Femminista

Did you know… that Hillary Clinton once tried to join the Marines?

From the NYT, 1994

Speaking at a lunch on Capitol Hill honoring military women, Hillary Rodham Clinton said that she once visited a recruiting office in Arkansas to inquire about joining the Marines.

…

She was 27 then, she said, and the Marine recruiter was about 21. She was interested in joining either the active forces or the reserves, she recalled, but was swiftly rebuffed by the recruiter, who took a dim view of her age and her thick glasses. ‘Not Very Encouraging’

“You’re too old, you can’t see and you’re a woman,” Mrs. Clinton said she was told, adding that the recruiter dismissed her by suggesting she try the Army. “Maybe the dogs would take you,” she recalled the recruiter saying.

“It was not a very encouraging conversation,” she said. “I decided maybe I’ll look for another way to serve my country.”

Ruth Moore Act takes on VA’s treatment of sexual assault survivors

From the Guardian:

Ruth Moore, a US navy veteran from Milbridge, Maine, was 18 and eager to serve her country on her first oversees assignment when she was raped by her supervisor, twice. Her ordeal, and the military’s refusal to address it, left her so traumatised she attempted suicide, after which she was discharged, diagnosed with a personality disorder she says she did not have.

Moore, now 44, has since spent a quarter of a century fighting for compensation from the Veterans Administration before finally being diagnosed with PTSD related to the attacks. She is far from alone, according to two lawmakers who, on Wednesday, introduced a bill named after her that requires the VA to fix its “unfair and broken” disability claim system for victims of sexual military assault.

Under current regulations, veterans like Moore whose mental health issues are connected to sexual violence face a far greater burden of proof than other claimants suffering from the same illnesses. Yet, according to the Service Woman’s Action Network (Swan), military sexual trauma is the leading cause of PTSD among female veterans.

Why is sexual trauma the leading cause of PTSD among female veterans? Well…according to the DOD one in three service women report having been sexually assaulted. The Pentagon estimates that roughly 19,000 sexual assaults occurred in the military in 2010, and those numbers are even higher for women who have been in active combat (about one half report experiencing sexual assault). That means that we will likely see an increase in the number of sexual assaults now that the combat ban has been lifted. So we definitely need the VA to recognize and provide services for survivors of sexual assault. We also need them to do some serious reflection and fix whatever is going on in their culture/structure/policies that’s leading to these staggering rates of sexual violence.

Sign Ruthe Moore’s Change.org petition here!

Find the rest of the article at the link

Pentagon Lifting Ban on Women in Combat

via NYT

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the military’s ban on women in combat, which will open up hundreds of thousands of additional front-line jobs to them, senior defense officials said on Wednesday.

The groundbreaking decision overturns a 1994 Pentagon rule that restricts women from artillery, armor, infantry and other such combat roles, even though in reality women have found themselves in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than 20,000 have served. As of last year, more than 800 women had been wounded in the two wars and more than 130 had died.

…

Serving in combat positions like the infantry remains crucial to career advancement in the military, and women have long said that by not recognizing their real service the military has unfairly held them back.

4 Measures in the Defense Authorization Bill That Are Good for Women

From MOJO:

The Senate unanimously passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2013 on Tuesday. The giant bill includes four provisions that, if included in the final version of the law, could help women in the military. It’s not clear whether the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will approve any of these measures, but here they are: 

1. Military women who are raped would be able to use their government health benefits to get an abortion. The Hyde Amendment blocks the use of government funds—including government-funded healthcare—for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or when the health of the mother is at risk. But under the more strict Pentagon policy, women in the military are blocked from using their health benefits to pay for abortion even if they become pregnant from rape. To correct this disparity, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H) authored a measure in the NDAA that would increase access to abortion care for military women.
2. The military would be forced to improve how it handles reports of sexual assaults. This provision, from Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), requires the military to keep restricted reports of sexual assaults on file for 50 years, so that veterans can access forensic examination records in order to file disability claims and criminal charges against their rapist (if the statute of limitations has not run out). It also requires the Department of Defense to expand its annual report on rape in the military and to set new policies on how to prevent and respond to sexual harassment cases.
3. Convicted sex offenders would be discharged. According to the DOD’s own statistics, 36 percent of convicted sex offenders have been allowed to remain in the military. Right now, only the Navy requires convicted sex offenders to go through the discharge process. This measure, from New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, would expand the Navy’s policy to all branches of the armed forces.
4. It would force the DOD to review its policy of excluding women from combat roles. This measure, also from Gillibrand, requires the Pentagon to come up with a plan for lifting its current policy blocking women from serving in combat roles, a policy that is also the subject of a recent lawsuit. The measure doesn’t set a hard deadline for changing the rules, but does require the agency to issue a report on the matter within a year.

Grueling Marine Corps training course to go co-ed

According to the NYT, the Marine Corps is opening its Combat Endurance Test - one of the most formidable male-only domains in the American military - to female Marines.

Beginning in September, the corps says, female officer volunteers will participate here, part of a study to gauge the feasibility of allowing female Marines to serve in more extensive combat roles.

Col. Todd S. Desgrosseilliers, the commander of the Basic School, which oversees the course, said he had no special concerns as the course prepares to accept women. “Nothing more so with women than with men,” he said.

“We expect them to be fit enough to go through the course when they get here, just like the men are.”