Military segregation of the sexes a good idea


There are enough rape and sexual assault stories coming out of Iraq these days to keep Americans variously outraged and confused. In the past few weeks, two major stories have appeared - on Salon.com and in The New York Times Sunday magazine - reporting the difficulties servicewomen face in a testosterone-infused military.




Not quite rape, in other words.

The Times made a much bigger mistake in featuring another woman - Amorita Randall, a former naval construction worker who said she had been raped twice while in the service and suffered a brain injury in Iraq when her Humvee was hit by an IED, killing her driver.


No serious person doubts that sexual harassment and even rape occur in a war zone. But the degree to which sex is consensual or forced - often a question of he-said-she-said - is further complicated by military hierarchy and the extenuating circumstances (and passions) of war.


Doubtless many women have suffered what they report. Doubtless, too, some women exaggerate sexual assault stories. But the $287 million-a-day question that sits like a Brontosaurus in a Baghdad mess tent is: Now what?

Is the solution more sensitivity training and more victim advocates?

Already, the Department of Defense has a sexual-assault prevention and response program. Already, soldiers go through mandatory workshops on sexual harassment and assault. Already, each battalion has an equal opportunity representative to field complaints.

How much is enough to thwart the nature of the beast?


Clearly, some of what is considered sexual harassment falls into the category of harmless sport - the usual towel-snapping that is, in fact, a way to neutralize sex.




Targeting women isn't excusable, obviously. It's also not the women's fault that they've been put in this untenable situation - exposed both to combat and to the repressed fury of sexually charged young men.



