Air Force Goes On The Hunt For The Most Dangerous Foe of All: Porn

Bronan the Barbarian12 years ago

Apparently the U.S. Air Force has had a sexual misconduct problem. After a report from a number of groups suggested that the Air Force “has tolerated a ‘culture’ of disrespect for women,” they began an investigation of a number of bases for inappropriate or unprofessional material.

What did they find?

A worldwide inspection of U.S. Air Force facilities uncovered more than 631 pornographic movies, videos, DVDs, posters, magazines and other material that were either stored on computer servers or displayed in common areas at bases, according to a report released Friday. The hunt also found 31,585 other instances of “unprofessional” and “offensive” material — including some that was racially insensitive, it said.

That’s… actually not all that bad. I’m sure the average fraternity house would have more violations than that, and some dark, seedy shit too. Have you ever seen Hungarian midget porn? BECAUSE I HAVE! You figure the number of military personnel and bases we have around the world, that number doesn’t seem all that horrifying.

Regardless, all of these men and women are serving their country honorably, so if they want to take their down time to fire off a few practice rounds in order to lower their stress level, there’s nothing wrong with that.

At the Air Education and Training Command in Texas, things seem to be a bit more of an issue:

Among the material found at the command on common computer drives, according to the report, were 144 pornographic posters and graphics — including some “glorifying suicide” and “racial” in nature — and 13 videos at showing “sexual images” as well as “killings and torture.” Another video removed from the command was entitled “Achmed the Dead Terrorist.”

Now, this would be some pretty serious stuff, but, taking this sensibly and ignoring NBC’s awful journalism, it means that they probably had a bunch of pics of Kate Upton before she put on some weight, a violent movie or two, and and a couple shitty internet memes. Not all that terrifying. Some of the computers did belong to instructors under investigation for sexual misconduct with recruits and trainees, which should have maybe convinced them not to have questionable stuff on their work PCs, but so far, I see no reason to overreact…

“…criminal investigations have been launched into some of those responsible for the material and said that some personnel may be subject to possible court martials.”

Ah, good, I see we’ve jumped right into overreacting. To actually give a bit of insight into this awful, degrading material, here’s a quick list:

– pornographic posters
– Maxim magazines
– a clothed woman giving head
– a woman with a beer between her boobs
– a Ken doll in a bathing suit
– Tom Brady not wearing a shirt (not sure if this belonged to a woman or a really serious Pats fan)
– Achmed the Dead Terrorist (mostly offensive because Jeff Dunham sucks ass)

So, basically, Air Force members are being punished for either displaying in some way that they have a sex drive, or that they have a sense of humor (except for the guy with the Achmed DVD)?

It seems most of it was prompted by an administrative assistant objecting to the porn on base PCs and that certain members of the bases kept secret stashes of it for their downtime. While I’m sure she thought she was doing some good, removing porn and labeling anything remotely sexual as inappropriate probably isn’t going to help lower the rate of sexual assaults, which is up to as many as 19,000 a year based on some sources. Labeling sex as unhealthy is probably not going to stop people from doing violent, sexually unhealthy things. I mean, it totally didn’t work in repressed Victorian England, where Jack the Ripper spent his time making murder art, but sure, definitely this time.

The Air Force should relax, take some more proactive instead of reactive measures, and let their personnel enjoy their porn off duty. Everyone knows that’s why the internet was created anyway. Their time would be much better spent looking for the people actually involved in sexually assaulting people, instead of taking everyone’s porn away so they look like they’re taking action.

[via npr]

Image via wcu.edu