The definition of sexual assault in the military has become so broad and all encompasing that it essentially means “male had negative interaction with female”. I just retired after 20yrs and can tell you that if you are male and are accused of anything at all there is an assumption of guilt until proven innocent now more than ever. Commanders don’t want to seem “soft on SA” so they jump to action before any facts come out.
In my unit one of my peers was selected for promotion to O4 with a special identifier that he should be sent to a select school because he was considered a “top 10% officer” on that promotion board. He was accused of SA shortly there after, was pushed out of his job and transferred to a lower unit, lost his promotion line number, lost his school slot and was being shuffled out of the service by the USAF so they could "be done with him. He hired a civillian attorney to fight the discharge, the accuser ended up recanting after several months, he was reinstated but the damage had already been done and his career is over. This happens with a very high frequency and is rarely reported by the media.
There is no way to “win” and I don’t know the solution, if there is one, but the pendulum has swung so far to the right that all males are branded as offenders without any due process and their careers are torpedoed just for the sake of making it clear that a commander “won’t tolerate SA within his ranks”. The guys whose careers are killed unjustifiably are considered “eggs broken to make the omlete” and everyone just looks the other way.
N.B.: There are techniques by which a small person can take down a big person – who does not know the techniques. But if the two are roughly equal in fighting skills and fitness, the big person wins. He has a longer reach, he has more raw muscular strength, he has more mass behind his punches, he has more muscle-padding to absorb the other’s punches – he wins. As between a man and a woman, that means the man usually wins.
Are sexual assaults (apparently) so frequent in the military because:
a) “sexual assault” (as Cubsfan said) has become trivialized to include interactions that most objective witnesses wouldn’t consider sexual and/or assault
b) ‘this is what happens when you force men and women to live/work together in this type of job’ (or a sentiment to that effect)
c) male soldiers rationalize that female soldiers shouldn’t get all out of sorts about being raped 'cause that’s what’s gonna happen if they’re ever captured by the enemy (i.e. they figure that any female soldier, by definition, accepts rape as an acceptable occupational hazard)
d) all of the above
e) ?
(I am especially interested to learn if ‘c’ above is felt to be playing a significant role)
ETA: On re-reading, I now realize I better make explicit that I don’t (obviously, I hope) believe that any of the above in any way minimizes the crime/violence that is sexual assault
It’s A. Sexual assault is unacceptable and that’s not up for debate. I can tell you from personal experience that they (DoD) throw new behaviors every month into the SA pile so that SA doesn’t carry the weight it used to. Violent rape and morning after regret are treated with the same broad stroke now. They aren’t the same thing and I’ll never be convinced otherwise. It happens all the time in the junior enlisted dorms. A couple airmen have some beers and hook up. The next morning there’s regret once they are sober. All it takes is for the regretful participant to mumble the words “I didn’t want to do that” and it’s over for the other airman. Notice I’m not saying him or her because it happens to guys or gals who spent an evening “experimenting” with a same sex friend and are mortified in the morning. It’s happened on 4 different occasions in my career. There is no way out and no way for the accused to salvage their own careers. Commanders today are terrified of not acting fast enough to show they take every incident seriously so they go straight to punitive measures which alienates the accused from the rest of the unit. There is no recovering from that. I’ve witnessed it too many times.
I agree with Shodan on this one. Physical assault, including sexual assault, is not just some important economic and socio-political issue. It’s real and it sucks.
Of course we should be training our armed forces personnel to defend themselves.
Most rapes in the military have male victims. As Czarcasm posted, men are also less likely to feel able to report their victimisation. How does that fit into your schema?