Sexual (mis)conduct in the Canadian forces

Abstract: This essay compares findings of Marie Deschamps’ 2015 report on sexual harassment and assault in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) with my earlier 1990s study of gender integration in the CAF. Both demonstrate that CAF culture is sexualized and misogynistic. Deschamps argues that changing this culture is a pre-requisite for addressing sexual misconduct. But is such cultural change possible if the CAF’s mandate and principal organizational features remain unchanged? I argue that (1) gendered military culture is grounded in the CAF’s hierarchal social structure, disciplinary system, and conditions of service designed to achieve operational effectiveness; and (2) the CAF’s normalized atmosphere of sexualized hostility to women soldiers originates in tensions within the military’s internal relations of domination designed to preclude soldiers’ resistance and ensure that they enter harm’s way to execute the military’s mandate of state-sponsored lethal violence. As long as these hold, the problem of sexual misconduct may remain intractable.

Read the full article
Report a problem with this article

Related articles

  • More for Researchers

    Access to outpatient occupational therapy services after inpatient psychiatric hospitalization in the Veterans Health Administration

    Abstract: IMPORTANCE: Veterans with occupational performance (e.g., activities of daily living [ADL]) limitations who are receiving inpatient psychiatric care may benefit from outpatient occupational therapy upon discharge, but access disparities have not been investigated. OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether ADL limitations, an indicator of need, are associated with outpatient occupational therapy utilization after inpatient psychiatric hospitalization in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and whether this relationship differs by facility characteristics. DESIGN: Secondary analysis of VHA medical record data. Modified Poisson regression was used to model outpatient occupational therapy utilization (yes or no) as a function of ADL limitations, facility characteristics, and sociodemographic and clinical characteristics. Interactions were used to estimate whether the relationship between ADL limitations and outpatient occupational therapy utilization differs across facility characteristics. SETTING: VHA outpatient setting. PARTICIPANTS: Veterans who received VHA inpatient psychiatric care from 2015 to 2020 and lived