This bit of horror arrives courtesy of Wired.com:

An Air Force brochure on sexual assault advises potential victims not to fight off their attackers.
“It may be advisable to submit [rather] than resist,” reads the brochure (.pdf), issued to airmen at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, where nearly 10,000 military and civilian personnel are assigned. “You have to make this decision based on circumstances. Be especially careful if the attacker has a weapon.”

The brochure, acquired by Danger Room, issues a series of guidances on “risk reduction” for sexual assault. Among others, it advises people under sexual attack in parking lots to “consider rolling underneath a nearby auto and scream loud. It is difficult to force anyone out from under a car.” A public affairs officer at Shaw, Sgt. Alexandria Mosness, says she believes the brochure is current.

While the brochure also explains that sexual assault is not always committed by people who “don’t look like a rapist”—attackers “tend to have hyper-masculine attitudes,” it advises—it does not offer instruction to servicemembers on not committing sexual assault. Prevention is treated as the responsibility of potential victims.

“Rapists look for vulnerability and then exploit it in those who: are young (naive); are new to the base, deployment, area, etc.; are emotionally unstable,” the brochure (.pdf) continues.

The quoted brochure is from SC’s Shaw Air Force Base, one of the largest Air Force bases in the US, a base that includes its own self-contained town supporting around 16,500 military personnel and their families. (By contrast, the closest town, Sumter, has a population of roughly 40,500.)

So it’s important to remember that in the scenarios outlined in this rape-prevention brochure, the rapists that are attacking servicewomen are likely servicemen. Yet these servicemen aren’t given helpful tips or training on how to avoid physically and sexually assaulting their peers.

This brochure suggests that the Air Force—these servicewomen’s bosses—still don’t see rape as a man’s issue. It’s a woman’s issue, one as natural and inevitable as your monthly menses, one women should just accept unless they’re dykes or drama queens or some other troublesome kind of women who rolls under cars to avoid being raped by their peers.

8 replies on “Air Force Advises Female Recruits to “Submit” to Being Raped”

  3. “…these servicemen aren’t given helpful tips or training on how to avoid physically and sexually assaulting their peers.”

    Tips on not being a complete asshole? Tips on how to not force yourself upon someone who’s crying and begging you to stop? Yeah, that was ma and pa’s job. And society’s. And we’ve all (miserably) failed.

    Rape/sexual assault should be punishable by the most draconian measures imaginable, and it’s absolutely shameful that we go so easy on these despicable people. Enough wrist-slapping already. These guys need to be made to SUFFER — suffer to such an extent that all of their rapist buddies will take notice and become instilled with a genuine fear of reprisal commensurate with the brutality of their crime.

    Of course we will never be able prevent every instance of rape from occurring simply by passing more laws or implementing harsher penalties, but, believe me, plenty of these fucks would think twice if they knew that they’d *automatically* — no plea bargains, no probation, no parole — be spending the rest of their life in prison and/or that their dick would literally be cut off if they got caught.

  4. HIT- Another problem is that in the military you have to pretty much get caught in the act to get in trouble for anything.

  5. @ ill:

    Yeah, well that sounds just about stupid enough to be true.

    Anyway, i was talking about ALL rapists, not just those in uniform.

  6. I think we can all agree that this is a serious issue and steps need to be taken, culpability is a start as HIT suggests

  7. “Yet these servicemen aren’t given helpful tips or training on how to avoid physically and sexually assaulting their peers.”
    Are you sure about that?
    While rape is appalling on any level, your interpretation of this strikes me as wrong.

  8. Yeah, I just read the whole pamphlet (finally) and at the very least your headline is mis-leading.
    “Air Force Advises Female Recruits to “Submit” to Being Raped”
    That was bullshit Cienna.
    It seems to me they are saying if you are in that horrible situation that you have to weigh whether or not the attacker, whom will usually be bigger and stronger, will beat the shit out of you in addition to getting raped.
    It seems like sensible advice to me.
    I managed to go through 8 years in the AF without raping anyone, as does the vast majority of our servicemen.

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