More on rape as a weapon of war
UPDATE: I've been alerted that this piece originally came from the Women's Media Center, which incidentally, is an amazing site/resource.
Robin Morgan has an interesting piece in The Guardian, Their Bodies as Weapons. Morgan uses the recent rape and murder of a 14 year-old Iraqi girl as the jumping off point for a larger analysis of militarization and masculinity.
One training song (with lewd gestures) goes: "This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun." The US air force admits showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids. Feminist scholars have been exposing these phallocentric military connections for decades. When I wrote The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism, I presented evidence on how the terrorist mystique and the hero legend have the same root: the patriarchal pursuit of manhood.
Make sure to read the whole thing...thank goodness someone is making the bigger connections.
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It's a very interesting article, but isn't "This is my rifle, this is my gun" from the movie Full Metal Jacket?
Doulababe:
Life imitates art imitating life? FMJ may have used it, but I've been told by people who've been there that it really is used in boot camps. I'm not sure which one came first, though.
It was used in the RAF air training corps (air cadets) when I was there.....
No, FMJ doesn't use it. It uses "This is my rifle; there are many like it, but this one is mine."
Unfortunately the cadence including “this is my rifle….� is just one of many violent, sexist, ugly songs that soldiers are required to sing. How else are they supposed to brain wash you???? I spent my first few years after high school in the Army and I was yelled at quite often for refusing to sing cadence lyrics such as “I went to the playground, where all the children play, took out my bazooka, and I began to spray!� No Joke.
That was pure insubordination, WC Goddess. Let me guess: you military-hating traitor wouldn't execute a 5-year-old child if so commanded by your superiors, too?
chem_fem, I have to ask: what on earth was your "gun" supposed to be?
Networking capacity occurs at various levels: between individuals or organizations, city-wide and between cities. The challenge is to translate the known, even clichéd, generic skills of personal networking to the city level. These qualities range from the qualities associated with creativity, such as curiosity, to others like ‘gift of the ‘gab’, energy, listening capacity, understanding others’ viewpoints, relationship skills, interest in others, and the ability to inspire or empathize. The networking capacity of the organizations of a creative milieu is more than the urban equivalent of an ‘elevator speech’.
Typically these summarize what you do in 30 seconds or hook your listener to being interested in you, because you ask good questions and are interested in them. For organizations, the networking type and attributes depend on purpose – this determines its form, which ranges from the open to the closed. For instance, an open network might simply disseminate information. An example here would be the Active Living Network, which requires little if anything from recipients and where connections between the parts are minimal.
By contrast, the London Voluntary Service Council or an inter-city EU network on best practice in public–private partnership would be more closed and should involve real engagement of participants, mutual site visits and the writing up of projects. When such networks are well run, those involved might become friends and unpredictable, often positive, spin-offs occur.