Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 25

SHARP REALITIES

the status of the Army’s SHARP efforts critically.
Generally, the institutional Army is attacking this
problem as hard as it has anything in its history.
However, in addressing the issues involved, it still
struggles with exactly what the culture is that is in
need of change and precisely what needs to be done
to fix it.
There are different schools of thought about this
effort. Some soldiers see themselves first as victims
of Congress rather than as advocates for the real victims and leaders and stewards of the environments
in which these crimes occur. Some suggest that the
military is comparatively better off than, say, college
campuses, at least in terms of raw percentages. This
implies that the real problem in the military is one
of the society instead, and it ignores the question of
what should be done to change the culture.
Others adopt the related attitude that we are going
to shoulder this burden for society and that we will
lead the way, just as the Army did for racial and gender integration. The unstated theme of this attitude
is, similarly, that “we know we are not as bad as the
civilians are on these issues, but we accept this mission
anyway because we need to make it right, and we’ll
be doing the country a service by leading the way for
what is right.” On the surface, this way of approaching
the problem appears less wrongheaded, but again, it
fails to understand the depth of the task at hand. This
may signal to Congress that the military is willing and
able to settle the problems of assault and harassment
once and for all, but it fails to directly address the
culture we have to change.

Quality Versus Quantity
These perspectives are encouraged and compounded by the impulse to track sexual assaults and harassment (equal opportunity and equal employment
opportunity issues as well as SHARP issues) within
the military in terms of statistics.
The metrics involved are misleading because they
influence the people leading efforts to reduce sexual
assault and harassment to confuse symptoms with
causes. Metric-driven approaches can create the
illusion that leaders are doing something to influence causes when they are not; they are watching the
problem play out. In that sense, the statistics, though
undeniably valuable for gauging the problem (not for
MILITARY REVIEW  March-April 2015

directly fixing it), are something of a red herring. The
culture has to be understood, and only when understood can it be changed.
What exactly is the culture that needs to be
changed? The qualitative dimension of the problem
within the military is its power dynamic. In the civilian sector, the power dynamic is mostly economic;
wealth equals power. Employees who are victims have
legal avenues outside the chain to address harassment
and assault and, in the back of their minds, they do
not worry about a chain of authority over them that
also has legal jurisdiction over them, as soldiers worry.
The lawful authority of the military is the obvious
reason why it has an urgent problem that has festered
and eroded trust among soldiers.
That authority can make life hell for the soldier
who rejects a quid pro quo sexual offer, for instance.
Usually that soldier is very young and inexperienced
and may not understand resources available outside
the soldier’s chain of command. Analytical data used
in sexual assault review boards should clearly identify chain-of-command abuse reported, as this is a
reflection of the uniqueness of the problem within
the military. Most do that now. For every report of
assault, there is a likelihood (according to Criminal
Investigation Division estimates) that the actual
number will be 80 percent higher. So, the metric for
understanding the quality resting under the surface,
alarmingly, also points to the quantity of unreported
abuse taking place “under the radar.”

Culture: Sexual Objectification in a
Military Setting
When one exercises great power, such as legal
authority over others, and lacks moral sense, maturity, or wisdom, this exercise inevitably becomes entangled with basic impulses. It winds up mixing in
sexual dynamics, as hard as that fact is for many to
admit or to face. In power-authority relationships,
such as the rank hierarchies in the military, sexual
impulse often arises overtly, as we have frequently seen of late with cases where superiors became
sexually involved with subordinates on a consensual basis in illegal and inappropriate relationships.
However, if a lower-ranking person rejects a consensual relationship, the situation often ends in sexual
harassment or assault.
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