Response Post 4.18

The two New York Times articles brought a topic to light that I think is rarely discussed in our media today. I have never really thought about sexual assault in the military before. It is easy for us to assume that the military is one united unit…a team that works together and depends on each other, and therefore they would not hurt each other. It was really upsetting to read the stories of women in the U.S military who have been sexually assaulted. What was even more upsetting to read was that many of the women were expelled from the military and sent home because of their complaints. Some women who remained silent expressed their intense fear about their stalkers. One woman refused to drink anything after 7 pm, so she did not have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and risk being attacked by her stalker.

The very idea of living in fear of sexual assault in a military setting frightens me. I find it to be even more frightening than sexual assault in a “normal” environment, because these women really feel that they have no where to turn to for help. The military has always been extremely male dominated, and I can imagine that women feel they cannot complain about their situations because they have an intense fear that their male superiors will not take them seriously. In fact, many of these assaults probably occur by males who are in a higher position of power than the women they are assaulting, therefore putting the women in even more of a “birdcage” type of situation.

Finally, these articles made me ponder the whole “don’t ask don’t tell” debacle. If women are allowed to be in the military and fight alongside men (and have sex with men), why is there such an intense debate over having gay people in the military? I have always heard that one large factor going in to the gays in the military discussion is that straight men will feel that their gay fellow soldiers may be attracted to them, and that is an added pressure that they don’t want to deal with while they are in the military. However, if women are allowed to be in the military and live in close quarters with men (as the NYT articles tell us), shouldn’t these women be “putting sexual pressure” on men, the same way that gay men would do if they were in the military? It doesn’t make sense that one of the main arguments for “don’t ask don’t tell” is that gay men will make straight men feel uncomfortable, when women are in the military anyway.