Military sexual trauma: gender, military cultures, and the medicalization of abuse in contemporary America

Sexual violence is a serious problem within armed services. This article explores intra-service rape – that is, rape carried out by servicepersonnel against other servicepersonnel – in branches of the U.S. military from the 1990s to the present. Such forms of violence are often denied by senior military officers and, when acknowledged, routinely minimized. The article begins by establishing the parameters of the crisis of sexual abuse within the US armed services. Second, it explores systematic failures to recognize forms of suffering. Victim-survivors in the military are vulnerable to military-specific obstacles to reporting their abuse and being believed, including contractual restrictions and ‘chains of command’, organizational cohesion, warrior comportment, interpersonal vulnerability, and gendered and sexual identities. Particular attention is paid to differences by gender and sexual orientation. Third, it analyses the medicalization of suffering in the modern military and its effects. What meanings are assigned to ‘military sexual trauma’ (MST) and how has that label affected victim-survivors of rape or sexual assault? The article concludes by arguing that the concept of ‘trauma’ as it is applied to victims of sexual abuse does a formidable amount of political and ideological work

Whole-genome sequencing reveals host factors underlying critical COVID-19

Critical COVID-19 is caused by immune-mediated inflammatory lung injury. Host genetic variation influences the development of illness requiring critical care1 or hospitalization2,3,4 after infection with SARS-CoV-2. The GenOMICC (Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care) study enables the comparison of genomes from individuals who are critically ill with those of population controls to find underlying disease mechanisms. Here we use whole-genome sequencing in 7,491 critically ill individuals compared with 48,400 controls to discover and replicate 23 independent variants that significantly predispose to critical COVID-19. We identify 16 new independent associations, including variants within genes that are involved in interferon signalling (IL10RB and PLSCR1), leucocyte differentiation (BCL11A) and blood-type antigen secretor status (FUT2). Using transcriptome-wide association and colocalization to infer the effect of gene expression on disease severity, we find evidence that implicates multiple genes—including reduced expression of a membrane flippase (ATP11A), and increased expression of a mucin (MUC1)—in critical disease. Mendelian randomization provides evidence in support of causal roles for myeloid cell adhesion molecules (SELE, ICAM5 and CD209) and the coagulation factor F8, all of which are potentially druggable targets. Our results are broadly consistent with a multi-component model of COVID-19 pathophysiology, in which at least two distinct mechanisms can predispose to life-threatening disease: failure to control viral replication; or an enhanced tendency towards pulmonary inflammation and intravascular coagulation. We show that comparison between cases of critical illness and population controls is highly efficient for the detection of therapeutically relevant mechanisms of disease

Nous avons combattu pour libérer; vous donnez pour sauver. Centenaire méthodiste

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Orchestrating Harmony: Litanies, Queens, and Discord in the Carolingian and Ottonian Empires

This chapter explores the role of Carolingian and Ottonian royal women in the royal liturgy, and particularly in the litanies and laudes regiae present in extant sacramentaries, graduals, tropers, and other liturgical manuscripts surviving from the late eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. It describes a central tension between the manuscript evidence and the historical narratives, between the hope for a cosmic harmony and the reality of discord, disease, and war. As the Carolingian Queen Fastrada organized litanies within Saxony to ensure the success of Charlemagne’s campaign against the Avars, Ottonian queens and empresses also utilized this liturgical form to avert disaster in troublesome times. Liturgy structured the world as harmony; yet the performance of liturgical rites could be triggered by discord. The chapter examines the tension through queens and empresses who appear inconsistently in the liturgical manuscripts, but who consistently work within the wider political community at specific historical moments to oversee the important liturgical rites

Orchestrating Harmony: Litanies, Queens, and Discord in the Carolingian and Ottonian Empires

This chapter explores the role of Carolingian and Ottonian royal women in the royal liturgy, and particularly in the litanies and laudes regiae present in extant sacramentaries, graduals, tropers, and other liturgical manuscripts surviving from the late eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. It describes a central tension between the manuscript evidence and the historical narratives, between the hope for a cosmic harmony and the reality of discord, disease, and war. As the Carolingian Queen Fastrada organized litanies within Saxony to ensure the success of Charlemagne’s campaign against the Avars, Ottonian queens and empresses also utilized this liturgical form to avert disaster in troublesome times. Liturgy structured the world as harmony; yet the performance of liturgical rites could be triggered by discord. The chapter examines the tension through queens and empresses who appear inconsistently in the liturgical manuscripts, but who consistently work within the wider political community at specific historical moments to oversee the important liturgical rites