I was surprised to see a double-page British Army recruitment advertorial in Closer magazine, chirping: “If you want an interesting and diverse job, plus the chance to travel and get physically fit, visit our [website]“. Aimed at men this would be disingenuous, but mostly harmless, nonsense (the Army exists to fight wars, it isn’t the Cub Scouts). Aimed at women it is downright irresponsible.
The armed forces are breeding grounds for sexual violence. Just last month the BBC reported on The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, by Helen Benedict, which recounts the constant threat of rape and abuse women face from their fellow soldiers. I don’t know if violence is as endemic, or as widely reported, in the UK armed forces, but common sense suggests that since all armies are based on hierarchies of brute force women are always going to be the at-risk bottom of the pecking order.
The Army, of course, is merely interested in filling its ranks. It won’t tell the truth about the risks women face. Magazines like Closer, though, are ostensibly by and for women. Don’t they have a responsibility to consider whether their editorial content is endorsing something that is dangerous to women?
February 17th, 2010
3 Comments at "Women’s Magazines—Recruiting Wrongly?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/may/26/gender.military
Well, according to this article ‘ Sexual harassment is rife in the armed forces, with 99% of servicewomen reporting they had been subjected to some form of sexual remark or material by male colleagues in the past year. One in seven - 15% - say they have had a “particularly upsetting” experience over the same period, ranging from sexually explicit comments through to sexual assault.’
So, you’re not wrong to extrapolate from the US situation.
I think mainstream advertising funded women’s magazines gave up a long time ago on any kind of vetting process for the advertising they take on. They may be written by women and ‘for’ women, but their ownership generally some big publishing conglomerate which does not have ‘women’s interests’ as a big part of it’s mission. That’s why I find magazines like Bitch and Ms. ( all from the US) so fascinating, as the publishing is actually funded by feminist groups.
Thank you for your comment and that link. I agree, the folks pulling the strings clearly don’t care where their ad revenue comes from. What particularly bothered me about the Closer spread was that it was advertorial - with a Closer journalist directly endorsing the Army, rather than merely a standard paid-for ad.
Women soldiers are not raped for being at the foot of some kind of patriarchal peck-order, they are raped because men have evolved strong sex drives to mate with women. The army has a massive gender disparity, with large numbers of low-status males with little to offer women - in short, the men most likely to take the ‘rape shortcut’ to perpetuate their genes. It is self-evident that women in the army are at a much higher risk of rape than civilian women.
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