Standard NYT smear piece. "If you are a female in the Army, you will be raped or harassed. The men all want to rape or harass you." Blah, blah blah. Certainly, rape and harassment do happen but to read this article you would think that it is only a matter of time before any woman who dares to join the great big misogynist frat party that is the military is raped and/or harassed. Now, in order to maintain the pretense that this was balanced report the author did throw in this paragraph on page six of the sixteen page article

There were women, it should be noted, who spoke of feeling at ease among the men in their platoons, who said their male peers treated them respectfully. Anecdotally, this seemed most common among reserve and medical units, where the sex ratios tended to be more even. Several women credited their commanders for establishing and enforcing a more egalitarian climate, where sexual remarks were not tolerated.
I worked with females early in my career before a reclassed to combat arms and my current wife serve a little over three years before leaving the Army as a Sergeant (one of the best I have seen in my career by the way). I have seen how it works. This article seems to imply that most often commanders will ignore harassment or even rape. That is so patently untrue that it is laughable. Most commanders I have known are so paranoid about even the possible appearance of impropriety that they will crush anything that even looks wrong. I have seen some downright draconian policies enacted to prevent this sort of thing. I once saw a young soldier get his butt chewed because he used the word "chick" to refer to a female and a female soldier who was neither being talked to or about said she was offended. This is not "tailhook". This is just the NYT trying to stir up trouble again, the same as yesterday and the day before and probably tomorrow as well.

SFC W