A recent Associated Press article, called “Sex Is Major Reason Military Commanders Are Fired,” which is being picked up all over, says almost a third of fired military commanders are losing their jobs over sex. Losing your job over sex sounds kind of fun. Sounds like members of the armed services are being all that they can be by engaging in some good, old fashioned-patriotic boning. The only problem is, the article kind of confuses sex with sexual assault, and, like, helps the military sanitize its entrenched rape culture.
Just to review, rape and sexual assault are pervasive in the military. Here are some useful statistics:
- A female soldier in combat zones is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.
- In October The Huffington Post calculated that a servicewoman was nearly 180 times more likely to have become a victim of military sexual assault (MSA) in the past year than to have died while deployed during the last 11 years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- Over 20% of female veterans have been sexually assaulted while serving in the US army.
- The Pentagon estimates that only 14 percent of the assaults are reported.
- In Fiscal Year 2011, 3,192 sexual assaults were reported out of an estimated 19,000 — roughly 52 a day! (One of the reasons that rape is so underreported is because rape victims have to report their rape to their supervisor, who is often the rapist!)
- Of 3,192 sexual-assault reports in 2011 only 191 members of the military were convicted at courts martial.
- In 2011, less than 8% of reported cases went to trial.
- Of the cases that went to trial, 191 subjects were convicted, resulting in 148 offenders serving jail sentences and 122 being discharged.
- An estimated 10% of perpetrators resigned instead of facing a courts‐martial.
- 1 in 3 convicted military sex offenders remain in the military.
One of the ways the military has tried to up its rate of conviction is by charging accused rapists with adultery. In a guest column in Foreign Policy, former Marine Intelligence officer Matt Collins writes that,
One troubling tact commanders have taken is to pursue adultery charges in rape cases. For the victims, this means that their attackers will get off on a misdemeanor conviction and do not have to register as sex offenders…. Rape victims are denied the satisfaction of the military acknowledging the crime and properly punishing the attacker.
So, this is the background. But the AP story doesn’t really focus on rape. In fact, it doesn’t mention the word rape one single time. It lumps together sexual assault with things like having sex and drinking and other fun things that you’re not supposed to do in the military but that aren’t illegal in the civilian world.