This dissertation examines the relationship between masculinity in American military culture and the prevalence of rape through a gender perspective. It argues that the extreme form of emphasized masculinity within the military contributes to a culture that rationalizes and increases the risk of sexual harassment, assault, and rape. The dissertation will analyze how military gender constructions and narratives influence sexual behaviors, such as rape being used to demonstrate power or relieve sexual tension according to gender roles. It will also distinguish between male and female rape in the military, though both are ultimately driven by expectations of masculinity and femininity.

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Academic year 2014-2015
Candidate number: 10761
MSc International Security
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Dissertation
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Masculinity in the American military culture and the
occurrence of the rape phenomenon: a gender
perspective.
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This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the award of the degree of MSc in International Security.
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2. Statement
This dissertation contains no plagiarism, has not been submitted in
whole or in part for the award of another degree, and is solely the work
of Anne-Lise Vray.
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Anne-Lise Vray, 27 August 2015.
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3. Abstract
The following dissertation studies the relationship and correlations between rape and the military
realm, and do so from a gender perspective. It focuses more precisely on the American military, where
rape, both male-on-female and male-on-male is fairly common. This paper aims to explore how the
gender narratives that are at the roots of, and therefore embedded in the U.S. military, influence sexual
behaviors in this particular environment, and lead to ‘military-specific’ forms of rape (rape as a
demonstration of power and hierarchy, rape as a relief for males’ sexual tension, rape as an homosocial
behavior etc).
This dissertation will argue that the gender perceptions, in particular the way masculinity is shaped and
pushed to an extreme within the American military, influence and increase the sexual pressure that is
put on soldiers, and therefore ‘rationalize’ the phenomena of sexual harassment, sexual assault and
rape within the American troops. Indeed, this paper will demonstrate that it is embedded within the
military institution in general, and the American one in particular, that joining the military means
breaking one’s inner little boy and turn him into a ‘real man’. Femininity and female attributes,
understood as everything that is outside of this militarized masculinity, are used as means of pressure,
to mock and ‘toughen up’ the soldiers. In this environment, while men have to adopt an extreme and
standardized form of masculinity, women also have to ‘man up’, i.e to make themselves more
masculine, if they only hope to gain respect from their male fellows, but also if they want to reduce
their chances of facing sexual harassment or worse. This manichean vision of gender leads to a no-
holds-barred ‘race for masculinity’ where one can use things like sexual assault and rape to gain the
upper hand, control and respect over a fellow soldier. This also comes hand-in-hand with other
corollary phenomena, such as largely unreported sexual assaults and rapes (because of fear, hierarchy,
shame etc) or servicewomen stating that they believe rape is to be expected in the military.
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4. This paper will also distinguish male and female rape, which are two distinct yet related phenomena in
the sense that they are both driven by gender expectations, but the depicted causes and the actual
consequences are different whether the victim is a man or a woman.
This dissertation aims to modestly contribute to the ongoing effort to raise awareness on these
phenomena, to more and more hold the assailants accountable, but also more broadly to bring a general
reflexion on genders by deconstructing them, both in the civilian society and the military realm, even
though in the latter this reflexion still remains shy.
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WORD COUNT: 12,439
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5. Table of content
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Introduction: pages 6 to 11
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Chapter 1: Theoretical considerations on gender, masculinities and sexual violence pages 12 to 24
• 1. Rape and gender in the civilian society: pages 12 to 15
• 2. Military masculinity: pages 16 to 20
• 3. American military masculinity: pages 20 to 24
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Chapter 2: American military culture and sexual violence pages 25 to 37
• 1. American military culture and gender constructions: pages 25 to 27
• 2. Male and female rape within the American military culture: pages 28 to 30
• 3. Sexual assault responses and American military culture: pages 31 to 38
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Conclusion: pages 39 to 41
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Bibliography: pages 42 to 45
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6. In 2013, the American President Barack Obama addressed a speech to graduating students from
the U.S. Naval Academy, and stated that ‘those who committed sexual assault are not only committing
a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that makes our military strong. That’s why we have to be
determined to stop these crimes, because they’ve got no place in the greatest military on
earth’ (Obama, 2013). A few months later, the U.S. leader gave the Department of Defense and the
American military a one-year deadline to make significant improvements with regard to addressing the
‘issue’ of sexual assaults within the national troops. ‘If I do not see the kind of progress I expect, then
we will consider additional reforms that may be required to eliminate this crime from our military
ranks’, Obama (2013) stated. Thus, the sexual assault phenomenon in the United States military has
become such a major concern that the President of the country himself is pushing for real actions to be
taken. Obama’s ultimatum conducted the Department of Defense to release last year a report on Sexual
Assault Prevention and Response, which acknowledges as well at the very beginning (actually in the
very first sentence of the report’s Executive Summary) that ‘Sexual assault is a significant challenge
facing the United States military and the nation’ (DoD, 2014). Indeed, according to the data of the
same institution, ’20,000 service members experienced at least one sexual assault during 2014, a ratio
of 1 in 20 women and 1 in 100 men’ (Protect Our Defenders, no date). However, even though
proportionally more women are victims of sexual assault and/or rape, a higher number of men undergo
these crimes. According to the Department of Defense (2013), there were 2,204,839 officers and
enlisted members in the total military force of the United States in 2013. Of these service members,
16.2% were women (358,156) and 83.8% were men (1,846,680). Any reference to the American
military in this dissertation will always be understood with regard to the previous numbers and to the
U.S. army as composed by the following service branches: the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the
Air Force and the Coast Guard.
The phenomenon of rape and sexual assault in the U.S. military, as spread out as it is, is still largely
left untold. ‘The vast majority of these cases went unreported. Fewer than 1 in 5 victims openly
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7. reported their assault. For those victims who did report, 62% experienced professional, social, or
administrative retaliation or punishment from their commanders and their peers. At the same time, only
175 cases resulted in a conviction for a registrable sex offense, and charges were filed in just 38% of
reported cases. In addition, 1 in 4 women and 1 in 14 men experienced sexual harassment in
2014’ (Protect Our Defenders, no date). Thus, and as this dissertation will study more in depth, this
major issue for the American military has not yet been properly and fully addressed.
Terminologically, the definitions of notions such as rape, sexual assault or sexual harassment are not
always unanimous and the boundaries between the terms not always clear. As noted by Rosen (2007:
946), ‘comparisons across studies of sexual victimization, both military and civilian, are often
problematic because of differences in method, including different definitions of rape and sexual assault
and different time frames in which victimization is reported. For example, in a landmark study of
sexual assault on college campuses (Fisher, Cullen, & Turner, 2000), the definition of rape included
oral and anal penetration and penetration with an object. These behaviors were not included in the
definition of rape in a study conducted at the U.S. Air Force Academy but were categorized as “sexual
assault” (Office of the Inspector General, Department of Defense [DoD], 2003).’ Thus, the American
Department of Defense (2014), acknowledging that its ‘definition of sexual assault in the military is
broader than the crime of rape’ defines sexual assault as an ‘intentional sexual contact characterized by
use of force, threats, intimidation, or abuse of authority or when the victim does not or cannot consent.
The term includes a broad category of sexual offenses consisting of the following specific UCMJ
offenses: rape, sexual assault, aggravated sexual contact, abusive sexual contact, forcible sodomy
(forced oral or anal sex), or attempts to commit these acts’. The Uniform Code of Military Justice
(UCMJ) indeed distinguishes in its article 120 different sexual offenses, and defines a rapist as ‘any
person subject to this chapter who commits a sexual act upon another person by; (1) using unlawful
force against that other person; (2) using force causing or likely to cause death or grievous bodily harm
to any person; (3) threatening or placing that other person in fear that any person will be subjected to
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8. death, grievous bodily harm, or kidnapping; (4) first rendering that other person unconscious; or (5)
administering to that other person by force or threat of force, or without the knowledge or consent of
that person, a drug, intoxicant, or other similar substance and thereby substantially impairing the
ability of that other person to appraise or control conduct; is guilty of rape and shall be punished as a
court-martial may direct’ (Protect Our Defenders, no date).
Definitions of sexual assault or rape are also often gendered, only considering the case of sexual
offenses on females and therefore completely ignoring the possibility of male rape. Thus for example,
until 2012, the FBI was defining forcible rape as ‘the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and
against her will’, before finally changing it for the following gender neutral definition: ‘penetration, no
matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex
organ of another person, without the consent of the victim’ (FBI, 2014). Similarly, the former article
120 of the UMCJ limited rape to ‘an act of sexual intercourse with a female not his wife, by force and
without consent’ (UMCJ, no date). The text, modified in 2012, was therefore not only dismissing the
eventuality of male rape, but also of marital rape.
Finally, another definition was the one adopted by the American Medical Association (AMA) and the
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists(ACOG), which had a much broader vision of
the notion of rape than the Department of Defense, the FBI or the UMCJ. The AMA and the ACOG
thus consider rape to be ‘any act that occurred without an individual’s consent, which involved the use
or threat of force, and included attempted or completed sexual penetration of the victim’s vagina,
mouth or rectum’, while ‘sexual harassment was defined to include quid pro quo demands and hostile
environments. Hostile environments included unwanted and uninvited: sexual teasing, jokes, remarks,
or questions, pressure for dates, sexually suggestive looks, gestures, letters, or other sexual attention,
including unwanted sexual contact. Unwanted sexual contact was defined as unwanted intentional
sexual touching or fondling of buttocks, thigh, leg, breasts, genitals, or other body part (independent of
rape). The term ‘’sexualized environment’’ indicates a hostile work setting’ (Sadler et al. 2003: 3).
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9. Logically, when referring to rape or sexual assault, this dissertation, since it will mostly study military
settings, will use the definitions provided by the Department of Defense and the UMCJ. Thus, the rape
phenomenon understood as such has increasingly attracted attention and raised concerns, including at
the higher levels of decision and power. It is consequently legitimate to wonder why sexual assault is
occurring so frequently in the institution representing and embodying discipline and order, in the ‘army
strong’ like its recruitment slogan claims, in the world’s largest army, in ‘the greatest military on
earth’ (Obama, 2013).
This dissertation will analyze the rape phenomenon within the American military from a gender
perspective, that is, will argue that intra-troops sexual assaults are driven by dynamics of power based
on gender expectations. Gender, according to the United Nations (no date), ‘refers to the social
attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female and the relationships between
women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations between women and those between men.
These attributes, opportunities and relationships are socially constructed and are learned through
socialization processes. They are context/time-specific and changeable. Gender determines what is
expected, allowed and valued in a women or a man in a given context’. Following this definition,
gender within the specific context of the U.S. military will be a force that pushes certain behaviors to
be tolerated, others to be prohibited, that decides of what is acceptable or not, ranks some values and
draws specific expectations.
In its first part, this dissertation will conduct an in-depth study of gender, sexual harassment, sexual
assault and rape from a theoretical point of view. This entails explaining gender broadly, along with
widespread conceptions of masculinity, femininity and gender stereotypes. In this chapter, data on
gender, rape and the correlations between the two will also be analyzed, first within the civilian
context, and then within the military context (other than American), in order to be able to then put into
perspective the data that will be used on the American military in the second part, and introduced in
this first part. This first chapter aims to provide the bases for understanding sexual violence within the
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10. U.S. military context by giving a background on the sexual assault phenomenon in other contexts as
well as on the American society in general. Moreover, it will study and discuss the connections that
exist between the gender narratives that are displayed in the U.S. military and the inherent sexual
violence that lies in the very roots of the institution.
Using the first chapter’s data as a theoretical frame, the second part of this dissertation will then
exclusively study the rape phenomenon (and its affiliates) from a gender perspective in the American
military context. This part will first critically analyze the construction of gender, and of masculinity in
particular, and assess the potential connections between these gender narratives that are part of the
American military culture and the development of dangerous and toxic phenomena such as intra-troops
sexual assaults. This chapter of the dissertation will also talk about both female and male rape, their
different meanings and perceptions. Indeed, even though male rape is a widespread phenomenon
touching 1 in 100 servicemen, it is far less known and ‘public’ than female rape, just like some of the
definitions of rape quoted earlier have already proved. Yet, male rape entails an incredible level of
violence. Thus, as Belkin (2012: 80) found out, ‘in the latter decades of the twentieth century, male
American service members penetrated each other’s bodies « all the time.» They forced broom handles,
fingers and penises into each other’s anuses. They stuck pins into flesh and bones. They vomited into
one another’s mouths and forced rotten food down each other’s throats. They inserted tubes into each
other’s anal cavities and then pumped grease through the tubes. And parallel to these literal
penetrations, they subjected each other to continuous, symbolic penetrations as well’. Male rape is also
an ambivalent and tricky incident, as it often mixes or is confused with what is referred by the
literature as homosocial behaviors. While these behaviors can sometime lead to consensual
relationships between two male soldiers, it can also drift onto unwanted sexual contacts, and the
present dissertation will analyze the link that the latter may have with gender expectations pressure.
Through a critical analysis of literature, testimonies and official reports, the second chapter of this
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11. research paper will therefore study the ins and outs of both female and male rape, in order to
understand if and how their causes, consequences, and perceptions differ from one another.
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12. I. Theoretical considerations on gender, masculinities and sexual violence
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1. Rape and gender in the civilian society
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Rape is a widespread, cross-cultural phenomenon that has ‘always’ been happening, regardless
of the region, but that can be particularly endemic, as this paper will show, depending on the situation
and the particular setting. In the civilian society, rape along with sexual assault and sexual harassment
are sad realities whose occurrence and regularity is sometimes difficult to believe. As previously seen,
the definition of the term ‘rape’ is not a place of consensus in the United States. Similarly worldwide,
this notion is discussed and its limits and inclusions greatly vary from one country to another.
However, an international institution, the World Health Organization (no date), provides a definition
that aims to be common to all the nations, and thus states that sexual violence is ‘any sexual act,
attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual comments or advances, or acts to traffic, or otherwise
directed, against a person’s sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to
the victim, in any setting, including but not limited to home and work’. The definition goes on by
saying that ‘sexual violence includes rape, defined as physically forced or otherwise coerced
penetration – even if slight – of the vulva or anus, using a penis, other body parts or an object. The
attempt to do so is known as attempted rape. Rape of a person by two or more perpetrators is known as
gang rape’.
Rape and its corollaries are therefore phenomena that have not yet been eradicated from modern
societies. Thus, all the countries in the world continue to undergo these crimes, for some at higher rates
than others. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (no date), Sweden is the
Western country with the highest number of sexual offenses, with in 2013 190 sexually violent events,
that is rape and sexual assault, for 100,000 inhabitants. Of all the 116 respondents to this UN survey,
the country with the most sexual violence is St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with a rate of rape and
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13. sexual assault of 209.4 for 100,000 population in 2013. Countries like Costa Rica (149.4), the
Maldives (166.1), Ireland (137.2) or Scotland (161.5) are among the other respondents with the highest
sexual violence rates. For this survey, the United States did not provide data. However, the Rape,
Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN, no date) tells us that ‘according to the U.S. Department
of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)--there is an average of 293,066 victims (age
12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year’, which in an even more significant way brings a
sexual assault to occur in the United States every 107 seconds.
Overall and worldwide, the first victims of sexual violence are women. Indeed according to the United
Nations (no date), ‘up to 70 per cent of women experience violence in their lifetime, according to
country data available. Women aged 15-44 are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from
cancer, car accidents, war and malaria, according to World Bank data. It is estimated that, worldwide,
one in five women will become a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime’. Hence, women
represent a high-risk population that is globally more exposed to sexual violence than to many other
international scourges. However, as this dissertation will demonstrate, sexual violence against men is
also often underreported, especially in some particular settings, such as the military context. Thus for
example, the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (2010: 18) tells us that
‘approximately 1 in 71 men in the United States (1.4%) reported having been raped in his lifetime,
which translates to almost 1.6 million men in the United States (Table 2.2)’, although acknowledging
that ‘too few men reported rape in the 12 months prior to taking the survey to produce a reliable 12
month prevalence estimate’. From these statements, it is consequently logical to conclude that there are
many more than 1.6 million American men who have undergone rape during the course of their life.
As for the characteristics of the offenders in the U.S, the last report of the Bureau Justice Statistics
dates from 1997 and do not provide any date on the assailants’ gender whatsoever, hence implying that
all the perpetrators are necessarily men. With regard to the offenders, informations that we do get are
that 52% of them are white, and that they are 31 years old on average. In addition to that, the National
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14. Crime Victimization Study (2013) tells us that 82% of sexual assaults were perpetrated by someone
known to the victim, while about 50% of the total sexual violence occurred within one mile of the
victim’s home.
Explanations for sexual violence vary a lot depending on the context, but some common readings of
these events are often given. Indeed, gender is regularly linked in some way, directly or indirectly, to
the phenomenon of rape and its corollaries. Thus for example, Roland Littlewood (1997: 4) asserts that
‘the standard view, such as it is, argues that collective sexual violence is only the frankest expression
of men’s power over women: sexual only in that the genitals are the emblems of the politics of
gender’. According to the United Nations’ definition previously quoted, males and females have been
assigned different roles, consequently named gender roles, which have also given birth to gender
expectations and gender performances. These gendered « packages » have a major influence on many
areas of men and women’s lives, and also lead to create a hierarchy between sexes, as well as within
the sexes. Hence, as explained by Goldstein (2001: 332), ‘men and women in virtually all human
cultures occupy dominant and subordinate status ranks. Men often exploit women’s work, with and
without pay - including sex work, domestic work, child care, nursing, and the array of low-wage jobs
in modern industrial economies. Overall, though not everywhere, men enforce women’s subordinate
condition with widespread threats and uses of « hidden violence… rape, battery, and other forms of
sexual and domestic violence. »’. Thus, sexual violence is a mean for men to strengthen their dominant
position, already embedded in society, over women. As a consequence, an explanation for rape and
sexual assault comes from a competition for domination, a need of the ‘stronger’ group to maintain and
intensify its ascendance on the ‘weaker’ group. Part of the narratives of widespread masculinity
therefore consists in the sexual domination of femininity, both the inner femininity that one may have,
and the femininity of others, which can refer to both men and women. This need for sexual
domination, when pushed further or to an extreme, can lead to sexual violence, and to the development
of phenomena such as rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment. This deep call for sexual ascendance
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15. is exacerbated in the military, where logics of power are one of the keys to the system. Indeed as
mentioned before, some settings and contexts, where some specific narratives of masculinity are in
place, make more rapes and sexual assaults more likely to happen. One of these settings, on which this
dissertation will focus, is the military context. Indeed, ‘military culture is built upon a tenuous balance
of aggression and obedience. The potential for sexual violence exists whenever there is too much of
either’ (Penn, no date). To start, sexual violence is observed at a much higher rate in countries or
regions in war, and consequently with a heavy military, paramilitary or militia presence. Thus,
according to the UN (no date), ‘in the Democratic Republic of Congo approximately 1,100 rapes are
being reported each month, with an average of 36 women and girls raped every day. It is believed that
over 200,000 women have suffered from sexual violence in that country since armed conflict
began.The rape and sexual violation of women and girls is pervasive in the conflict in the Darfur
region of Sudan. Between 250,000 and 500,000 women were raped during the 1994 genocide in
Rwanda. Sexual violence was a characterizing feature of the 14-year long civil war in Liberia. During
the conflict in Bosnia in the early 1990s, between 20,000 and 50,000 women were raped’. Again, these
numbers only mention female rape and completely dismiss the occurrence of male rape.
Hence, sexual violence plays an important role in wars, armed conflicts and military settings in
general. Studying this phenomenon, Belkin (2012: 83, emphasis added) found that ‘in almost every
cultural and institutional context imaginable, penetration is associated with masculinity and dominance
while penetrability is a marker of subordination. The person who penetrates dominates while the one
who is penetrated capitulates. The penetrator is masculine while the penetrated is feminine. In an
important essay on American football, the late folklorist Alan Dundes interpreted the game as a ritual
in which players « assert their masculinity by penetrating the endzones of their rivals. » More broadly,
Dundes found that, « Answering the question of who penetrates whom is a pretty standard means of
testing masculinity cross-culturally. » Nowhere has this been more true than in the military’.
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16. 2. Military masculinity
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As acknowledged by Connell (2005) in the very title of his book, there are several types of
masculinity; several masculinities exist. Military masculinity is one of them, constructed in a specific
way that is consistent with the military goals, dynamics and interests. Indeed, as noted by Kronsell
(2005: 282), ‘in comparison to other institutions in society, defense and military institutions have been
associated with specific gender stereotypes, surprisingly consistent across both cultures and time.
Military and security institutions have been historic sites of hegemonic masculinity. Because their sex
has been taken as a given, a ‘natural’ circumstance determining their status as the country’s defenders,
only men have been required to become the nation’s defenders’.
Similarly, Brown (2012) argues that ‘the military is particularly important to scholars of gender
because of its importance as a site for the creation and propagation of ideas about masculinity, as well
as its position at the nexus of gender and citizenship’. Thus, the military creates a specific form of
masculinity which, despite the common features it may have with other types of masculinities,
constitutes a construction of its own. It even appears that military masculinity is an ideal for manhood,
the warrior representing a gender ideal. Indeed, as Goldstein (2001: 266) puts it, ‘being a warrior is a
central component of manhood, forged by male initiation rituals worldwide. The warrior, foremost
among male archetypes… has been the epitome of masculinity in many societies. A man learns
to deny all that is ‘feminine’ and soft in himself’. Goldstein goes on explaining the warrior’s
characteristics that are recurrent across many cultures: physical courage, endurance, strength and will,
and honor (‘the warrior is a ‘man of honour’’: this statement already tells us that we are only talking
about men here). All these elements are traditionally associated with men and masculinity. These
specific narratives of masculinity start, Goldstein (2001: 264) tells us, with rites of passage from
boyhood to manhood. ‘In societies with frequent warfare, young males must participate in war - and,
for some, kill an enemy - before being called a man’.
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17. Moreover, according to many scholars, the purpose of the construction of this specific military
masculinity, that is, a deep and indestructible link made between being a man and being a soldier, is
actually to get men to keep fighting, and to give them a ‘primitive’ incentive to do so. Thus, Belkin
(2012: 38) argues that ‘troops would flee from the battlefield if they did not fear that disloyalty would
cause them to lose their masculinity. Hence, armed forces carefully manipulate shame and gender such
that service members who fail to conform to archetypal understandings of military masculinity such as
bravery, discipline, stoicism, sacrifice and loyalty are punished through gendered shaming. […] From
this perspective, military masculinity is a bag of « tricks to make men keep fighting » and works « to
coax and tick soldiers into participating in combat… by linking attainment of manhood to performance
in battle. »’.
Military masculinity, at an even larger extent than other masculinities, is constructed in opposition and
rejection of femininity and anything that can relate to it. First of all, this includes the repudiation of all
the features that are traditionally associated with women and femininity. Thus, ‘in the military, the
issue of silence relates to men and their gender. Men are soldiers, but women are female soldiers.
Women have a gender and a sex; men do not’ (Eduards, in Kronsell, 2005: 283). Masculinity is so
embedded in the military that it becomes the norm for anyone who enlist, including females. In a study
conducted on female soldiers and published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine (Sadler et
al., 2003: 5), 28% of the respondents recognized ‘deliberately making themselves look more masculine
or unattractive’, and this is only the physical aspect of it. Entering the military, in its basic sense,
means to reach the final stage of manhood, the apogee of masculinity, as well as to accept a profound
antagonism between this new status and anything that can be read as ‘not-being-a-man’, and therefore
to renounce to all these ‘not manly’ or ‘not manly enough’ behaviors and features. Thus, ‘warriors do
attain masculine status through practiced disavowals of the unmasculine that saturate day-to-day
practice in modern military organizations throughout the world, including the American armed forces.
The ideal of military masculinity often does go hand in hand with practices which disavow the
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18. unmasculine. A man learns to ‘deny all that is ‘feminine’ and soft in himself’. Masculinity often
depends on an ‘other’ constructed as feminine and armed forces intentionally mold males into warriors
by attaching to ‘manhood’ or ‘masculinity’ those qualities that make good warriors.’ (Belkin, 2012:
27).
This rejection of the ‘unmasculine’ also includes the exclusion from the ‘real-men’s club’ of gay men,
seen as disruptive for the masculine order in place within the military. According to Goldstein (2001:
374), ‘the widespread homophobia found in modern armies may result from the need to feminize
enemies. […] Their presence [of gay men] makes ambiguous the construction of male soldiers as
dominant sexual actors whose submissive-receptive partners are women external to the military force -
back home, in the next brothel or port, or in pin-ups and wallet photos. Because homosexuality is read
as effeminate, the presence of openly homosexual men shatters the homosocial unity… needed to
successfully carry out aggression against the enemy conceived as less than a man, that is, a woman’.
And hence, these narratives of aversion for anything that can be read as ‘feminine’ or ‘gay’ are carried
out throughout the military, both in time and space, and so from the very beginning. As Goldstein
(2001: 265) puts it, ‘the military provides the main remnant of traditional manhood-making rituals,
especially in boot camp and military academies where young men ‘endure tests of psychological or
physical endurance. The epithets of drill instructors… - ‘faggot,’… ‘pussy,’ or simply ‘woman’ - left
no doubt that not becoming a soldier meant not being a man. This method takes advantage of the fluid
character of adolescent recruits’ psychic structures, « preaching with a fanatical zeal the cult of
masculine violence. » Drill sergeants draw on « the entire arsenal of patriarchal ideas… to turn civilian
male recruits into ‘soldiers.’ »’. In addition to that, homosexuals are also regularly paradoxically
presented as both dangerous sexually-obsessed individuals and weak ‘undermen’ who can be easily
dominated by the ‘real men’. Thus, talking about the US military culture, Belkin (2012: 99) tells us
that ‘incoherent imaginations about gay men as violently aggressive penetrators but also passively
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19. weak victims of penetration’ have been spread out to reinforce the ‘all heterosexual male soldiers’
rhetoric.
As a consequence, part of these narratives also consist in maintaining a highly sexualized environment,
in particular by using a sexualized language that aims to constantly diminish the ‘other’, that is, the
unmasculine, the feminine, and the homosexual. ‘Abusive language commonly used within the
military has been sexualized, reinforcing an association of sexuality with aggression and violence and
indicating that military institutions and military practice have been built on a particular understanding
of the relationship between violence and sexuality’ (Kronsell, 2005: 285). This sexualized environment
both reinforces and is based on ‘an almost universal preoccupation with sex’ of soldiers, ‘an
« obsession with sex in a community of men… deprived of usual social and emotional outlets. » A
British officer in WW1 concluded that « most soldiers were ready to have sexual intercourse with
almost any woman whenever they could. »’ (Goldstein, 2001: 333).
In addition to that, sexual violence in a militarized environment can play a very important role for
bonding and cohesion of the troops. The social organization within the military is often referred to as
one of a family, or even closer than this, where each soldier is ready to give his own life for another
member of the troops. ‘A combat veteran says that « among men who fight together there is an intense
love. You are closer to those men than to anyone except your immediate family when you were
young »’ (Goldstein, 2001: 196). In the military context, the team spirit and relationship between the
soldiers are so strong that it can induce a dynamic where a group action does not have the same
consequences as an individual action. Thus, as Goldstein (2001: 365) puts it, ‘One function of gang
rape is to promote cohesion within groups of men soldiers. Men who would not rape individually do so
as part of a display within the male group, to avoid becoming an outcast. […] Gang rapes may serve to
relieve individual men of responsibility, just as groups absolves soldiers in killing’.
Moreover, sexual violence often plays a role within military masculinity with regard to what Goldstein
(2001: 369) calls ‘ethnonationalism’. According to him, ‘the nation is often gendered female, and the
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20. state male. Women in some sense embody the nation and the political inclusion of women and the
masses of men (democratization) seemed to accompany the rise of nationalism in Europe a century
ago. Rape of « our » women sometimes becomes a dominant metaphor of the danger to the nation
from enemy males’. Again here, the soldiers’ masculinity is called, strengthened by a rape metaphor,
and used as an incentive to obtain the troops’ obedience and get them to keep fighting.
Military masculinity, and what it implies, is however different depending on the country, the region or
even the continent of reference. Even within the branches, divisions, sections and troops themselves,
the culture can be really different. Thus, military masculinity in the United States, as well as its
perception and comprehension of sexual violence, is a very singular case that needs to be studied as
such. ‘Masculinity has strong connections to war fighting and to militaries, which are commonly
perceived as institutions that confer masculinity and create men out of boys. According to R. W.
Connell, “Violence on the largest possible scale is the purpose of the military; and no arena has been
more important for the definition of hegemonic masculinity in European/American culture” (1995,
201)’ (Brown, 2012).
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3. American military masculinity
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This dissertation will hence focus on the gender conceptions within the American military, and
especially on the American military masculinity. In the United States, the military is a very prominent
and important institution that is worshiped by many Americans, who really look up to soldiers because
they embody selflessness, public spirit and discipline. ‘Cynthia Enloe argues that the United States has
what could be called « a ‘militarized’ concept of national loyalty and identity” because in the United
States the military occupies “a special place in the public realm, somehow more intimately bound to
patriotism, to the fate and dignity of the nation than, for example, public hospitals or even the national
legislature »’ (quoted in Brown, 2012).
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21. As a consequence, and since the American military remains largely a masculine institution, a more
important pressure is put on men and their manhood, some scholars argue because boys and men are
carrying the burden of the nation’s defense in case of attack. This pressure can translate very early on
in young American males’ life. ‘Boys are also the main enforcers of gender segregation in middle
childhood. Boys are the recipients of most of the adult efforts to enforce appropriate gendered
behaviors as well. Although US girls may now wear pants or dresses, and play with trucks or dolls,
boys may not wear dresses or play with dolls. Teachers and parents « seem far less ambivalent about
encouraging androgyny in their young daughters than in their sons. » In short, boys are the primary
focus of gender-molding in children, presumably because boys are the ones who may need to fight
wars some day’ (Goldstein, 2001: 288).
The culture of protection from the enemy is indeed very present and central in the American culture,
being implied that men are the ones who are supposed to protect against male attackers. These
gendered narratives of war, protection and loyalty are very much connected to sexualized narratives of
war, protection and loyalty. The invasion or intrusion of an enemy is often assimilated to a penetration,
which therefore has to be avoided at any cost. Reversely, and following this logic, the soldiers, to get
the ascendance, have to be the ones who penetrate, symbolically or not. Thus Belkin (2012: 86), who
conducted a deep study of the American military masculinity, found that ‘In U.S. military culture,
warrior masculinity has been about protecting one’s body and nation from penetration; about never
allowing one’s anus to be penetrated; about obliteration of feminine penetrability. The warrior’s
masculinity has depended on being not-subordinate, not-feminine, not-on-the-bottom, not-penetrated
(anally or otherwise). […] Penetration has been something that warriors do, as opposed to something
done to them’.
The ‘tradition’ of using sexual violence as a way to show power in a military context can be traced
back, Goldstein (2001: 359) tells us, in the ancient world where anal rape was one of the methods used
to feminize the enemy troops, ‘with the victor in the dominant/active position and the vanquished in
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22. the subordinate/passive one’. Moreover, ‘Homosexual rape was used in various ancient Middle Eastern
and Greek societies to assert dominance relationships (as it is used today in, e.g., US prisons), and this
practice was more common in war than in domestic society, although found in both places. The Aztec
word for a powerful warrior translates as « I make someone into a passive. » Male war prisoners were
apparently raped in a variety of Amerindian societies, ranging from the Caribbean and Florida to North
America, before the Spanish conquest. In the Old World too, « homosexual rape was used as a military
insult. »’. In the American military, the sexualization of the enemy and the use of penetration as a
metaphor (or an actual act) for taking over and having the power over the opponents’ territory, is
widely used and is part of the narratives that are understood by the soldiers. Thus for example, ‘among
the messages inscribed on US bombs in the Gulf war was the theme, « Bend Over,
Saddam. »’ (Goldstein, 2001: 359).
However, rape and sexual violence within the American military context does not always intervene to
subordinate an enemy, and can have other significations, ins and outs that Belkin (2012: 80) explains:
‘rape and other forms of penetration have implied a range of meanings. In some cases, being
penetrated is a marker of weakness, subordination and a lack of control. In others, it is an indication of
strength, dominance and power. In some cases, it signifies infantilization. In others, maturation. In
some cases, being penetrated is a precursor to excommunication and signals that one is not qualified to
be a member of the warrior community. In others, it marks inclusion, welcoming and membership.
Some military practices construct being penetrated as the ultimate taboo for a warrior. Other construct
it as central to what it means to be a real man. And in many cases, being penetrated embodies all of
these notions simultaneously: strength/dominance/control on the one hand and weakness/
subordination/powerlessness on the other’.
The heavy meanings and values carried by rape and sexual violence within the U.S. troops make its
occurrence much more likely. Indeed, notions such as power, strength, dominance, control,
membership, belonging, cohesion, community, manliness or masculinity, are key values that are
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23. embedded in the military and drive the squads, which are taught from the beginning to cherish these
concepts and to see them as the only way to go in order to become great soldiers, and thereby great
(and ‘real’) men. These narratives on sexual violence are directly linked to the widespread phenomena
of Military Sexual Trauma (MST), defined as ‘any form of sexual abuse (whether physical or verbal)
which takes places among men and women of the military’ (My Duty To Speak, no date). Indeed, this
connection can be made since, as Stacy Malone (the executive director of the Victim Rights Law
Center in Boston) talking about MST, puts it, ‘sexual assault is not about sex, it’s about power’ (quoted
in Nanos, 2013). Similarly, James Asbrand, a psychologist for the Veterans Affairs’ PTSD (Post-
Traumatic Sex Disorder) clinical team in Utah asserts that ‘It's not about the sex. It's about power and
control’ (quoted in Penn, no date).
Rape, sexual violence and military sexual trauma are phenomena that are endemic in the U.S. army
and that have consequently, as indicated before, become a major concern at the highest levels of
decision. In fact, the Department of Veterans Affairs ‘released an independent study estimating that one
in three women had experience of military sexual trauma while on active service. That is double the
rate for civilians, which is one in six, according to the US department of justice’ (Broadbent, 2011).
These phenomena greatly affect male and female soldiers. ‘Approximately 30 to 40% of female
veterans and 10% of male veterans claim to have experienced some form of military sexual trauma.
Sexual harassment rates are often much higher’ (mydutytospeak, no date). The consequences of
military sexual trauma, among which suicide and homeless are commonly found, are also dramatic.
Indeed, ‘forty per cent of homeless women veterans have reported experiences of sexual assault in the
military, according to the Service Women's Action Network. "Other common effects of MST are
feelings of isolation, sleeping problems, hyper-vigilance, depression, and substance abuse," explains
Dr Amy Street, a clinical psychologist at the VA Hospital in Boston who works with
victims’ (Broadbent, 2011).
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24. The reality of sexual violence in the American military entails many more consequences and implies
many other ins and outs, which will be detailed, explained and analyzed in the second chapter of this
dissertation.
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25. II. American military culture and sexual violence
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1. American military culture and gender constructions
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This second part of the dissertation will exclusively focus on the American military context, in
particular on the phenomena of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment, and analyze how they are
connected to the American military culture and the narratives about sex and gender that come with it.
However, this chapter will not discuss the use of sexual violence ‘as a weapon of war’, that is, rapes
and corollaries that are perpetrated not within the American troops, but against a war enemy, or the
population of an occupied territory. Although there is a lot to say about this aspect as well, since it has
been so devastating for many populations, like in Vietnam where thousands of people are known to
have been raped, just like in Iraq or Afghanistan, among others, this research paper will focus on intra-
troops sexual violence, which is a very specific phenomenon to study by itself, with its own origins,
causes, consequences and implications.
As previously introduced, the American military culture and masculinity is one of a kind, and is based
on a lot of narratives, many of which are highly sexualized and/or gendered, that are spread and
perpetrated throughout time and space within the U.S. army. The image of the soldier occupies a very
important place in the American society, and therefore enjoys a lot of privileges among civilians, one
of which is to represent an example to follow and to envy, especially by other men, in particular with
regard to the soldier’s masculinity (because the typical warrior is always pictured as a man). Thus,
Brown (2012) tells us that already ‘in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, paramilitary culture was
celebrated in « scores of movies, televisions shows, men’s ‘action-adventure’ novels, magazines, war
games, ‘combat’ shooting and ‘mercenary’ or ‘survivalist’ training schools, and the militarization of
the domestic civilian arms market” ». Within this culture, the warrior is « a gender ideal for all men;
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26. every man could be a warrior and should be prepared to fight his own private war against domestic and
foreign enemies »’ (Brown, 2012).
One of the very roots of the American military culture is to break the ‘inner boy’ that lies inside each
man and to turn him into a ‘real man’, that is, a warrior, ready to give everything for his peers and his
country. As Dana Chipman, a judge advocate general in the army, puts it : ‘The way we socialize
people probably has some effect on the incidents [of sexual violence]. We cut your hair, and we give
you the same clothes, and we tell you that you have no more privacy, you have no more individual
rights—we're gonna take you down to your bare essence and then rebuild you in our image’ (quoted in
Penn, no date).
Moreover, the American military masculinity is constructed in constant opposition to femininity, so
that anything that can be associated with it has to be unconditionally rejected. This strong gender
binary and the repudiation of the feminine is a key in the American military culture and is a very
important to understand the soldiers’ mindsets, codes, values and behaviors. A good illustration of this
is the response given by a U.S. Marine, asked to explain the concept of masculinity: ‘The opposite of
feminine! No. To me, what is masculine. I don’t know [Pause.] And I’ve worked so hard at being
it’ (quoted in Belkin, 2012: 38). Indeed within this context, femininity is understood as something to
avoid, since it carries values that are opposed to the ones the military is supposed to embody, to inspire
and to spread out. And hence, ‘femininity is coded as an arbitrary, fictional construction which
represents weakness, subordination, emotionalism, dependency and disloyalty. These traits are framed
as dangerous aspects of the unmasculine that warriors must reject at all costs if they are to acquire the
strength necessary to defend national security’ (Belkin, 2012: 26). The decision taken by the Pentagon
in 1994 of banning women from direct combat roles is consistent with these narratives, and was at the
time ‘justified in terms of the « unique bonds » necessary for mortal combat, which « are best
developed in a single gender all male environment. » The US Army Chief of Staff said in 1993 that
« cohesion is enhanced by uniformity, by adherence to a common sense of values and behaviors. » The
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27. idea that « male bonding » is central to war offers a possible explanation to the puzzle of universally
gendered war roles. If males in a group share a special bond that females cannot enter, or (worse yet)
that females’ presence disrupts, then women could hardly play much part in combat’ (Goldstein, 2001:
194). In January 2013, the American Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta officially overturned the 20
year-old rule by lifting the ban and thus officially allowing women to be part of ground combat units.
In spite of this move, the gender narratives are deeply embedded in the U.S. military and are
influencing the attitudes and spirits of the soldiers. Although they occupy an increasingly important
space in the institution, and that they now have access, at least virtually, to all the sectors and branches
of the American military, women are still put down and taught that they are worth less, since they are
under-men: women. The demonization of women and femininity has direct consequences on the way
they are treated, that is on the amount of sexual violence they are subjected to. Thus ‘the military is
one of the last closed institutions in this country that hasn’t adapted to modern social values. As more
and more women enter the military, we need to drive out old attitudes around bullying and sexual
harassment. The trauma can be horrific. For too long it has been something you 'manned up’ about.
The attitude is: don’t rock the boat’ (Shangani, 2014). Many servicewomen consequently have to cave,
most of the time without even realizing that they are, in order to avoid being a target of violence, or
when it is no longer possible, simply to keep their job. As an anonymous victim of sexual harassment
in the U.S. Coast Guard reported to My Duty To Speak (2013), ‘We were ordered to move some
furniture around. Two of the women sat there and said that it was too heavy for them. The men moved
the furniture it for them. I am half their size and did the work for myself without any help. If you ask
any of the women they would tell you that they are not treated any differently because they are women.
It is sad that these women feel that showing their breasts or showing that they are weak, delicate
creatures is the only way to get ahead in the US Coast Guard. Sadly, they are right. Their careers are
flourishing. My career was threatened’.
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28. 2. Male and female rape within the American military culture
!
These gender constructions are also consistent with American international interests, and are actually
shaped and used to serve those interests. The rejection of the feminine, consequence of the
sanctification of the masculine and its most basic, traditional and stereotypical attributes, and the
constant assimilation of manhood with ‘soldierhood’, are manipulated in order to depict a legitimate
and ethical image of the United States abroad. Indeed, ‘of the myriad ways in which gender has been
implicated in American ambitions abroad, its militarization has been among the most significant. When
the soldier is constructed as tough, masculine, dominant, heterosexual and stoic, this reinforces an
impression of the military as strong, effective, honorable and fair, and of American hegemony abroad
as civilized, just, and legitimate. When the soldier’s masculinity is seen as normative, this smoothes
over contradiction in empire, and vice versa. Military masculinity thus has served as a containing,
camouflaging capacity for broader political contradictions that otherwise could not be reconciled
(Belkin, 2012: 42)’.
However, women are not the only targets of the gendered military culture and its intrinsic sexual
violence narratives. Indeed, men are under constant pressure to meet the gender expectations that
require to expel anything that is or can be assimilated to a feminine feature. The first victims of this
highly masculine-without-compromise culture are gay men, who for a long time have been officially
considered not being able to fit in the U.S. military. Indeed, until 1993, gay men, just like women,
were simply and purely banned from the American troops. In 1993, Bill Clinton introduced the ‘Don’t
Ask, Don’t tell’ policy, under which gay people were technically allowed to enlist and to serve, but
only as long as they did not openly reveal their sexual orientation. Despite the Republican opposition,
this measure was overturned in 2011 by President Barack Obama, who then stated: ‘As of today,
patriotic Americans in uniform will no longer have to lie about who they are in order to serve the
country they love’ (quoted in BBC News, 2011).
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29. Although gay men are now officially authorized to serve without denying who they are, the
homophobic ‘habits’ and the idea that a gay man is not enough of a man are deeply anchored within
the U.S. military culture. Indeed, gay men are the victims of imagined contradictions that Belkin
(2012: 97) explains: ‘The imagination of gays as rapists has had considerable currency in American
military culture. While the projection of penetration anxieties onto imaginations of gay rapists may
appear to emerge organically in military culture, this psychological and discursive move has been
encouraged by law and deregulation. Consider, for example, that an important rationale for banning
gays from the military constituted homosexuality as a penetrative identity. Penetration is so
fundamental to homosexuality that gay troops injure heterosexual peers simply by looking at them.
The moment that a gay soldier sees the naked body of a heterosexual, the injury is complete. And yet,
while anxieties about penetration have been displaced onto imaginations of gay rapists, gay men have
been imagined as the passive victims of rape as well. Drill instructors have conflated homosexuality,
femininity, weakness, and receptive anal penetration during boot camp, thus constituting and
reinforcing the belief that to be raped is to be gay’. Thus, gay men are both pictured as predators not
able to refrain their sexual drive in an only-male environment, and as undermen, too weak to dominate
during the sexual act, and therefore too weak to go to war. Belkin (2012: 94) explains these
contradictory ideas about gay men by going back to deeply rooted contradictions surrounding
penetration that have been structuring the masculinity of some American service members. ‘U.S.
service members have confused gay and straight, love and hate, rapist and rape victim, anus and
mouth, expulsion and retention, rape and hazing, friendship and loneliness, literal and symbolic
penetration, and gay identification and same-sex erotic practice. These confusions have been
reinforced by, but have also sustained, military law, regulation, culture and tradition, and they have
rendered the troops obedient and available for social control’.
And hence, whether it is about women or men, heterosexual or homosexual, the codes and the
narratives that are embedded in and conveyed by the U.S. military are not only deeply gendered, but
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30. also deeply sexualized, and further yet violently sexualized. In fact, Belkin (2012: 89) even talks about
‘institutionalized roles’ played by rape and its corollaries in the American military culture. Indeed,
from the beginning, that is in bootcamp and hazing ‘ceremonies’, sexual violence and forced sex are
central practices. Many ‘rites of passage’ in the military have involved some sort of demonstration of
power through violent sex. One of these hazing rituals was the Navy’s ‘crossing the line’ ceremony
that has been happening since the sixteenth century. As narrated by Belkin (2012:90), ‘penetration was
a central feature of crossing the line ceremonies in the last decades of the twentieth century. Hersh
found that « Garbage, sewage, and rotten food are poured over the wigs and into every orifice of their
bodies, including their anuses. »’. These practices have reportedly two main purposes: cohesion/team
bonding and manhood proof. Indeed, ‘as one American sailor who participated in the ceremony in the
1960s said, « Endure the humiliation of the ritual and your mates would be reassured that you were
one of them… Yes, the ritual was very abusive… It was a matter of showing our mates that we were
real males. »’ (Belkin, 2012: 91). Thus in this context, these violent sexual rituals were a test of one’s
ability to ‘take it like a man’, and passing this test meant to be part of the team for good, but also (quite
paradoxically) to pass a sort of masculine threshold after which a soldier’s body becomes an invincible
armor. In this regard, Belkin (2012: 103) argues that ‘myths about American military masculinity have
been constructed in terms of a one-dimensional depiction of penetration: warriors appear to have
sealed-up, impenetrable bodies and anything else is unmanly’. Thus, any crack in this impermeable
shield is considered to also be a crack in one’s manhood and therefore one’s ‘soldierhood’, which
makes sexual violence and rape even more difficult to handle for the victims. ‘Service members have
been taught to believe that to be anally penetrated and to fail to fight back signifies that one is neither a
man, nor a warrior, nor a heterosexual’ (Belkin, 2012: 97).
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31. 3. Sexual assault responses and American military culture
Rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment are common phenomena in the U.S. military, with major
consequences and surrounding issues. The problem is so widespread that Elsa Nethercot, a former
Coast Guard member talking about how endemic sexual assault and harassment were in this branch of
the military, stated that they were also ‘a condition of your continued employment’ (quoted in Nanos,
2013). Since the soldiers’ ‘body armor’ is such a key within the American military culture, while the
rape phenomenon is so epidemic, the latter tends to be covered and/or seen as ‘not such a big deal’, as
this dissertation will show more in depth later on. ‘Rape is a universal problem – it happens
everywhere. But in other military systems it is regarded as a criminal offence, while in the US military,
in many cases, it's considered simply a breach of good conduct’ (Broadbent, 2011). Accordingly,
sexual violence is not regarded, treated and therefore addressed the same way in the American military
than in other army systems. Moreover, rape is not perceived, considered and handled the same way
when its victim is a man or a woman. Indeed, even though any sort of rape constitutes a form of failure
for the military institution, since it is supposed to embody values such as rigor, exemplary attitude and
behavior or loyalty, female rape is somehow compatible with the U.S. military’s interests and
corroborates the narratives it conveys about masculinity and its antagonism with femininity. As Belkin
(2012: 114) puts it, ‘As embarrassing as male-female rape is to the armed forces, male-male rape is
even worse. Military representatives rarely discuss male-male rape in public, and when they do address
sexual violence between men, they sometimes refer to simulated rather than actual rape. While the
image of a man raping a woman is not inconsistent with ideas about male dominance or the tradition of
troops in victorious armies raping women in territories they conquer, male-male rape calls into
question the archetypal image of the masculine warrior by implying that the soldier/victim is too weak
to fend off an attack. At the same time, male-female rape underscores the penetrability and weakness
of the female body, implying that women are unfit to be warriors and that the military is, and should
remain, a bastion of male power. In this sense, male-female rape is less threatening to military culture
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32. than male-male rape. An emphasis on male-female rape may even line up with the military’s interests
by diverting attention away from male-male rape’. This is why, quite logically, ‘even though the
absolute numbers of male-male and male-female rapes in the military have been about the same, for
example, there has been almost no public or media discussion of sexual violence among men’ (Belkin,
2012: 104). However, and despite this official silence on male rape, that we also find on many laws
and official texts, male rape is a widespread phenomenon in the U.S. military. The fact that it remains a
taboo which is still largely ignored leaves a huge number of victims in a very lonely and desperate
situation where there is not much they can do, except to ‘get over it’. Thus, according to Protect Our
Defenders (2014), an organization whose mission is to end ‘the epidemic of military rape’, over 52
percent of the victims of sexual assault in the American military in 2014 were men. Meanwhile, the
Department of Defense acknowledges that 38 servicemen are sexually assaulted every single day
(Penn, no date). ‘The moment a man enlists in the United States armed forces, his chances of being
sexually assaulted increase by a factor of ten. Women, of course, are much more likely to be victims of
military sexual trauma (MST), but far fewer of them enlist. In fact, more military men are assaulted
than women—nearly 14,000 in 2012 alone’ (Penn, no date). These numbers, both for men and women,
are much higher than in the civil society. Indeed, the National Crime Victimization survey reported that
38 percent of rape and sexually violent acts were perpetrated against men, which is about 14 points
lower than in the U.S. military (Rosin, 2014). As for women, it is even more significant than for men:
‘the department of veterans affairs, meanwhile, released an independent study estimating that one in
three women had experience of military sexual trauma while on active service. That is double the rate
for civilians, which is one in six, according to the US department of justice’ (Broadbent, 2011).
According to a study conducted on U.S. servicewomen for the American Journal of Industrial
Medicine (Sadler et al, 2003: 5), ’more than three-fourths (79%, n.399) of participants reported
experiences of sexual harassment during their military service. More than half (54%, n.273) reported
unwanted sexual contact. One-third (30%, n.151) experienced one or more completed or attempted
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33. rapes’. This same study tells us that ‘Three-fourths of women who were raped did not report the
incident to a ranking officer. Of these, one-third noted they didn’t report the assault because they were
uncertain how to; one fifth didn’t report because they believed that rape was to be expected in the
military’ (emphasis added). This last reason for not reporting sexual violence says a lot on the
American military culture, highly and violently gendered and sexualized, and in which silence is the
rule in order to keep an immaculate image of the institution.
Male-male rape in the U.S. military context is a very specific case, as it is perceived and conceived in a
very different way than male-female rape because of the gender narratives and the hermetic masculine
stereotypes the American military is based on. Thus, male victims of rape and sexual assault often see
it as an immense humiliation and betrayal. As James Asbrand, a psychologist of the Salt Lake City VA
(Veterans Affairs) explains, ’in a hypermasculine culture, what's the worst thing you can do to another
man? Force him into what the culture perceives as a feminine role, completely dominate and rape
him’ (quoted in Penn, no date). Consequently, male victims of sexual assault often find themselves
completely isolated and ashamed, and if some find the courage of telling their heavy secret or
reporting the offense, they face an incredible number of obstacles and further humiliations. Welch, a
servicemen who got raped, stated that he has ‘been turned down several times. There's this wall that
says, « That couldn't have happened to you—you're a man. »’, while another one, Mike Thomson,
declared that he ‘wasn't "afraid" to report it—[he] was ashamed and disgusted. Guys aren't supposed to
be raped’ (quoted in Penn, no date). This last comment reversely implies that women, and thereby men
with ‘feminine’ features (that is, not-warrior-enough characteristics) are supposed to be raped, which is
the discourse that is embedded and regularly displayed in the American military culture. In addition to
that, because of the beliefs anchored in this culture that real men, that is, warriors, are unbreakable, the
possibility of sexual assault on males is completely dismissed in the official procedures that address
rape. In this regard, Phillips, another victim of sexual violence in the U.S. military testified that ‘the
questionnaires are designed for women. They were asking, « How many times were you violated in
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34. your vagina? »’ (quoted in Penn, no date). Moreover, since the eventuality of male-on-male sexual
incidents is so stubbornly rejected, the whole chain of ‘support’/‘care’ offers a totally inappropriate and
uncomprehensive response to the victims. Thus, Neal, a servicemen who was assaulted and had to go
through this chain, reported that doctors told him things such as ‘Son, men don't get raped’, or ‘You
enjoyed it, didn't you? Come on, tell me the truth’ (quoted in Penn, no date).
And hence, these different factors combined can explain why ‘men develop PTSD [Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder] from sexual assault at nearly twice the rate they do from combat’ (Penn, no date).
Despite the suffering of so many male soldiers who find themselves in such situations, ’an estimated
81 percent of male MST victims never report being attacked’ (Penn, no date).
Female victims’ situation is different, because as discussed earlier, male-on-female rape is more
‘socially accepted’ and consistent with the U.S. military’s interests, but it is not better. Just like men
who undergo sexual assault, women often face this ‘wall’ of isolation, and are constantly pressured to
feel guilt, many of them being accused of being responsible for what happened to them. Thus, a U.S.
Coast Guard, after having reported her rape, stated that: ‘I requested counseling and the counselor was
a woman who blamed me for the rape. I will never forget her saying; “If women would just say yes
there would be no rape.” I ended up holding all emotions in and continued on with my service’ (My
Duty To Speak, 2014). Another servicewoman from the Coast Guard declared that ‘the retaliation was
worst than the rape. Almost everyone from an E-2 to an O-7 called me a liar. After reporting my rape I
was the one transferred not my rapist’ (My Duty To Speak, 2013).
In the same line of victim-shaming culture, a woman from the U.S. Army, who got raped by 5 fellow
soldiers, testified that ‘about a year after returning from Iraq, I was told that I would have to face
disciplinary actions for “indecent sexual acts’ (My Duty To Speak, 2012). Moreover, a male victim
stated: ‘I serve with a bunch of people that start every rape prevention discussion with: « Many women
would lie about rape »’ (My Duty To Speak, 2013).
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35. A female member of the Coast Guard, in a long testimony (My Duty To Speak, 2013), talks about her
‘porno central’ unit, where porn was everywhere. She courageously decided to report it, and was told
that ‘if [she] wanted butterflies and unicorns that [she] should have been a preschool teacher’, and that
‘this is the Coast Guard. Porn is harmless and needed to help the men’. In her statement, she also
depicts how ‘men openly describe incidents that are by definition rape’ while ‘the women laugh at
their jokes’. This testimony describes how sex is depicted in the U.S. military as a primary need for
men, a compulsion that needs to be fulfilled, whether it is by porn or by rape. Consequently, because
sex is presented a such a deep and essential urge, sexual assault in this context is often expected as a
‘logical incident’, and therefore more easily excused.
And hence, despite all these alarming testimonies, incidents, offenses and crimes, the responses remain
for the most part very inappropriate, and the issues are not being addressed correctly, properly or fully.
Indeed, the problem already exists in the very texts that constitute the military laws and rules of
conduct. Thus, under the article 120 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, both trainers and trainees
can be held responsible for a sexual contact, even though trainees are supposed to unconditionally
follow their instructor’s orders. ‘This creates an enormous power imbalance, with trainees expected to
ask permission even to use the bathroom or make a phone call. In this environment, it is impossible for
trainees to freely consent to sexual relations with instructors’ (Protect Our Defenders, no date). For
example, a male victim from the Marines stated that ‘When a gunnery sergeant tells you to take off
your clothes, you better take off your clothes. You don't ask questions’ (Penn, no date).
Aside from this risk of getting a huge backlash when reporting, the victims often feel that it is not
worth it, because they believe that nothing will be done against their rapist. For example, according to
Sadler et al (2003: 5), one fourth of them acknowledged that they did not report the incident because
their attacker was a ranking officer, and one third because their attacker was a friend of the ranking
officer. Similarly, Welch, an MST victim, declared: ‘hell no, I didn't report this. Who was I going to
report it to? He had serious rank over me. After they ordered me to return to work with him, I stabbed
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36. myself in the neck so I could go home’ (Penn, no date). Indeed, ‘according to the Department of
Defense, more than 93 percent of all rape cases in the military end without a conviction’ (Nanos,
2013), and there are several reasons for that. Many specialists of military rape and victims advocates
mainly blame the fact that sexual violence incidents are examined within the chain of command, which
can create major conflicts of interests, since many perpetrators are ranking officers or friends of
ranking officers. As Greg Jacob, the policy director at the Service Women's Action Network, explains:
‘We looked at the systems for reporting rape within the military of Israel, Australia, Britain and
some Scandinavian countries, and found that, unlike the US, other countries take a rape investigation
outside the purview of the military’ (Broadbent, 2011).
And hence, the U.S. military, by keeping the investigations on sexual assault ‘in-house’, prevents
many victims from obtaining justice.
In addition, to avoid the embarrassment and the hassle of sexual assault reports and military sexual
traumas, the American military appears to have found alternative ‘tricks and techniques’ that allow the
institution to save face. Indeed, over the past decade, there has been an epidemic of personality
disorder discharge. ‘Research suggests that the military brass may have conspired to illegally discharge
MST victims by falsely diagnosing them with personality disorders. "The military has a systemic
personality disorder discharge problem," write the authors of a 2012 Yale Law School white paper.
Between 2001 and 2010, some 31,000 servicepersons were involuntarily discharged for personality
disorders. It is likely that in many cases these were sham diagnoses meant to rid the ranks of MST
victims’ (Penn, no date). Similarly in March 2012, ‘Yale’s Veterans Legal Services Clinic reported on
the military’s widespread use of these diagnoses, which are often given to rape victims and war-scarred
soldiers, and argued that the resulting discharges were illegal. Citing a 2008 study by the Government
Accountability Office, the report concluded that “hundreds, if not thousands” of illegal personality-
disorder discharges had occurred since 2001, many resulting in victims being denied disability pay and
other veterans’ benefits’ (Nanos, 2013). Thus, as Trent Smith, a sexual assault victim fighting against
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37. the Air Force regarding his discharge, puts it: ‘If they want you to be schizophrenic, you're
schizophrenic’ (quoted in Penn, no date). Moreover, since the Veterans Affairs regard a personality
disorder as a pre-existing condition, the government therefore does not offer any financial support to
cover the expenses of treatment for PTSD caused by a sexual assault. For example, Kori Cioca, a
former Coast Guard who told about her rape and the hell she has been going through ever since in the
documentary The Invisible War (Dick, 2012), also explains in this film how the Veterans Affairs
denied her demand to get her treatment paid, as her rapist dislocated her jaw, which caused her a long
unbearable pain and forced her to only eat soft food.
Facing the overwhelming evidences of an epidemic of sexual assaults left with no answer, the
Department of Defense, under the public pressure, took more measures to address the issue. However,
overall, despite these official efforts, the responses to the phenomenon remain largely inappropriate.
For example, in its 2014-2016 Sexual Assault Prevention Strategy (DoD, 2014), the Pentagon lays out
the following ‘prevention’ strategies: ‘In an effort to establish shared understandings of prevention,
DoD adopted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) definition of prevention as it
applies to sexual violence. The CDC identifies three levels of prevention based on when the prevention
efforts occur:
• Primary Prevention: Approaches that take place before sexual violence has occurred to prevent initial
perpetration.
• Secondary Prevention: Immediate responses after sexual violence has occurred to address the early
identification of victims and the short-term consequences of violence.
• Tertiary Prevention: Long-term responses after sexual violence has occurred to address the lasting
consequences of violence and sex offender treatment interventions’.
Even though the last two levels, that is two levels out of three, are called ‘prevention’, they are
intervening after the sexual assault, which again shows that the military institution is focusing more on
improving the victims’ conditions of treatment, which is indeed really necessary, than on actually
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38. reducing the number of victims. One explanation to this, that we can draw from the arguments that
have been layer out in this dissertation, is that sexual violence and gender narratives are so embedded
in the U.S. military culture that it is much easier to handle the consequences of it rather than its causes.
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39. Conclusion
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The phenomena of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment are endemic in the American
military. The rates of their occurrence are alarming, while the conviction rate discourages the victims
from even reporting the offenses. The social pressure put on the victims is another dissuading element,
since penetration is represented within the military context as a sign of weakness and assimilated to
femininity. Rape is therefore perceived and approached differently whether the victim is a man or a
woman. When a male soldier is sexually offended, nobody talks about it, and if one does, the assaulted
man is depicted as a weak person not able to defend himself, and therefore as an homosexual, an
underman, an undersoldier. When a female soldier gets raped, she is either called a liar, or if she
somehow manages to be believed, she is accused of having provoked the assault and used as a
scapegoat proving that the military institution should only be reserved to men.
Similarly, the causes for sexual assaults that are ‘officially’ presented are different depending on the
sex of the assaulted. When a man gets raped, it is either pictured as a male-bonding rite taking place
during a hazing ceremony, or as an homosexual vicious impulse showing that gay men have no place
in the U.S. military. When a woman is sexually assaulted, the reason give is that her male fellow
soldiers have a deep need to satisfy their primitive desires at any price, it is presented as biological,
proving once again that women’s presence in the military is not advisable because it endangers their
own well-being and lives. The rape of a servicewomen is therefore consistent with the narratives
conveyed by the American military with on the one hand the role of a weak group in need of
protection, played by women, and on the other hand the role of the protectors, played by exclusively
male troops.
Thus, sexual assault as a common phenomenon in the U.S. military has been based on and has
developed around strong gender stereotypes and especially a military-specific idea of masculinity.
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40. The issue is not correctly addressed as most perpetrators remain unpunished while most victims are
singled out, isolated and pointed out as the actual responsible for the assault. The official responses by
institutions such as the Department of Defense barely go back to the roots of the problem and mostly
seek to treat better the victims during the aftermath of military rape. They still refuse to implement the
reforms that are constantly asked by the victims advocates, the main demand being to professionalize
the military justice system and to end the process in which the chain of command, which is often
friend or of good acquaintance with the perpetrator, is the only authority deciding whether the victim
tells the truth or not, whether to prosecute or not and basically all the other decisions that could lead to
the assaulter’s trial and/or conviction.
One of the main actors of this fight to end the epidemic of military rape and to implement the right
reforms is the Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who has been a great voice for the cause for many years
now. She states that ‘A climate where supervisors and unit leaders were responsible for sexual
harassment and gender discrimination in nearly 60 percent of all cases demonstrates a system deeply in
need of further reform before there can be trust in the chain of command’ (Gillibrand, no date). She has
been pushing for The Military Justice Improvement Act, that ‘was unfortunately filibustered again
meaning the fight to pass this critically needed reform will continue’. Her work, along with the one of
organizations such as Protect Our Defenders or ServiceWomen’s Action Network is a key to raise
awareness among both the civilian population and the military troops, and to take steps towards very
needed changes in the American institution. Hopefully, their actions will pay off soon and the statistics
will start to show not only a higher percentage of reported incidents among all the assaults actually
happening, but also a smaller number of overall victims thanks to reforms that address the roots of the
problem and that aim to prevent rape, and not just to ‘cure’ the victims afterwards. What is also at
stake here, in order to preserve the U.S. military’s reputation, is to deeply change the gendered and
sexualized culture that is presented as the basic requirement to become a worthy soldier. In this culture,
sex is depicted as a biological need for men who cannot help but to relieve this inner urge, sexual
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41. assault victims are therefore only ‘unfortunate collateral damages’ who should just not have been here
in the first place, rape is ‘to be expected’ (Sadler et al., 2003: 5), sexualized language that constantly
diminishes women and gay men is the commonly used one, and military masculinity is based on a
deep opposition to femininity and on many contradictions and ambivalences.
There is an urgent need to reeducate the American troops and to review, rethink and redraw the lines
and narratives of masculinity the U.S. military is based on, in order to actually fulfill the institution’s
mission of ‘building’ the soldiers instead of breaking their inner-selves from the very beginning.
Thereby, by changing the gender narratives that are displayed in the American military, which will
relieve the servicewomen and men from a huge pressure, the phenomena of rape, sexual assault and
sexual harassment, that are mainly due to this gender burden, will diminish and will stop being part of
the U.S. military culture as well. Because as for now, they are part of it.
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