For those of you outside the US Army "SHARP" is the acronym for Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention. As many of you all probably are aware, there seems to be a problem within our military of sexual assault and harassment and the leadership within the US military has made this problem one of their top three problems to remedy within the services in near term.
Now, I've had to sit through 3 "safety stand downs" where the whole post shuts down and conducts training on the "do and don't" of SHARP. Out of these 3 safety stand downs at two different locations the narrative that is being passed is becoming more and more concerning for me to swallow.
Essentially, what I'm taking from it is this: The woman is always right, the man is always wrong. The woman is always the innocent victim, the man is always the predator. The woman has agency all the way up to the point where some type of responsibility may be involved and then she doesn't have it and is just an object being acted upon while the man has agency all the time and is expected to use their agency to keep other men from forcing their agency on a woman that is being acted on(i.e. drinking at a bar, or party, or dancing, or whatever) I've seen all kinds of people put in front of the soldiers to speak and all of them almost to the person talk to the male soldiers in an accusatory way about how they are feared.
I was even told by the speaker yesterday that anyone who was critical of Miley Cyrus' performance at the VMA's was being sexist. And the true culprit was the man who made the song that she chose to dance to...That she was being sexually empowered and assertive and if we judged her we were being disrespectful. Basically we were told to never comment anything but good to a woman PERIOD...
This has me greatly worried and I am seriously getting tired of the narrative that I have to feel bad about myself simply because I'm a man and can't help myself unless I swallow this gender studies 101 bullshit. There's never going to be a realistic solution to this problem unless we start having realistic conversations about it. It's never going to work as long as one side gets the choices of an adult but the responsibility of a child while the other side gets treated as a child but given the responsibility of an adult. We like to say and think we play by "grown up" rules...I wish we really did...
Now, I've had to sit through 3 "safety stand downs" where the whole post shuts down and conducts training on the "do and don't" of SHARP. Out of these 3 safety stand downs at two different locations the narrative that is being passed is becoming more and more concerning for me to swallow.
Essentially, what I'm taking from it is this: The woman is always right, the man is always wrong. The woman is always the innocent victim, the man is always the predator. The woman has agency all the way up to the point where some type of responsibility may be involved and then she doesn't have it and is just an object being acted upon while the man has agency all the time and is expected to use their agency to keep other men from forcing their agency on a woman that is being acted on(i.e. drinking at a bar, or party, or dancing, or whatever) I've seen all kinds of people put in front of the soldiers to speak and all of them almost to the person talk to the male soldiers in an accusatory way about how they are feared.
I was even told by the speaker yesterday that anyone who was critical of Miley Cyrus' performance at the VMA's was being sexist. And the true culprit was the man who made the song that she chose to dance to...That she was being sexually empowered and assertive and if we judged her we were being disrespectful. Basically we were told to never comment anything but good to a woman PERIOD...
This has me greatly worried and I am seriously getting tired of the narrative that I have to feel bad about myself simply because I'm a man and can't help myself unless I swallow this gender studies 101 bullshit. There's never going to be a realistic solution to this problem unless we start having realistic conversations about it. It's never going to work as long as one side gets the choices of an adult but the responsibility of a child while the other side gets treated as a child but given the responsibility of an adult. We like to say and think we play by "grown up" rules...I wish we really did...
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