Sexual violence and abuse are ingrained into military cultures. Armed conflict not only radically lowers the threshold at which interpersonnel violence can take place, it also dramatically alters the nature of that violence. Compared to peacetime, wartime rape increases the number of men (and a tiny group of women) willing and able to inflict sexual harms. In war, rape becomes an intensely public display of brutality; it is even valorized as a patriotic act and one that facilitates emotional bonding between (male) perpetrators. Crucially, in armed conflicts, rape is extensive and systematic. It is sometimes genocidal. Modern conflicts that have seen sexual violence reach such extreme levels that it amounts to femicide include Afghanistan, Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Burma, Bosnia, Cambodia, Croatia, Cyprus, Darfur, Democratic Republic of the Congo, East Timor, El Salvador, Haiti, Indonesia, Kuwait, Kosovo, Liberia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Peru, Rwanda, Serbia, Turkey, Uganda, Vietnam, Zaire, and Zimbabwe.
But sexualized abuse is not only inflicted on so-called ‘enemy women’. Servicewomen are also attacked by their own comrades. In the U.S., fifteen per cent of American women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan reported having been sexually assaulted or harassed. In 2019, levels of sexual assault were highest in the U.S. Marines and Navy and lowest in the airforce; 66 per cent of victims were in the lowest ranks. Victims were male as well as female (there is very little data on non-binary and other genders). Eighteen per cent of completed investigations into sexual abuse in the U.S. military involved male victims. Like their female counterparts, these men experienced severe physical, emotional, and psychological harms, as well as the humiliation of what they perceive to be a fundamental attack on their masculinity and (often) sexual orientation.
Until recently, the British armed forces have assumed that the ‘problem’ of intra-service sexual violence is smaller in the UK compared with the U.S. They were disabused of this assumption in July 2021 when the UK’s House of Commons Defense Committee published their report entitled ‘Protecting Those Who Protect Us: Women in the Armed Forces from Recruitment to Civilian Life’. The report was based on the largest consultation of female service personnel and veterans ever undertaken in the UK, with evidence given by more than 4,000 women. The results were shocking. 62 per cent of servicewomen reporting bullying, harassment, and discrimination. In the words of one woman who had served in Iraq, her fellow servicewomen ‘don’t have to worry about enemy fire. They have to be worried about the guy that’s next to them…. He becomes like public enemy number one for them’. Nearly 90 per cent of abused servicewomen admitted that they hadn’t bother reporting their experiences to their superiors because they knew it would be ignored – or, worse, would be used to belittle them, hamper their promotion applications, or even see them dismissed from the military as ‘troublemakers’.
How can we explain high levels of abuse? Sexual violence in armed institutions and during times of military conflict don’t exist in a political, cultural, or economic vacuum. Sexually abusive ideologies and practices are deeply rooted in institutional histories and imbedded power dynamics. Military institutions reward aggression and promote cultures of dominance. Men who are attracted to the military may be more belligerent than many of their peers. There is also evidence that many recruits had sexually assaulted people prior to enlisting. Upon enlisting, these recruits simply continue their abusive practices, but in an environment where there is less accountability than there would be in civilian contexts. Elsewhere, I have discussed reasons for high levels of impunity granted to sexual aggressors in the forces.
During armed conflicts, sexual violence against ‘enemy women’ has generated other explanations. In recent decades, the concept of ‘rape as a weapon of war’ has come to the fore. It points to the numerous ways rape serves strategic purposes in ‘clearing’ territories of people and destroying cultures. Although extremely important, ‘rape as a weapon of war’ should not be allowed to dominant the history of sexual violence in armed conflicts. It ignores the dramatic extension of ‘everyday rape’ during armed conflicts and risks sidelining or even ignoring intra-community rape or rape that is not sanctioned by military strategy.
There have been numerous attempts to minimise or even eradicate sexual violence within militaries and during times of war. They have not been effective. International law, for example, has proved to be a weak constraint on rapacious armies. In 2001, both the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda recognized rape as a crime against humanity, as opposed to a violation of men’s property rights or an inhumane act. International scholars and feminists were jubilant; sexually violent men barely noticed. Numerous scholars have also attempted to identify aspects of military culture that increase the likelihood of men committing sexual atrocities. In general, these include racism, peer pressure, unfamiliar environments, lack of training, revenge, weak military leadership, and trauma or PTSD. These ‘combat stressors’ are important but they fail to explain why military units vary so widely in the extent and nature of their rapacious behaviours.
Attempts to eradicate intra-military sexual abuse have tended to focus on training of personnel, provision of helplines, introduction of mandatory prevention and response measures, and improved advocacy for victims. Ensuring that victims can access effective medical and psychiatric resources in the aftermath of abuse has also been important. This has often been accompanied by the introduction of ‘military sexual trauma’ (MST) as a diagnostic label that not only acknowledges the unique nature of this form of sexual violence but also can be used to channel help. The problem with such approaches is that they focus on victims, rather than the people who have harmed them. MST can end up pathologizing and further stigmatizing those who have been harmed by sexual abuse.
Bureaucratic and psychiatric responses to sexual violence in military institutions fail to tackle the underling cultural malaise that permeates military life. The disjuncture between ‘paper’ provisions and ‘on the ground’ facts is glaring. The best that can be said is that progress is glacial.
What can be done? In my book Disgrace: Global Reflections on Sexual Violence (2021), I argue that one of the first seps in eradicating sexual violence in military institutions and during times of armed conflict is to acknowledge that it is not inevitable. Even during armed conflicts, there are wide variations in the extent of such forms of violence, with some conflicts experiencing very little. More research is required if we are to identify the reasons for such variations. Military institutions need to listen much more carefully to what their members say when they describe not only their experiences of intra-service violence but also the solutions that they think will help prevent similar traumas happening to other servicemen and women. It is imperative the cultures of impunity are disrupted and destroyed. The need for senior military personnel to act effectively in their responsibility to protect and empower everyone under their command must be made a priority.
If you are interested in this blog, see my two books in the area: Rape: A History from the 1860s to the Present and Disgrace: Global Reflections on Sexual Violence.
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