Response to Hannah's Post

In countries where Herak comes like Sarajevo, the mentality of male supremacy remains a constant thus a major military tactic in those countries is to suppress the people and women in particular through tactics such as rape. I am surprised to know that Herak had been punished for his crime and imprisoned although he mostly committed these atrocities due to military orders. Herak felt remorse, but unfortunately most of the horrible actions he did were done to establish his masculinity in order to gain respect from his comrades in the military. If he were to back down from raping or killing anyone he was commanded to, automatically his masculine credibility would be obliterated, thus one could say that peer pressure and acceptance by other men triggered most of his negative actions. The opposite occurs in the United States military in which the actual rape incidents happen among the comrades themselves. The United States he is supposedly more advanced in mentality and has gone through the whole feminist movement continues to undermine women as well. Many of the rape cases that occur by men sexually assaulting women officers/privates go unpunished and undetected. The difference with Herak’s case is that they would rape the enemy and trust their own, but in the case of these U.S. military officers there was no trust within the troops especially by the women because many had passed through some sort of sexual assault/harassment and did not have the support of the military in punishing those who committed the crimes. Another difference within the rape crimes is that in the U.S. army these rapes were not done to fulfill officer’s orders, they were done voluntarily by the officers; yet both Herak’s and the U.S. officers’ rapes were done to establish their masculinity.