Rape & the Weekly Standard

This afternoon while I was driving home from my job, I was listening to All Things Considered, a radio-magazine program on National Public Radio. The story that caught my attention was one on female combat veterans who were suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from both combat and sexual assault by fellow (male) soldiers.

I've spoken with many female vets from our current imperial adventure, one as recently as last night, and worked for a time as a kind of organizational development adviser to Iraq Veterans Against the War. I have written a book on gender and militarism, called Sex & War, that devoted a sizable section to just this topic (sexual assault in the military). I have a lengthy exploration of the same posted on Feral Scholar, a blog co-moderated by DeAnander and me.

Two days ago, I entitled a blog entry here at Huffpo as simply "Limbaugh," in which I attacked Democrats for making such a to-do about some offhand comment the dipshit made about antiwar veterans.

I didn't attack Rush (he is no longer even satirizable); I attacked prominent Democrats and their flaks for making the big deal out of it that they did (including some brain dead resolution introduced on the floor of the House of Representatives (they too have now transcended satire). Their attacks on Limbaugh were motivated by political opportunism and fueled by militarism's cultural taboo against speaking ill of soldiers. I then described the institution of the US armed forces as "an imperial employment program steeped in the culture of machismo and misogyny."

Misogyny: hatred or strong prejudice against women.

Machismo: prominently exhibited or excessive masculinity.

Anyone who has spent time in the military knows that my comments about the military culture are dead accurate, and will tell you so unless they are bald-faced bullshit artists.

My own tracts on masculinity, which are numerous and easily available to anyone with a search engine, have been as clear as they are repetitious: in our general society, masculinity is constructed around the notion of conquest -- sexual, colonial, and over Nature. That masculine violence and the threat of it is directed against women as a means of social control, and it is the basis of a sexual protection racket in which women are socialized to seek the protection of one male (often in exchange for obedience) against males generally.

This is not rocket science, since the evidence for it is reiterated in our daily experiences almost from birth. It is controversial not because it is not obvious -- it is -- but because it calls into question male power and male prerogative. That the US armed forces are an imperial instrument is also as obvious as the nose on our collective face to anyone who can find it in themselves to confront the facts; but again, the kapu against speaking ill of the military -- like the kapu against naming patriarchy for what it is -- is controversial because it questions the status quo.

The Miles Foundation, that tracks violence against women in military communities, found that "prevalence of adult sexual assault among female veterans has been estimated as high as 41%."

My own conversations with women vets supports this estimate, and they report the fear of sexual assault to be a constant.

So I was surprised that National Pentagon Radio did the story, and glad that they did.

The majority of these assaults are punished with administrative wrist-slaps... because boys stick up for boys as a general rule, and boys are still 85% in the armed forces.

Machismo. Misogyny. Iraq and Afghanistan.

The US military is an imperial employment program steeped in the culture of machismo and misogyny. Easy, right?

Along comes The Weekly Standard, the premiere neocon sheet in the country, and they re-post from a snarkily fascist blog, with commentary:

HuffPo Hates the Troops

John Hawkins at Right Wing News makes a great catch. He notes that even when the HuffPo tries to pose as a defender of the troops, they can't help impugning them:

This quote from Huffington Post columnist Stan Goff is so ironic that it's almost funny (emphasis mine),

"Right-wing buffoon Rush Limbaugh takes a swipe at Iraq veterans who oppose the war... who can defend themselves quite nicely, if they even feel inclined to respond to this kind of schoolyard boy-baiting.

"Democrat flaks jump on this like ducks on a June-bug, and in the process themselves reproduce the sick militarism of this culture that automatically valorizes anyone who wears a uniform. How dare you insult a soldier! Like its some sacred calling instead of an imperial employment program steeped in the culture of machismo and misogyny. (And you can gasp as theatrically as you want... I spent more than two decades wearing a uniform... that is exactly what it is.)

"So Goff thinks that the military is an, 'imperial employment program steeped in the culture of machismo and misogyny.'"

Goff can't even claim to be taken out of context, or misinterpreted. He graciously removes doubt about his intent by asserting 'that is exactly what it is, but he 'supports the troops,' right?

How fortunate our troops are, to have veterans like Goff 'defending' them from folks like Limbaugh!

The reason I couldn't resist this, given how the NPR piece today simply reinforced exactly what I was saying is that I don't want to let anyone off the hook like the wing-nuts have.

Huffpo contributors have frequently engaged in military ass-kissing as craven as any jingo scriptwriter; and I want to ensure that I am differentiated properly. I do not support the troops. And I have two sons in the Army. This whole support-the-troops meme is asinine. It is a meaningless loyalty oath.

The wing-nut bloggers knew I wasn't attacking Rush Limbaugh or calling for supporting the troops, as did Ahmed Chalabi's favorite mag, TWS.

That's why they didn't put the whole text in their excerpts; because it demonstrated I was not attacking Rush Limbaugh -- sorry, but I need to trim my ear-hair. My invective was leveled at chicken-shit Democratic elected officials who refuse to defund the war, but will waste their time trying to pin the troop-support tail on the shock-jock donkey.

This story of rape in the military is one of the legion of reasons why we cannot scrape quietly by and ignore these taboos... or as many do, participate in their perpetuation. They protect power.

The veterans with whom I have collaborated to stop the war do not need to be supported as troops -- quite the contrary -- they need to be supported as human beings. The women featured in that devastating NPR segment need to be supported as women in a male-dominant world.

There is a reason neither the blogofascist nor the Weekly Neocon addressed the content of my claims about the military. It is because those claims are categorically true.

Comments

[SamThornton]

There is a solution for every problem.

Just issue each female member of the Armed Forces three hand grenades and three, free-pass "gotchas." End of problem.

I jest, of course.

[LeftRight]

Anyone who has spent time in the military knows that my comments about the military culture are dead accurate, and will tell you so unless they are bald-faced bullshit artists.

"The Miles Foundation, that tracks violence against women in military communities, found that 'prevalence of adult sexual assault among female veterans has been estimated as high as 41%.'"

In answer to the first quote, yes, you are correct. The military culture is incredibly steeped in "MACHO" and therefore is a sick culture that I was forever glad to get out of (For the record, I am a man, but I was raised to not worry about the "MACHO")

About the second quote, I am sad and concerned that our military personnell are attacking each other at that kind of rate. When more than 4 out of every 10 women serving in the military can expect that.....

[Tubby]

Being so anti-military yourself, why did your boys enlist?

[davidly]

How true. But most people- that vast majority, I daresay- can't handle this reality, and hence won't even deal with its foundation.

[Stan Goff - Huffpost Blogger]

1will seems to be having a difficult time accepting that women can be raped at all. I hope this video on "command rape" is instructive:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090707A.shtml

Women are not assaulted in the mess hall (though they -- as all women do -- move through the world of men feeling the laser aim-points of the male gaze crawling on them).

Armed women are assaulted by armed men.

Women are harassed, assaulted and raped without resistance when the circumstances have rendered them powerless (like with bosses, authority figures, in a majority-male environment where women know who will be supported when the stories are told, etc.).

Men rape women when they are alone with them.

Et cetera.

On other points, Sex and aggression are welded together in our cultural episteme. The military is fundamentally about aggression, which is nurtured. Given that aggression is sexualized, and male sexuality is perceived as aggression, what do we expect?

[Ben Dixon]

You bring up an important issue of rape in the ranks. Now how do you suggest we go about fixing that problem?

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

You know at one time I considered one of the more cogent arguments against allowing women in combat was that they would be subject to sexual assaults.

At that time I was naive enough to assume that meant the ENEMY soldiers....

[angel66]

Excellent post. This is so truthful it will never be discussed in the media properly.

[1will]

I've no doubt that female servicemen are being raped by their fellow soldiers. I do have some doubts about your numbers. In every picture, video and news report I've seen about Iraq and Afghanistan all of the soldiers are armed. They don't even go to the Chow Hall unarmed. It just seems odd that these armed women are raped.

[lbben]

1will,

I have no idea if your observation is an accurate reflection of the situation. Assuming it is, male soldiers are still in a dominant position because of the attitudes and learned behaviors both men and women bring with them from civilian life, probably bumped up a notch by the process of entering the military, and by everyone being armed.

Everyone having a gun does not change the odds, but maybe the stakes.

[jesusquintana]

Another fantastic post, Mr. Goff. You are my new favorite blogger.

[connski]

Beautiful writing. To invoke a "macho" simile, you write like a boxer. And of course "support the troops" jingoism is irrelevant. For one - they are bound to follow orders. Secondly - it's the policy we should be looking at; the capitalist practice of seizing resources and capturing markets - both of which have been operative in Iraq from day one. Finally, let's question the biggest myth-meme perpetrated in our time; democracy = capitalism/free trade. If that equation worked, the world wouldn't tolerate militarist thugs killing monks and unarmed citizens in Burma. But China, Thailand, India are to busy getting deals on oil and gas to put pressure on their neighbor. Of course one could say the same of the US and Mexico.

[fedupwithhypocrisy]

Machoism and misogyny are at the root of all the world's problems. Only real men can own up to it and acknowledge how it damages both sexes.

And only those who have served in the military can truly understand the dysfunction inherent in the system. The most vocal neocons in power have never served.