When Man On Man Rape Is Acceptable in The Military
by L. S. Carbonell
The Pentagon
In a prison setting, men raping men is not a gay thing. It is a violent display of power by a stronger male over a weaker male. An article in the April 3 edition of Newsweek, “The Military’s Secret Shame” has disclosed that the same display of power happened over 50,000 times last year in our military.
It has been known for some time now that female soldiers and sailors are the victims of rape at an alarming rate, and that the military is not aggressive in arresting and prosecuting the rapists. This new study demonstrates an aspect of military sexual abuse that no one ever talked about outside of the LGBT community. One of the arguments for repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was that allowing gays to serve openly would protect them from being blackmailed with threat of exposure of being gay if they reported being raped by another man. According to the article, even straight soldiers and sailors were threatened with being “outed” to keep them silent.
Just as lesbian service members are targeted for brutal sexual attacks, servicemen who are gay or are suspected of being gay are targeted, sometimes in an effort to force them out of the service. While the right wing is promulgating the fear that our “innocent” young male soldiers will be forced to endure unwanted sexual advances by gays, some servicemen were gang raping and viciously assaulting the true innocents – teenagers who just didn’t look butch enough for the military. Repealing DADT will not end these kinds of assaults, but it will remove the ability of rapists to coerce their victims’ silence. As other government agencies learned a long time ago, when being gay is no longer illegal or unacceptable, exposure ceases to be a weapon of intimidation.
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