If you've been following our recurring coverage on military sexual trauma (MST), here is an important addition to it: Helen Benedict, a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, currently on sabbatical, has a book coming out next year from Beacon Press called "The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq." (You can pre-order the book at Benedict's own website, linked here.)
On Memorial Day weekend, she published an OpEd recently on the subject, in the New York Times. The piece, which was entitled "For Women Warriors, Deep Wounds, Little Care," is linked here.
A few months later, in August, she published another OpEd, called "Why Soldiers Rape," in a different outlet, which is linked here. Compared to the NYT piece, this one is more overtly politicized, both in thinking and in language.
While that strategy can have pros and cons, one positive is -- whether you agree with it or not -- that it's a useful stance to take to provoke thinking and/or discussion. (Although I'd also like to compare the two essays side by side to see how Benedict treats the same material slightly differently, for different audiences.)
Decades ago, feminist authors and filmmakers were able to accomplish traction by taking on topics like rape (Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, by Susan Brownmiller) and pornography (Not a Love Story: A Film about Pornography, by Bonnie Klein, with Susan Griffin and others) as aspects of the culture that harm women substantially, yet are frequently overlooked.
(Benedict's website indicates that a previous article published in Salon last year, "The Private War of Women Soldiers," was awarded the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism in 2008. That article is linked here.)
Some of the terms Benedict uses, like "misogyny" (literally, hatred of women) are very strong indeed. How big a problem is this really? My hunch is less so than what Benedict suggests. But by using such volatile language to communicate similarly incendiary thinking, Benedict succeeds in drawing greater attention to the problem. Doubtless what she portrays, however, is not "everywoman" servicemember's experience in the military. (The comments to the NYT piece make that abundantly clear.) But for those who are harmed by military sexual trauma, no doubt she makes some very good, and thought-provoking points -- even if you don't end up agreeing with everything she says, or how she says it.
Another difficulty is the topic is so polarizing, based on individuals' own experiences -- that those who have suffered from it tend to see the pervasive nature of it; whereas those who haven't personally experienced also tend to believe their experience is the norm, and shut out the other point of view. (See the comments section in the NYT piece for examples of this "all or nothing" thinking.) In this way, both sides run their own risk of illustrating the cliche that "when all you have is a hammer, you tend to see everything as a nail."
The following is an excerpt from that piece:
"Rape in civilian life is already unacceptably common. One in six women is raped or sexually assaulted in her lifetime, according to the National Institute of Justice, a number so high it should be considered an epidemic.
In the military, however, the situation is even worse. Rape is almost twice as frequent as it is among civilians, especially in wartime. Soldiers are taught to regard one another as family, so military rape resembles incest. And most of the soldiers who rape are older and of higher rank than their victims, so are taking advantage of their authority to attack the very people they are supposed to protect.
Department of Defense reports show that nearly 90 percent of rape victims in the Army are junior-ranking women, whose average age is 21, while most of the assailants are non-commissioned officers or junior men, whose average age is 28. . . "
Benedict ties rape to misogyny -- literally, hatred of women -- and what she suggests is the systematic, institutionalized degradation of women in the military:
"Two seminal studies have examined military culture and its attitudes toward women: one by Duke University Law Professor Madeline Morris in 1996. . . and the other by University of California professor and folklorist Carol Burke in 2004 . . . Both authors found that military culture is more misogynistic than even many critics of the military would suspect. Sometimes this misogyny stems from competition and sometimes from resentment, but it lies at the root of why soldiers rape. . .
Morris and Burke both show that military language reveals this "unabashed hatred of women" all the time. Even with a force that is now 14 percent female, and with rules that prohibit drill instructors from using racial epithets and curses, those same instructors still routinely denigrate recruits by calling them "pussy," "girl," "bitch," "lady" and "dyke." The everyday speech of soldiers is still riddled with sexist insults. . .
The view of women as sexual prey has always been present in military culture. Indeed, civilian women have been seen as sexual booty for conquering soldiers since the beginning of human history. So, it should come as no surprise that the sexual persecution of female soldiers has been going on in the armed forces for decades. . ."
Benedict then goes on to suggest why rape is under-reported in the military:
"Having the courage to report a rape is hard enough for civilians, where unsympathetic police, victim-blaming myths, and the fear of reprisal prevent some 60 percent of rapes from being brought to light, according to a 2005 Department of Justice study.
But within the military, reporting is much riskier. Platoons are enclosed, hierarchical societies, riddled with gossip, so any woman who reports a sexual assault has little chance of remaining anonymous. She will probably have to face her assailant day after day and put up with resentment and blame from other soldiers who see her as a snitch. She risks being persecuted by her assailant if he is her superior, and punished by any commanders who consider her a troublemaker. And because military culture demands that all soldiers keep their pain and distress to themselves, reporting an assault will make her look weak and cowardly.
For all these reasons, some 80 percent of military rapes are never reported, as the Pentagon itself acknowledges. . . ."
And then Benedict suggests two reasons, not exactly complimentary to recruiting, about how violence is perpetuated in and by the system. Hmmmn.
"Misogyny has always been at the root of sexual violence in the military, but two other factors contribute to it, as well: the type of man who chooses to enter the all-volunteer force and the nature of the Iraq War.
The economic reasons behind enlistment are well understood. The military is the primary path out of poverty and dead-end jobs for many of the poor in America. What is less discussed is that many soldiers enlist as teenagers to escape troubled or violent homes.
Two studies of Army and Marine recruits, one conducted in 1996 by psychologists L.N. Rosen and L. Martin, and the other in 2005 by Jessica Wolfe and her colleagues of the Boston Veterans Affairs Health Center, both of which were published in the journal Military Medicine, found that half the male enlistees had been physically abused in childhood, one-sixth had been sexually abused, and 11 percent had experienced both. This is significant because, as psychologists have long known, childhood abuse often turns men into abusers. . .
Worse, according to the Defense Department's own reports, the military has been exacerbating the problem by granting an increasing number of "moral waivers" to its recruits since 9/11, which means enlisting men with records of domestic and sexual violence.
Furthermore, the military has an abysmal record when it comes to catching, prosecuting and punishing its rapists. The Pentagon's 2007 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military found that 47 percent of the reported sexual assaults in 2007 were dismissed as unworthy of investigation, and only about 8 percent of the cases went to court-martial, reflecting the difficulty female soldiers have in making themselves heard or believed when they report sexual assault within the military. . ."
(Those last statistics are perhaps most troubling of all...)
Benedict also has an essay on her website that's worth reading, called "For Women Warriors, Deep Wounds, Little Care," which is linked here. (Same title as NYT piece, slightly different content.) Watch for her book to come out in the Spring of 2009, from Beacon Press.
