Air Force sex assault prevention chief charged in sex assault

[james_davis_nicoll]

ARLINGTON, Va. — The chief of the Air Force’s sexual assault prevention and response branch was arrested this weekend and charged with sexual battery.

Comments

[wild_irises]

It must be in the water. This was in today's tabloid San Francisco rag, which I was reading in the lunchroom at work.

[azurelunatic]

And these guys were just the ones to get caught.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

The Dean of International Students at my university was also the Dean of Women. When our university was amalgamated with another one, he was fired because of his history of racism and sexism.

[beth-bernobich.livejournal.com]

I should know better than to read the comments. *sigh*

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Someone obviously needs to write a CommentBlocker plugin/extension.

[cyprinella]

I've used this one to pretty good success. http://stevenf.com/shutup-css Since it's just css you probably could do up a thing in Stylish if you use Firefox that does the same.

[bwross.livejournal.com]

News sites, including Stars and Stripes, almost always require javascript to even see the comments[*], and so I find No Script pretty much covers me for that.


[*] The reason is often that the comment code is provided by a third party, in this case from Disqus. If you leave disqus.com blocked, you won't see the comments, even if you do allow stripes.com.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Apart from the one guy ranting about how liberals are too stupid to understand what the military does to keep them safe, the comments are actually pretty sane and cogent. Of course that one guy accounts for about 20% of the comments.

[beth-bernobich.livejournal.com]

There were also all the comments about how women always lie about rape. Those bring back troubling memories. (Which is why I especially should not read comments in articles like that.)

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

All the comments I saw like that were coming from the one guy, and he was getting jumped on for it. By Internet standards that's civilized discourse.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

With this plus the last incident, the answer is clear: The Air Force needs to create a PowerPoint slide that says "Don't rape women. And don't attempt to rape women either." Then require all LtCol's to sit through a PP presentation that consists of just that one slide.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

When I worked at Farm Bureau, we had one of those HR presentations where one example was a female boss hitting on a male employee even after he asked her repeatedly to stop. Video stopped, discussion started, including one lady who insisted to the point of yelling that "all men love to be hit on" and nothing untoward happened. HR person said, and I quote, "Don't keep hitting on someone if they have said no. Don't grab or grope anyone ever." To which the lady protested again, finally saying, "What, is the guy supposed to be gay? Is that the joke here?"

So I question whether simple, direct "Do not rape women" would even be enough for some people.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

She probably doesn't believe that men CAN be raped--at least not by women.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

I hadn't actually thought about that -- maybe she thought the logical conclusion of sexual harassment was rape, and men "can't be raped." That's... well, it's disturbing, but it's not like I haven't seen similar thoughts expressed on the internets before.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Oh, I certainly agree. I was intending that as sarcasm, aimed at both the military's overuse of PowerPoint and the fact that the clearest possible messages aren't making it through. (He was the sex assault prevention OIC, for pity's sake!)

ETA: The now-classic "Sexual Assault Prevention Tips List" here: http://feminally.tumblr.com/post/168208983/sexual-assault-prevention-tips-guaranteed-to-work
(E.g. "3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!")

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Ah, this is not the first time this week that I've missed sarcasm... and it's only Monday night!

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

These days, PowerPoint is mandatory for training, and also brain-softening before interrogations. Imagine something like this:

1) Do not rape women.

2) Do not rape men, either.

3) That thing about rape? Sheep, camels, and dogs, too.

4) Don't ask about the fuel hose incident.

[ilya187.livejournal.com]

That was slide projector, not PowerPoint (back in 1985), but in Air Force boot camp we were shown slides saying exactly that. Maybe officer candidate school skips that part.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

Officer schools skip surprising things. A friend in the Canadian forces pointed out to me that leadership training for corporals is much more thorough and rigorous than for officers. Basically, iirc, you must pass a leadership course to become a corporal. Officers do not receive leadership training.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Must depend on the service. US Marine officer candidates have to take formal leadership courses. I had to take similar courses as an NCO.

Although part of it was "There's no magic formula to being a leader. We'll give you some guidelines and a series of positive and negative examples, but in the end, you have to work it out for yourself."

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Part of that may be related to the "every man a rifleman" ethos of the Marines?