She who cannot be discussed: Behavior

 Cross posted from my regular blog, but more details.

the US Navy has implemented a "don't ask don't tell" program for sailors, and pushing education on those with old fashioned ideas.

What is not discussed: The behavior. Even though the Tailhook scandal was mentioned as the reason the Navy realized they had a problem. 

In a ship, there is a hot house atmosphere, and minor micro aggressions can become real problems. One of my friend's son deserted during the VietNam war because he couldn't take the racial bigotry he was faced with every day.

But what worries me about this: in their zeal to retrain sailors to drop their beliefs (in this case, deep seated cultural and religious beliefs), will the result of the policy be not harmony but a blindness to real sexual agresseion by predators who will twist the policy to silence those who object? LINK UKGuardian article from ten years ago about cover up of sexual assault against military women...  but this also hapens in men.

and the number or reports have increased in recent years, although it is not certain if the numbers are higher because micro agressions are included in the reports, or if the increase is because people are more willing to report serious cases that in the past would not bave been reported because of shame or fear.

The Pentagon's latest survey on reported sexual assaults in the military show that in 2021 an estimated 8.4% of active duty women and 1.5% of active duty men indicated experiencing at least one incident of unwanted sexual contact.

Also not discussed: without discussing how this training goes against religious beliefs that some behavior is wrong, (italics mine) the end rsult  might mean a lot of the best and brightest will either leave or will tell their kids not to join the service. 

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Similarly, in this monkeypox in an infant report leaves out the question: Why is a small baby sleeping in the same bed as two caregivers, one of whom had done high risk behavior and started having symptoms three weeks before the child's rash started ? 

Sleeping with an infant in the same bed is an African custom, so if the case is in immigrants that custom should be explained. If it is white Americans, then we have to ask why an educated white adult with a rash and fever and a known behavior that makes him or her high risk for monkeypox is exposing their baby to an illness by sleeping in the same bed.

CBS news laments the west isn't helping with cases in Africa, but a close look shows only small numbers of cases until the recent spread via high spreader events in the west resulted in 50 thousand reported cases, most in countries where it is not endemic.

But what I wonder: In an epidemic that spread in the white MSM community, why have cases in more recent weeks changed to having 41 percent African American and 25 percent Hispanic?

Instead of trying to change behavior by shutting down raves and high risk meeting places, we see an outreach to the gay community to get a vaccine. Problem: Is there an outreach to the minority gay community also? Culturally gays are less welcome in black and Hispanic communities, so they might not have gotten the message.

But given the reports that monkey pox was a white middle aged MSM disease, even I was aghast that in recent weeks that there had been an increase in the numbers of people who were minority background.

NBC report about this, and the barriers to minority men who suspect they have the disease: not just the stigma against MSM, but the bureaucratic problems that stopped people from getting tested and treated, including the slowness in contacting possible contacts to the gentleman who first came down with symptoms.

Meanwhile, the disparity in those who have contracted monkeypox and those who have access to vaccines is glaring. While Black people account for about a third of monkeypox cases in the U.S., about 10% of vaccines have been administered to the group, according to the CDC. The vaccine distribution disparities come as Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of the CDC, acknowledged that the agency must make drastic changes to respond better and faster to public health emergencies, following missteps during the Covid pandemic.

one of the untold stories of covid is the refusal of the black community to get the vaccine, partly due to lack of outreach, but also because of mistrust in the medical community that dates from the Tuskegee study. 

Outreach and local clinics where people know you would help, but no one wants to admit that the takeover of medicine by bureaucrats who stress efficiency spending time documenting everything you do rather than having a doc waste time getting to know you personally has lowered the trust in the medical community.

And the problems of rural and inner city health outreach is not just about the black community, but about other minorities, including working class whites.