Author: Chris Bodenner

What’s The Best Way To Combat Military Rape? Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes (with an updated reader retort below):

I’m a reserve naval officer with a young daughter that I love very much. I mention this information just to let you know where I’m coming from when I say that the media (including The Dish) is getting this story wrong and missing the larger problem.

One rape is too many – period – and does it happen in the military? Obviously. That said, I can tell you from personal experience that the military is more proactive on this problem than any other public or private institution. I’m not an apologist – just telling you the facts. Every year, every single member of the military goes through several hours of sexual assault prevention training. As long as I can remember – at least 10 years – this training has included outside-the-chain-of-command hotline numbers and other reporting techniques. You should also know that sexual assault stats in the military can include incidents that wouldn’t even be reported within civilian institutions – things like “brushing by” and “staring for too long.”

The reason that I mentioned that I have a young daughter is that, after studying the data, I can say with confidence that she would be safer in the military than at most American colleges. I’m not even talking about the frat colleges like USC or Duke. I’m talking about places like Harvard. Check out the Class of 2013 survey that was published in The Crimson, especially this tidbit:

In the survey, 45 people—41 of whom were women or transgender students—said that they had been sexually assaulted at Harvard. Just eight of those victims said they reported the assault to Harvard administrators. And just one, a male victim, went to the police.

I believe only about half of the graduates responded to this survey and so it doesn’t include those who were so traumatized that they had to leave Harvard. But even so, those numbers are roughly the same as the numbers for the military – and remember that the threshold of what is defined as “sexual assault” at Harvard is probably much higher than the military. Finally, and most damning, only one – one! – victim out of 45 went to the police. And only 8 notified anyone at all. That is absolutely egregious.

Clearly this is just the tip of the iceberg. So who has the problem? We all do. Like I said, one rape is too many.

Lastly, Harvard and every other college gets a shitload of federal money for research and student loans and grants, so their sexual assault problem is not theirs alone. If the tax-payer is funding those institutions, the tax-payer has a right and duty to demand higher standards.

Update from a reader:

Responding to the Naval Reserve Officer who excuses the military’s demonstrably unsuccessful response to sexual assault while pretending not to: I’m a retired Naval Officer, and now a civilian working on a military base, and I call bullshit on his assessment that the military is more proactive on this than anyone else. A few points:

1. Mentioning he has a daughter he loves is irrelevant, manipulative hand waiving.

2. The annual sexual harassment training we receive is a check-in-the-box lecture conducted by ill-trained and apathetic instructors. The last one I attended devolved into a lengthy discussion that was little more than victim-blaming accusations of inappropriate dress, which the instructor allowed without interruption or contradiction. This was not much different than the post-DADT training lecture, during which the instructor opened with “You don’t have to like it and I’m not gonna try to justify it,” signaling his clear dislike of the new policy.

3. Your correspondent’s dismissal of military assault statistics because the include “brushing by” and “staring too long” is insulting to all those that have been assaulted. It is a repulsive and inaccurate minimization of a very real problem. The writer is conflating sexual harassment issues – which, just as in the civilian world, can include ogling, leering, and staring inappropriately – with assault, while pretending that such concerns are unheard of in the civilian workplace.

4. Comparing “the military” to “colleges” is a nonsensical logical fallacy. It is much more appropriate to compare the military to other industries and workplaces. The fact that our daughters are not particularly safe at colleges is a problem, but to hand-wave away the military issues with little more than “but other places that are worse” is childish.

We have a major sexual assault problem that has confounded the uniformed leadership despite having vastly greater authority over their employees than nearly any other industry or professional leadership cadre.  It is this contradiction that suggests a significant structural and cultural problem not to be dismissed by lazy comparisons and minimizations.

“He’s A Much Greater President Than The Polls Suggest”

by Chris Bodenner

Andrew’s Overtime appearance on Real Time is up:

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Earlier in the show, Rand Paul came up:

Maher says Paul’s success could be based on his aversion to “American Empire”. “Like his father, he is for not for having an American empire,” Maher said, referring to former GOP presidential candidate and his dad, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). “That’s the thing I love about the Pauls.”

Blogger Andrew Sullivan concurred with Maher saying, “I think Rand Paul’s attempt to say what most people in this country really understand, which is we don’t need to run the world. We don’t want to run the world. America would be in a better place if we were less interested in our own power, and more interested in freedom.”

Most of the show isn’t available online, but featured on YouTube below is Maher’s blistering take on the upcoming movie Noah and the 60% of Americans who believe the Biblical flood story is true (money quote: “Hey god, you know you’re kind of a dick when you’re in a movie with Russell Crowe and you’re the one with anger issues”):

Update from a reader:

You can get a podcast of Real Time (full audio, no video) for free at iTunes or HBO.com. Usually comes out midweek after the show.

The iTunes version is out – here.

A Week-Long Mental Health Break

by Chris Bodenner

In case you missed Andrew’s sign-off post and are confused by the various bylines, he’s off the blog until Monday:

It’s ten years since Aaron and I met and we’re taking some time in the sun by ourselves to celebrate. The Dish crew will take care of the joint while I’m away, as they take care of the joint while I’m not. You know what I most crave? Not having to have an opinion about the world every day.

Speaking of joints, a reader wrote to Andrew late Saturday night:

My fiancée and I were always curious what pot was like, but we’re too “straight laced” and (connected to law enforcement) to actually try. Damn, that took a long time to type that because of how interesting the iPhone keypad is. Anyway, you get the point. I’m high right now. Baked I guess? Is that a thing we still say?

Fiancee’s asleep on the couch, so the only other person I thought to contact was you. After all, you’re the only person besides my fiancée with whom I’ve been able to share a mature and nuanced dialog about the ethics and legality of pot. Thank you for helping us build the confidence and understanding to see this as a recreational activity akin to social drinking. We deserved to be able to try this in relative comfort and know what all the fuss has been about. Honestly, I don’t think it’s for us, but I can’t believe it took me so many years to even feel like it was ethically, even religiously acceptable, to want to find that out for myself.

I can’t think of a good line to end on. The Princess Bride is sure funny.

Especially with lightsabers:

Our main email account at andrew@andrewsullivan.com is still very much active this week, so keep the emails coming. It’s your blog too, after all.

Why Don’t Republicans Talk More About The Rural Poor?

by Chris Bodenner

A reader makes an important point:

While I’m sympathetic to Andrew’s broader argument that liberals are far too quick to attack opponents with the sexist/racist/homophobic label, and am even sympathetic to his narrower argument that Paul Ryan’s statement wasn’t really all that exceptional or offensive, I think he’s missing the point of what gets liberals so riled up about statements like Ryan’s. It is not that he critiques the culture of the urban poor (a well-established code for black people); it is that Ryan does so to the exclusion of everyone else. Various reports (such as this one – pdf) track the poverty rates between urban and non-urban centers and tend to find a persistently higher poverty rate in non-urban areas:

A higher proportion of nonmetropolitan households (28.2 percent) are near poverty as compared to metropolitan households (24.0 percent).

Half of all rural African Americans (50.5 percent) live near poverty; rural Hispanics are at 47.0 percent, followed by whites at 23.5 percent, and Asians at 19.9 percent. In nonmetropolitan areas, 38.2 percent of children under the age of 18 live below 150 percent of the poverty line compared to 32.5 percent in metropolitan areas.  Over one quarter (26.2 percent) of elderly people live near poverty in nonmetropolitan areas, up by 1.5 percent from 2009. In metropolitan areas 20.6 percent of the elderly live near poverty.

Now, are poverty rates the whole story? Of course not. There are intersections of unemployment, family structure, race, and a whole host of other things to explain the difference. However, when you look at the statistics between urban and rural areas, you kind of have to ask yourself: “Why is Ryan only focusing on black people when the problems of poverty and poverty culture clearly impact millions of rural whites as well?”

Does he do that because he’s a racist? Probably not. However, it’s pretty clear he’s doing that because it’s “safe” for someone from his party to bash heavily-Democratic minorities like blacks. If he applied the same critique to rural whites, part of his party’s base, he would likely be losing votes and support from people he needs to win elections.

What’s The Best Way To Combat Military Rape? Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader goes in-depth on the issue:

First off, I want to say that military sexual assault (MSA) is a scourge within our military and we must weigh every available option in seeking to eliminate it. That being said, I believe that Sen. Gillibrand’s legislation (and broader campaign) fails in three critical ways: substantively, technically, and stylistically.

1) Substantively – There is really nothing beyond anecdotal evidence backing up Sen. Gillibrand’s claim that the chain of command serves as the main deterrent to reporting. The 2012 SAPRO Report (DoD’s office responsible for collecting data on sexual assault within the military and for developing strategies to curb and combat MSA), 73% of women and 85% of men believe that their leadership does well to create an environment where they would feel comfortable reporting. Those numbers need to be closer to 100% and the gulf between male and female servicemembers is alarming, but that data does not suggest that lack of confidence in command is the central driver of underreporting.

SAPRO reported that the top three reasons why women failed to report sexual assault were:

-They did not want anyone to know (70%)

-They felt uncomfortable making a report (66%)

-Did not think the report would be kept confidential (51%)

Likewise, the top three reasons why men failed to report were:

-They believed they or others would be punished for other infractions or violations, such as -underage drinking (22%)

-They would not be believed (17%)

-Their performance evaluations or chances for promotion would suffer (16%)

The data seems to suggest that the chief barrier to reporting is not the chain of command, but the comfort of the individual victim. An appropriate response would demand much more emphasis on supporting the victims of MSA as opposed to tweaking the justice system. Sen. Gillibrand’s legislation does not provide any additional supports for victims at the individual level. Ultimately, it’s a big, unwieldy bureaucratic revamp.

Lastly, the military has wielded the chain of command to affect cultural transformation. Racial desegregation, repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and today’s integration of women into combat forces have all been implemented through – not in spite – of the chain of command. The chain is a means of holding commanders accountable for the actions of their subordinates; now, more than ever before, that includes sexual harassment and all forms of unwanted sexual contact.

2) Technically – Gillibrand’s legislation would create a special office of prosecutors within each Service Secretary’s office to dispose of reported alleged offenses. Prosecutors eligible for assignment to this office would have to be grade O-6 (Colonel-equivalent) or higher. In the Army, for example, there are somewhere around 140 O-6 Judge Advocates. These officers commonly serve as staff Judge Advocates for commanders of larger units (think Brigades, Divisions, sometimes Corps). According to the the SAPRO report, the Army fielded 1122 unrestricted reports of sexual assault/harassment last year. How many Judge Advocates would be tasked with referring these cases? While many public defenders may juggle somewhere around 400 cases a year, that’d be high inadvisable to base a staffing model around; these incidents vary wildly in severity (offensive comments to brutal rapes), geographical location, and cross-jurisdictional concerns. Additionally, the UCMJ requires trials to commence within 120 days of charges being filed. Taking this all together, let’s assume that these O-6s are given 100 cases a year, bringing the number of attorneys in this office to 11.

Sen. Gillibrand’s central claim is that MSA reporting is so low because victims are mistrustful of the chain of command. Consequently, we could expect reporting to increase if we removed disposition of these cases from the chain. Following that logic, a greater reporting level would demand a greater number of these limited O-6 prosecutors. Pulling these prosecutors from the units that they are assigned to into this newly created office would materially degrade the military’s ability to competently and expediently dispense with justice with regards to UCMJ offenses not covered by Sen. Gillibrand’s bill. This would create a situation where the services are forced to rapidly promote junior officers to fill positions typically held by more experienced individuals. Moreover, there are significant concerns about the quality of prosecution that victims would receive under this system. Most O-6s within the services’ respective Judge Advocate corps spend more time behind a desk than before a courtroom and many of these individuals have not argued a case for years.

3) Stylistically – The debate over Sen. Gillibrand’s legislation became all too acrimonious, and I largely blame her for that. While her passion undoubtedly brought much-needed attention to the matter, it also created an unfortunate narrative of “Gillibrand or Nothing” with regards to Congressional action. That could not be further from the truth. The FY14 NDAA contained dozens of provisions addressing MSA and represents the single largest step towards combating the issue. There is still far more work to be done, but it is disingenuous to say that Congress failed to act on the matter. Yeah, this is a historically shitty Congress, deserving of much of the contempt directed at it, but when it comes to MSA, the body shapes up rather well.

Tragically, a lot of these victims were used as pawns by either side of the debate. That’s unconscionable. But on the balance, the attention directed at this issue, one that had reared its gut-wrenching head over and over and over again across the past several decades, was positive and proof that our legislature and nation benefits from a greater number of women filling its halls. If there’s an enduring vision to be had from this whole episode, it’s of the women of the Senate Armed Services Committee grilling the shit out of the Joint Chiefs. That’s why this time is different – the advocates are not only more numerous, but much, much, much more powerful.

Finally, thank you providing a unique and compelling forum for discussing so many diverse, important, and sometimes not-so-important issues. The Dish is definitely one of the better corners of the Internet.

Previous Dish on efforts to combat military rape here.

Correction Of The Day

by Chris Bodenner

“An earlier version of this article misquoted a comment from Malachy McCourt on St. Patrick.  Mr. McCourt said, ‘My attitude is, St. Patrick banished the snakes from Ireland and they all came here and they became conservatives.’ He did not say St. Patrick banished the slaves from Ireland,” – the New York Times.