GEND 356: Marshall's "Serving in Combat Does not Serve Women Well"

“[Women] are pushed into military duty due to poverty and lack of other options”

“Some 42% of female veterans say they joined the military because jobs were hard to find, compared with one-quarter of men”

“31% military women are black […] this is almost twice the share of active-duty men who are black (16%)”

When I was in high school I remember the National Guard recruiters would always set up post right at the entrance to the cafeteria every day to entice graduating Seniors to sign up.  Seniors who were anticipating a massive student loan debt and a discouraging job market.  When I was a Senior myself, I remember joking with my friends at the time that I should just join the army because there was no way in hell that I would be able to afford college or get any kind of job after graduating.  I went to high school in Coventry, which (at a glance) consists mainly of upper-middle class White folks.  So it was extremely easy to remember the three People of Color in the entire high school.  That being said, I wonder how many of them seriously considered this option.  Based on the statistics provided by Lucinda Marshall in "Why Serving In Combat Does Not Serve Women (Or Anyone Else) Well" it wouldn't surprise me if they all did.  

“Sexual assault in the military is not a woman’s issue.  It is an epidemic and a national disgrace that is a direct result of the misguided notion of militarism that posits that strength comes from asserting power over others”
I underlined and highlighted this quote in my print-out of the article.  The Institution of the United States Military, in our history of colonization, stands more for an exertion of force over a vulnerable group of peoples in order to extract some kind of resource or to establish some kind of fucked up global dominance.  If this idea of forced domination is part of the ideology of the Military is then combined with the ideology  that disenfranchises women (that we have been indoctrinated in this Western Society), it comes as little surprise to me that this would result in a systematic rape of women in the military by those in the military.  This is continually ignored while lawmakers seem to say "stop complaining because now you can fight on the front lines "equally" with men."  This kind of false equality does not serve women.   

“Here at home more money is poured into the military while social services, education and health care are desperately underfunded and for poor women and women of color we perpetuate the cycle that propels them to join the military for reasons such as getting an education and job training”
This quote inspired some digging for visuals because I find numbers themselves to be a bit overwhelming.  I love graphs and charts, and I find these particularly unsettling.
http://pgpf.org/Chart-Archive/0053_defense-comparison
 How can other countries even compete with this kind of spending?  How are we even still feeling threatened at this point?  Clearly this is less about our "defense" and more about our conquest.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258
The government budgets a mere 2% for education, but almost 20% for military?  This is such a clear illustration of the priorities of the US government.  It isn't a wonder why those who cannot afford an education to chase after the already thinning job market resort to joining the military.  Overall, I am not surprised with the revelations of this article, though I am frustrated by it.

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