Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for April 14, 2010

How is she so sure? Have I missed of a state too? Or is she just close to what she wanted & not is backing off?

She was raped by a superior officer….

Melinda (or is it Melanie?) is one of Trudeau’s best recent creations. Watching her negotiate human interactions gets my own insides twisted up.

She decided to re-enlist, because she was good at her work & didn’t think that the act of a violent jerk should dictate her life. Now, she’s facing all this crap.

When DOONESBURY is good, it’s very, very good.

Is she reading more into this than there is because of her past experience?

Thanks for the links, Joe-Allen.

Yeah, no one has established or accused that Seabrook is a rapist, and then it’s downhill after that.

That’s how we see these innocent men released from prison after decades, because of malicious false insinuations/accusations, from cantankerous people who blindly hold on to their own guilt fetishes. We should differentiate between inadvertent infliction of injustice/inequality and the eagerly deliberate attempt by to create it. (lynch mob mentality). Stuff like this has kept the ACLU and defense lawyers in business forever. That’s how Scheck made his name.

That would make a compelling character for Trudeau to develop. An innocent man released from prison after decades. There has to be a goldmine of humorous irony to riff on as the character tries to readjust from a stolen life. There’s enough material for a Pulitzer.

I wasn’t addressing the story line, but acknowledging the response, by some to it.

^FriscoLou, I’m afraid I’ve worked with a guy who was convicted of a crime he didn’t do, spent a few years in prison during which his wife divorced him. When they found the real criminal and cleared his name, the total response from the state was: Sorry about that, here’s bus fair. He hasn’t been able to get a job because a) nobody wants someone who hasn’t been working for a few years, b) when they hear his story they don’t believe him, and of course c) the economy is bad.

He needs a good lawyer to get him compensation!!

Folks, this is fiction - don’t get emotionally wrapped up in the characters. That said, ‘crime’ isn’t always black and white. Her CO coerced her; he thought it was just good fun, she thought she had to accept it to keep the career she was good at. Who’s right? obviously, she is, but like the Catholic Church now, the military covered up his indiscretions. Wrong? Certainly; but the point is, is she over-reacting now? Possibly, but if she’s a good mechanic, then why’s he calling her for office duty? That’s what we have to wait and find out. Trudeau is the master of ironic twists. That’s what makes it interesting.

People, at this point I think we know that Seabrook wasn’t the same officer that sexually abused Mel before - I think the dialogue yesterday would have been different had he been.

FriscoLou, yep - Seabrook could have some serious problems if Mel’s PTSD inspired fears become rumurs or accusations. Even if Seabrook is shown to be completely innocent, there would be that cloud over him. Mel wouldn’t want to do that to an innocent man, but Mel isn’t thinking right at the moment.

Wcorvi, I’m a bit confused by your post when you talk about a military cover-up of sexual abuse. Did I miss a news story some place?

I don’t believe that Seabrook is the rapist. Things have changed (a little) but enough so that she would have some leverage when re-enlisting about not getting reassigned to his area.

Plus, her reactions up to now are not what they would be if he were.

But this has to bring up a whole passel of issues for her.

As to why the rapist wasn’t discharged or in jail, welcome to the real world of the military.

Chrisnp, you’ve apparently missed many news stories. It’s still apparently open season on women at the Air Force Academy, for example.

So, what we’re saying is her concern is his bunk BEDS?

Captain Rothlesberger?

I dont think we have ever been told what happened to her attacker.

I can imagine that her concerns are hightened. Hopefully this guy is a good officer and will show her not all man of power are like her attacker.

Perhaps we are about to see a better side of human - perhaps Seabrook will redeem the male soldier

Actually, I don’t rcall that we know what happened to the original rapist. I’m thinking if the rapist wasn’t discharged or in jail, the reason might be that Mel didn’t report it - That’s a huge problem, and not just in the military.

trudyjh, you had to go back what? six or seven years to find your example? or did something new recently come out of that old scandal? In my comment to wcorvi, I meant to ask if there was something currently going on that I’ve missed - and frankly, I just might have. I never have time for the TV news and barely scan the newspaper lately. Mostly I get whatever I do listening to the news on the way to work.

trudyjh, if that’s “the real world of the military,” then I served 24 years in an alternate reality. When I was in the military, officers and NCOs were occasionally caught doing what happened to Mel. When they did, they were prosecuted and punished. None got to stay in the Army. How many cases went unreported is a whole other matter. If there were cover-ups, they were covered up from me too. If there was a cover-up in one of my units on a massive scale like the AF academy, I think I would have gotten at least a hint of it.

One possibility that did not occur to me until now is this:

The CO is totally clueless.

First clueless as to Mel’s wonderful talent. She’s tremendous at what she does. Moving her to an office is sheer stupidity.

Second, he’s clueless at being a leader and manager.

Actually all he wants is an office slave so he doesn’t have to do the drudge work. He wants to sit back and let someone do the part of his job that’s he’s too lazy to do himself. He’s so stupid and lazy that he just pulls Mel’s name out the hat randomly.

He treats Mel as a thing because that’s what salves are, things!

If you don’t think he’s treating her as a thing, look at his expressions from yesterday. Look at the completely dismissive way he deals with Mel’s “job change.” He doesn’t take time to explain why he “needs” her.

I suppose in combat situations no sane officer would take time to explain commands. But this is an office. If he needs Mel to do her new job well he should be telling her why he needs her to do it.

It may be that mundane laziness and stupidity is what’s scaring the hell out of Mel.

Then again??!!

Hi Alex, I think you are reading a lot into a character that was just introduced in one strip. To me he’s an Ops officer, not her Co, and yesterday’s dismissiveness had more to do with his being up to his eyeballs in work, which is why he’s gotten permission to pull a highly trained mechanic out of a job she is obviously doing very well.

Frankly, I am hoping she was picked because she’s smart and dedicated. I worry though that she was picked because she was a woman. Not because of potential sexual harrassment, but because some men think a woman’s place is in the office, not working in a repair bay. Sad but common in both the military and civilian worlds.

I wonder how much research GBT did for this topic?

@Alex Williamson:

Again, I find your reading of their motives very plausible.

What do you think of GT’s revealing interview at the link Joe Allen quotes (http://tinyurl.com/y6522n8)?

As GT says, he has too much respect for PTSD females like Mel to second-guess their misgivings or accuse them of overreacting. And he says his new military characters (male and female) are constantly surprising him by what they do and say.

This Seabrook–whom she obviously does not know yet–may turn out to be an insensitive lunkhead (which would remove Mel’s fear and give the strip a comic ending), or he might notice her the simple way most undeveloped males do: primarily as a bedmate rather than a teammate.

Either way the strip breaks, we aren’t going to see the kind of fraternal relationship our army would like to develop between the sexes. In a strong organization, even where competition is encouraged, buddiness has got to trump gender. A soldier like Roz reduces buddiness merely to sex.

Funny, when I was in the military, moving from “the line” to Ops, or a desk position was a bit of training for a more authoritative position. If you showed that you were competent, and had a good head on your shoulders, you were trained in supervisory tasks in preparation for a promotion.

The comments are very revealing of human nature - especially the nature of Doonesbury lovers. Some think that the world is composed strictly of victims and victimizers. If you’re not one, you’re the other. Clue: It’s more complicated than that. And remember: this is a COMIC STRIP! And I will try to remember that all generalizations are false.

If the Catholic church now admits it’s been covering up rape and sexual abuse for decades, why on earth do you think the military is BETTER than that?

After all, the church claims to value the humanity of the individual. The purpose of the military is to turn the individual into part of the unit – and part of that is ignoring or tossing out everyone who doesn’t fit the mold. It’s a situation MADE for abuse.

Anyone who says he’s (you’ll notice this is a male thing, which tells us something) never heard of such a thing should just google “rape air force academy” and see what’s there. West Point is no picnic for women either.

Don’t know if anyone will see this, but have you considered that maybe the men she works with have complained about her being stand-offish and avoiding them in the simplist of activities, and so instead of finding out why (because that might be too much work) he simply moved her to ops? Or not….

Re: ET1 MisngNOLA: The military, & a lot of civilians, consider a supervisory position with a lot of paperwork a promotion. I was a decent tech, but lousy paper pusher & worse supervisor. It’s more efficient to let people do what they’re good at & just give them a pay raise.

I’m confused too. Was this the officer who raped her or has this triggering her memories? I’m thinking maybe the rape occurred while she was on office duty and she’s scared that it might happen again.

“When DOONESBURY is good, it’s very, very good.”

You got that right, Brian

Well, here are the facts so far. Mel’s got psychological baggage from a prior command rape. Since she has a flight line clearance, any medical history of hers is in her file. She may be jumping to a conclusion here based on that baggage, or she may not. The “audience” doesn’t have enough information yet.

The CO may or may not know about it - if he doesn’t know, he sucks as a CO because he should have read that file before singling her out for special duty. And yes, officially getting transferred to ops is supposed to be a good thing.

If he DOES know, he’s either a good guy who intends to try to address the issue in a professional manner, or a bad guy. That hasn’t been determined yet, but if there’s no NCO in the picture right now for her to report to, he’s a VERY BAD guy. A breach of protocol like that is very, very serious and could come back home to him quickly if the upper echelons hear about it (unless they, too, are corrupt - and yes, it does happen). One of the purposes of an NCO is to serve as a buffer between officer and enlisted. Not always the way it works in real life - very frequently the NCOs themselves are the problem - but a lack of an NCO in the chain of command structure at all indicates a severe breakdown of military discipline and protocol.

My own opinion is that Trudeau is doing an excellent job trying to portray this situation, but he needs to be educated about military custom and culture. It does looks like he’s trying, and quite frankly if he was going to try to paint a realistic picture of the rampant sexism and unprofessionalism the military is capable of toward it’s female members, they wouldn’t be able to print the comic in a family paper.

Rape in the military is a deadly serious problem - many questionable “suicides” and non-combat related deaths of women in the military are linked to coverups of their rapes. The official statistic today is that one in three women are raped by someone in their chain of command. A woman in the US military today has a higher chance of being raped than she does of being shot by the enemy. No recruiter is going to tell you that! It’s long past time this dirty little secret was addressed. Good on ya, Mr. Trudeau.

I’ve had one friend (now retired) raped by a fellow soldier in Kuwait, and we know that female soldiers in the Iraq/Afghan theaters are told to avoid walking alone within the perimeter, and that’s not out of fear of insurgents. I think Trudeau is touching on an important subject (better than the actual news does).

I think that Mel’s problem is that Lt. Seabrook bunks in his office rather than is a designated officers quarters. Or in other words, he has a bed in his office…

@Devonshade: that’d be even more poetic than him trashing Havoc’s backroom heroin deals. Maybe he should do both. Heh.

Crispnp, randgrithr & others – A couple of years ago there was an episode on NPR which I played for the Women’s Studies course I was teaching at the time. It described the situation Mel finds herself in – having been raped and then reassigned with no sensitivity to her issues and had numerous women giving their first-hand accounts. It wouldn’t matter whether Seabrook did it or not, because NO, none of the rapists ever stand trial – let alone do time. In fact a deaf ear is turned by higher-ups, and she may even suffer more humiliation if she dares to report. Your last paragraph says it all randgrithr.

Thanks both to palin drome and Chrisnp. and for that matter randgrithr.

palin drome:

Great link. http://tinyurl.com/y6522n8 also posted by “Joe”

Everyone should read this, especially those that chide and/or deride GT for being too liberal. (I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a liberal, but some liberals are way too simplistic. Sometimes I’m way to simplistic simply out of frustration with frustrated conservatives. )

Anyone who reads this should see that GT is not anti-military and is not naive about the issues he addresses. He admits to his imperfect understanding of complex issues and seeks out help in understanding them.

Chrisnp

After second (third fourth?) look at yesterdays comic I can see that Seabrook may be as you described simply over stressed with overwork. That does not diminish the impact of his brusque treatment of Mel.

As you pointed out until we have further info, speculation remains just that, speculation. Whatever GT has in mind I’m sure it will speak well to the many issues involved here.

randgrithr

Your (and others) thoughtful exploration of both the individual and systemic aspects of these issues helps me diminish my unfortunate tenancy to rant or overreact.

It reminds me that the best response to both good and bad speech is more thoughtfully leavened speech.

Long live the First Amendment!

randgrithr sex abuse in the military is broader than your examples, which are against policy. They extend to using women willingly as policy, as “sexual weapons” against men at Gitmo and Ghriab,

I don’t think it’s right to reflexively convict the group because of the identity of the individual. What could the views of female MPs be, because of the image Lyndie England, and be consistent with Mel’s views of male soldiers?

Can you imagine her son with the other kids in the sand box and one of them asks: “So what did your folks do in the war?” And Grainer/England’s kid responds: “They were the Ghraib rapist.” Characters like you’d only find in Doonesbury.

If the LaCrosse fiasco taught us anything: Is that we should target our outrage specifically/relevantly instead of carpet bombing.

“Success is doing what you love.”

Mel re-enlisted because this is the kind of work she loves to do. She wasn’t feeling depressed when she repaired the USO chopper, was she? NO! In fact, she was at the top of her game.

Now she’s afraid that history is going to repeat itself.

@Alex Williamson;

I agree wholeheartedly that the best response to both good and bad speech is more thoughtfully leavened speech. (The reason that I don’t say anything about the First Amendment is that I’m Canadian. We don’t have amendments as such. But I’m sure yours is a good one.)

The one thing that drives me most crazy in these comments is people saying “It’s only a cartoon.” But so what? It’s what people make of it, read into it, that matters. The comic is the springboard - where people take off from.

In short, I don’t think the cartoon is so “only”.

BrianCrook… And when DOONESBURY is bad, he’s really good!

Ron, do you mean “and when he’s bad he’s better?