The Washington Post reports that after ruminating on the subject of sexual harassment for an entire day, Chuck Hagel has arrived at the totally unique conclusion that you need more training. Anyone who didn’t see that coming, raise your hand. Yeah, me, too.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Tuesday evening ordered the armed services to immediately “re-train, re-credential and re-screen” tens of thousands of military recruiters and sexual-assault prevention officers as the revelation of another sex-crime scandal rocked the Pentagon.
[…]
“He is going to spare no effort to address this problem,” George Little, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters Wednesday. Little said the public, lawmakers and military personnel “have the right to be outraged” about the Fort Hood investigation.
Oddly enough, in a link sent to us by Jerry920, NBC reports that a woman who has been charged with sexual harassment at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX pleaded guilty;
Staff Sergeant Emily Allen admitted to having a sexual relationship with a male technical trainee, attempting to have a sexual relationship with another man, and having or trying to develop social relationships with two female and one male technical trainees.
“She pleaded guilty to having a relationships with all four of the technical school Airmen,” Lackland spokesman Brent Boller said.
I honestly don’t understand the problem, really, I don’t. But, I’m pretty sure that taking time from training to teach hand and arm signals isn’t the answer. Like someone said in the comments in the other post, the training is already eight hours long. If a lieutenant colonel, a sergeant first class and an Air Force sergeant don’t understand that grabbing various women by the ass, turning your subordinates into prostitutes, and boinking your trainees is against DoD policy, I don’t think more training will fix that. Honestly.
Ok, everyone who thinks any of that is acceptable behavior, raise your hand. Nope, me neither. And I’ve never had a sexual harassment slide show presentation. Never. I don’t think that the military needs to waste a minute on training people not to be perverts. Maybe they should keep them in the field five days a week like they did to us. Or separate the sexes, like they did to us.
But training is exactly the solution employed by people with no leadership experience, so I guess we’ll go with that one instead of using some common sense.
There could be a whole of reasons for all this nonsense, but most of it could be solved by the military doing what it already does best instead of pretending to be a dating service and by enforcing the rules that it already has in place.
Of course, it really was easier back in the day when men and women didn’t share assigned bunk space. Gee, who would have thought that might lead to problems.
I was in a Support Unit and we had both males and females. I knew of other NCO’s that were scared to death to counsel their female soldiers without the door open or another NCO in the room.
I did not play that game. I expected all of my soldiers to do their jobs and behave as grown ups, in return I treated as grown ups and soldiers. So I counseled all of my soldiers the same, in private and in confidence. I never had a single issue with it.
Maybe GENs Petraeus, Sinclair and Allen should give the introduction.
They all decided to enforce GO Number 1 with ruthless efficiency and then somehow then the “Generals take orders from their Privates”……
I agree OWB. I say take the kid’s gloves off and get old school again, maybe then people will start taking shit more seriously.
Somebody needs to sodomize the Good Idea Fairy.
Curious to wonder what Tech school that was in Lackland. So I went on global and looked.
No wonder why this Emily Allen chick was trying to sleep around. It was the Dental squadron at Lackland! Dental in the air force usually got some pretty hot chicks.
C2/2000AF; but Emily wasn’t one of those “hot chicks”.
“If a lieutenant colonel, a sergeant first class and an Air Force sergeant don’t understand that grabbing various women by the ass, turning your subordinates into prostitutes, and boinking your trainees is against DoD policy, I don’t think more training will fix that. Honestly.”
Money quote of the day here at TAH. Ya done good, Jonn. (smile)
So how is the wholesale integration of men and women going?? Not too well from the looks of it. And if you keep sending mixed signals instead of enforcing regulations, the problem is not going to go away.
I had sexual harassment/assault training from 1991 (Tailhook) until I retired in 2009 and it was all a joke. The best being when I was a senior enlisted advisor at the Naval Academy and had a female Chief training a large group of Alpha Males on sexual assault and telling us that by virtue of being males, we were all potential rapists. Boy did I get my ass chewed for my response to that!
Ruthless enforcement of the rules regardless of rank, regardless of circumstance. That is the only solution I can come up with in my little pea brain. General Sinclair will be a real test case. Power point presentations and checking the block aint gonna do it. And it is just going to get worse when the social engineers finally get the females in the infantry and related combat arms.
Here, pass these outa nd read them over. Class dismissed.
Rule #1. Fantasies are just that. That’s why they’re not called realities.
Rule #2. Assume all women are ladies until they ask for money to do it. If that happens, either pay up or get out.
Rule #3. Your eyes are free to roam. And that’s all that’s free to roam.
Rule #4. If your conscience is broken, at least assume that you are being filmed for the TV “Caught in the Act.”
Daffy-having failed in his attempts to get Elmer to shoot Bugs: “Listen friend what you need is briefing, come with me.”
After Elmer inevitably shoots Daffy again:
Elmer: “More briefing?”
Daffy: “More briefing”
7 – I probably should LOL but Jonn, well she just wanted to be popular or one of the pretty chicks of dental. She probably was 22 years old at Staff. One of things of the AF. come in at 18, pass the ridiculous WAPS testing to be a young staff who didnt know any better.
Surprised they still show her as a staff sgt. I guess they havent handed down the punishment yet.
Well, okay, answer me this: if it isn’t okay to put your boy and girl children in the same bedroom after a certain age, or in the same bedroom where the parents are having sex, then why is it okay to have co-ed sleeping/living quarters in any confined space, just because it’s the military?
I do understand hormones and hormonal attacks. I’ve had them myself, but I dealt with them in an appropriate way. I did not see this kind of thing when I was in the Navy, and you can’t count a barrage of dirty jokes and double entendres as sex assault. Those are just bad manners. And it wasn’t that men and women in the Navy/Marines didn’t screw around with each other. They did, but on their own time.
So what happened between 1974, when I left the Navy, and now?
Don’t blame it entirely on ‘kids away from Mom and Dad’. That’s part of it, like this one time, in band camp–, but it’s only a small part. There’s more to it than simply being away from home, or being in close quarters.
I can say that I very seldom saw it happend in civilian companies, but that may be due to working in an atmosphere of ‘do that and get fired’.
“The Washington Post reports that after ruminating on the subject of sexual harassment for an entire day, Chuck Hagel….”
Hagel ruminated all day? At work? Where was his secretary? This is unbelievable!
Ex-PH2; It’s not the sleeping arrangements, it’s the culture. I remember the stink women in uniform made when a general said that he’d punish the women who get pregnant in Iraq and the participant in that medical condition. I mean, their whole argument was that they couldn’t say “no” even in a combat zone, that sex was a “right” this general was taking away from them. And what if they had sex with so many guys that they didn’t know who the father is? FFS, couldn’t everyone keep their pants on while they’re being shot at?
Co sign with Jonn on that one. Desert seemed to be a way for people to play out a fantasy, it was a culture and it still is a culture that carries on. Just out in non combat areas like Al Udeid, Al Dhafra and Kuwait have that issues. Contractors having sex with women in uniform, uniform on uniform sex and so on. Even had a chaplain out there sleeping with a young female airman.
This problem has been going on for decades now. I remember the crazy scandal in Germany, even at Ramstein they had male on male issues with sodomy.
ExPH2, In Iraq we had General Order #1, no sex. Our camp became a whore house when females came on board to do the Lioness program. In Afghanistan, I was on an embassy reinforcement mission, two of my Marines who were walking a roving post, caught a female Army Officer having sex with one of her soldiers on top of a piano in one of the embassy outbuildings. While at USNA, had too many episodes of sexual misconduct both consensual and non consensual to list here, between midshipmen and midshipmen and midshipmen and staff. It seems like every deployment I went on where the sexes were mixed, you had misconduct.
My point is, this shit is going to happen. I don’t know what else to say. Burn the offenders down to the ground. Stop covering the shit up when it involves those of senior rank. It is illegal. Treat it as such. Bring the pain. But power points and statistics and heart wrenching stories aint doing the job. Burn the offenders DOWN!!
“Or separate the sexes, like they did to us.” That’s just crazy talk. Like Tony Cucolo’s slilly expectation that soldiers have to obey orders…
“If a lieutenant colonel, a sergeant first class and an Air Force sergeant don’t understand that grabbing various women by the ass, turning your subordinates into prostitutes, and boinking your trainees is against DoD policy, I don’t think more training will fix that. Honestly.”
Ah, but Jonn, I think you’re missing the true genius of this plan!
Don’t you see it – the forced “training” is itself a form of (mass) punishment for wrongdoing. Think about it, more time spent in a classroom watching some idiotic video presentation and having to take a ‘test’ where you are forced to regurgitate what you just saw. If that’s not punishment, then I’d like to know what is!
It’s like making everybody do pushups because Private Gomer Pyle stole a donut from the mess hall. Punish everybody for the transgressions of a few and soon the ranks will be self-policing (or else they will face the prospect of more “training.”) 😉
Our ambulance platoon became a self-propelled whore house at $75/pop and the all-female Support Bn platoon drove from FOB to FOB (the ones who didn’t get disqualed from deployment for being preggers before we deployed). Another female lieutenant in the maintenance company got caught screwing her PSG by her husband, a grunt. Then she lost a rifle and that ended her career.
Okay, that’s what I was looking for. I know we had this discussion back in January. This is an extension of that. I think it’s better to bring it up and discuss it than pretend it doesn’t exist, which is what happened when I was in.
And I agree, stop covering up this shit and stop covering for senior NCOs and officers. I saw as many horndog officers as I did POs. I can’t say that nobody misbehaved while on duty, because I got the gossip about WAVES officers trading OOD nights with male officers based on which enlisted men and women were standing duty at NPC.
The difference between then and now is that it wasn’t so obvious, but those were not combat environments, either. In combat, however, if you can’t keep your pants on, as Jonn says above, (FFS, couldn’t everyone keep their pants on while they’re being shot at?) you are putting other people’s lives at risk even there are no bullets flying through the air. Sex isn’t illegal. Putting other people’s lives in jeopardy is.
It just seems to me, especially with Petraeus’s recent affair, that the fish stinks from the head a lot on this. And Hagel spent a whole day thinking about this? Did it interrupt his nap time?
The beatings shall continue until morale improves.
As I stated earlier and elsewhere, compare the rate of sexual misconduct going on in uniform to, say, that of your average large college campus.
Yeah, I think I’ve made my point.
Or separate the sexes, like they did to us.
It’s a lot harder to f#ck the women when you can’t see them without binoculars…..
Take a page from the civilian workplace, lose your job in disgrace when you are caught sh1tting where you eat….and it doesn’t matter if you are the CFO or an apprentice. F#ck the secretary and find your way home without a paycheck d1ckhead…not to mention how that plays out at your unemployment hearing.
@22 – You’re right, Sparky. That mindset of the “need to get some” is prevalent in both high schools AND colleges throughout the country, and that mindset transfers over once the dotted line is signed and the young man/woman transition into uniform. Ex-PH2 makes a sound observation that a majority of those in uniform are 18-30 and have sex on the brain, but then MGySgtRet observes folks need to be slammed dunked. I agree with both points.
We need to get back to the old school days and fry some fuggin’ asses over this stuff. While they’re at it, they need to get back to hosting Article 15’s in formation so the whole world can observe.
@23 Well said and correct.
@9 – MGySgtRet – What was it you said that got the folks so upset with you? I’m curious. (I’ve been to briefs like that and recall walking out pissed off!)
Or how about this?
Take a page from the Roman army, admit that looting, pillaging and raping are part of the game of war, admit that it happens and quit giving sex and sex assault lectures to people who are little kids in adult bodies. Dispense birth control pills to the women or give them IUDs or have their tubes reversible-tied, and give the guys reversible vasectomies, until they get back home. And if someone says “No”, then “no” means “no” and get those little snots to accept that.
Then give them lectures on VD – put some really NASTY stuff in those lectures – and quit being such a bunch of wusses about it.
@26, I told the female chief that I was not a potential rapist, her statistics were bullshit and I was not going to sit through any more of this witch hunt. I then got up and left. I was tracked down by a female Master Chief (I was a Gunny at the time) who told me to report to the Command Master Chief. When I reported to him and pled my case, he chewed my ass and requested that I return to training. Since he had given me a choice in the matter, I requested not to have to return any more because I was unsure if I could keep my emotions in check. He agreed and let me return to my office. The female Master Chief was PISSED and followed me back to my office threatening me with all sorts of evil. But I did not have to sit through any more of that crap and her threats were just that. She did not have any authority over me. That was a fun day at the office!!
Then give them lectures on VD – put some really NASTY stuff in those lectures – and quit being such a bunch of wusses about it.
I remember the one I got at Great Lakes. The instructor was an even then crusty HMCM(FMF) who had done a couple of tours in Vietnam. Even today I hear the question, “Who likes blueberry pie?” and I still get queasy.
@24: But you know what, it will never happen. Because when someone does get caught, it’s easy to cue up the violins and to beseech the Chain of Command or Court martial panel with “why should you let one screw up destroy the career of a great soldier/sailor/airman/marine?” And the more distinguished the offender, the less likely they are to be punished, which just leads the private/sailor/airman/marine to think “ain’t that always how it goes?”
I think it’s pretty unrealistic to pull young men and women out of a society in which not only is sex glorified and celebrated in every possible permutation, but in which the biggest “sin” a person can commit is to judge another person’s sexual choices, and then to expect that person to adhere to a code of sexual morality that is more fitting of a monk. It’s particularly unrealistic when the top leaders of the military themselves are guilty of the same behavior.
Honestly, the problem with sex in the military is not that there’s too much of it, the real problem is that there isn’t enough and it’s not evenly distributed. This leads to resentments, jealousies, dividing of loyalties and the shattering of unit morale – after all, it’s hard to be someone’s battle buddy if you’re competing against him for the same piece of tail.
Short of opening military brothels like the Foreign Legion supposedly does, I’m not sure what the solution here is, but it seems apparent that the puritan approach ain’t workin’.
The other thing I have to contribute (?) to this discussion is that the Romans, who invaded Tuscany and overwhelmed the pleasure-loving and libidinous Etruscans, took the Etruscan culture and adopted it for their own. That included gladiatorial games.
The early Romans were a rather rough bunch, but they were also a bunch of horndogs that make modern soldiers pale by comparison. They went on with gladiatorial combat because it drew blood and the smell of blood in the arena made them quite randy. Women considered the sweat from a gladiator to be an aphrodisiac. They carried this culture everywhere they went, as confirmed by the various coliseums they left behind.
I don’t think there is much difference from that now, except that for some reason, the military wants to ignore the problem instead of facing and dealing with it. Don’t think for one second that men can’t be forced into the same corner by women (or other men) as women.
Another lecture isn’t going to solve the problem, nor will kicking butts. Women in the military, especially senior women, need to get off this ‘all men are rapists’ kick, too, because it’s is hogwash, and that attitude really pisses me off. (Yeah, I’m in the ‘listen here, bitch’ mood today. 🙂 )
I’ll make sure my training date coincides with my furlough.
Nicki: nice try. But I’m sure there will be multiple “make up” dates, and that the training will be mandatory. (smile)
@28 – That’s precisely what I sorta figured. I HAVE been to briefs like that. Good on ya for sticking up for yourself.
@30 – I’m with you, and I’m certainly not arguing that leaders should expect people to behave like monks. I’m sure you’d agree there is a lack of accountability. Sadly, when the leadership is doing it, then… well, you know the rest. If Petraeus and his ilk are getting away with it, it’s no wonder why it’s so pervasive in some respects. Nobody is being held accountable.
I just think the military needs to get back to some common sense approaches. I admit I’m not quite sure what that looks like, other than a few remedies I’m familiar with that have already been proposed here in this forum. Others have said that punishing the whole lot by death by .ppt just isn’t going to fly. I agree. As far as the equal distribution of tail, you make a point – but there’s a difference between consensual and non-consensual sex, and I think that’s the crux of this issue here.
Hondo – do I look like I give a flying fuck at this moment? Nahhhh…. Since I’m going on forced vacation and losing 20+ percent of my pay, I think I can avoid the training fairly easily. What are they going to do, fire me?
I find this more infuriating:
“The Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, issued new interim guidance on April 5, 2013, to support victims of sexual assault who hold, or wish to hold, a government security clearance, but may be reluctant to seek mental health counseling for fear they may have to disclose the counseling on their application.
Interim guidance allows victims of sexual assault to answer “No” to Question 21 on the Standard Form 86, “Questionnaire for National Security Positions”. The question asks if you have consulted a health care professional or been hospitalized in the last seven years, regarding an emotional or mental health condition.”
That is all fine and dandy. Yet it fails to look at PTSD. I bet there are a lot more people out there with PTSD symptoms that are not seeking help because they are afraid of losing their clearance.
The issue is one of Military Discipline having been tossed out the window for the sake of social engineering, and everyone gets a trophy mentality.
Rape and sexual assault happen everywhere, the military is not immune… but!! More classes, more powerpoint is not the answer.
@29 Sparky, LMFAO!
My roommate got out of the Army just about a year ago and decided to go back in.
The last TWO WEEKS have been a litany of complaints about how they have done nothing but Death By Power Point… and in fact, DbPP that he’s already seen enough times in the past to have memorized.
Sure. Another couple hours of that will make a serious impact. I believe it.
I noticed Staff Sergeant Emily Allen likes boys AND girls. Isn’t that a “GO” in equal opportunity?
@35 Nicki – Unless you only get paid for 55 days a year, you will not lose 20% of your pay for being furloughed 11 days.
If you work a standard 2080 hours a year, 11 days is only 4.2%.
But, yes, it still sucks.
#40 – Marco, thats a greenlight indeed. Looking at her pictures, she might not look all that bad out of uniform. But the articles all point to poor “social relationships” with females, really doesnt go into detail what she was doing with these females. Could have just been engaging in threesomes, who knows.
@41: Federal employees get paid every two weeks (with some exceptions) so 1 day unpaid/week means that for 11 weeks (5 1/2 pay periods) they will see a 20% reduction in their pay (i.e., assuming they normally work a 5 day week, they are being paid for 8 work days in a pay period instead of 10.) My guess is that’s what the 20% refers to.
Arby: Annually, it’s about 4.2%. But it will indeed be a reduction of 20% in pay during the period for which the furlough is at peak effect. DoD employees will lose 1 paid day per week, or 16 paid hours per pay period for 5 pay periods (plus one pay period where only 1 paid day will be lost).
(80 – 16)/80 = 64/80 = 80% of former gross pay. That looks like a reduction of 20% to me.
For as long as there have been men and women there have been those who used power to get access to sex and those who used sex to get access to power. It’s a lot older than Antony and Cleopatra or even David and Bathsheba.
Hell, it’s an issue that we in civilian society still deal with. We’ve all heard the term “casting couch”, and there’s no doubt that there are a whole lot of places where a person in a position of power asks a sexually desirable subordinate “just how badly do you want that promotion?”
I think the military gets a lot of attention because it’s more visible than other parts of society, but it’s pretty silly for our leaders to think that they’re going to be able to undo a hundred thousand years of human nature with a couple of power point briefings.
A Pentagon spokesperson named George Little? I wonder how many in his office call him Chicken Little behind his back?
“(I)t’s pretty silly for our leaders to think that they’re going to be able to undo a hundred thousand years of human nature with a couple of power point briefings.” Well, they also thought that they could turn the IRS loose on folks and no one would find out, or that they could blame Benghazi on a video, and they could seize the phone records of a “news” organization and get away with it.
I’ll reiterate what I said on an earlier thread: sex is more primal than discipline in that discipline has to be inculcated in a variety of ways, but sexual desire comes perfectly naturally to most of us (hormonally and biologically if nothing else). It is a core aspect of our personhood, especially in youth, and the extent to which discipline will be able to impact sexual behavior is limited especially when people are under tremendous stress (sex being the ultimate stress reliever) and without many other outlets.
But the real problem is that the lefty nincompoops who now run our government simply do not want to acknowledge any of this, because if they do the whole “gender is a social construct”, “human behavior is perfectly malleable” idea that informs so much of lefty ideology, but especially gender feminism, will fall completely apart.
Don’t believe me? Well last week the Departments of Justice and Education-the top tiers of our government mind-published a joint letter to the University of Montana which is meant to serve as guidance for the standard of what constitutes sexual harassment on campus. The letter states that “Any expression related to sexual topics that offends any person” is sexual harassment and subject to punishment. This is a very broad definition of sexual harassment and means that anything from a classroom discussion on Nabakov’s “Lolita” to a simple request for a date would constitute sexual harassment (for details see http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/10/say-anything-sexual-that-offends-anyone). But the gender feminists really do see all males as “potential rapists” and as long as they hold power expect them to continue to enforce their worldview.
This is why I retired after 30 years. Could no longer tolerate being treated like an 18 year old. Just deal harshly with the few that screw up and keep moving.
Arby, I didn’t say for the year, did I?
Right.
you must be heated about this?