Could it be that the pornography industry has something to do with women’s continuing struggle for equality and respect?

Brig. General Jeffrey Sinclair

So it would seem from the case of Brig. General Jeffrey Sinclair.

It was not surprising to learn that a military judge accepted General Sinclair’s strategy of pleading guilty to lesser charges in exchange for the dismissal of far more serious counts, including violent sexual assault, that could have put him behind bars for life.

According to the New York Times,  “General Sinclair formally pleaded guilty to mistreating his former mistress — an Army captain — as well as disobeying a commander’s order not to contact her, misusing his government charge card, and using demeaning and derogatory language about female staff officers.”

In exchange, military prosecutors dropped the more serious charges that “General Sinclair twice sexually assaulted his former mistress by forcing her to have oral sex, threatened to kill her and her family if she revealed their affair, and engaged in consensual but “open and notorious” sex with her in a parking lot in Germany and on a hotel balcony in Arizona. Those charges could have led to life in prison for and registration as a sex offender, if convicted.”

You have to dig deeper into this unsavory story to discover that General Sinclair learned his technique for violent fellatio from the thousands of violent pornographic photographs and videos he had stored—against military orders—on his computers and other devices in Afghanistan.

Prosecutors initially tried to get that nasty porn admitted as evidence in court, but the judge refused to allow it, saying it could “taint the jury’s outlook on the trial.”  The jury, let it be noted, consisted of five generals.  All men.

In the Army, it’s illegal to possess pornography while on deployment.  It’s illegal to engage in adultery.  It’s certainly illegal for a superior officer to force a soldier to have sex.  According to the Captain, whose identity is being withheld, General Sinclair “grabbed her by her neck and shoulder and forced her to perform fellatio….It happened again some days later, she said. This time, he stopped only when she threatened to scream.”

This is precisely the kind of case that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s landmark legislation, which aimed to take the trying of sexual assault cases out of the hands of the military, was designed to address.

Imagine how this case would be different if instead of a colonel as judge and five generals as jury (judge and jury all-male), the court case was tried by a civilian judge and a jury composed of 12 men and women who were not in any way beholden to the military.

Illustration by Jerry McJunkins; fayobserver.com

Of course, even civilian rape and sexual assault cases are notoriously hard to successfully prosecute.  Men still get away with minimal sentences as victims are blamed with “leading him on” or “asking for it.”  Some 97% of rapists never even spend a day in jail.

In the Sinclair case, the Captain is being caricatured as a typical “jealous mistress” who blew the whistle on the General as revenge for his inability to make any commitment to her.

But really—would any woman, let alone an Army Captain, put herself through the torments of a sexual assault trial merely for revenge?

She may not realize it now, but in refusing to be browbeaten into silence she is standing up for every military woman and every civilian woman who has had to bite her tongue and comply with abusive behavior from men with greater social status and privilege.

But the deeper question that deserves to be asked here is why it’s OK for violence againt women to be represented through violent pornography, such as that possessed by the General.

Defenders of the porn industry insist that: a) a penchant for watching violent porn doesn’t imply a desire to carry it out in real life and b) porn is just acting—it’s not real.

Tell that to the porn starlet whose throat has been bruised and battered through violent fellatio.  Tell that to the girl who is forced to have sex from behind while her head is dunked repeatedly in a toilet.  Tell that to the girl whose anus is torn apart as three men gang-bang her—“only acting,” of course.

Is this too harsh for you to read?  Does it offend your sensibilities?

I’m sorry, but I am of the opinion that if something is too horrible for us to read about, it’s too horrible for us to permit to go on in actuality.

From violent porn to factory farming, from mountaintop removal to sex slavery and lab animal torture—if it’s so bad we have to avert our eyes, then it’s so bad we have to do something about it.

I salute the tearful Captain who testified valiantly in that military courtroom, knowing that every man in the room hated her for daring to tell the truth.

Our military women deserve better.  All women deserve better!  The violent porn industry is a pus-filled abscess seething below the sight lines of society.

If we want to get a handle on why women continue to be disrespected, the multi-billion dollar porn industry would be a good place to start an inquiry.  Who’s got the balls to take those bastards on?

**The upshot, 3-20-14: the General got a very gentle slap on the wrist.  Are we surprised?  Hell no!  It is almost impossible to convict on sexual assault, at least as long as the judges and juries are all-male, with the opinion that “boys will be boys” and “she led him on….”  GRRRR!!!!!