Stumbled across this story recently and dunno quite what to make of it. NB: I didn’t fully deploy all of my Google-Fu skills to completely confirm the story. Every easy search looped back to this, but it appears real.
The Lede: Defense Secretary: 10,400 Male Troops Subjected to ‘Unwanted Sexual Contact’ Last Year.
“Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told a group of ROTC cadets on Wednesday that sexual assault is a “particular challenge and a particular disgrace” to the U.S. military. He noted that last year, far more men (10,400) than women (8,500) “experienced unwanted sexual contact.”
First thought: Unless you happen to be surprised in the shower what were the circumstances for the guys? I’ll admit that I have no current frame of reference. Even in the shower wouldn’t a normal male react rather than filing a report?
Still, if the story is true it is oddly enlightening. 10,000+ of those “Males” currently in uniform filed a complaint that added to the stats. Also, the definition of “assault” seems to be vague in masculine terms. There are no details in the story. My emphasis would be the notion of “Unwanted Sexual Contact”.
So… Our currently serving folks have opted to file a complaint rather than simply punching the lights out of some miscreant?
If it were April 1st or a post from the Duffle Blog it’d be funny. As it is I can’t quite bring myself to even giggle about it. YMMV!
Please define “unwanted sexual contact”? If it’s male-on-male, I’d tend to agree with the majority of hetero men.
If it’s male-on-female, I’d call it “lucky”.
Have we raised such a generation of wussies that can’t stand up for themselves, without filing a Goobermental agency “complaint”? Really?
(I’d say more, but don’t want to dig a hole I can’t climb out of)
In the current command climate, punching the perpetrator would make the perpetrator the victim and get the victim in trouble. Filing a report doesn’t surprise me. It’s the only means of self defense available.
So now we need to have some “walk a mile in my jock strap” marches by women everywhere.
Stank, years old jock straps with flies attracted to them. Yep, that sounds “fair” to me…(Get to it MG Coombs!)
Today’s kids have no male role models in school. The vast majority of teachers are female these days. They are socializing our male children to have the traits that female have. The results are obvioous:
– Violence, bad. Reporting good.
– Self defense, bad. Defense by authority figure, good.
– Waxing body hair, good. 70s porn star bush-like eyebrows and balls, bad.
I got news for you, FF. The vast majority of schoolteachers have ALWAYS been women. It was one of the few respectable jobs that women could get in the 19th century.
Don’t you know that?
Have you never heard the word ‘schoolmarm’, or did you think that was just some quaint word used in a movie or TV show?
Schoolteacher, nursey, secretary – that was about it. Up until the end of the 18th century, when women were being worked to death in spinning mills and textile mills and garment factories for a few pennies a day, the only other occupations women had were mother, nun or prostitute and thief. In the Middle Ages, if a man’s wife died and his only offspring were girls and he wanted to remarry, those girls either got married or were kicked to the curb.
You need to do a little reading of history – like read ‘Moll Flanders’ – before you say such things. Daniel Defoe merely reported what he found women subjected to. Moll represented many of the women he ran into.
The SECDEF didn’t say these are actual reports. This is an estimate extrapolated from actual reports. As the force is near 80% male it doesn’t take many male reports to get to such an impressive number.
Here another thought. Might more males be reporting (I’m assuming that these are both referred and un-referred reports used in the anslysis) instances of “unwanted sexual contact” just to cover their ass?
For example, SGT x is out at a club in Fayetteville and PFC/SPC y (let’s assume she has a reputation you don’t want to be associated with for whatever reason) grabs or touches him. It would be highly reasonable for SGT X to get this documented so that it doesn’t come back on him at some point. With a force of 1 million males it would not take a lot of instances like this to skew the numbers.
In regard to ‘unwanted sexual contact’, I thought that stuff had ended with the ‘OK to be gay’ thing in the service.
So, either these guys are gay guys reporting unwanted contact with women who can’t figure out that they’re gay (how is that possible?) or they’re straight guys being hit on by tundra wookies?
This definitely needs more and better-defined reporting.
Oh, dear – it just occurred to me that there may be a moerk in the woodwork here.
Based on the recent experience of someone I know, the number is inflated by a VERY low bar for defining conduct. This person got written up, denied a plum assignment, and had their post-training leave cut short for basically saying hello to a guy that didn’t like what was said. I’m thinking that happens 14000 times a day.
My guess is any physical contact of a person looking to cause trouble could be written up.
The most common I heard of, was guys waking up to a hand reaching through the rack curtains. By the time they were able to react, said attacker had disappeared into the darkness of berthing.
According to CDC: “Unwanted sexual contact – intentional touching, either directly or through the clothing, of the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person without his or her consent, or of a person who is unable to consent or refuse. Unwanted sexual contact can be perpetrated against a person or by making a person touch the perpetrator. Unwanted sexual contact could be referred to as “sexual harassment” in some contexts, such as a school or workplace.”
The numbers seem about what I remember from my last few SARC briefings. While the feminazis screech and claim 27,000 females in the military are raped by males every year (a totally fabricated number), the actual numbers show a low total rape rate, and the majority of all levels of sexual violence in the military is by the same sex.
Suspect they used similar criteria as when I was getting background checked for drug usage and the NIS lads said that if you were in the same room as someone smoking pot, you were in the same room as someone you knew had pot and you didn’t report it, if you knew someone who smoked pot and didn’t report them, were at a party where someone smoked pot and you didn’t report it, possessed pot, rode in a car in which you knew there was pot concealed, etc. all counted to answer the question: How many times have you smoked pot? (I told them maybe 10,000 times or so – I lived in a town nationally famous for smoking and growing weed.) Apply those same sorts of criteria to sexual misadventure and you get….
MST has now become the other “go to” when claims of PTSD won’t work for compensation. For every veteran with a real issue there are 10 “veterans” – those with less than a year of service or who got tossed out for whatever reason – continuously bombarding the system with one claim for something after another. MST is nearly impossible to prove and they don’t have to talk about it because it’s just too upsetting. You want to know why the VA comp system is screwed up? They pay people not to get well and encourage claims from posers and losers who couldn’t make it in the military. Again, I’m not talking about wounded combat vets. The system is out of control and not sustainable.
Hey, male on male, back of the hand ball slap for the purpose ensuring one is focussed on the task is off the table!
It works!
51% sarc.
DOH!
Touching me? Touching me! I don’t know if I should be upset, sad, jealous or happy. Nobody ever touched me in the military. Well, except in the vein Mater Chief referenced just above. “Therapeutic Touch Counseling” by the DS and occasionally the TOP when I was a new boot in the field the first time. Nothing sexual mind you but very effective in getting their point across.
Meant “Master Chief” sorry sir.
Any of you homos touch me, I’ll kill ya
Lighten up Francis…
Two males in the communal shower.
Male one: Wow, that’s a nice cock you have, may I touch it?
Male two: I don’t know, well okay.
Male one: This is really a nice cock, may I touch your balls?
Male two: Well okay but nothing else.
Male one holding male two’s balls and squeezing: Now give me your wallet, watch and cell phone.
Maybe it’s just a little pushback (no pun intended) against the incredibly stupid PC climate in today’s military.
Joe thinks “you want to play these stupid mandatory SHARP training games all day/week etc. OK, I’ll play your silly little games.”
and then Joe reports every incident as detailed in the Death by PowerPoint briefing until the SARC/Victim Advocate/whatever they’re called these days, gives up in frustration.
And now Joe can go back to skating and playing CoD on Xbox.
I did not realize Commander Phil Monkress of All-Points Logistics was still in service.
Under today’s guidelines, a slap on the ass followed by “good game” is sexual assault.
I am waiting for the first idiot to say that the ‘seal of approval’ given to jumpers at green ramp, Fort Bragg, NC is Sexual Harassment because ‘he lingered’.
Hell, For that matter, I’ve known Black hats at Airborne school who even after they EXPLAINED to the students what they were doing, had SHARP complaints filed against them for tracing the leg straps all the way back to the saddle (for those unaware, the saddle in a T-11 Parachute sits generally at the center of the jumper’s butt between the legs). It is not Sexual harassment, it is Making sure your parachute harness doesn’t come undone in the air and kill your dumb ass.
Some of these days, I really wonder about the future of the United States of America, when STUPID shit like this is allowed to happen and the person who brought it up isn’t told to ‘STFU, Drink water, Take a knee, change your socks, here’s your motrin, and MAN THE F#$K UP’.