On Sunday Feb. 12, journalist Liz Trotta was featured on Fox News' "America's News HQ" in a segment about new rules concerning women in the United States military. In less than four minutes, Trotta attacked feminists and government spending to protect our soldiers, in addition to implying that women in combat should expect to be sexually assaulted.
In the past four years Trotta has joked about the assassination of President Barack Obama and has compared the Occupy protestors to the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. Her comments about sexual assault in the military only prove her ignorance and bigoted sense of humor. At The Lamron, we take issue with Trotta's antiquated remarks about feminism and supporting our troops, both male and female.
According to a Pentagon report, the number of violent sexual assaults in the military has increased 64 percent since 2006, which Trotta attributes to the "close contact" of our troops. Following Trotta's line of logic, women in the military should expect and accept that male soldiers – who apparently can't control their animalistic instincts – will rape them; presumably, the "extreme feminists," who want "to be warriors and victims at the same time," are asking for it.
Skewing data from the Department of Defense and McClatchy Newspapers, Trotta insinuates that feminists are forcing the government's hand to spend exorbitant amounts of taxpayer money on programs to protect and council military women, "who are now being raped too much."
Trotta's comments are the ultimate example of feminism becoming a "dirty word" in our societal vocabulary. Instead of signifying a desire for political, social and economic equality between men and women, feminists have essentially been misconstrued as radical, man-hating, bra-burning she-devils.
The view that sexual assault has become inevitable is, to say the very least, unfortunate. We're proud to say that we're part of a campus in which the students, faculty and administration have been extremely candid about the seriousness of this issue, and to hear someone dismiss it as Trotta so easily did is reprehensible.
Credit, however, must be given to anchor Eric Shawn. In response to Trotta's remarks on overspending, he suggested to her that the people who protect us deserve to also be protected in return. Trotta's retort? "That's funny, I thought the mission of [the armed forces] was to defend and protect us, not the people who were fighting the war."
It's a common sense notion that all members of our military deserve to feel secure when they're "working," just like any other American. Normally it would pain us to acknowledge this type of idiocy and skewed sense of reality, but sometimes a person comes along with an opinion that is so wrong, it needs to be addressed. Liz Trotta is one of those people.