From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Military Quote
Date: 5 Oct 1992 05:17:06 GMT
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu
Originator: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu

In article <1an2d0INNdlk@agate.berkeley.edu> walker-john@yale.edu (John Walker) writes:
>
>From the standpoint of the military, excluding women in any way from
>serving is not a good idea.  It reduces the available talent pool, and
>makes recruitment more difficult.  But in many ways the military (and
>government in general) simply follows society.  Is our society ready for
>women to serve in the military?  Is our society to see female soldiers (or
>sailors, or pilots) on propaganda videotapes, being shot, raped, or
>tortured?  Are we ready to see dead women on the cover of the New York
>Times?  Evidently not.

While I agree with your general comment about the public being ready for
this (or not ready), I feel compelled to bring up how the public is
evidently fully capable of seeing women harassed and tortured on a daily
basis in the movies, TV and popular music.  We hear about women getting
raped and killed in evey major city in the US without batting an
eyelash.  We see women in chains and getting beaten in music videos by
the hundreds, literally.  Movies will sometimes stick in gratuitous
rape scenes for the BOX OFFICE VALUE (again, check out Naomi Wolf and
Andrea Dworkin, no matter what you think of her.  She researches some
very unpleasant things, and I'd be just as angry if I were her).  Women
are routinely forcibly unclothed in movies and on TV.  Remember when
that woman up north was raped in a barroom on top of a pool table?  The
onlookers failed to call the cops; they were too busy SHOUTING
ENCOURAGEMENTS TO THE RAPISTS.  Heavy metal groups will sing "I used to
love her, but I had to kill her."  They will have record jackets showing
a woman's lower body with the legs slightly spread, and titles like
"Plug Me To Death."  Other groups sing, "I'll stick my knife right down
your throat."  Motley Crue videos keep women in cages.  Duran Duran puts
women in chains.  Alice Cooper usewd to have a blowup woman doll on the
stage in front of him with ripped-up clothes and a plastic hose around
its throat.  

We see dead women, stabbed, raped, shot, whatever, on the covers of many
more magazines and newspapers than the New York Times.  Go to your
neighborhood video store and check out the horror section; see how many
tape boxes have pictures of half-naked women being menaced by hatchet-
wielders and stuff like that, with marvelously erotic expressions of
bald fear on their faces.  Look at movie posters and TV promos.  Take
notes on how many of them have a scared woman clutching a bedsheet to a
naked chest while a man looks on -- there are many variations of this.
Listen to your TV next time a promo comes up; take notes on how many
times a woman saying, "No!  Don't!  Stop!" is used as an exciting teaser
to make the show sound more sexy.

I appreciate your sentiment, and think that your opinion about seeing
this and how it will impact the public has merit.  But, we're seeing it
happen to our daughters, sisters, mothers, and wives RIGHT NOW and doing
nothing about it.  It's all over.  And there has been NO public outcry.
I have to wonder why.

Regards,
Janis C.
 




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