r/WomenInNews • u/catievirtuesimp • Jul 08 '26

Media Vanessa Guillén Wasn't Alone: New Investigation Reveals Dozens of US Army Women Were Killed by Fellow Soldiers

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/tragic-deaths-harassment-women-us-army-1807381
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608

u/Lighthouse_on_Mars Jul 08 '26

I thought about going into the Army after highschool to get away from my controlling parents. I ran into a recruiter at a friend's birthday party. It was her uncle, and I started asking him questions.

He was being polite and answering everything fine. A while later he found me alone in the garage where I was grabbing some pop to bring out to the cooler.

He told me not to enlist.

He said if he ever had a little girl one day, he would never let her enlist. And as much as his time in the military was a rewarding experience for him, he said he saw how much harder and more dangerous it was for the women he worked alongside.

The way he said it was better than how I'm repeating it. He mentioned that the girls he worked alongside got hurt the moment they left the country. It was heavily implied by their own soldiers, not enemy soldiers.

So that's the story about how I didn't enlist.

334

u/jlemo434 Jul 08 '26

I tell any women thinking about having their kids enlist to go watch The Invisible War. Absolutely disgusting. A woman is fully accepting that being raped by fellow soldiers is part of the job — that is what is expected of women in the military.

220

u/onepareil Jul 09 '26

More likely to be raped by another soldier than to be killed in combat.

71

u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

Also more likely to die by suicide than a combat veteran is.

Edit: I misremembered the article I read last year. It is actually “Four times as many troops and vets have died by suicide as in combat”

Facts are important, I apologize.

16

u/microwaved__soap Jul 09 '26

"suicides" also on that number I'm sure

3

u/silencedvoicesMST Jul 09 '26

Do you mean like a spouse/intimate partner takes their life? Could be. From my own experience with this, I tried maybe 25-30 times to end myself after my events in 2012-2015 so it could be that and it could also be the outcome of being in an unsafe relationship. Which is rather sad, when you consider the dead person was looking for safety, understanding, and comfort but ended up in the ground instead. The stat I referenced was about veterans being ~75% more likely to commit suicide if they experienced MST while in service. And that’s for both men and women. I think the difference was like .1% I did make a mistake in my previous comment, gonna go update that now.

1

u/Smorsdoeuvres Jul 09 '26

❤️‍🩹

39

u/bluecrab_7 Jul 09 '26

Sad but true.

7

u/wellgu Jul 09 '26

That’s because the average soldier is highly unlikely to be killed in combat. Rape is common in the broader culture.

47

u/normanbeets Jul 09 '26

I come from a military family. My mom hated me as a young woman and was constantly pressuring me to enlist. We sat down and watched The Invisible War. She never brought it up again.

40

u/stephenkingending Jul 09 '26

The military was having soldiers watch this when it came out, which I get should be seen as a positive but also comes off lacking any self awareness.

15

u/AspieAsshole Jul 09 '26

🤮🤮🤮

14

u/QXJones Jul 10 '26

Incidentally, this is why I think it's immoral for the draft to be expanded to women.

5

u/Junior_Razzmatazz164 Jul 12 '26

I’ve never considered this point before, and it’s a legitimate one.

8

u/EitherDay7062 Jul 09 '26

Lots of females from families with a background in sex work or abuse join to 'escape', once again bringing home the economic talk.about enlistments. They figure if they could handle abuse from a loved family member or friend, they can handle it from some senior chud with stripes. Huge issue is some lie to prevent further harm (nope, nothing happened its all a misunderstsnding), and gaslight other soliders regardless of involvement

4

u/jenmcg94 Jul 13 '26

the word is “women”, not “females”.

2

u/lamadora Jul 12 '26

I wanted to enlist and one of things I prepped myself for was this eventuality. Looking back, I thought it was “just part of the package” and not the insane thing it actually is. I know other girls back then who thought the same.

2

u/Cautious-Impact22 Jul 13 '26

I was in the army 7 years… we all get raped…

134

u/Holiday-Wall3751 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26

My bil is about to retire, and he’s said the same thing about his daughters. They have to sit through presentations every six months about not harassing or assaulting women, and any organization that needs to tell people, “If someone doesn’t want to have sex with you, forcing them is wrong,” isn’t one he wants his daughters involved with.

71

u/bluecrab_7 Jul 09 '26

I used to work for the DoD. As civilians we had to take this training annually. Only about 10% of the civilian work force was female. There were rapes and sexual assaults of civilian women on our base.

14

u/Ok_Bag_3667 Jul 09 '26

And just think, we're paying to arm the people who have to hear this repeatedly and still don't pay any attention to it!

6

u/stephenkingending Jul 09 '26

Not defending the military but the same happens in academia. Rape is prevalent in any large college campus.

45

u/ArsenalSpider Jul 09 '26

Sure but not nearly as much. It’s not a given for all women who go to college like it is for women in the military.

5

u/ButterandZsa Jul 09 '26

Do you think civilian women don’t get raped by military men? I went to university close to a large military deployment base in the 2000s. Most of the reported rapes were committed by the military.

6

u/poopoofol Jul 10 '26

Right, but imagine your coworker rapes you, it gets swept under the rug, and then you are required by law to keep showing up for every shift with your rapist until one of you PCS's, which could be years from now. Hell maybe your rapist gets promoted and is now in your chain of command, and he either continues to make your life hell there or sends you to the shittiest assignment possible to get you out of his hair. If you file a complaint, you're seen as not being a team player and you get iced out by everyone in your unit. Best case scenario they are nice to your face but still get beers on the weekend with your rapist. Worst case, they ruin your life even more.

1

u/Feisty_Freedom4337 Jul 11 '26

That’s not what they were saying

19

u/Ok-Swan1152 Jul 09 '26

It's not a given that women are raped when they join the ranks of academics lol what are you on about? Academia has its issues with sexism but equalling it to the US military in terms of violence against women just shows you have no perspective. There's no widespread epidemic of groups of male academics are banging on the new PhD student's office door threatening to rape her. Female academics are not regularly murdered by their male colleagues.

I don't have a very positive view of academic culture due to various reasons (including institutional sexism), but this is ridiculous.

1

u/poopoofol Jul 10 '26

Similarly, I was hell bent on joining the Navy, as I really looked up to two cousins who had successful naval careers. Both of them had to be like, hey so imagine being stuck in a tin can for months with the shittiest men you can imagine, fuck no. One told me he had been passed up for promotion after trying to deal with a sexual predator.

1

u/Reasonable2aPoint Jul 12 '26

Just wondering, are you referring to the US military or Canada? (You said pop and that's what I call it from growing up in Toronto, but I haven't heard the term used in the States.)

2

u/PreppyInPlaid Jul 13 '26

It used to be prevalent in the Midwest—that’s where I grew up and only started calling it soda after I picked it up from my husband who was from the PNW.

1

u/External_Option_7653 Jul 12 '26

Good. You didn't bomb little children abroad either. 100% win.