Army chief wrongly blames military sexual violence and misogyny on Manosphere

A British general has tried to blame the UK military’s widespread sexual violence and deep-rooted misogyny on the so-called Manosphere. General Roly Walker said these issues were being brought into the army from outside.

SAS-trained Walker is the current head of the British Army. He was addressing a defence committee meeting on sexual violence in the ranks. Asked why sexual harassment was as widespread an issue in the army as it was five years ago, he responded:

My personal view is this gets harder before it gets easier, because of the trends in wider society.

The level of misogyny, the level of rancorous behaviour and belief systems, and the tension in wider society is something we have to accept as the environment from which we attract.

He even said he had been forced to deal with such issues in his domestic life:

I’ve got children in their early 20s. I’m well aware of what is going on with things like the manosphere and the sense of deepening rifts within young people, all of which is playing and accelerating through social media.

A lot of that generation are coming through into the Armed Forces.

Self-evidently, this was an attempt to externalise the military’s longtime issues with gender, sexual violence and abuse. But it isn’t going to cut it.

The Manosphere

The MPs and panelists at the committee session talked about the impacts of the Atherton report on bullying, harassment and discrimination (BHD) and sexual violence, which was published half a decade ago. That report found:

64 percent of female veterans and 58 percent of currently-serving women reported experiencing BHD during their careers.

And heard:

truly shocking evidence of the bullying, sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape experienced by servicewomen.

It also warned about issues with:

the military’s handling of sexual assault and harassment, which sometimes exacerbates trauma for victims.

Report author and former MP Sarah Atherton was at the session. She did not agree with Walker:

It’s obviously something that he felt quite awkward to say. It felt quite awkward to listen to. It’s obviously what the MOD are using as an excuse for this behaviour, and what he said actually normalised the problem.

Well done, general… You’ve pissed off the woman who wrote the proverbial book on this issue.

Externalising the problem

The UN defines the Manosphere as:

online communities that have increasingly promoted narrow and aggressive definitions of what it means to be a man – and the false narrative that feminism and gender equality have come at the cost of men’s rights.

Adding that:

These communities promote the idea that emotional control, material wealth, physical appearance and dominance, especially over women, are markers of male worth.

Think Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate and sundry other tawdry bullshit-peddling man-babies… But let’s cut to the chase: the British military’s issue with sexual violence predates our era of dodgy influencers.

Take the example of the inquiry into recruit deaths at Deepcut Barracks in the late ’90s and early 2000s. The inquiry alleged a widespread culture of “bullying, sexual assaults and rape”. The last death was in 2002, when Andrew Tate was an unknown 16 year old. How, then, could this possibly be related to the ghoulish spectacle of modern online misogyny?

What about the case of Danish tour guide Louise Jensen, raped and murdered by three soldiers in Cyprus in 1994? Or the sexual torture of Kenyan women suspected of ‘collaboration’ with the anti-colonial Mau Mau movement by the British colonial forces in the 1950s?

The list goes on…

Built-in violence

The truth is that many forms of violence are built into the military institution and the practice of warfare – and always has been. This includes sexual violence, which has been a feature of wars since time immemorial. The Bible even tries to give rape in war some legitimacy. And Israel’s use of systematic sexual violence as a tactic of occupation and genocide is just one of many modern examples.

This general’s comments betray a deep ignorance of the issue at hand. And it is worrying that such a powerful figure has the lives, health and safety of others in his hands. The truth is we need to examine, reform and perhaps even abolish – in part or in whole – the institutions of war if this issue is ever going to be seriously addressed.

By Joe Glenton

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