June 2013
Sex and the Army Have a Long History
My mother told me that it isn’t polite to discuss sex, money, or politics. I have minded all her other admonitions, but these topics are the fodder of historians and columnists, and I am both.
The whole issue of rape in the military has many more sides than the outraged press, the brave women on the Armed Services Committee, and the Defense Department are addressing. We need some perspective before we can fix the problem.
The very idea of having women in the professional military is new in human history, something that has only come to be as a result of the efforts to permit equal opportunity in every modern institution; it is the fruit of the emancipation of women from second-class citizenship. As the DOD privately complains, it is a vast social experiment that most of them initially opposed. (They also opposed desegregating the black and white military until president Truman forced it.)
We know that for the most part, the effort to make the military look more like the public it serves has worked well. Women have proven themselves dedicated, tough, and competent at every task assigned them. And during such touchy duties as military policing and overseas occupations, the presence of women can defuse otherwise violent confrontations, something our police and tavern owners already know. Female bartenders defuse belligerence.
Should women be permitted to serve side by side with men in the military? Absolutely yes. But there are problems with it too.
• Testosterone. When primates are in physical conflict, testosterone surges in males, not only in warfare, but after any close brush with death. After cataclysms, human beings have a strong need to mate to assure species survival. This is a potent human drive.
• Abuse of Power. In many Third World armies today (Egypt, for example), where women are not readily available, male recruits are often used by superior officers. This is rarely acknowledged, but even in our own military sexual abuse scandal, young men have also been raped. Many of today’s raping of fellow soldiers (male or female) go on because the perpetrators can get away with it. Serious consequences for such rapists will stop this old military tradition.
• Economic Realities. Armies from antiquity have been paid badly, but were provided a share in all captured booty (including the enemy’s women). Soldiers are away from wives and families for a long time, and their commanders know that having access to women for sex and comfort makes them more manageable. Many professional armies traveled with “camp followers,” prostitutes and female servants. But such availability has never been enough to spare local populations from rape and loot.
• Military Tactics. Part of military strategy is sowing fear in the enemy by telling them what you will do to them and their families. Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Mongols announced to cities under siege that if they surrendered quietly, they would be spared rape and plunder. If not, the entire male population would be massacred and the females enslaved.
• Hatred. Japan, in World War II, raped every female of any age in the notorious “Rape of Nanking” in China, as did the Russians upon taking Berlin. The Koran’s tales of conquest of cities and tribes spells out how the spoils (women) were to be divided, kept as personal sex slaves or sold to the lucrative slave markets. Pious Islamist warriors still behave this way today, especially in Sudan and Somalia.
• Modern Mores. The majority of male military now working with their female colleagues are treating them as colleagues. The few who do not, who rape because they can or because they think tradition protects them, are criminals who must be weeded out of the military and watched in civilian life.
However, the military’s drinking culture can, and does, put women at a disadvantage. In the desire to be “one of the boys,” young women make themselves vulnerable. This is not smart. But what hurts raped military women most is not being protected by their “band of brothers” or their superior officers. This culture can and must be changed.
677 words
Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of Ten Inventions that Changed Everything. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.
The whole issue of rape in the military has many more sides than the outraged press, the brave women on the Armed Services Committee, and the Defense Department are addressing. We need some perspective before we can fix the problem.
The very idea of having women in the professional military is new in human history, something that has only come to be as a result of the efforts to permit equal opportunity in every modern institution; it is the fruit of the emancipation of women from second-class citizenship. As the DOD privately complains, it is a vast social experiment that most of them initially opposed. (They also opposed desegregating the black and white military until president Truman forced it.)
We know that for the most part, the effort to make the military look more like the public it serves has worked well. Women have proven themselves dedicated, tough, and competent at every task assigned them. And during such touchy duties as military policing and overseas occupations, the presence of women can defuse otherwise violent confrontations, something our police and tavern owners already know. Female bartenders defuse belligerence.
Should women be permitted to serve side by side with men in the military? Absolutely yes. But there are problems with it too.
• Testosterone. When primates are in physical conflict, testosterone surges in males, not only in warfare, but after any close brush with death. After cataclysms, human beings have a strong need to mate to assure species survival. This is a potent human drive.
• Abuse of Power. In many Third World armies today (Egypt, for example), where women are not readily available, male recruits are often used by superior officers. This is rarely acknowledged, but even in our own military sexual abuse scandal, young men have also been raped. Many of today’s raping of fellow soldiers (male or female) go on because the perpetrators can get away with it. Serious consequences for such rapists will stop this old military tradition.
• Economic Realities. Armies from antiquity have been paid badly, but were provided a share in all captured booty (including the enemy’s women). Soldiers are away from wives and families for a long time, and their commanders know that having access to women for sex and comfort makes them more manageable. Many professional armies traveled with “camp followers,” prostitutes and female servants. But such availability has never been enough to spare local populations from rape and loot.
• Military Tactics. Part of military strategy is sowing fear in the enemy by telling them what you will do to them and their families. Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Mongols announced to cities under siege that if they surrendered quietly, they would be spared rape and plunder. If not, the entire male population would be massacred and the females enslaved.
• Hatred. Japan, in World War II, raped every female of any age in the notorious “Rape of Nanking” in China, as did the Russians upon taking Berlin. The Koran’s tales of conquest of cities and tribes spells out how the spoils (women) were to be divided, kept as personal sex slaves or sold to the lucrative slave markets. Pious Islamist warriors still behave this way today, especially in Sudan and Somalia.
• Modern Mores. The majority of male military now working with their female colleagues are treating them as colleagues. The few who do not, who rape because they can or because they think tradition protects them, are criminals who must be weeded out of the military and watched in civilian life.
However, the military’s drinking culture can, and does, put women at a disadvantage. In the desire to be “one of the boys,” young women make themselves vulnerable. This is not smart. But what hurts raped military women most is not being protected by their “band of brothers” or their superior officers. This culture can and must be changed.
677 words
Dr. Laina Farhat-Holzman is a historian, lecturer, and author of Ten Inventions that Changed Everything. You may contact her at Lfarhat102@aol.com or www.globalthink.net.