Sexual assaults on submarines

[Springdafs]

I'm listening to the news this morning, reporting on many reports of sexual assaults, by men on women, on submarines. These include 'rape lists ' (the order women will be raped in the event of imminent disaster) and sexual assaults on sleeping women by higher ranked men. The comments given by the official are;
Its difficult as people are living cheek by jowl
We don't have a mature society placing people into submarines
Women should speak up about assaults.

Not ONCE is it suggested that men should just not behave so appallingly. AIBU to think this should be the no 1 comment on this?

I wonder if the RAF is the same, always thought of them as “a cut above” for some reason.

@KimberleyClark the RAF have been mixed sex almost from the beginning, there is a different culture too. The RAF regiment were recently the first front line fighting force to include women too. So I would assume it wasn't as common although there are obviously rapey men in all parts of society the RAF isn't as much of a testosterone fest compared to the other services.

Yes! I put a thread in TV chat channel. It was so disturbing

I’m sure I read that a submariner was jailed recently for 7 years for raping a male colleague. As for the RAF, I think they’re are many less squaddies and seamen equivalents and many more officer equivalents, that balance probably helps too, although there will be plenty of entitled awful types too.

My dad was in the prison service all his years. During one particularly bad riot, there were men running around raping each other.
Disgusting opportunists.

Airmen, and you're not locked-up in a confined space for three months on a huge, windswept airbase. In fact, a weekend is much like any weekend elsewhere. That's not the case on a thermonuclear-armed submarine.

I am not prejudging this, but the mail has an agenda here. I was in the Navy in the 90s and had a friend who was seriously harassed. She was pilloried and ended up on the front page of the Mail.

i wanted to join the navy but the job i wanted to do was only on ships and in 1984 - no women. I went in the army which was relatively fine in my job.

TW for sexual abuse at this bit: But i was at the same base as the one who was gang raped, at times with a squash racket handle. It was all over the papers and she was absolutely pilloried and villified. There was a lot of coercive sex going on. It has never ever been taken seriously enough in wider society, and certainly not in the forces.

Male on male sexual violence was well known in the navy when i was in the army, but also other services but maybe less of it? I don't trust them to take it seriously now, but they may handle it better than back in the 80s.

I’m more baffled of the fact how obsessed women still are about men.

Seriously, when will women finally wake up and see that this is what men are and finally start to de-center men from their lives.

what does that even mean? nobody is baffled. nobody is even surprised.
How can you decenter men when they are in charge of everythng?

be sensible

Fellow Redhanded listener here! One of the many things that horrified me about that episode was the way the reporting systems work, so that often the person who has been raped / sexually assaulted has to report to their boss (sorry I'm not sure of the correct terminology for ranks etc) in the first instance. So if it was their boss who attacked them, they're absolutely fucked.

Absolutely! Yes I thought the same - there is no "objective" (I mean hardly likely to really be objective but supposedly so) reporting channel outside your line of command - who very likely was your rapist/knows full well what's going on and already chooses to ignore.

And the brazen absence of any real investigation or attempts to hold those involved to account - not even pretending to give a shit aboutnit basically.

not sure how it is elsewhere, but at the first unit i went to we were the first cohort of women (about 12 of us) and they thought about this kind of thing before we arrived (the men, the WRAC wouldn't address this at the time because they thought the male regiments would just say "nah, too dangerous, they're not coming" while the WRAC was trying to push a narrative of us being every bit as capable as the men. Complicated times)

Anyway. They came up with the idea of a sort of pastoral care thing. So we had a padre and a chaplain to whom we could talk about anything anyway (both men). And then we had the senior woman (a sergeant) who would be kind of in charge of "women's issues". And she was great, not afraid to speak truth to power, and she was long in the tooth, very good at her job, had been around a while and was brutally honest. It worked very well.

But other places i was based - not so much.

Sexual abuse of women and children by men is endemic period.

And seems like it won’t ever end.
Men have no intentions to stop.
And they seem to just get worse with their hate towards women and girls.

I just cannot understand why anyone is surprised that when you put men and women together in a confined space for lengthy periods this sort of thing happens. Of course it does not make it right at all but it is entirely in keeping with what we know of human nature.

Of course they were

it was sadly very common among new recruits to be sexually assaulted, was pitched as a form of hazing

Another post from you that gives insight into how much you need some form of therapy.

you’re one of the most bitter people on here most of the time

Jesus millsbills, have I upset you?
I don’t know what you’re on about, but if that post really made you think I’m bitter or something…. I’m guessing it’s you with the issues.
Take care, ta!

These include 'rape lists ' (the order women will be raped in the event of imminent disaster)

Sorry, I don't get this. Is this supposed to be a jokey thing, like 'Hugh from marketing is going on my hit list' or it's a real list on the notice board thing?

Appalling.

But the one good thing is that since the Me Too movement more and more people are speaking out about sexual assault.

Hollywood, television, the army, the police, the fashion industry, the church...more and more people are coming out to talk about abuse of powers that routinely take place in these environments.

Before people were too scared to speak and worried they would not be taken seriously.

Are they taken seriously though? How many rapists get convicted? Tiny percentage