The pentagon has released a report quantifying the rate of sexual assaults in the military, which was quickly picked up by various media outlets as evidence of a culture that victimizes women and deprives them of legal protection. Less ethical organizations, such as “The Editorial Staff” at USA Today, took it a step further with bombastic headlines invoking Vietnam-era casualty rates claiming “500 military sexual assault cases a week” that indicate “women in the military continue to be vulnerable to rape, anguish and injustice because the Pentagon’s attempts to fix the problem have been inept”. Others have joined the clarion call, demanding that the military’s UCMJ be overhauled to provide greater assurance of convictions for sexual assault cases.
The results of the study are based on a survey administered by the Pentagon and taken by 22,792 military personnel. The survey, titled the 2012 Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Members (2012 WGRA), is based on civilian gender violence data-gathering tools and takes a wide scope on what constitutes sexual assault, including “unwanted sexual contact, unwanted gender-related behaviors (i.e., sexual harassment and sexist behavior), and gender discriminatory behaviors and sex discrimination”, and even “unwanted phone calls”. Notably, the respondents also include male victims, though one wonders how many men lined up to fill out this paperwork.
Reading into the report, as opposed to grabbing outrageous numbers and running with accusatory headlines, one quickly finds statistics on actual assault cases brought up for disciplinary action :
In FY12, the Department completed development of and deployed the Defense Sexual Assault Incident Database (DSAID), a secure, centralized, case-level data system for documenting sexual assault reports and managing cases. The Department also continued to standardize case disposition definitions, resulting in a standardized definition for the term “substantiated.” At the end of FY12, the Military Services reported dispositions for 2,661 of the 3,288 military and civilian subjects receiving or waiting for a disposition for the allegations against them at the close of FY12.12 Investigations determined that 947 of the 2,661 subjects were either outside the legal authority of the Department or a military criminal investigative agency determined the allegations were unfounded (false or baseless). 13 The remaining 1,714 subjects investigated for sexual assault were presented to military commanders for consideration of disciplinary action. Of the 1,714 military subjects, commanders could not take action against 509 due to evidentiary problems. Eighty-one of the 1,714 military subjects received no disciplinary action because commanders determined the criminal allegations were unfounded (false or baseless). Commanders had sufficient evidence to take disciplinary action against 1,124 of the 1,714 military subjects. Of the 1,124 subjects, sexual assault charges were substantiated for 880 subjects for whom it was determined a sexual assault offense warranted discipline. For the remaining 244 subjects, evidence supported command action for other misconduct discovered during the sexual assault investigation (such as making a false official statement, adultery, underage drinking, or other crimes under the UCMJ), but not a sexual assault charge. Command actions for sexual assault charges and other misconduct charges included court-martial charge preferrals, nonjudicial punishment, administrative discharges, or other adverse administrative actions. Sixty-eight percent of subjects receiving disciplinary action for a sexual assault had court-martial charges preferred against them.
These statistics are from Volume 1, which most of the news outlets are referencing. The rest of the report describes institutional bromides to alleviate the problem. Volume 2 provides details on the research method :
To determine the extent of unwanted gender-related behaviors, members were provided a list of 12 sexual harassment behaviors and four sexist behaviors and were asked to indicate how often they had experienced the behaviors in the past 12 months. The 12 sexual harassment behaviors comprise three components of sexual harassment—crude/offensive behavior (e.g., repeatedly told sexual stories or jokes that are offensive); unwanted sexual attention (e.g., unwanted attempts to establish a romantic sexual relationship despite efforts to discourage it); and sexual coercion (e.g., treated badly for refusing to have sex). To be included in the calculation of the sexual harassment rate, members must have experienced at least one behavior defined as sexual harassment and indicated they considered some or all of the behaviors to be sexual harassment. Sexist behavior is defined as verbal and/or nonverbal behaviors that convey insulting, offensive, or condescending attitudes based on the gender of the respondent (Fitzgerald et al., 1988). Members who indicated they experienced unwanted gender related behaviors were then asked to provide details of the experience that had the greatest effect (i.e., where the situation occurred and who the offenders were). Trend comparisons on unwanted gender related behaviors are presented from surveys administered in 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2012.
Based on weighting of the response rate and comparing it to reported civilian phenomenon, the report extrapolates that 6.1% of female military personnel are assaulted each year, resulting in news reports of “26000″ assaults. Regarding the above disciplinary statistics, the study further concludes that only 10% of assaults are reported, presumably due to fears of retaliation. Taking this dubious claim at face value, 10 X 880 = 8800, not 26000, which in USA Today’s calculator parlance, amounts to one military rape victim every 20 minutes.
While news outlets are reporting the “26000 military women sexually assaulted each year” as fact, the findings in this report are based on subjective opinions of survey takers using a broad definition of what constitutes sexual assault. That being said, anyone who has spent time in the military knows that female service members are sexually harassed in the extreme, and that black troops are the most egregious offenders. Racial statistics are not provided in the Pentagon’s report, and for good reason, as the rate of black-on-white assaults and harassment would be revealed at nearly 100% of incidence. That is an ugly truth that feminist media outlets will not broach, preferring to spill their ink vilifying the majority of decent military men and their leadership with demands for reform to better accommodate the career aspirations of today’s young women. Our military mission is steadily morphing from national defense to being an equal-opportunity jobs program that ignores brutal realities in favor of expanding female employment prospects.
Our President, who recently emasculated American men in his computer-generated Mother’s Day proclamation that lauds women’s long march against oppression and blithely puts our mothers on “the battlefield”, was also quick to seize upon the Pentagon’s report with directives for the Secretary of Defense to “go after” and cashier military sex assault defendants. The president and his staff should have probed the report a little deeper to seek workable solutions to the problem instead of grabbing another chance to pander to female voters. Other female-centric political leaders, in demanding an overhaul of the UCMJ specifically to address sex assault cases, care not that innocent men are going to be railroaded in upcoming attempts to prove that sexual harassment reduction initiatives are succeeding. A year from now you can bet on hearing about encouraging results towards making the military a safer place for our daughters and sons.
When an organization becomes feminized, focus shifts from efficient production of goods and services to establishment of rules for the comfort and security of women. Our military, which has been at the forefront in providing opportunity for men of all backgrounds to prove themselves based on their talents and efforts, is devolving into a politically correct Petri-dish for universal inclusion in the name of social justice. As this process continues the armed forces will weaken, and we will at some point find ourselves facing an enemy that does not entertain such noble delusions. When that time comes, a good number of our young men are going to die attempting to prop up the rotten edifice of feminist overreach.
