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singunburdened:tamorapierce:buttons-beads-lace:fuckyeahbiguys:theamericanavenger:theamericanavenger:Okay guys this is kinda important. GQ just came in the mail and for the first time in a long while it had a really important article…I just sat here for like the last half hour reading this and I’m incredibly appalled at our justice system in regards to the military. The article interviews about 23 men who have all been sexually assaulted in some branch of the military. The PTSD from sexual assault in the military is more prevalent than PTSD from combat…If you have a chance I suggest reading this article…and the title is a quote that one of the victims Doctor told him…Hey guys! I’m very impressed and extremely happy to see this post gaining a lot of speed over the last few days! A few people have requested it, so i’ve gone ahead and scanned the pages of the article for those who want to read it, to read. So, here it is!Wow. Very powerful stuff. I’ve had quite a few friends from back home enter the military and this is never something we bring up in discussions. I’m glad it’s garnering more attention. Some quotes:“The moment a man enlists in the United States armed forces, his chances of being sexually assaulted increase by a factor of ten. Women, of course, are much more likely to be victims of military sexual trauma (MST), but far fewer of them enlist. In fact, more military men are assaulted than women— nearly 14,000 in 2012 alone.”"Military culture is built upon a tenuous balance of aggression and obedience. The potential for sexual violence exists whenever there is too much of either.”"Trent Smith, Air Force, enlisted 2011: "He was a senior aide— he had a direct line to the top. Being invited voer to his house, I just took it as I should go. Looking back, I as myself, Why didn’t you do anything? It wasn’t like he held me down or tied me up. I didn’t want to cross him. I really didn’t feel like I had any choice. I had just turned 19. It could be my career. I froze and went along with it.”“"Rsearch suggests that the military brass may have conspired to illegally discharge MST victims by falsely diagnosing them with personality disorders. “The military has a systemic personality disorder discharge problem,” write the authors of a 2012 Yale Law School white paper. Between 2001 and 2010, some 31,000 servicepersons were involuntarily discharged for personality disorders. It is likely that in many cases these were sham diagnoses meant to rid the ranks of MST victims.”"Jeremy Robinson [name changed], Army, 1970-1972: "I have very little memory of my time in the psychiatric ward, because I was so heavily drugged. I stopped eating. I became suicidal, and I made three attempts. They gave me shock treatments against my will. The diagnosis was paranoid schizophrenia. I bore that label for forty years before the VA finally admitted they had misdiagnosed me.”“"Above all, MST victins keep quiet because they do not believe their attackers will be punished. And they’re almost certainly right. The conviction rate in MST cases that go to trial is just 7 percent. An estimated 81% of male MST victims never report being attacked. Perhaps it should astonish us that any of them do.”"Mike Thomson, Marines, 1997-1999: ”I wasn’t “afraid” to report it— I was ashamed and disgusted. Guys aren’t supposed to be raped. I didn’t want to tell anybody about it. I didn’t want to say anything.”““Men develop PTSD from sexual assault at nearly twice the rate they do from combat. Yet as multiple research papers have noted, the condition in men is egregiously understudied. This is because so few men tell anyone. Those who do often wait years; many male participants in therapy groups are veterans of Korea and Vietnam. At Bay Pines’ C. W. Bill Young VA Medical Center in Florida, the country’s first residential facility for men suffering from MST, the average patient is over 50 years old at admission.”I feel so lousy for our guys. I heard my dad once refer to the Vietnam veterans as “a bunch of ***damn crybabies”—and that was just because people were starting to talk about PTSD. (My dad was a sergeant in Korea, and would only tell the stories he could make funny. He didn’t even mention his own PTSD symptoms, and never by that name, until much later in his life. I only realized he had it when I read the first ground-breaking book on the effect of Vietnam at home and abroad, which introduced PTSD to the public that cared to read it, and recognized my father’s behaviors.)When you’re a soldier, you’re taught(brainwashed) to toughen up, be hard, don’t complain, suck it up, be part of your unit, obey orders, obey the chain of command. I can’t imagine the level of courage it must take to report rape, if you’re a woman, and even more so if you’re a man.why a man? Think of the conditioning our guys get from the cradle, unless they’re lucky. Boys don’t cry, boys don’t talk about feelings, boys don’t touch other boys unless it’s sports, boys fight if other boys pick on them, boys don’t complain if they’re picked on, boys don’t have sex with other boys(but if they do, they’re on top). Take all that, and put it into the military setting, and male soldiers who are raped must be paralyzed into silence.And once again the military betrays these men, as they betray women who are raped. They drum them out with a record that will ruin their chances of getting them a job. They sentence these men to the psychiatric treatment that will make them truly mentally ill, the saturation of drugs and shock treatment that is supposed to heal paranoid schizophrena. They ruin soldiers’ lives for telling the truth.I feel sick. Don’t you? If your soldier is haunted and won’t talk, maybe see if he’ll go to a veterans’ group, not the VA. He might talk to other veterans before family, and the VA’s psychiatric care is … flawed. He may have to go in the long run if he needs things like meds, but a group might be able to give him good advice.Hey,Tumblr. a few resources for vets as alternatives to the VA:Military OneSource: CONUS lines Toll-Free: 800-342-9647En español llame al: 877-888-0727TTY/TDD: 866-607-6794http://veteransfamiliesunited.org/2011/06/06/counseling/http://www.veteransnetwork.net/directory.php is a site listing additional support groups, from the Veterans of Foreign Wars to advocacy programs that help vets get and use their VA benefits. Friendly note, Military One Source also supports currently serving servicemembers as well as their families. -- source link
#rape culture#toxic masculinity