Hardship Duty

Book excerpt: In the past thirty years, it has become evident that the U.S. military faces widespread and ongoing challenges related to harassment and sexual assault. Despite prevention efforts, estimated sexual assaults are increasing, reporting is decreasing, and the problem persists across all branches of the military. Servicewomen who have experienced and survived these abuses drive the analysis in this book, and their voices are central to these pages. In Hardship Duty: Women's Experiences with Sexual Harassment, Sexual Assault, and Discrimination in the U.S. Military, Stephanie Bonnes focuses on the puzzle of how sexual abuse remains highly prevalent in an organization that has dynamic policies, prevention strategies, and evolving education programs designed to combat sexual violence. Drawing primarily on in-depth interviews with fifty servicewomen, Hardship Duty uncovers how masculinity and misogyny are entangled in the organization's structure, policies, values, physical spaces, and culture in ways that create sexual abuse vulnerability. Bonnes demonstrates how privileging masculinity and denigrating femininity at the organizational level encourages harassment at the interpersonal level, how servicewomen are often forced to cope with harassment and sexual abuse on their own--despite policies designed to assist victims--and how women who do report are often treated like institutional enemies, harassed more, and face resistance from the institution. With multiple stories of sexual harassment and sexual assault from U.S. servicewomen, this book not only opens the doors to a normally closed institution, but it also gives voice to those who are marginalized and often silenced within it.