Military culture encourages sexual harassment?
The Stars & Stripes does some navel gazing today about sexual harassment in the military, and, apparently the conclusion that we should arrive at is that the military needs to be feminized. Of course, they talk to morons like Phil Carter, one of the founding members of IAVA who went on to work for the Obama Administration as their chief of detainee affairs. He was fired from that job, too.
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.”
There is also some rivalry between services and between specialties in the services, Carter said — the feeling that, for instance, “anyone who’s not at the tip of the spear is, in their view, a little bit less of a Marine.”
Carter said he countered some of the rivalry by focusing on team-building, “so that the men in our units would see themselves as on the same team as the women in their units.”
Carter also expected women “to shoot as well, run as far and do everything they were required to do, regardless of their sex.
“Different standards contribute to tension within the ranks, and allowing women into combat will only succeed to the extent that everyone is held to the same standard,” he said.
So, i guess the solution to the sexual harassment problem is that we should lower the physical and proficiency standards for men, so they won’t be jealous of women. Never you mind that those standards save lives in combat. It’s more important that we force social experiments on the troops and totally disregard that their job is to survive combat and insure that the enemy doesn’t survive.
I’ve worked with women and never felt a need to sexually harass them. I expected those in my charge to perform at the same standard as their male peers. Usually, they did. Most of the men in the military treat women as equals without trolling social media to post disrespectful comments about them. Women who come to this forum are treated respectfully without enduring much more harassment than we men endure from each other.
The problem is that the people who don’t understand military service are trying force the military to eat a shit sandwich of social experimentation which isn’t compatible with military service.
Carter is so intellectually vacant on the subject, he even blames the infantry blue cord for encouraging sexual harassment. I guess he thinks that the military should just give a blue cord to everyone in the Army and that would fix everything. The Marines don’t give out blue cords, so explain that, Phil. Dingus.
Category: Military issues
I’m having a really hard time believing any of this. All my time in the military I never heard of any rapes or sexual harassment going on. My guess is that the media is trying to break the DOD down for the introduction of women into combat units. If it does occur, the numbers are grossly inflated.
Cet article de Stars and Stripes est le merde de cheval complet.
@1 I agree. I know it does happen for sure, statistics support it. But the press makes it look like everyone in the military has got some lower rank woman in a compromised sexual position. Just don’t it warrants more PR than the nations sexual problem at large.
I don’t know, when I got my blue cord it came with a cute little blue bib scarf with two snaps on the neck ring to wear when you got dressed up….men wearing a uniform with scarves is not traditionally associated with a great deal of male on female sexual harassment….
Perhaps instead of worrying about the elite nature of troops who will daily face enemy fire causing a sexual harassment environment they should take a few moments and review the leadership of the O5 or higher ranking officers who can’t seem to understand that adultery and fornicating with subordinates is generally taboo under the UCMJ. If the men who are in charge of the military can’t stop f#cking everyone, except apparently their own wives, they see or work with how are these fine “leaders” supposed to change the culture of the rest of the military?
Is Stars and Stripes turning into the Red Army Times now?
Maybe the DoD should ask an old-time like me about sexual harrassment on the job. If some sailor hit on me, I said, “Oh, you want to have sex with me? Fine. I want to get married and have about a dozen kids, and you’ll have to spend the next 30 years in the Navy supporting all of us. That’s the only way you’ll get sex out of me.”
I’ve never seen guys run so fast in the opposite direction.
Worked every time.
Funny. I read an article in the paper Stars and Stripes, mideast edition, the other day. By the same reporter, Jennifer Hlad, with the same schewed and utterly idiotic agenda.
Link to the other article is here: http://www.stripes.com/news/does-social-media-add-fuel-to-servicemembers-degrading-actions-1.221481
The women I serve with pull their own weight and are respected. I don’t see harrassment. I see respect both ways between men and women in the military.
Who gives a shit about facebook? Are we to monitor every Soldier’s facebook page now? Get serious, Hlad & Company.
I think sexual harrassment / assault, etc. are about to be removed from military jurisdiction. We’re being pushed down a very slippery slope here.
I suspect that a good part of this is the media and feminist groups working to get women more fully integrated into combat roles before Obama leaves office. His administration is very compliant with social experimentation in the military so get what you can while the getting is good. Make women out to be victims of knuckle dragging rapers and you make more headway towards getting what you want. Combat efficiency be damned. The left does not care about combat efficiency or that integrating women in combat arms is more likely to get them killed. It is all about symbolism. All that crap about women being under a glass ceiling in the military because they don’t have all of the opportunities that men do is a bunch of crap. They don’t have those opportunities because the physical aspect is beyond the capabilities of 98% of women in the military. This is just like the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. We got bombarded with all the stories about how gay’s just want to serve their country and don’t want special treatment and just want fairness blah, blah, blah. Using sexual harassment as the calling card is just the way to get the nose under the tent. I do not believe that sexual harassment in the military is any worse than it is out in the civilian populace. I spent most of my career in the infantry with two assignments away from the FMF. I did not have a lot of exposure to females. But what I did see was not good. I saw females use their femaleness to get out of things they did not feel like doing and when there were accusations of sexual misconduct, I saw a lot of it get swept under the rug by senior leadership who did not want to deal with it. At a training command where I worked just before retirement, I saw a lot of inappropriate conduct between students and staff. This was for the most part handled in a ruthless manner and offenders were hammered. But the big problem is this,… Read more »
#1 TWO Thumbs up.
Below is what I posted from the SHARP folks dodging the furloughs and other sequester effects:
“Just when the country’s level of stupidity seems to peak, another kick in the head comes around. Just think what these 25,000 folks could accomplish if they were in an operational setting vice taking this number out of hide for some feel good program. Does anyone think these folks are bought and paid for just for being sexual assualt program experts.
Don’t get me wrong, I do have extreme sympathy for assaulted and abused individuals but the SHARPs and other untrained individuals (attending some week long BS series of lectures does not make one trained) in the mix does not provide value added. Let the victims be treated by the medical professionals and the CIDs, NCIS and other real legal or law enforcement agencies handle the paperwork.
I’m still convinced the questions asked in the polling and other data sources have been skewed to show the liberal left what they want to hear, not what they should. I’m certain that some number of she said, he said incidents and Monday morning buyer’s remorse of weekend events come into play. I just can’t believe the numbers having seen the professionals I worked with over a 30 yr career. I really get pissed off when I see three supposed leaders of the nations legislature call our professionalism and morality into question when members of their own body (Congress and Senate) are not exactly squeaky clean.”
I would also be willing to bet that the current run of Generals being investigated for sexual assualt and harrasement don’t get punished, or just slaps on the wrist before walking out the door to some high dollar post service job while the two E7s/8s get hammered.
So where are the statistics which show harassment, rapes, and assorted other forms of sexual assault to be higher in the military than in the general population?
Until it can be shown that a problem exists, how’s about we quit fixing it? I know, I know – too logical for the lefties who prefer to break something to justify their solution to a previously nonexistent problem.
standards save lives in combat
A concept which seems to elude those in power at the present time.
@4, Right on. I can’t stand watching Johnson, Petraeus, and probably Sinclair continue to draw benefits from the system they betrayed.
You want to solve the problem? Start at the top.
I’m sorry, I try not to be a grammar nazi, but I had to laugh at the wrong form of navel in your first sentence. Or maybe it wasn’t a mistake – maybe they’ve been gazing too much at the Navy and that explains why they don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to the Army.
Yeah, I really remember my blue cord making me feel elite.
I’m in, and probably stating that I like pretty ladies is enough to
A: constitute harassment
B: get me in trouble with the wife
C: end my career which has around a year left before retirement
I so cannot wait for the next powerpoint on SHARP, and I AM, and whatever acronym they come up with this weekend to restate common sense stuff to me.
Hell it’s so much more easy to pay millions on useless programs and teachers instead of realizing that a dumbass 18 year old hormone driven human with no common sense that squeeked in because of lowered standards and lack of effective punishment is going to do whatever the fuck enters his/her stupid ass mind when the sun sets and a bunker looks like a happy surprise sex cuddle palace…
Oh and the workplace searches are also such fun. Like I have hidden panels of playmates in lifesize posters that rotate when I hit a button and that they might walk in and SURPRISE me looking at them…
I have motion sensors that auto rotate that shit.
Many moons ago I spent a brief amount of time as my brigades EEO representative, and had to take part in an investigation of an E-8 recruiter scumbag POS who used his position to attempt to gain “favors” from some of the young female (E-2. E-3) soldiers. His mistake was messing with one young soldier who was 6 feet tall and built like an amazon goddess…and when she said no, that REALLY meant no. She kicked his ass when he got too touchy feely. This dumbshit then tried to write her up for assaulting an NCO, and THAT is how his dumbassery made to to my desk. She wasn’t even going to report what had happened, until he tried to recommend her for an article 15. She countered with accusing him of attempted rape, an investigation ensued, and several other females came forward. In the end, homeboy admitted he was a douchebag, and he ended up being dismissed from the service, and lost it all. I left that position and returned to my favorite ever job of being a platoon sergeant, and one of my soldiers was said gutsy female soldier. We are still friends. If this happened today it would probably be national news. Oh, and it was the only time in 29 years that I saw something like this happen.
there was the time when I walked into a workroom full of mixed male and female subordinates and said “OK, boys and girls, time to get back to work” (we had been sitting out an equipment failure) and found myself defending my “sexual harassment” to my superiors… one ‘lady’ (funny, the one who would have stepped into my job had I been taken out) had complained that I had called her a ‘girl’. What saved me was that I had said ‘boys and girls’. (Apologies of overliberal use of quotes!) How much of this purported sexual harassment is of this nature? The media makes it sound like any female would have to fight off the rapists just to get chow.
This all boils down to political agenda and ensuring certain special interest groups continuing to vote the way that they are.
LGBT or whatever “alternative” lifestyle people are choosing to practice this week want to accepted by society. In my opinion they think that once the military accepts them, society has to soon follow. Clinton bought their vote with Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Now OBummer is taking it to a new level.
Problem is that educated people are going to continue to believe what they want to, regardless of popular public opinion.
It’s ironic that our Commander in Queef himself stated “I will limit the influence of special interest groups on Capitol Hill.” Many more lies later here we are with a GIANT shit sandwich that we’re all forced to take a bite of.
How about we poll the women in our military and ask them what they WANT?
Remember-this administration is the same one that recently issued a letter, via the Departments of Education and Justice, that stated that sexual harassment was any speech or behavior that offended anyone or made anyone uncomfortable-no “reasonable man” standard, never mind free speech on campus, everything entirely subjective. That puts all the rest of us at the mercy of the most thin skinned and prone to take offense. Lefties have always tried to make their expectations of how the world should be fit how the world actually is, and it inevitably fails with disastrous, if not tragic results. Now they have control of the military and don’t have to worry about re-election. All of this was entirely predictable, alas.
Sounds to me like Carter didn’t get sexually harassed as much as he hoped he would — and resents the hell out of it.
I had females and males under me in my supply room. They were all my minions, equally. When it came to PT, I would not allow the discussion of how many push-ups or how fast of a run they did; I made them talk about how many points they got. The highest points got “chief minion” status for the rest of the month and was in charge of the supply room when I wasn’t there (even if it was a PV2 and I had a couple of SPCs).
As for harassment, I didn’t sexually harass any of my soldiers, male or female. I did harass them, just the normal kind, but I did that equally for everyone. I did not tolerate anyone being treated differently in my supply room. Even current 11-series who were assigned to me for temp duty were equal to everyone else. To the point that a CPL tried to complain when I gave a SPC leadership of a mission over him (believing that CPL was a higher rank than SPC).
If you don’t see robberies, burglaries, and murders, did they happen? People who rape, sexually assault and systematically sexually harass people are predators- they cover their tracks and groom victims to be in situations that will make the victim seems less credible. Just because “you don’t see it” doesn’t mean it is not happening. That “I didn’t see it, so I don’t believe it” is the culture this article is about. That culture isn’t unique to the military, but the military does amplify it.
Many times I worked with females, above, below and equal to me. I tried my best to treat them all with the same level of respect. Sometimes my thoughts were not perfect, my comments not right and I learned how to be a better individual. I respect anyone, male or female, who dons the uniform and puts in the good fight.
Having said that, Phil Carter and Jennifer Hilad, neither of them know their ass from a hole in the ground.
More turd powder sniffers, just when I was thinking Monkress and Ladner were keeping the turd powder to themselves.
Please provide “empirical evidence” that the military “amplifies it” instead of just emotional bullshit conjecture.
@ #21: So, if someone says that it happened, when in fact the robbery did not even occur, then an entire county should receive a power point presentation anyway??
Antarctica exists. My having never been there does not alter the value of Antarctica or in any way limit it’s existence.
@16 – That is part of the problem. Comments offensive to over-sensitive feminists and harmless flirting are equated with actual rape and assault, lessening the severity of rape and assault. Women, even civilians, need to toughen up. Comments you don’t like are not assault or harassment unless the person is relentless, doesn’t take no for an answer, and keeps you from doing your job. Normal give and take between the genders is not harassment. Did he hit you? Not the football slap on the butt for a good job, but hit you with intent to harm you? THAT’S assault. Does he keep touching you after you said no? That’s assault. Did he have sex with you against your will? That’s rape. Not, did you get drunk and have a good ol’ time that night but were embarrassed and regretted it the next day. That is NOT rape. It goes the other way too. There was an incident when my son was in tech school last summer. A woman was found drunk and naked in the bushes on base. To try and get out of trouble herself, she said she had been raped. Fortunately for the male involved, it was quickly determined that she had NOT been raped. Did she get charged with false reporting? Violation of several conduct rules? Nope, she got recycled and ended up in my son’s class shortly before he graduated. If I were a man, I certainly would never want to serve with her or trust her in any way. In another story from my son, a gay guy in his BMT flight was caught making a list of the top ten hottest guys in the flight. Did he get charged with harassment? Kicked out of BMT? Nope, he got a little counseling. Any of you guys want to deploy with him? Probably not. All of those MTIs are being court martialed yet the military doesn’t wash out recruits with the same issues. My daughter left for BMT on Tuesday. We had several conversations about all of this before she left. She’s had to deal with… Read more »
Blue cords and chest thumping…you bet! I was and still am proud to have that blue cord and I did my share of chest thumping in the day. Did it make me want to jump the first female I saw? Of course not. So what to we do, not let the military legal authorities in place deal with problem children? No we come out with phoney, BS Power Point Presentations and let the liberal left, feminist agendas and the POTUS tell us they have the answer. Let’s just take away the blue cords, the ribbons, the insignias, the combat patches, unit patches. Nothing but name tags so we all look like we work at Burger King. That will demoralize everyone down to an equal level. No one will ever think about sex again. Much less sex in a inappropriate manner. What lunacy are we coming to the the 21st century military? I, as an old vet just don’t understand. My day is long gone I gather.
@25 Thank you, and thank you again. Common sense has been traded for “open mindedness” to the point their brains have fallen out on the floor
The solution can be summed up in two words: PT BELT
Now, this is just me writing, maybe if we segregated the military male from gay and female – would sexual harrassment and assault go to it’s pre-Vietnam days?
Which woman 3-star today will be Dempsey’s replacement next year – in time for the elections since women in the military is a successful wedge issue?
Okay, this shit is going beyond retard at this point. I spent 21 years in the uniform and I got harassed twice during that time. Once as an A1C by the CC’s exec (dumbass butter bar metrosexual with serious delusions of manliness) and the second time by a MSgt with short man’s disease on steroids. In my opinion and based on shit I deal with at work, sexual harassment in the military is a two way street. Those females who are harassed are either 1) spineless and don’t stand up for themselves, or 2) encourage the behavior through their own actions or speech, or, and this is the big one, 3) get stupid fucking drunk, don’t know where/when/whom and then cry foul after the fact. How you carry yourself drives how you are treated. And, if it’s a supervisor, as in case two above (MSgt with short mans disease on steroids), you FUCKING REPORT THEM AND DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES. Otherwise, STFU.
The people who are going to harass and violate policy are going to find a way to do it regardless of any training. All that will result is the mass punishment of everyone else.
Coming from grunt land to working in an office with females I was in culture shock. They were just like Infantryman in their manner of speaking. Within a week one had told me about her having a dream where I was her gynecologist and the women in the office started calling me “doctor”. Another has a sign on her desk that says “sexual harassment will not be reported, but it will be graded on a scale of 1 through 10”.
I have been looking at a great deal of data lately on the surge of sexual assaults in the military and none of it makes sense to me. Terms are thrown around w/o uniform definition and survey results are intermingled with filed complaints, convictions, you name it. Folks play with the data to compare rates of reported sexual assaults in the military versus the civilian population and use whole population numbers, as if, for instance, the inclusion of a 100-year-old civilian or a three-year old child in the general population stats can be compared to the ages of military members. The Pentagon previously reported that there has been a startling up-tick in sexual assaults in the military since 2006, with 3,191 REPORTS of sexual assault throughout the US military in 2011. I do not know whether the military has more of a sexual assault problem today than it did, say, in 1944. The problem is that unless one is willing to say that the military either is recruiting sexual offenders or is actually creating them in service, the so-called surge of sex crimes claimed is very curious, indeed.
AirCav, maybe the potential for SH is there because of rank structure. We’ve all seen right here that it is not limited to men on women, but also extends to women on men and same-gender-on-same-gender.
It’s one thing to have pictures in your footlocker. It’s another to act on some impulse that you know is just wrong.
Twist, you have my sympathy.