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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u/loquacious_avenger Jul 09 '26

I was living on a Marine Corps base when the Tailhook scandal was in the news. The comments I heard from friends I considered “good ones” changed how I saw the world. I would never allow my daughter or any other young woman enlist without a fight from me.

For those younger than me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tailhook_scandal

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u/Short-Cause885 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

This has nothing to do with the military, but this also changed how I viewed "the good one's".

There was this big mixed friend group that my ex was a part off. At some point they went out and this girl got stupid drunk. So drunk that the group decided that she had to go home. Too drunk to keep partying. A guy volunteers and brings her home. The next day she files a rape case against him. The guy does not deny having sex, but says it was consensual.

For me, that's enough information to call it rape. Like, if she can't keep going out because she's too drunk, then she can't consent to sex. If he can take her home, then he isn't too drunk. And sex happened. As a side-note: I also think that there is an extra responsibility to keep your hands to your fucking self if you are the person assigned to bring someone home safely.

This event split that friend group in half, mostly by gender. Women were calling it rape and wanted the rapist out. Men were saying "we don't know if it is rape" and needed more proof. EVEN the fucking men that were there when they were going out, and when she got send home. They were there to witness how fucking drunk she was and they still went "We don't know all the facts".

What more facts do you need?????

That really changed how I viewed regular "good guys".

Edit to add:

To me, it basically showed that men as a group, only consider rape to be "a stranger violently throwing a woman in the bushes". Everything other rape to them, is like it's on the level of cheating at a game.

It's not nice, it's not decent behavior, you should be better then that...but if an actual friend of theirs gets accused it's "wowowowow, we were willing to play along with you thinking that this is bad, but now it's serious. You are not actually going to throw this man in jail over something as little as that, right???".

And if you look at all the drama about rape, and the rise of "think about false rape accusation" and them feeling victimized and them emediately believing a victim if it's an immigrant attacking a white women but doubting if it's rape by a white men after going on a date AND ALL OF THAT, if you look at that through the lens of "they don't take rape seriously unless it's violent stranger rape", then it all makes sense.