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They have slumber parties??

I’d no idea that the Marines have slumber parties for potential recruits.

Settling a highly publicized case in which two military recruiters were accused of rape, the U.S. Marine Corps has agreed to pay two young women $200,000 and change its recruiting practices in Northern California. The assaults allegedly occurred in 2004, when the two women were 17-year-old high school students…one was told she had to have sex if she wanted to join the Marines…

The agreement also requires that female recruiters be available for young women, and that female supervisors must be present at any Marine-sanctioned slumber parties that include female recruits or applicants.

Maybe they pop popcorn, eat S’mores, play computer games and tell potential recruits this is just a small taste of how Service will be like a fun extended-stay summer camp away from the scrutiny of your parents.

Oh, and toss in a little rape as a recruitment incentive. “You can only come play on the battlefield if I get to rape you first!”

Do you think the Marines are still scratching their heads over how that failed to be much of a success?

P.S. I still think if you’re not old enough to drink, you’re not old enough to have a job where people try to kill you and you try to kill them.

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Juli Kearns

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9 responses to “They have slumber parties??”

  1. nina Avatar
    nina

    Lord have mercy!

    Reply
  2. Arvin Hill Avatar
    Arvin Hill

    Aside from the horror of such violent criminality, potential military recruits getting raped by recruiters may be a fair representation of what females have in store when they follow through with a military commitment.

    See Helen Benedict’s “The Private War of Women Soldiers”
    http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/07/women_in_military/print.html

    Definitey one of the more shameful stories about the military I’ve run across this year. You know, aside from the mission itself.

    P.S. I totally agree about your comment about the illogic of the legal drinking age versus the fighting-killing-dying age. Hell, I remember my father saying “If you’re old enough to die for your country, you’re old enough to drink” – and that was forty years ago.

    Reply
  3. Jay Taber Avatar
    Jay Taber

    Both Stan Goff and Melissa Farley have a lot to say about military bases, prostitution, and violence against women. PRE has a lot of useful information about how pornography acculturates young males to this:
    http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/

    Reply
  4. Idyllopus Avatar
    Idyllopus

    Arvin, Jay, sorry you guys got caught in comment moderation. I have things set right now to hold comments that have links (to protect against spam) but had imagined it wouldn’t apply to people who’d already had commented. May have to check out another way of protecting against spam.

    Had read the excellent Salon article and Stan Goff is always, even if indirectly, addressing these issues.

    Wasn’t aware of the Prostitution Research website. Quite some image on the home page.

    Thanks for posting the links. I’ve seen my share of ugly stuff when, years ago, Marty was playing clubs near bases where there was prostitution trade going on. Japan right now is dealing with the publicity to do with women who were sold into the sex trade during WWII. Don’t know if you’ve read Ryu Murakami’s “Almost Transparent Blue” but it’s a pretty intense story (fiction) of prostitution in a Japanese town with an American Air Force base.

    So, Jay, what do you think of legalization of prostitution?

    Reply
  5. Jay Taber Avatar
    Jay Taber

    After reading the articles here http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/c-laws-about-prostitution.html
    I was persuaded to change my mind about legalized prostitution, realizing that it did not remove the industry’s violence against women.

    Reply
  6. Idyllopus Avatar
    Idyllopus

    I’d searched around earlier to see what it had to say there. Have read a lot of other things over the years. My problem is, with the exploitation of workers in other fields and violence perpetrated against them, I have a difficult time separating off the sex industry as absolutely unique and an island unto itself in this regard. Which is one of the things which inclines me to legalization.

    Violence is an inherent part of our society, the way that it functions economically and spiritually. The criminalization of prostitution or its legalization isn’t going to change that. The change must come from elsewhere.

    Reply
  7. Jay Taber Avatar
    Jay Taber

    I think the distinction for prostitution is that legal or not it constitutes in many cases actual not virtual slavery. With the enormous level of trafficking of women and children for this purpose, the brutality is off the charts compared with wage slaves. FYI, Melissa has a book due out this summer that explains this and more based on extensive international research. It should be a real eye-opener.

    Reply
  8. Michael Bains Avatar
    Michael Bains

    I was recruited to the Army back in ’83, and they holed us up in a Holiday Inn, across from Cleveland State U. Not exactly a “slumber party” and, as far as I know, there were no “sleep with me or go away” extortions, but we did get to see some hookers and corner drug dealers whilst walkin’ Prospect Ave after dark.

    The bigger mystery – though it was 1983 – is that there were NO drug testing. Not one of the 3 of us from my HS would’ve made it past that hurdle.

    Reply
  9. Idyllopus Avatar
    Idyllopus

    A world without drug screening. I vaguely remember it.

    The hookers around here come out before dark.

    Reply

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