In recent years researchers have highlighted the US government’s use of sexual humiliation as a form of torture. For example, this article highlights how children were sodomized in front of women by American terrorists at Abu Ghraib, and this piece looks at how American officials ordered prostitutes to menstruate on so-called “terrorists,” also at Abu Ghraib. Several thought-provoking questions come out of these events: How did the US government get to this point? How, if at all, do you relate these acts of torture to wider social-cultural-political issues unfolding in modern-day America?