The attitudes are revealed not just in barracks rooms and on battlefields, but in workplaces and on social media sites, where womenÂ’s comments and photos are met with sexist epithets, calls for naked self-portraits and discussions of whether they are attractive enough to urinate on or sexually assault with various military-related gear. While top brass has demanded change, recent arrests and scandals illustrate just how far the problem reaches. This month alone, at least five commanders or sexual assault prevention representatives have been accused of or charged with misconduct.
In the latest case to become public, a sergeant first class at the United States Military Academy at West Point is accused of videotaping female cadets without their consent, sometimes in the shower. Paula Coughlin, who pushed the 1991 Tailhook sexual assault scandal into the public eye when she told her story of being sexually assaulted during the Navy aviation convention, said she believes women serving in today’s military may have to endure more than the women who served in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “It comes down to archaic attitudes held by current leadership,” said Coughlin, who is now a board member for the advocacy group Protect Our Defenders. “There are good people in the military who want that old attitude to go away,” she said, but the establishment “is clinging to traditions that are really now undermining the whole mission.”
Those traditions can run the gamut from songs and cadences that celebrate rape and violence against women to nicknames like “WM,” a term that can mean both “woman Marine” or “walking mattress.” Delilah Rumburg, CEO of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape/National Sexual Violence Resource Center, said research shows that social norms “that oppress and objectify women, value the use of power over others, tolerate violence and victim-blaming, support traditional views of masculinity as dominant and controlling and foster secrecy around individual or family matters all contribute to an environment where sexual violence can occur.”
If a workplace allows misogynistic comments, she said, it sends a message that other forms of sexual violence — to include sexual harassment, cyberbullying and even rape — will be tolerated. Phillip Carter, director of the Center for a New American Security’s Military, Veterans and Society Program and a former military police and civil affairs officer in the Army, said a testosterone-charged culture is to be expected in any organization of young, athletic men, but that leaders must focus that energy in positive ways. “The military gives an elite status to the infantry in part because it had to in order to incentivize people to serve there,” Carter said. The Army gives infantry soldiers a blue cord to wear with their uniform to show their status and “encourages a certain amount of pride and chest-thumping.”
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Does military culture foster environment of sex abuse? - News - Stripes
