Does military survey represent an "epidemic"--or just more politics?

Last week USA Today went ballistic with the Pentagon survey that purported to reveal an “epidemic” in sexual assaults in the military that was only getting worse. The paper demanded to know why the military was doing “nothing” about it, and a photograph on the front page showed female soldiers in a line—perhaps waiting to be “assaulted.” Once more, politics rather than facts is in play here. This is nothing new; one may recall that Helen Benedict—whose view of the military as part of the “patriarchy” demonstrates her bias—caused a stir in the media a few years ago with her story in Salon called “The Private War of Women Soldiers,” claiming that one-third of female soldiers were raped. Benedict’s vastly inflated statistics on sexual assault were, however, quickly exposed as being based on faulty data—particularly in its reliance on self-selecting sources such as a small group of female soldiers who claimed to be suffering from PTSD, and then extrapolating that number to represent the experience of all women in the military.  

In the victimization game, exaggeration in the name of the cause is no sin—unless, of course, it’s a crime. In 2009, Jennifer Beeman, who was director of the Campus Violence Prevention Program at the University of California, Davis was arrested and charged with fraud and embezzlement of funds for personal use. Beeman was accused of “false accounting” of the number of rapes reported on campus, and inflating the number of reported sexual assaults substantially in order to reach the “threshold” needed to  obtain federal grant money to fund her violence prevention program. Despite being convicted of several felonies, Beeman was only sentenced to 180 days in jail.  Also in 2009, the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault was accused of misusing most of the federal grant money that it was supposed to use for to establish violence prevention programs.

This is not to say that sexual assault is not a problem in the military. It is—for both male and female soldiers. However, two things should be pointed out about the survey:

A) Unlike the CDC’s 2011 survey on intimate partner violence, it is not based on a random sampling. Over 100,000 surveys were distributed, but only one-fifth of them were completed. This strongly suggests that this survey is largely based on a self-selection—meaning that is highly likely that those who perceived themselves to be victims would be more likely to complete the survey, this skewing the results.

B) The report suggests that in raw numbers more male soldiers than female experienced sexual assaults.  

In the initial reporting, none of this was made apparent. However, Bloomberg questioned the majority of the reporting on this story from the beginning: “While public and political attention has focused on the persistent problem of men in uniform abusing women, the survey found that more victims of sexual assault and harassment in the military are male than female, largely because men make up about 85 percent of the total force.” It also pointed out the “scanty response rates, questionable data and broad definitions of what constitutes abuse.” For women, this could mean simply being touched by someone they didn’t like or “misinterpreting” the intentions of another. For male soldiers—particularly by other male soldiers—this is often about shame and control. The media, for example, frequently sites rape as a weapon of war in the Congo; what it doesn’t mention is that many of the victims are men, who are so shamed by the experience that they cannot even show their faces in public. When women advocates are confronted with the data, they of course claim that this issue isn’t about “gender,” but that’s what they say today. 

But an answer to USA Today’s question may be that what “studies” of this nature claim and what the reality on the ground is may sometimes be very different. In the “real world,” people generally live among those with whom they share a similar outlook; they may work with people who are “different” than they are, but they don’t go home to them. Or if they if they do, they can isolate themselves in their homes or apartments as if “they” don’t exist. This is not the case in the military. You have to coexist day and night with people with different personalities, different worldviews, different life experiences and different races. Disagreements and conflict are natural and common occurrences in this environment. Some people may be more “sensitive” than others, while some may choose to see what they wish because it is easier to view oneself as a “victim” rather than adapting one’s own behavior to changed circumstances. 

And while there is no way to “interpret” forcible rape other than what it is, that is not so clear-cut in other interactions in which there is a dislike of other people or a preference not to interact with them. This frequently occurs in everyday life; you may be walking by a female who is just another anonymous ship passing in the night in your mind, but in her mind, she may be thinking you are consumed with sexual desire for her and turning over in your mind what you are going to do with her if you had the chance; or maybe she imagines that you are “looking” at them. I've encountered women who I can see peripherally are looking at me hoping to catch me "leering" at them for an "Aha" moment. To them I recall this passage from Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire:

Blanche: I was fishing for a compliment, Stanley.

Stanley: I don’t go in for that stuff.

Blanche: What – stuff?

Stanley: Compliments to women about their looks. I never met a dame that didn’t know if she was good-looking or not without being told, and some of them give themselves credit for more than they’ve got. I once went out with a dame who said to me, “I am the glamorous type." She says "I am the glamorous type!” I said, “So, what?”