Tag: rape

Clever devils: getting good people to act bad

Posted on by kathiemm
“In Self-Defense”. 1876 editorial cartoon by A. B. Frost. Depicts a caricatured former Confederates in the U.S. South with a knife and smoking gun in his hands standing over the corpse of an African-American toddler.
Image is in the public domain.

 

Moral disengagement involves a set of unconscious psychological processes allowing individuals to engage in or support or tolerate inhumane treatment of others while still thinking of themselves as good people.  Common examples include using euphemistic language to make bad things sound less bad (“collateral damage”), pseudo-moral justifications (“the war to end all wars”), displacement or diffusion of responsibility (“I was just following orders”), advantageous comparison (“killing a couple of terrorists is a lot better than letting them kill thousands”), and attribution of blame/dehumanization (“axis of evil threatening the peace of the world”).

Unscrupulous power-hungry political leaders throughout history have often  successfully promoted moral disengagement in those whom they want to dominate for their own purposes.  Unfortunately, in regard to the burgeoning global refugee crisis, expressions of moral disengagement in the home of the “tired and the poor” are rife.

Consider the following comments. What forms of moral disengagement, as listed above, do you see?

  • “When the Syrian refugees are going to start pouring into this country, we don’t know if they’re ISIS, we don’t know if it’s a Trojan horse….it could be the great Trojan horse of all time…”
  • “some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule. And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy….things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”
  • “One of the problems that we have and one of the reasons we’re so ineffective is they [terrorists] are using them (civilians, family members) as shields….It’s a horrible thing, but we’re fighting a very politically correct war.”
  •  “I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they do to us….They don’t use waterboarding over there….They use chopping off people’s heads.”
  • “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems… they’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Warning: this disease is contagious, deadly, and right in your own backyard

Posted on by kathiemm
No racism.
Image by Martynas Barzda and is in the public domain.

Racism is as deadly as AIDS, as contagious as influenza, and as contemptible as human sacrifice—which indeed is what it is.

It has reached epidemic proportions in the US, and not for the first time.

As with most diseases, some groups appear to be particularly vulnerable both to becoming infected and to spreading their infections to  others;  these groups include, in frightening proportions, people responsible for the public welfare such as the police.

Even in the corporate media, and especially in the alternative media, evidence of brutal police harassment of people of color seems nearly ubitquitous:

Episcopal priest on road trip with interracial family shares harrowing story of police harassment

Police Harassment and Violence Against the Transgender Community

Undoubtedly, you are already  aware of the rash of recent incidents wherein police attacked unarmed people of color and beat and/or murdered them by one means or another—in public places or paddy wagons or jail cells.

Here are a few  recent cases you may have missed:

Walter Scott

Andres Green (15-years-old)

And here is a broad sampling of people of color killed in police custody between 2005 and 2014.

Virulent diseases can evolve into a number of different forms, and in the case of racism, forcible invasions of the vaginas of women of color are among the loathsome  manifestations of the disease.

Imagine such things happening to you or someone you love.

But also recognize that while pernicious, the disease is not irradicable.

Sometimes a single person speaking out against injustice can make a difference:

A White Woman Confronts Police Harassing a Black Man, and the Result Is Stunning

And it took just one person to start a petition that gained thousands of signatures asking  the United States Department of Justice  to take over the investigation of the death in police custody of Sandra Bland :

Take Over The Investigation Into The Death of Sandra Bland From The Waller County, Texas Police Department.

Moreover, in the wake of the long overdue and desperately needed media attention to police lethality, major group initiatives have emerged, such as Black Lives Matter. Read this article about the significance of this movement

Black Lives Matter joins a long line of protest movements that have shifted public opinion — most recently, Occupy Wall Street

Climb aboard and be part of the solution.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Military Sexual Assault: Toxic Masculinity Gone Viral?

Posted on by kathiemm

Men who perpetrate military sexual assaults tend to be indiscriminate;—they will destroy the lives of men as easily as women.

Indeed, because men enter the military in much higher numbers than women, the majority of military sexual assault victims are men.  In a 2013 report on sexual assault, the Pentagon estimated that 26,000 service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2012; 53% of those attacks were directed at men, mostly by other men.

It has been estimated that 38 military men are sexually assaulted every day; “The culprits almost always go free, the survivors rarely speak, and no one in the military or Congress has done enough to stop it.”  A few survivors did talk to GQ Magazine; you can read their stories here.

In order to explain sexual assaults, one factor that clinicians and social scientists have advanced is “toxic masculinity,” which may be exacerbated by toxic environments.  Toxic is defined as “the constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence.”

Such traits appear to flourish in certain toxic environments more than in others.  Prisons comprise a toxic environment, and the military is another.

Do the ideas of toxic masculinity and toxic environments sound valid to you?

Whatever your views on the extent to which traits and environments become toxic, I hope you will steer children away from bullying and recognize that neither military service members nor imprisoned men and women deserve to be sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, or otherwise abused—in violation of international law.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Sexual Trafficking in the United States

Posted on by kathiemm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtIdtXZ6Ks8

Invasions can be carried out by many noxious forces: bombs, soldiers with weapons, armed police, poisonous smog, polluted waters, bacteria, viruses, etc. We know these things.

But how about sexual traffickers and their customers?  Men (almost exclusively) for whom trafficked girls and boys may be little more than dehumanized receptacles for their sexual satisfaction—are they not invaders too?

Human trafficking victims, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services,  “often come from countries or communities with high rates of crime, poverty, and corruption; lack opportunities for education; lack family support (e.g., orphaned, runaway/thrown-away, homeless, family members collaborating with traffickers); and/or have a history of physical and/or sexual abuse.” In other words, some of the most vulnerable people in this country and elsewhere, instead of receiving services, are forced into sexual slavery.

Human trafficking, particularly sexual trafficking, began receiving increased media attention following World War II, when Japan’s forcing women and girls  to become “Comfort Women”—a practice that has been labeled a war crime—became known.  On July 30, 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for Japan to “acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility…for its military’s coercion of women into sexual slavery during the war.”

In the United States today, sexual trafficking flourishes—including in our nation’s capital. Thousands of girls, boys,  and women—at least as many as the women forced into sexual slavery in Japan—are raped daily.Do we see a little hypocrisy here?

Billions of our tax dollars are spent on the invasion of other countries in order to benefit the military—industrial complex,  but programs and agencies committed to reducing sexual slavery and its aftereffects are woefully underfunded. Are priorities a bit skewed?

Sexual trafficking in the United States is not state-sponsored as it was in Japan, but it is largely tolerated. The powers-that-be seem unable to find ways to make a profit from ending trafficking and are unable to find other reasons to do so.  Time to speak up?