26-10-2009, 01:59 AM
Keith, from what I understand, rape is indeed about power and control, and not about sex.
Magda, your article about what I gather is a British or Commonwealth perspective and experience mirrors what has been going on in the US as well for sometime, with war games, mall gaming centers (one recently the targets of protests near Philadelphia), and even the militarization of schools through ROTC and Federal initiatives.
The empire needs its cannon fodder (again).
I think the whole induction/indoctrination process is dehumanizing and teaches the inductee not to think, or feel. If is has even a modicum of success, we all have on our hands another sociopath or psychocopath. Rape and torture and death become a continuum, perhaps tantamount to the same thing from both the pereptrators' POV as well as the victims'.
This is a subject that, on one hand, requires a certain amount of professional acumen through which to qualify as an "expert" commentator.
On the other hand, the one I prefer, it requires only that one be a thinking, caring, feeling, compassionate being. One could say "human", but past and current history is proving that humans are quite capable of it if properly 'experienced'/trained, as proven.
My own personal experience, the only thing that matters in terms of how I regard the subjects, has been described in some detail several of the books written by Derrick Jensen through his own personal lens. The article Magda posted spoke of " the job of educators [being] to look after children" and, in my case, one did. In 1966, having been raised in an abusive household by a right-wing conservative absentee father and a harridan of a stepmother, I enrolled in a voluntary collegiate ROTC group called the Bay State Special Forces. We were taught lots of things (...), and I thought I was the cat's meow when I went home to show off my spit-polished paratrooper boots, brass buttons, and black beret to my favorite high school teacher. He had nurtured my writing and had taught me the World War One poetry of English soldiers... "Dulce et Decorum Est" being now superbly memorable, "Naming of Parts" being perhaps appropriate in this thread ... and, when I came waltzing down the hall in uniform, he turned away and shunned me. He literally would not talk to me. That, and being purposefully pitted against my best friend in college during hand-to-hand combat training, and seeing one unit member drop out to enroll in the Marines and then to come home from boot camp and put a bar fight victim into the hospital, and rooming with a conscientious objector during the draft-burning era, woke me up.
I'm sure glad it did.
Magda, your article about what I gather is a British or Commonwealth perspective and experience mirrors what has been going on in the US as well for sometime, with war games, mall gaming centers (one recently the targets of protests near Philadelphia), and even the militarization of schools through ROTC and Federal initiatives.
The empire needs its cannon fodder (again).
I think the whole induction/indoctrination process is dehumanizing and teaches the inductee not to think, or feel. If is has even a modicum of success, we all have on our hands another sociopath or psychocopath. Rape and torture and death become a continuum, perhaps tantamount to the same thing from both the pereptrators' POV as well as the victims'.
This is a subject that, on one hand, requires a certain amount of professional acumen through which to qualify as an "expert" commentator.
On the other hand, the one I prefer, it requires only that one be a thinking, caring, feeling, compassionate being. One could say "human", but past and current history is proving that humans are quite capable of it if properly 'experienced'/trained, as proven.
My own personal experience, the only thing that matters in terms of how I regard the subjects, has been described in some detail several of the books written by Derrick Jensen through his own personal lens. The article Magda posted spoke of " the job of educators [being] to look after children" and, in my case, one did. In 1966, having been raised in an abusive household by a right-wing conservative absentee father and a harridan of a stepmother, I enrolled in a voluntary collegiate ROTC group called the Bay State Special Forces. We were taught lots of things (...), and I thought I was the cat's meow when I went home to show off my spit-polished paratrooper boots, brass buttons, and black beret to my favorite high school teacher. He had nurtured my writing and had taught me the World War One poetry of English soldiers... "Dulce et Decorum Est" being now superbly memorable, "Naming of Parts" being perhaps appropriate in this thread ... and, when I came waltzing down the hall in uniform, he turned away and shunned me. He literally would not talk to me. That, and being purposefully pitted against my best friend in college during hand-to-hand combat training, and seeing one unit member drop out to enroll in the Marines and then to come home from boot camp and put a bar fight victim into the hospital, and rooming with a conscientious objector during the draft-burning era, woke me up.
I'm sure glad it did.
"Where is the intersection between the world's deep hunger and your deep gladness?"