Mere words won’t combat misogyny in military

Soldiers are heroes, and heroes can’t be rapists. Or at least, that’s what we believe

This week, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines raised the issue of vaginas in the military, and soldiers were glad that someone finally did. The president broached the subject by ordering them to fire upon the genitals of female rebels; the soldiers received the order by laughing.

As feminists are understood throughout the world to be unable to take a joke delivered in the form of violent military directives, Duterte felt it necessary to explain his. Without vaginas, females “are useless.” Get it?

Much of the humour will necessarily remain lost on Canadians. That is not merely because we have a prime minister who calls himself a feminist. It is because we have an expectation that our leaders not be openly sociopathic, and we are fortunate that this expectation has been met by more or less each and every one of them.

Like most things in Canada, human rights are not perfect here, but many of them tend to be better than elsewhere. This fact is often pointed out by those who wish to deflect from difficulties at home; that does not, however, make it less factual. A delayed Access to Information request in Canada is not as bad as the imprisonment of a journalist in Turkey; a politician subject to her outfit being criticized in Canada is not as bad as a woman being forced to wear a burka in Afghanistan; a scientist muzzled in Canada is not as bad as a population censored in China.

It can’t be denied: Though bad things happen everywhere, more bad things of certain kinds happen in certain places.

But if we’re to use a sliding scale of terribleness geographically, there is no reason we should not use it industrially. Just as it is true that some places are generally worse for women than others, it is true that some sectors are generally worse for women than others. Where militaries are found, sexual assault often occurs in numbers disproportionate to other parts of society.

A Statistics Canada survey found that one in thirteen female full-time Canadian Forces members has been sexually assaulted connected to her service, and a Maclean’s investigation discovered that many were punished by command when they reported it. This is rather awkward for the Liberal government, which is very feminist according to itself but which, according to a lawyer representing three members suing the Canadian military, has been trying to beat a class-action lawsuit for sexual harassment and assault by arguing that it doesn’t have a duty to provide service members a safe working environment. The government’s strongest counter-argument seems to be that many government ministers are women.

In the United States, the commander-in-chief may feel less compelled to distance himself from sexual misconduct in the military, as he himself brags about committing it. One in three service women has been sexually assaulted, twice the rate among civilian women. More than onethird of service members believe they’ve been retaliated against for reporting their sexual assault. According to Human Rights Watch, service members are 12 times more likely to experience a reprisal than to see their attacker convicted of assault. Many are discharged when reports are fabricated that they have a “personality disorder.”

Many men are among the victims of a macho culture, if a macho culture is indeed one explanation: Thirty-eight military men are abused every day, according to the Pentagon.

Though sexual assault is always difficult to face, it could not possibly be more challenging, painful and dissonant than when it occurs in a sector where members risk their own lives to save other people. Soldiers are heroes, and heroes cannot be rapists. That so many of them are heroes, and a surprising number of them rapists, means that the integrity of militaries must be defended with greater vigilance.

Open misogynists such as Duterte and Trump remind us that security ought to begin with some words from the top; self-described feminists such as Trudeau remind us that it cannot end there.