someone who will ignore reality when it stares them in the face. The Soviets - had an evil, corrupt looter-oriented system that was doomed to eventual failure. But they did field one hell of an army. One that (apparently to your mysognist horror) had women in it as well as men.
                      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
              • Posted by khalling 10 years, 4 months ago
                so, 1. if women are excellent pilots, we don't need men.
                2. why don't women belong in combat? The reality is, women end up in combat for better or worse. In a civilized society, the fewer involved in war the better, in general. women physically tend to be not as strong. many problems along that line. for pilots, not so much BUT in warplane the limiting feature is the pilot.
                3. are spies not a part of the military? hmmmm.
                I'll bet you dollars to $1 cheeseburgers that the best ones have been women which is why you don't know about most of them
                4. your last point is a straw man. One SHOULD have the goal of protecting freedom of a nation. Women and children throughout history have been involved in that fight.
                Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
                • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 4 months ago
                  yeah, right. the Roman legions were packed with females. The Wehrmacht was fully sexually integrated, as were the American and British armies. Of course, the Russians had women in their military during WWII; they were darn near conquered, if not for American money and materiel, and still managed to waste 20+ million of their own people.

                  Forget how strong women are or how excellent they are; the point is to keep the enemy from fucking them. Welcome to Anthro 101. Not a lot of point to fighting an enemy you're going to ship your women off to to fuck.

                  That's where Objectivists and socialists have common ground; both are unwilling to accept Man's true nature as a *thinking, tribal animal*. The socialists want to turn us into herd-beasts like cows, and the Objectivists want to turn us into solitary hunters like cats.
                  (there's a reason why dogs are smarter than and can recognize more words than can cats; their pack nature).

                  We're fighting a 7th century death cult, and, because so many of us are progressive perverts at heart, we refuse to fight them appropriately.
                  The term (more Anthro 101) "f* you" has an implied "I" at the beginning. Because that's expressing dominance. And winning at war is most often a matter of dominating the enemy.

                  You go right ahead trying to deal with the real world in the delusion of gender equality and rights without responsibilities. History always cleanses every civilization which becomes so sophisticated that it takes the concept of equality to such ridiculous extremes that they'd rather make their females subject A) to the horrors of war and B) subject to being possessed by the enemy.

                  "What is best in life; to drive your enemy before you; to possess his woman in front of him."- Genghis Khan, ruler of the largest empire in the world, and the only undefeated one.

                  I worry that our sophisticated military will get its ass whipped if the enemy ever figures a way to negate our advanced technology. Maybe Iran wants a nuke, not to blow up places, but to create EMPs over battlefields.

                  The purpose of war is not to simply destroy whatever member of the enemy becomes destroyable. it is to bend the enemy to your will.

                  One soldier died, and others risked their lives, because it was important to modern American society to put Jessica Lynch where she had no business being, just because she wanted to play at being a soldier.

                  Meanwhile, as we piss and moan about how terrible the educational system is, how feral and ignorant current generations are becoming... we don't teach boys to be men or girls to be women. When I want to get a shocked reaction from a modern, I use the excuse, "I'm a guy; I can't cook".
                  I'm sure it warms many a heart-cockle here to watch all those commercials (the ones where dad's not an idiot) of men cooking for their women.

                  Of course, the risk of being raped, or gang raped, or otherwise abused, is somewhat distant for modern western females who begin spreading their legs for any tattooed, pierced, loud-mouth lout they encounter, before they even begin to bleed.

                  My last point is not a straw man; societies exist for women and children; men wouldn't have needed societies if they hadn't had women and children. It's the family that anchored man to fixed locations, forming villages, towns, nations.

                  I don't consider the CIA to be part of the military, and yes, I'm sure there are Mata Haris in western societies who excel at obtaining intelligence and spreading disinformation by spreading their legs for the enemy. How one judges what constitutes a "best" spy, I couldn't guess. Amount of intelligence obtained, quality of intelligence obtained, difficulty in obtaining intelligence?

                  I can't help laugh even when I think about the number of men who bristled whenever I got harsh with my language with a female, but who have no problem letting the fools play at being soldiers.
                  Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                  • Posted by $ Susanne 10 years, 4 months ago
                    God, what a disgusting point of view. You seem to have a very poor attitude about women, and make a lot of presuppositions about them... I mean, sure, in a 1930's movie where you have "Real Men" and "Weakling Dames" it sounds about true, but that's about 80 years behind the times. And wasn't valid (but for Hollywood imagery) even then.

                    What makes you think that a woman, rather than serving honorably and admirably and killing the enemy, would rather spread her legs before the enemy, would "give it up" or automatically somehow forget her training so she could get raped? The whole weak and defenseless woman stuff neading a REAL MAN to come to her defense - is good for those 30's propoganda movies, but is in no way accurate in real life.

                    Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                    • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
                    • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 4 months ago
                      "poor attitude"...

                      If I had a poor attitude, I'd treat women the way most modern punks treat women. My entire argument has been that our women are TOO DAMNED GOOD to subject to the horrors of war and the enemy.

                      80 years behind the times... so you're another of these people who hold the irrational view that civilization is continually advancing and getting better, with each generation smarter than mom and pop.

                      If a female gets captured by the enemy we're fighting, she's not going to have any choice about spreading her legs.

                      The thing about propaganda is that it can also be true; and in the case of those "30s movies" yo decry, they reflect reality a lot better than the fantasy world the degenerate zombies inhabiting the U.S. today do.

                      Yeah, Milla Jovovich in "Resident Evil" is soooo much more realistic than, say... Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca", or Olivia DeHavilland in "Gone with the Wind", or "Mata Hari" with Greta Garbo, or Claudette Colbert in "It Happened One Night" or "Cleopatra"... Or Myrna Loy in any of the Thin Man movies... Or Carol Lombard in "My Man Godfrey", or Marlene Dietrich in "Morocco"...

                      I don't know why you chose to pick on the 1930s, but they weren't culturally an anomaly. Had they been capable of making films in 1776 or 1876, they would have resembled those made in the 1930s more than those made since the 1950s.

                      And one of my favorite films, "Heaven Knows, Mr Allison" was made in 1957, not 1937. Of course, had it been made today, they'd have had sex by the first 20 minutes of the film, and the ending would have been Debra Kerr carrying a 50 caliber machine gun mowing down Japanese left, right and center to rescue Robert Mitchum after he got himself captured trying to take out the Jap artillery.

                      Another of my favorites (and I'm only sharing from the pleasure of making your grind your teeth to nubs), was made in 1951, not 1931, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn... yes... "The African Queen". How's that fit in your little stereotype, hmm?

                      "The Mummy Returns" had to be made PC, by portraying the otherwise beautiful Rachel Weiss as a two-fisted knife fighter, because the delightful "The Mummy" just wasn't acceptable as a standard 1930s type B movie made in the 21st century (well... 1999)... no matter how delightful the heroine was or how romantic the hero was.

                      So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

                      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                  • Posted by khalling 10 years, 4 months ago
                    this comment is hard to get through. I'm not sure of its value. It is so rude and insulting I cannot fathom how it advances the discussion. I notice you choose me quite often to "gift" with this kind of content. Why is that?
                    Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                    • Posted by $ Susanne 10 years, 4 months ago
                      Stock in trade for those types... They have a mindset that says "Me, big tough guy You, submissive dame". Since you can think rationally and logically, you're a threat to his masculinity... so you have to be a target.
                      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                      • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
                      • -1
                        Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 4 months ago
                        "these types"?

                        If that's all you got from my comment, then there's no point in trying to educate you.

                        How is she a threat to my masculinity again? She's thinking logically, but not rationally. She's the one under the delusion that humans don't have instincts.

                        More like, "me big tough country, you submissive country." It's got nothing to do with me personally being big and tough, it's got a lot to do with the fact that men don't make babies. Men don't nurture babies. It is not their evolved role to do so, it is their evolved role to fight, kill and die to protect and provide for the females and the children.

                        When the barbarians overran Rome (and raped and pillaged), it wasn't Boadicea who did it. The conflict between Seutonius and Boadicea is the archetypical example of what I'm talking about, particularly in light of their respective speeches before their climactic battle. For a contrasting example, consider Queen Elisabeth I, or Queen Victoria. Women leading from the rear works. Women leading from the front, doesn't. It's that evolution thing, again.

                        My great frustration is that I won't live long enough to watch y'all learn the lesson... AGAIN.

                        In 1984, Geraldine Ferraro promised, laughing, that we'd NEVER have unisex bathrooms or put women in combat; the idea was ridiculous. I guess she shared my mindset.

                        Let's take Heinlein's advice; men have born the brunt of defending the nation for 230 years; let's have a draft akin to the draft men have been subject to. And to make it "fair", men will be barred from military service the same way women have for most of the history of the U.S. for the next 230 years. Go ahead, put the all-female battalions up against Chinese or Iranian regulars.
                        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                        • Posted by khalling 10 years, 4 months ago
                          1. can you explain the absurd statement "may think logically but not rationally."
                          2. instinct: humans do not have instincts. Babies lose the auto-reflex at around 2 months. Why? Because it is contradictory for a rational animal. The whole point of instincts is not to gain knowledge or learn. The whole point of being human is his ability to learn. This conflicts with the concept of automatic response. I do not think it is the purpose of a male to just fight and protect. That seems barbaric to me and completely out of touch with how the world works in 2013 and moving forward. I also do not see a female's role as barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen cooking up a man's meal.
                          Yes, physiologically only females can be pregnant and give birth. But anyone can be raped or pillaged. It is in a sovereign community's best interest to use all of their resources efficiently and freely. The more you box yourself in with arcane reasoning like this, the more likely you will be to lose the war, not to mention battles.
                          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                    • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
                    • -2
                      Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 4 months ago
                      Rude, possibly. I don't know where you get the insulting part. I was vulgar trying to make it clear just how *ugly* the real world is without the technology that levels the playing field in the "civilized" west. Of course, we're not fighting western civilizations, but a 7th century death cult that somehow has managed to fight a military far better equipped and supported than any in history, to a standstill.
                      (here's a hint; the flaw isn't with the technology or equipment....)

                      Objectivists do not live in the real world. To be fair, humanity hasn't lived in the real world for about a century or more (except maybe in parts of Africa).

                      You're the one who questioned my correct usage of the word "stooped." You don't want responses, don't comment on my comments.
                      Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                      • Posted by khalling 10 years, 4 months ago
                        This is very much the real world and this is a real discussion. Your vulgarity was an attempt to get a rise out of me or to shut me up. You can say whatever you want in here. But we were in a discussion and I will call you out when you decide to use such tactics.
                        Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                        • Comment hidden by post owner or admin, or due to low comment or member score. View Comment
                        • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 4 months ago
                          No, I wasn't trying to get a rise out of you or shut you up. I was trying to get you out of the ivory tower that technology has built. In the real world there's a reason men dominate women, even today. I *don't* include myself in this because I'm *not* typical of men.

                          Do you reject evolution? If not, then you must accept the fact that men and women evolved to fill complimentary roles; there are reasons we are physically and psychologically different.
                          So, what's changed? Certainly not the physical and psychological nature of men and women.
                          The only change is technology.

                          As I mentioned in passing before, I've had guys climb up one side of me and down the other because I treated a female as I would a male. I don't blame them, no matter how silly and hypocritical I thought it made them look, because they were reacting from instinct.
                          How does one incorporate, "You don't hit girls... EVER" into the modern world of equal females, particularly in the military? And if I had a nickel for every time I'd read or heard a guy invoke that archaic and now obsolete piece of chivalry, I'd be living in a mansion right now. And yet they're still able to believe that doublethink, sincerely.

                          I can't. I have little respect for women who climb unnecessarily off the pedestal. The one woman alive whom I respect more than any other is Michelle Malkin. She manages to be equal without trying to be a man. She does her thing her own way, not the way she thinks men would do it. Nor have I ever detected her proclaiming her need to do things the way men would in order for her to be 'equal'.

                          You didn't read either fairy tale I linked, did you?

                          Read this, then:
                          http://space4commerce.blogspot.com/2006/...

                          Proud Legions, excerpted from "This Kind of War" is one of my favorite essays on war. What is presumed in the text, and which is difficult, IMO, for a woman or a modern male to comprehend, is how much of the military philosophy described in that essay *relies on the physical, emotional and psychological nature of men*.

                          Now, said system has been winning wars and settling issues for millennia. But, let's just toss it all away, with the future existence of our nation on the line, to experiment with making women feel "equal" and "fulfilled".

                          We call our military "warriors", but they're not warriors. If they were, we'd have a lot more court martials, court martials over incidents where our troops, covered in blood, grinned with delight as they dismembered the family members of the enemy who dared defy their will. Our *soldiers* would recoil in horror over such behavior, much as the Roman legions recoiled from the atrocities committed by the barbarian armies driving them mercilessly back to Rome in the 5th century, much as the ancestors of those barbarians recoiled from the atrocities committed by the legions as they carved their way across Europe.

                          With the vulgarity ("vulgar" means "common", btw), I was trying to briefly get across just how barbaric real war is devoid of the push-button niceties technology has afforded.

                          Again, and finally, I cannot perform the mental gymnastics necessary to both want to protect and provide for our females, and indignantly (and foolishly) fight for their "right" to serve in the military. Other guys manage this. I can't. Either women are something special to be cared for, put on a pedestal, or they're disposable garbage like the rest of us. I never learned to value and respect "equals" as society now requires me to do with women.
                          Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                          • Posted by Wonky 10 years, 4 months ago
                            Speak for yourself. I am not disposable garbage because I am not a woman. Nor do I believe that women who are not placed on a pedestal are disposable garbage.

                            Perhaps you could pick a single millennium, century, decade, or (preferably) year, and present your arguments in the context of that time frame.

                            Your writing skills are commendable and your knowledge of history and evolution appear to be adequate. Your apparent knowledge of war and aggression are beyond my ability to judge. I can't discern from your comments whether you believe that women should want, or need, men to sacrifice themselves for them, or whether you believe that they should want, or need, to be self-reliant and act in accordance with their rational self interests.

                            Do you allow for the possibility of the existence of women who would take the oath: "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another [hu]man, nor ask another [hu]man to live for mine.”
                            Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                            • Posted by Rocky_Road 10 years, 4 months ago
                              No, Wonky!

                              Reread his comment...he is trying to keep his romantic understanding of his role with women, and the opposing view that there is no role to play!

                              God help us if the latter is the absolute!
                              Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  
                              • Posted by Wonky 10 years, 4 months ago
                                I get the problems (from the essay he cites) that:


                                "...the liberal society, in its heart, wants not only domination of the military, but acquiescence of the military toward the liberal view of life."

                                ...and...

                                "The values composing civilization and the values required to protect it are normally at war."


                                Would that he would just say as much and provide some indication of which set of values he is referring to at a given time.

                                I tend to think a good depiction of the clash of these values is Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men from the "You can't handle the truth" scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOk...


                                In my opinion, Hiraghm's use of the words "our females" points to the central issue. For military purposes, he seems to want the emphasis on the possessive use of "our" to be flowing only from males to females because (if I understand him) he think's it is key (even "instinctual") in generating and maintaining attitude, motivation, and morale. This might be a good point, but I don't really care because I'm not a General, and will probably never have any significant influence over the attitude, motivation, and morale of our military.

                                His "role" with respect to women, based on his own citation, is different depending on whether he is military or civilian.
                                Reply | Mark as read | Parent | Best of... | Permalink  

FORMATTING HELP

  • Comment hidden. Undo