So that's 74,000 assaults against a population of 1,328,000[1]. So about 5.57% of the armed forces were assaulted sexually in one year.
But the United States as a whole had a reported ≈325k[2] sexual assaults in 2021. That's 0.09% of the population.
Are you really over 60 times more likely to be sexually assaulted in the military than in the general public? And are over a fifth of sexual assaults in America happening between military personnel? Somebody please tell me what I'm missing because I must be making a serious logical mistake.
One common stat that is used is "1 in 5 women are SA'd in college". Assuming a 4-year college, that means 1-((1-.2)^.25) = 5.5% of women in college are SA'd each year. So the rates are somewhat similar to a rough approximation with some coarse assumptions about demographics.
It looks like the Statista data comes from the National Crime Victimization Survey, which is available here. [1] Note that in 2022 the number rose to 531K, or 0.31% of women.
>Somebody please tell me what I'm missing because I must be making a serious logical mistake.
authority (and corresponding victim helplessness and defenselessness) breeds sexual assault and harassment. Military is by far among the most authoritarian institutions (only prison probably beats it by a thin margin).
Did you consider the gender demographics? The assaults refer to assaults on women and I doubt that women/men ratio is 50/50ish as in the general public.
Under-reported to police yes, but this data comes from NCVS which is generally regarded to be more accurate. You can learn more about their methodology here. [1]
It’s interesting how opaque and non-transparent the US military is. From a glance it seemed like this is one of the reason Iraq was such a fuck up. The intel that nothing was working there wouldn’t make its way up the chain, nobody understood how bad the situation was.
There used to be that one documentary circulating on Reddit about that general that was pretty open about things there and got severely reprimanded for it.
I can understand keeping things internal, but if things are not transparent internally then people should go public with the intel they have.
Nearly all of the mistakes in Iraq (including the decision to invade in the first place) were made at the political level, above the military. Bush decided to invade the country, Rumsfeld decided to commit too few troops to effectively occupy the country, and Obama decided to set a hard public deadline for withdrawal that allowed the insurgency groups that turned into ISIS to plan and bide their time.
The military can’t question the orders they receive from the president and Secretary of Defense. That’s an important part of maintaining civilian control over the military. The military can only try to carry out whatever goals and decisions they’re given by the politicians, and in Iraq the politicians (from both parties) got it wrong.
> The military can’t question the orders they receive
They can present a report on why the orders are a bad idea, IIRC. That could be seen as "questioning". And there is the possibility of disobeying illegal orders. But it is true, if the orders are legal and final then they have to be carried out. (And if they're illegal... better be prepared to prove it at a court-martial)
It’s possible there was some pushback on the manpower levels, because that actually is closer to a military decision. Though apparently even then, the military often just takes what they get. The original plans for the 1991 Gulf War didn’t include the flanking attack from the western desert because not enough forces were allocated, and it was Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney who had to remind the generals that they were allowed to request more troops if they thought they needed them.
But the decision to start and stop wars is explicitly political and there is a much greater taboo against the military trying to tell the president which wars the country should be fighting in the first place. Which is a big part of the difference between a democracy and a military dictatorship!
You forgot firing the iraq administration and the iraqy army. Im still convinced the whole thing was a plan to get a shia and sunni war going in the middle east. In that regard it was a monstrous great success.
The DOD estimates 4.3-8.4 percent of women experience unwanted sexual contact, based on 8,500 reports, extrapolated to 29,000 estimated incidents. The author argues that the actual rate is 24% of women, using the median estimate from a range of independent studies.
DOD's most significant change was moving the prosecution authority for sexual assault to a separate tribunal in 2023.
Completely unsurprising. There is a longstanding history of incentives and policy inconsistencies that make this outcome a virtual certainty. Everyone knows it is an issue but addressing it has been turned into a forum to push ideologically-driven narratives by all sides rather than a sincere effort to do what is necessary to find an effective solution. Lots of political vibes and platitudes, little interest in the hard questions.
No shocker. The talking point on sexual assault is generally, "there is much more than is reported" because victims for a variety of reasons do not like coming forward.
A huge percentage of these cases would be prevented if they simply had male and female E1-E3s housed in entirely separate sections of each base/ship.
The integration of women into the service was a good thing, but there's been a lack of realism from leadership about the actual realities of dumping a bunch of 18-22 year olds together when a significant minority of them are from extremely dysfunctional backgrounds and half of them barely made it through high school.
The greater problem is hostility to enforcement from the top down, as evidenced by countless scandals. Gender segregation "others" women and cripples their careers, ensuring that they continue to be underpromoted relative to their talent and thus underrepresented. We learned a long time ago that separate but equal is inherently unequal, yet it's a zombie concept that always comes back.
> It may seem intuitive that gender segregation would lead to less sexual harassment and sexual assault, but there is mounting evidence that shows the opposite might be true. Studies on workplace sexual harassment show that encouraging social integration at work can reduce sexual harassment. Other studies show that increased contact with an “outgroup” (in this case, women), improves attitudes towards individuals in that outgroup. These improvements are more likely to take place when group membership is de-emphasized during the interaction.
But we're hobbled in discussing this on HN because it skews overwhelmingly male — and there's even less enthusiasm for confronting that than there is for confronting sexual assault in the military.
Even if we accept your thesis, are you prepared to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, to throw women to the wolves with the hope that over time, the men will learn? I, for one, would not do this, as it is cruel and uncaring. In the best case, it is utilitarian, and that is evil.
You need some more nuance here. There is a place for mixed sex interactions. Men and women are not interchangeable. They have different needs, some of which require operating in sexually segregated settings, and because of their intrinsic complementarity, coupled with the vices that actually exist in the world and the weaknesses of human beings, there will always be tension. To refuse segregation in certain situations is to willingly put the weaker in danger.
It is important that we conform our actions to reality, instead of operating from arbitrary and preconceived notions of how things "should" be. The notion of "equality as sameness" does not help people flourish, because it is hostile and ignores who people actually are and their particular needs, and in this case, the needs proper to their sex.
Naturally I reject your characterization of integration as "evil".
Male propensity for sexual assault is not immutable — ensuring that there are actual consequences will move the needle. For that, we need officers who will take enforcement seriously — and although male indifference to enforcing sexual assault isn't immutable either, right now that means that more female officers.
Can you clarify what you mean by "housed in entirely separate sections"?
Because housing is separated (male barracks, female barracks for E-1 thru E-3 exactly with minor exceptions) throughout the military. But are you saying basically have a male section of the base and female section of the base?
>the actual realities of dumping a bunch of 18-22 year olds together when a significant minority of them are from extremely dysfunctional backgrounds[...]
This is either really sad or maybe I'm just naive?
Since when is the "reality" of putting 18-22 year olds together (dysfunctional background and high school completion or not) sexual assault?
I remember being 18-22, coming from a fairly dysfunctional background, and yet I managed to never sexually assault anyone. Even when I was in co-ed housing!
I also never sexually assaulted anyone in college and neither did anyone in my friend group. And yet! There were lots of sexual assaults on campus. It's possible for a small number of people to commit horrible acts without it requiring everyone to commit them or even see them happening.
Turning a blind eye to this or other similar problems (like stalking or catcalling or racial profiling or discrimination) doesn't help change the world for the better.
I'm glad you did the decent thing in college - some folks don't and the consequences for the victims are severe. I suggest we try, as a group, to ensure fewer and fewer sexual assaults happen like this and I think a critical part is recognizing that there are behavior patterns and statistics we can be informed by.
I obviously must have written my original comment in a way that was easy to misinterpret, or people are just super focused on the throwaway portion of my comment at the end, not the middle, which is what I intended to be the important part.
I was questioning the parent saying that the reality of putting 18-22 year olds together automatically equals sexual assault. As if the default behavior of 18-22 year olds is sexual assault. If we treat sexual assault as just the default behavior of 18-22 year olds, we are never going to address the problem. They basically are saying "boys will be boys", and I don't think that is okay.
I never once thought, or wanted my comment to be interpreted as sexual assault not existing. I'm kind of flabbergasted that I have to say it that explicitly.
It’s not like large numbers of newly enlisteds are doing crime. It’s a small percentage, it’s just not zero. It’s above zero enough that it’s a problem; however, it’s not like all the enlisteds are hooligans.
Honestly I think a lot of people find it reassuring to think of marines and frontline infantry as being a bit murderous. Men with enough crazy to charge a machine gun emplacement or storm a beach. A force our enemies live in fear of, the biggest bullies on the playground but on our side.
If you think some of our armed forces have that character, would you expect them to be restrained and orderly when not on the battlefield?
Personally I doubt the Hollywood image of boot camp troops chanting “what makes the grass grow? blood blood blood” is true - I prefer to think our troops are in fact very orderly and restrained.
Given that the US military has a persistent problem with Marines raping Okinawan women (i.e., people off-base entirely), I don't think gender segregation is the panacea that you think it is.
A huge percentage of these cases would be prevented if the leadership at Company-level and up actually took SHARP cases seriously and didn't retaliate against [1] or belittle soldiers who report assault/harassment. Or the fact that, until recently, it was at the commander's discretion whether to prosecute an assault/harassment as a crime [2].
>there's been a lack of realism from leadership about the actual realities..
I can assure you most Platoon leaders, Company commanders, etc. are very aware of the realities in enlisted living quarters; they are simply apathetic about them.
A SHARP complaint becomes another pile of paperwork on their desk they don't want to deal with (see [2]).
I think the tendency to blame the 18-22 year olds with "dysfunctional backgrounds" who "barely made it through high school" places the blame on the lower enlisted while ignoring the military leadership's responsibility for decades of documented failure in addressing this issue.
Consider the following:
> Most Service members identified the alleged offenders as men and often of the same rank as
the victim or some other higher ranking military member in their unit. However, an estimated 44
percent of women and an estimated 35 percent of men identified at least one alleged offender
as someone in their chain of command [3].
Also consider reasons for not reporting:
>Despite these differences, the top three reasons provided for not
reporting were consistent between men and women: (1) did not think anything would be done;
(2) thought it was not serious enough to report; and (3) worried about potential negative
consequences from military coworkers or peers [3].
In my opinion, the problem is at the top of the hierarchy, not the bottom.
(Sorry to throw so much in this comment, but I grow really tired of people thinking this problem is some case of lower enlisted being dumb hooligans who can't control their urges while ignoring the consistent and systemic failures of senior officers and NCO within the DoD to address the problem at all.)
Maybe this problem isn't bottom up, but top down, that is the leadership doesn't enforce rules and actually promotes this kind of very outdated masculine expression. I spent my entire adolescence in a military school and this is something that is very prevalent in the military corporation.
There is a lot of victim blaming for something that is clearly systemic -- where these incidents are dismissed because "boys be boys..." -- and could be worked around by making those responsible accountable, but that will step on some very shiny and important toes, which is why you don't see a push for the correct kind of change in the military that this needs.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. That part is continuing the thought process I started in the first paragraph, not responding directly to OP. Let me rephrase that, thanks!
In a profession that by nature is meant to be aggressive to the point of killing, how is any form of masculine expression outdated. Worse comes to worse these people may be required to kill other people with their bare hands. It's trained into them, it's meant to be systemic. Unfortunately a side effect is this sort of behaviour.
Separating men and women in such an environment is sensible. Recognizing that isn't victim blaming.
If a man is so uncontrolled he cannot help but rape his co-workers I do not want him with any weaponry or representing my country. The whole point of a well-trained militia is to drill into soldiers the capacity to commit violence only when needed and to have the discipline to individually perform their tasks to win a battle. We expect better behavior from attack dogs!
Soldiers are people trained to go to war. They do not "represent" a
country; they go, kill other people or die. It's not olympics. They go
to an environment without rules. It's not a boxing match with a referee.
Apologies I didn't reply to you comment, I didn't notice it, happens when you're voicing unpopular opinions and lots of people want to tell you you're an idiot.
I can tell from your comments you've never been in a firefight and your political leanings.
War has rules of engagement, yes. But both sides have to agree to abide by them. But I can guarantee that in the heat of battle any rules go out the window and survival is all you care about. An emotion afterwards is all there is, especially when you are young and undereducated. You ideals don't mean much.
People seem to think in this thread I'm trying to make excuses for this behaviour. I'm not. I'm providing reasons.
KittenInABox wrote:
> This is completely wrong. War has fairly strict rules, actually, more strict
> than policemen in the US.
Eh... no. Watch a few clips from Ukraine-Russia war, what those soldiers
are doing. The movies are on Reddit. This has nothing to do with any
rules, Geneva Conventions or whatever. War rules are only there in order
to make people like you happier, but if war happens, they're out of the
window.
No, but you were implicitly assuming undisciplined aggression, when what the military actually needs and tries to train for is disciplined aggression--aggression against only the right targets at the right time and place. Undisciplined aggression is an obvious violation of military discipline and should be treated as such by the leadership.
I'm not assuming anything, explicitly or implicitly. People like to pretend you can turn agression on and off and only turn it towards the "right" direction. Those people are either in denial or have no experience of what this training does to you.
Disclosure: 12 years in military multiple tours of various warzones.
> 12 years in military multiple tours of various warzones.
How recently? I'm guessing, recently enough that the military you served in is the dysfunctional military described in the article, which suffers from a severe lack of leadership. People whose service was further in the past can tell you a very different story.
I'm not recent no, been out over nearly 2 decades. I also don't look back with rose tinted glasses.
I can agree with basically everything you've said, bar the assumption that the military is only recently dysfunctional. A brief look at any period of history will mostly show you a severe lack of proper leadership with very few exceptions.
I'm aware my experience isn't everyone's.
Unpopular as the reality might be, when you train people to be killers, in the lowest ranks many of whom are there instead of in gangs or jail, because there's no other options for them, don't be shocked that within that subset of the population you finding high rates of various crimes, especially violent ones.
Does that mean you're not expected to turn aggression off towards commanding officers? If you can't direct it or turn it off, are generals constantly getting yelled at and punched by enlisted soldiers?
Or does the inability of soldiers to control themselves mysteriously only apply to subordinates, women, and civilians?
> No shit! That's because the integration happened based solely on ideological and political terms, as opposed to happening in order to improve the quality of the corps.
You could exclude anyone born on monday through wednesday and it wouldn't have a big impact on quality.
But getting rid of that exclusion for ideological reasons would be a good thing. It's a stupid exclusion.
If a very big exclusion doesn't have a very big reason to exist, then the reason to get rid of it doesn't need to be huge either.
> Nobody wants to admit that women may have different needs, or worse, abilities, than men lest they be called sexist and lose their political power.
> God forbid men and women actually have differences
I don't see how these differences have anything to do with the problem here. An all-woman group would probably have similar rates to an all-male group.
And most of the differences only exist in statistical form. Individual people have individual abilities and should be sorted based on their own scores.
> The integration of women into the service was a good thing
Was it?
I, for one, would reject this thesis, except in a qualified sense. That is, I can imagine a place for women in certain roles, sure, but not all roles. Same for men. The most obvious problem is that putting men and women in a position that places equal physical demands on them either does a disservice to men by making these demands lower to allow women to meet them, or to women by imposing on them a physical regime that is wholly inappropriate for the female body.
We know that men and women respond different to various physical activities. In sports, men tend to become healthier with moderate physical activity like weight-lifting. When women take up similarly rigorous exercise, you see negative consequences to their health. Menstruation can be disrupted, for example. That doesn't mean women cannot exercise, only that the range of exercises that benefits women is not the same as the range that benefits men.
Sex blindness where sex is relevant is a great disservice to each sex. It ignores the needs of each sex for the sake of ticking off some kind of ideological check box. It is not kind or loving to either sex.
I think this is a fair question, but I would be a bit concerned if the implication here is positive masculinity includes sexual assault. I'm sure that's not what you're saying though.
one of the books he lists this year is "Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About it" by Richard Reeves. It's about exactly what you say.
... and why isn't there more classification of women as perpetrators for their bad behaviors like men? Why isn't there more "perp walking" women-as-perpetrators stories like the constant "perp walking" men as a class get? Are the sexes only unequal when it works out for the oppressed-labeled classes?
One of my rules for understanding human society is that "everything always overcorrects." We tend to overcorrect one way, then overcorrect the other way, and so on. It's a bit like if you have a spring under tension and let go of it. It does not snap back to the center. It oscillates for a while.
The steel-man argument is that men have historically dominated society and decreasing their influence is a leveling process. That is to say, when one group is dominant and another submissive, lowering the influence of the first and increasing it of the second is progress toward an equal position.
It does seem like the wave has crested on this movement for now. Most intelligent people who aren't blatantly partisan are starting to express distaste toward it, and it's becoming less of a "shunned" position to push back on it.
>men have historically dominated society and decreasing their influence is a leveling process
RICH men have hist...
RICH men in the last 150 years figured out they can use poor mens' women (Hitler, anyone?) to get wealthier and solidify power. With double the tax base and nobody but the State to raise kids, the middle class became too mired in distractions and day-to-day survival and lacked intergenerational memetic staying power to address the benefactors of modern feminism: the moneyed class. Humans create social groups to survive in nature. One of the strongest bonds is the family, much stronger than bonds to the State are. The State has an interest in reducing family bonds which might compete against the State for piety. We like to get all warm and fuzzy about social contracts and such, but the fact is the State is a human-ranch and the owners of the ranch want you productive like bees in a hive and never able to throw them off.
I digress. When it comes to merit, I strongly believe one is a fool for rejecting an otherwise ideal candidate just because he's black or not really a he. When you're making a family sure all that matters, but when running a business your goal is to make money not be the whitest most male business out there regardless of revenue! I do think UC schools deflating Asian SAT scores for social justice is as racist as inflating them.
Technical site - technical solution - bodycams everywhere/everybody. Car dashcam costs $10 these days (and anyway video recording took a massive scale in the modern war like in Ukraine, so non-currently-fighting militaries better get used to it beforehand). In case of any questionable situation - presumed guilty until there is video clearly showing otherwise - thus no "battery issues", everybody would be carrying 2-3 bodycams and spare batteries just to be sure (already happening when it comes to drones, and soon every soldier will have several drones one way or another, drones are becoming widespread like guns and soldier carrying a gun has been normal for 500 years or so).
I hadn’t thought about it that way, but I see what you mean. The idea being the more important it is to know what really happened, the more important to record evidence as it happens, right?
I think our plan’s much bigger problems are ethical, social, legal, and political. And logical: odd to solve sexual misbehavior by routinely recording people while they’re naked. But a more technical critique for a technical solution:
Encryption or not, isn’t it axiomatic that you can’t hack or steal what doesn’t exist?
When our best and brightest protective schemes can’t protect the security files of all the cleared personnel in the US [0], or the bag of digital tricks the intelligence agencies use to hack with [1], is it technically wise to generate vastly more stuff worth stealing?
UCMJ is very very different than civilian law in a lot of aspects, it's not at all outside the realm of possibility to have certain high-value areas adopt something like the above out of an abundance of caution.
yes. Otherwise you'd have no interest in having bodycams working. And in military in many situations it is pretty typical that de-facto one is guilty until proven innocent, so no new approach here.
But the United States as a whole had a reported ≈325k[2] sexual assaults in 2021. That's 0.09% of the population.
Are you really over 60 times more likely to be sexually assaulted in the military than in the general public? And are over a fifth of sexual assaults in America happening between military personnel? Somebody please tell me what I'm missing because I must be making a serious logical mistake.
[1] https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN11994
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/642458/rape-and-sexual-a...