About time somebody started asking the right question!
…Misogyny has always been at the root of sexual violence in the military, but two other factors contribute to it, as well: the type of man who chooses to enter the all-volunteer force and the nature of the Iraq War. The economic reasons behind enlistment are well understood. The military is the primary path out of poverty and dead-end jobs for many of the poor in America. What is less discussed is that many soldiers enlist as teenagers to escape troubled or violent homes.
Two studies of Army and Marine recruits, one conducted in 1996 by psychologists L.N. Rosen and L. Martin, and the other in 2005 by Jessica Wolfe and her colleagues of the Boston Veterans Affairs Health Center, both of which were published in the journal Military Medicine, found that half the male enlistees had been physically abused in childhood, one-sixth had been sexually abused, and 11 percent had experienced both. This is significant because, as psychologists have long known, childhood abuse often turns men into abusers.
In the ’70s, when the women’s movement brought general awareness of rape to a peak, three men — criminologist Menachim Amir and psychologists Nicholas Groth and Gene Abel — conducted separate but groundbreaking studies of imprisoned rapists. They found that rapists are not motivated by out-of-control lust, as is widely thought, but by a mix of anger, sexual sadism and the need to dominate — urges that are usually formed in childhood. Therefore, the best way to understand a rapist is to think of him as a torturer who uses sex as a weapon to degrade and destroy his victims. This is just as true of a soldier rapist as it is of a civilian who rapes.
Nobody has yet proven that abusive men like this seek out the military — attracted by its violent culture — but several scholars suspect that this is so, including the aforementioned Morris and Rutgers University law professor Elizabeth L. Hillman, author of a forthcoming paper on sexual violence in the military. Hillman writes, “There is … the possibility that the demographics of the all-volunteer force draw more rape-prone men into uniform as compared to civil society.”
The physical abuse rate of 50% doesn’t surprise me at all. I stopped being surprised long ago at all the stories Marines tell about getting whupped by their family. Of course, they don’t tell the stories in a “wow that sucked” way, they brag about it like it’s cool and sometimes follow it with, “But see, I turned out okay!”
Yeah, whatever. And you attack tiny kittens with broomsticks because…?
The sexual abuse rates DID surprise me though. One in six?? Wow. But then again, thinking back on the way some Marines act, maybe it’s not surprising at all…and neither is the idea that somehow the military is attractive to people who grew up in violent homes. That would explain why the rape and sexual assault rates are twice as high as in the civilian world.
I am a female Marine currently in the Individual Ready Reserve. I like to sleep, travel, read, eat, explore, and take photographs. I read lots of news and I like reading about life in other countries. I am easily amused and my dream job is to be snoozing in a warm patch of sunlight, hopefully with a piece of tasty cheese nearby for when I wake up hungry.
Most women I served with had been abused in childhood. But not after they joined the military. For them, the military was safe and empowering…to a point. This survey seems to support this view.
Note that I did say…”to a point”. Perhaps they simply adapted…same as a waitress in a bar adapts to a level of scumminess intolerable in almost any other working environment.