DownWithTyranny!: Rape Isn't Romantic-- Or Sexual-- What About When The Victim In A Man?

Gary Jones, Army, 1984-'86:

At first I thought he was playing around. He managed to wrestle me onto my back, and I started freaking out. He pinned my arm above my head and my knee in the crook of his arm and covered my mouth with his right hand and looked at me and said, 'You will not make a noise.'

This week a friend pointed me to a twitter hashtag, #WhyIStayed, that illustrates why women stay in abusive relationships. The arguments on it, many of which are pretty universal, work for men who stay in abusive relationships too. You know the old saw about how if men could get pregnant, abortion and birth control wouldn't be controversial? Many people have also said that if men could be raped, rape would be treated different-- far more seriously-- by the legal system. Of our men are raped-- and not infrequently-- but it's a crime generally hidden from society. The new issue of GQ focuses in on sexual assault in the military and makes it clear that "more than half of the victims are men." Writer Nathaniel Penn: "According to the Pentagon, thirty-eight military men are sexually assaulted every single day. These are the stories you never hear-- because the culprits almost always go free, the survivors rarely speak, and no one in the military or Congress has done enough to stop it."

The moment a man enlists in the United States armed forces, his chances of being sexually assaulted increase by a factor of ten. Women, of course, are much more likely to be victims of military sexual trauma (MST), but far fewer of them enlist. In fact, more military men are assaulted than women-- nearly 14,000 in 2012 alone. Prior to the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell" in 2011, male-on-male-rape victims could actually be discharged for having engaged in homosexual conduct. That's no longer the case-- but the numbers show that men are still afraid to report being sexually assaulted.

Military culture is built upon a tenuous balance of aggression and obedience. The potential for sexual violence exists whenever there is too much of either. New recruits, stripped of their free will, cannot question authority. A certain kind of officer demands sex from underlings in the same way he demands they pick up his laundry. A certain kind of recruit rapes his peer in a sick mimicry of the power structure: I own you totally. "One of the myths is that the perpetrators identify as gay, which is by and large not the case," says James Asbrand, a psychologist with the Salt Lake City VA's PTSD clinical team. "It's not about the sex. It's about power and control."

To understand this problem and why it persists twenty-two years after the Tailhook scandal, GQ interviewed military officials, mental-health professionals, and policy-makers, as well as twenty-three men who are survivors not only of MST but also of a bureaucracy that has failed to protect them.

…Terry Neal, Navy, 1975-'77: "The part that I remember before I passed out was somebody saying they were going to teach me a lesson… One of the doctors said to me afterward, 'Son, men don't get raped.'"Asbrand, the Salt Lake City V.A. psychologist explained one of the prevalent dynamics to GQ: "There's the fear that 'if other people know this about me, well, then, my life is over. No one's gonna want to be around me. They'll know that I'm less of a man.'… I was starting to hallucinate that people were coming to get me. I barricaded myself in my room in the barracks because I heard a key in the lock and thought they were coming in. It was my roommate, but I was screaming, 'Don't hurt me!' They took me to the hospital, and that's where I finally told the psychiatrist what had happened. It was a huge mistake. I was put into a mental ward out of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. The doctor would say, 'You enjoyed it, didn't you? Come on, tell me the truth.'"

…An overpowering shame prevents many enlisted men from reporting an assault-- a sense that they must somehow be complicit in what has happened to them. Straight men often question their own sexual orientation, while gay men may struggle to find intimacy in relationships because they don't trust other men (or their own judgment). Telling the secret ruptures families and friendships. So does not telling.

The rape of a male soldier has a particular symbolism. "In a hypermasculine culture, what's the worst thing you can do to another man? Force him into what the culture perceives as a feminine role," says Asbrand of the Salt Lake City VA. "Completely dominate and rape him."

But shame isn't the only reason these men so often say nothing. Another is fear-- of physical retaliation, professional ruin, social stigma. Research suggests that the military brass may have conspired to illegally discharge MST victims by falsely diagnosing them with personality disorders. "The military has a systemic personality disorder discharge problem," write the authors of a 2012 Yale Law School white paper. Between 2001 and 2010, some 31,000 servicepersons were involuntarily discharged for personality disorders. It is likely that in many cases these were sham diagnoses meant to rid the ranks of MST victims. "If they want you to be schizophrenic," says Trent Smith, an MST survivor currently fighting his discharge from the Air Force, "you're schizophrenic." These diagnoses also spare the government the costs of aftercare: The VA considers a personality disorder to be a pre-existing condition, so it won't cover the expense of treatment for PTSD caused by a sexual assault.

Above all, MST victims keep quiet because they do not believe their attackers will be punished. And they're almost certainly right. The conviction rate in MST cases that go to trial is just 7 percent. An estimated 81 percent of male MST victims never report being attacked. Perhaps it should astonish us that any of them do.

…Heath Phillips, Navy, 1988-'89: "The two main guys-- their nickname was the Twin Towers. They held themselves like they were God and untouchable. They were both six feet five or above, 250 pounds. I weighed maybe 120 pounds soaking wet. As soon as the Twin Towers came near you, you instantly wanted to pee yourself.

"The main attacks were at night. When you're being dragged out of your bunk literally by your ear, you can't fight, because they're doing these funky things with your fingers, twisting them, and they're ripping your mouth open, and then they got another guy that has his fingers in your nose or in your eyes to make you open your mouth. That's what always used to bother me: I'm screaming, yelling, fighting, and nobody is even moving their curtains to look.

"I went AWOL; I couldn't take it no more. I tried hanging myself. I was living in the streets, and I got arrested shoplifting, and they sent me to the brig. Then I got sent back to the same berthing area, where they started terrorizing me again. The final straw was, I was taking a shower and these guys beat me up and raped me with a toilet brush. Medical told me I probably had a hemorrhoid. I went AWOL again, then turned myself in a couple of days later. Finally my executive officer came back [proposing] I take an other-than-honorable discharge.

"To this day I don't know why they did it, because they had beautiful girlfriends. I just happened to be one of their victims."