DREW

PAPERS

THE

Peter J. S. Lee

Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

26

is Man’s Military

Masculine Culture’s Role

in Sexual Violence
Air University

Steven L. Kwast, Lieutenant General, Commander and President

School of Advanced Air and Space Studies

Thomas D. McCarthy, Colonel, Commandant and Dean
AIR UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIR AND SPACE STUDIES

This Man’s Military

Masculine Culture’s Role in Sexual Violence

Peter J. S. Lee

 Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Drew Paper No. 26

Air University Press

Air Force Research Institute

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama
Project Editor

Belinda L. Bazinet 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lee, Peter J. S., 1978–

Title: This man’s military : masculine culture’s role in sexual violence / 

Peter J.S. Lee, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF.

Other titles: Masculine culture’s role in sexual violence

Description: Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama : Air University Press, [2016] |

Series: Drew paper, ISSN 1941-3785 ; no. 26 | Includes bibliographical 

references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016022010 | ISBN 9781585662623

Subjects: LCSH: Rape in the military—United States—Prevention. | United 

States. Department of Defense—Rules and practice. | Military life—United 

States. | Masculinity—United States. | Military socialization—United 

States.

Classification: LCC UB783 .L44 2016 | DDC 355.1/334—dc23 LC 

record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022010

Published by Air University Press in August 2016

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iii

The Drew Papers

The Drew Papers are award-winning master’s theses selected for publication by the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS), Maxwell 

AFB, Alabama. This series of papers commemorates the distinguished career 

of Col Dennis “Denny” Drew, USAF, retired. In 30 years at Air University, 

Colonel Drew served on the Air Command and Staff College faculty, directed 

the Airpower Research Institute, and served as dean, associate dean, and professor of military strategy at SAASS. Colonel Drew is one of the Air Force’s 

most extensively published authors and an international speaker in high demand. He has lectured to over 100,000 students at Air University as well as to 

foreign military audiences. In 1985 he received the Muir S. Fairchild Award 

for outstanding contributions to Air University. In 2003 Queen Beatrix of the 

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The Drew Papers are dedicated to promoting the understanding of air and 

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iv

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v

Contents

Foreword vii

About the Author ix

Acknowledgments xi

Abstract xiii

1 Introduction 1

 2 Organizational Change Theory 9

3 Sexual Assault in the US Military 25

 4 Theoretical Analysis of Sexual Assault 

in the Department of Defense 35

5 Recommendations 55

 6 Summary and Conclusions 63

Abbreviations 67

Bibliography 69

vii

Foreword

All students at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS) 

complete the same demanding curriculum throughout their year. As the 

school’s faculty members, however, we often refer to the thesis course as the 

students’ one “SAASS elective.” The thesis requirement earns that designation 

because each student is free to choose his or her topic area for research. In his 

remarkable study of sexual assault in the US Department of Defense, Lt Col 

Peter Lee tackles one of the greatest military conundrums of the day. While 

Pres. Barack Obama, the US Congress, the media, and others have given the 

issue much-needed visibility, few (if any) have looked beyond symptomatic 

factors to explore potential causal mechanisms.

Lee challenges the conventional wisdom that sexual assault is solely a recruiting problem—in other words, if the military can find those few bad apples who commit this horrible offense, it can preserve the orchard. Instead, he 

explores the contribution of masculinity to the foundation of American military culture and applies organizational and psychoanalytical theory to analyze the problem holistically. Lee uncovers a demographic proclivity toward 

sexual violence in the US armed forces; he also argues that a generational gap 

between senior military leaders and those most vulnerable to assault often 

obscures the cultural aspects of the problem and inhibits implementation of 

enduring reform. Ultimately, Lee’s work makes a compelling and important 

contribution toward understanding, and eventually combatting, one of the 

armed services’ deepest problems.

Originally written as a SAASS master’s thesis, Colonel Lee’s This Man’s Military: Masculine Culture’s Role in Sexual Violence received the First Command 

Financial Planning Award for the best SAASS leadership or ethics thesis of 

2014. I am pleased to commend this outstanding piece of sociocultural analysis to all people who commit themselves to exploring, and striving to solve, 

the country’s most pressing military challenges.

RICHARD J. BAILEY, JR., PhD

Professor of Strategy and Security Studies

School of Advanced Air and Space Studies

ix

About the Author

Lt Col Peter Lee graduated in 2001 from the Daytona campus of EmbryRiddle Aeronautical University with a degree in aerospace engineering. After 

receiving his commission from the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps, 

he attended pilot training and F-15C training, with a follow-on assignment to 

the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley AFB, Virginia. He left Langley to help start 

the Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals squadron at Vance AFB, Oklahoma. While at Vance he deployed to the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, 

in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. After his year-long deployment 

he returned to the F-15C in the 48th Fighter Wing at Royal Air Force Lakenheath. He left England in 2012 to attend the Air Command and Staff College 

at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, where he was selected to attend the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. He is married with children, owns and operates 

a small business, and holds master’s degrees in aviation safety, military operational art, and military philosophy.

xi

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the men and women whom I have had the pleasure of 

serving alongside during the past 12 years for their leadership in trying times. 

This year at SAASS has been the most intellectually challenging thing I 

have ever done. I am grateful for having been selected to study under such an 

amazing faculty and for the classmates who have made the journey worth the 

effort.

My wife and our wonderful children are the reason I live and breathe. I 

dedicate this work, and the rest of my life’s work, to them.

xiii

Abstract

The central goal of this thesis is to determine whether or not something 

inherent in US military culture makes members of the Department of Defense (DOD) more prone to sexual assault than their civilian counterparts. 

Lt Col Peter Lee assesses the role of masculinity in defining the DOD’s organizational culture and seeks to apply social scientific analysis to the problem 

of sexual assault in such a culture. Using organizational change theory as an 

analytical lens to military culture, he highlights areas that warrant further 

discussion in a holistic effort to combat sexual assault in the professional 

military ranks. The author concludes that there is a demographic proclivity 

toward sexual violence in the DOD which is aggravated by the generational 

gap between senior leaders and those most at risk of assault. To address the 

challenge head-on, the military must view the problem as one that involves 

its culture.

Colonel Lee first reviews the contemporary academic literature on organizational culture and defines the method of evaluating cultural characteristics 

in US military service. Next, he evaluates sexual assault in the military today, 

including a definitional and legal review as well as relevant statistical facts to 

objectify military culture in the theoretic form. After describing contemporary military sexual assault issues, the author applies organizational and psychoanalytical theory to military culture to highlight any areas that can be exploited to reduce sexual violence. The final section of the work offers how 

organizational change theory can be used to combat sexual assault and change 

military culture. It also highlights areas that require further study if one is to 

fully understand the problem.

1

Chapter 1

Introduction

As with the military’s acceptance of African Americans and gay soldiers, the issue does not lie with observing regulations or executive 

orders. This is about culture. The rank and file have yet to accept 

women into their community. Women have fought and died in Iraq 

and Afghanistan. They are no longer excluded from combat zones. 

But the military has yet to fully accept women or their contributions.

—Maj Gen Robert Scales, US Army, retired

Washington Post, 10 May 2013

In 1904, amid the yellow fever and malaria epidemics that ripped through 

the workforce, the United States took over the French effort to build the Panama Canal to connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. At the time, there was 

a common perception that these diseases were afflicted upon immoral and 

“unclean” workers who, in essence, deserved to get sick.1

 Today we know that 

mosquitoes caused the outbreaks. Even in the early 1900s, evidence strongly 

supported this fact, but people did not accept it because it went against the 

popular understanding of the cause of the crippling diseases. When Teddy 

Roosevelt confronted the American cultural distrust of medical research in 

1905 and committed to the eradication of mosquitoes near the canal work 

zones, around 85 percent of the 26,000 workers had been infected with malaria or yellow fever at some point in their two-year stints. Within one year of 

eradication efforts, the infection rate was down to less than 50 percent, and 

within four years it was less than 1 percent.2

John Stevens, a railroad man chosen by Roosevelt to be the chief engineer 

of the canal project, recognized that “digging was the least important thing of 

all” and knew that the health of his workforce had to be guaranteed.3

 Upon 

arrival in Panama, he famously said to his staff, who still resisted what they 

thought to be “wasted efforts” on mosquito eradication, that “there are three 

diseases in Panama. They are yellow fever, malaria, and cold feet; and the 

greatest of these is cold feet.”4

 He cast off old biases and overcame the tendencies to resist change by listening to expert medical advice and logically thinking through the problem. Despite severe resistance—including that from Secretary of War William Taft, who attempted to fire Stevens and his medical 

counterpart, Dr. William Gorgas—the priority to solve the health crisis before 

just “letting the dirt fly” won over, and the rest, as they say, is history.5
INTRODUCTION

2

Yellow fever and malaria compelled a group of leaders to question their 

underlying biases toward a very real problem of national security in the early 

1900s. Sexual violence is not so different an indicator of needed refocus on 

our underlying beliefs. This paper investigates the role military culture may 

play in aggravating sexual assault and the cultural implications which must be 

confronted to better affect underlying conditions conducive to the crime. 

Sexual violence is not a recent phenomenon but an old issue that is being 

confronted today as a behavior incompatible with our liberal democratic society, which values equality and dignity.

Since their birth, each of the US armed services has experienced major 

transitions. From minutemen to cyber warriors, part-time militias to special 

forces teams, and fledgling rebel power to hegemonic superpower, the American military experience has a rich history of valor and struggle. Civil society 

has also sacrificed and struggled to change; in fact, the ability to change is one 

of the things that makes America so powerful. The abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and the civil rights movement are all examples of change that has 

made this country better. However, previous examples of overcoming challenges reach some plateau of utility when it comes to the most recent focus on 

sexual assault. Can organizational theory in a contemporary context help 

guide the US military toward a more holistic sexual violence prevention program? What are the costs of doing so?

The US military has spent the last 12 or so years actively fighting terrorism 

and insurgencies around the world. This struggle has shaped contemporary 

views of the ways of war, both in the military and civil society. An internal 

fight, like sexual assault, is not so different from this experience but requires 

its own special handling. Lt Gen John Rosa, USAF, retired, a former USAF 

Academy superintendent sent to respond to the sex scandal in the early 

2000s, spoke about his efforts to reverse the sexually aggressive environment 

at the academy: “Fifteen percent of the people will always do the right thing. 

Fifteen percent will do the wrong thing. We were fighting for the 70 percent 

in the middle.”6

Today the military is fighting an insurgency in its own ranks—one that 

can’t be won without the influence of the middle 70 percent. Senior leaders 

are one or two generations older than the demographic most prone to assault. 

These leaders naturally risk projecting their well-intentioned but generationally out of touch values on the younger target demographic. In the same way, 

military members at forward operating bases are often removed from the 

population they are trying to influence. In the former, age is one barrier; in 

the latter, it is a maze of concertina wire and HESCO barriers.7
INTRODUCTION

3

The military learned the hard lesson of “knowing thy enemy” in irregular 

war. Is it so difficult to believe we are struggling to understand the sexual 

predator in the same way?8

 The strategy, thus far, has been to look at sexually 

violent criminals as outsiders, when in fact, they wear our uniform and sit 

beside us every day. We look out the window instead of in the mirror to see 

the crime. The Department of Defense (DOD) Sexual Assault Prevention and 

Response (SAPR) education program is the means to fight this battle in the 

human domain, but we risk losing the influence of the middle 70 percent if we 

choose to classify sexual assault as just another crime that needs better enforcement to stop. The truth is that this is war. Sexual assault, like terrorism, 

is a cancer that threatens the otherwise healthy host if we just treat symptoms 

instead of attack the source of the tumor. The military has spent more than a 

decade trying to solve problems in foreign lands. It is time to turn our attention inward with the same fervor.

Sexual violence does not start with the commission of a crime, and neither 

should our attempt to understand it. Well before America’s young enter military service and are trained, trusted, and placed among their peers, their formative education has had a 20-year head start on their military education. 

This time matters greatly, not only for sexual assault but also for how people 

spend their lives perceiving everything around them. How we think about 

sexual violence is important because it reflects how we talk about it and how 

we act to prevent it. To the author, it seems that the current DOD effort to 

combat sexual assault concentrates more on the act of the crime and less on 

discussing how the military thinks about the crime.

Immediacy has its place; the purpose of highlighting the part of culture in 

sexual assault is not an attempt to reduce the role of prosecution, and so forth, 

which are reflexive outcries to reassure the public that the military cares about 

the problem. We do care about protecting service men and women but are 

programmed to operate within our cultural norms to seek a solution instead 

of thinking about changing the cultural assumptions. Protecting the victim 

and prosecuting the criminal responsible are extremely important yet only a 

part of the total approach needed to understand sexual violence. This thesis 

seeks to discuss each aspect in turn—how culture plays a major role in how 

groups of individuals with unique formative experiences tend to think; how 

that thinking can shape the vernacular, the conversation, and the perception 

of the problem; and how acting first, without due diligence toward underlying 

cultural issues, will not solve the long-term problem.

Culture trumps strategy every time.

9

 Culture is the basis for most grouporiented behavior. You can copy the strategy of a competitor or a peer organization, but you cannot copy culture. Culture is organic, holistic, and an 
INTRODUCTION

4

infallible reflection of underlying beliefs. Strategy harnesses the power of 

culture to achieve goals through acts; however, an achievable strategy is one 

underwritten by the capacity of the supporting culture. Mismatch the two, 

and there is some level of overachievement or underachievement. However, 

it is possible to change culture to shape it into the image desired. The strategy 

to do so is the subject of chapter 2, drawing deeply from Edgar Schein’s Organizational Culture and Leadership. The interplay he emphasizes deals with 

the individual and the group, mostly from the perspective of a leader promoting change “top-down” versus a follower effecting change on the organization “bottom-up.”

Individuals assimilate into cultures in various ways and to certain degrees. 

To a lesser extent, the individual affects the culture incrementally in the same 

manner. For example, if you pour a cup of cold water into a cauldron of boiling water, the net effect of the cup is quickly overcome by the thermal inertia 

of its larger host. Pour a cup of oil into the same cauldron, and the host rejects the addition as something foreign, unable to assimilate to its surroundings, and duly separated from larger interaction. In summary, an understanding of culture shows what is part of, or in, and what is not part of the 

culture, or other. We are naturally drawn to assume characteristics of culture 

from observed acts, but as is explored later, nailing down what culture is and 

isn’t is not easy. 

Chapter 2 also clarifies how culture is clinically defined. Observed behavior is not necessarily “cultural” as much as it is what Schein calls “artifacts of 

culture,” meaning that culture is the cause, and behavior is the symptom.10

Culture is not only about observable behavior (artifacts) but also about the 

amalgamation of underlying beliefs and ideas, which inform and reinforce 

values upheld by the group as standards of behavior to espouse.11 Later, the 

author also discusses what underlies “underlying beliefs” as well, largely concentrating on research drawn from psychoanalytical academics who talk 

about the role of individuals in cultures. Schein states that culture is the very 

basis of how individuals are to “perceive, act, and feel” in certain contexts.12

Such a state of influence on the very basis of human behavior—to so powerfully control the subconscious—is an area of social science theory that compels society and the military to pay attention to the human phenomenon of 

culture.

13

Chapter 3 discusses what the military has done to tackle sexual assault in 

recent decades. Since the 1992 Tailhook scandal that sensationalized military 

men behaving badly, the DOD has put a significant amount of effort into 

fighting the problem, or at least fighting its perception.14 The case of sexual 

assault in the military also defines the demographic realities facing the DOD. 
INTRODUCTION

5

Census data shows that the military’s all-volunteer force does not demographically reflect a proportional cross section of American society. One major reason for the disparity is the self-selecting nature of those who choose to 

join the US military, which leads to an uncomfortable question about military 

sexual assault that remains unaddressed in the mainstream conversation: is 

the military demographically prone to a sexual assault at a higher rate than 

that of other civilian institutions and/or psychoanalytically prone at an individual level?15

The military is 86 percent male.16 Forty-three percent of military members 

are aged 18–24 years, the demographic representing most victims and perpetrators.17 The fact that most military members (by a landslide margin) and

most sexual predators are men aged 18–24 should be cause for special consideration.18 The military has made strides in confronting certain aspects of sexual assault—protecting victim’s rights, encouraging reporting, and attempting 

to remove stigmas associated with sexual assault. Such advancements are not 

to be cast aside but included in a broader cultural approach to addressing the 

issue at its core.

Chapter 4 attempts to clarify how organizational change, as applied to the 

case of sexual assault in the military, can suggest ways of understanding culture and managing change in the military-specific context. Identifying the 

source of the problem does not offer ease of manipulation though. Sexual assault is a vastly complex issue; the attempt to label it a cultural problem does 

not alleviate the effort required to change the course. For this reason, chapter 

4 dives deeper into what the military values from a cultural issue perspective—and, indeed, what it does not value. From this point, it becomes necessary to define why the military has a masculine culture, why it is perpetually 

propagated, and why shifting away from it will be difficult.

Experts agree almost unanimously that with regard to sexual violence, the 

military should actively facilitate more research to understand the demographic of military members psychologically, demographically, and with 

particular attention to the formative experiences (like childhood sexual 

abuse) of those who choose to serve.19 The military is hamstrung to consider 

the formative experience of individuals in its care because there is so little 

military-specific research done.20 Much of the leading contemporary research 

on sexual assault is based on civilian culture or small segments of military 

culture, which raises the question, why isn’t the DOD spending more time 

and effort studying its own demographic to help establish a better understanding of its members?21

Chapter 5 examines the implications of how military culture may need to 

change to reject sexually aggressive behavior more holistically, highlighting 
INTRODUCTION

6

where more research is needed to better understand the complexity of the 

societal problem. Labeling the dilemma of military sexual violence as a cultural issue does not offer any shortcuts to eradicating the crime in the ranks, 

but argues that the most intellectually rigorous way to confront the problem 

begins with understanding what makes up a culture. The final chapter attempts to summarize the implications of culture theory as applied to the case 

of military sexual violence and offers some ideas for a holistic approach to 

combating the crime.

In summary, the DOD has an opportunity to address the crime of sexual 

assault. The first step involves intellectual honesty: the military is an organization dominated by the male demographic and male values. These values may 

serve some purpose in the military context but may also have unwanted cultural side effects. Second, the DOD should understand and embrace its historically Western patriarchal military model of organization if it is to achieve 

lasting change. We are already on this path, with the repeal of “Don’t Ask, 

Don’t Tell” as one example, but there is much more to do. Third, the military 

must embrace an educational program that frankly discusses sexual assault to 

gain the trust of its heavily overrepresented demographic of at-risk youth—

offenders and victims. This approach will allow us to think of prevention as a 

proverbial “three legged stool” in which prevention is focused on individuals 

most at risk, education is used to normalize behavior, and the response is 

fixed on preventing secondary victimization (including “victim blaming”) 

and prosecution. With too much attention on any of these “legs” of the stool, 

the military stands to lose the battle with itself for survival. In short, we must 

first admit the uniqueness of the military problem as a reflection of our culture, embrace it, talk about it honestly, and then come up with solutions that 

transcend the generational subcultures of the military.

This thesis serves but one purpose regarding sexual violence in the armed 

services: to change the conversation. It is time to change the way we, the 

military, view ourselves and how we talk about violence in our ranks. Sexual 

assault is not about sex. It is about power and control and the few who misuse it. If we don’t change the conversation and confront predators directly, 

then we are party to their crime. Why would we offer them a haven in which 

to lurk without casting light into the shadows of our culture? Classically, this 

inability to confront one’s self has been for fear of survival if he or she is 

forced to change.22 This fear of survival, born of the fear of change, is the 

fundamental challenge of culture change. Sexual assault is a wicked predicament to try to solve, but like women’s integration, racial integration and normalization, and the recent integration of gays and lesbians openly serving, 

the US military is more than capable of tackling the change and coming out 
INTRODUCTION

7

stronger. It is known, broadly speaking, who commits the crime: men. It is 

also known, with high statistical surety, the age of most victims and perpetrators: 18–24. The question, it seems, is, does the military knows itself 

enough to be confident that it can take on the problem honestly, change for 

the better—and for good?

Notes

All notes appear in shortened form. For full details, see the appropriate entry in the bibliography.

1. Bowers, “Yellow Fever, Malaria.”

2. “American Experience: Panama Canal.”

3. Morrissey, Donegan and Panama Canal, 284.

4. Bowers, “Yellow Fever, Malaria,” 6.

5. Morrissey, Donegan and Panama Canal, 285–86.

6. Lt Gen John Rosa, USAF, retired, interview by the author, 29 January 2014.

7. HESCO barriers are large earth-filled containers used as rapidly deployable blast barriers in combat zones, as well as flood barriers in civilian application.

8. Sun Tzu, Illustrated Art of War, 125.

9. Merchant, “Culture Trumps Strategy.”

10. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 25.

11. Ibid., 2–9.

12. Ibid., 3.

13. Dr. David Lisak, interview by the author, 5 March 2014.

14. Rosa, interview. Some (graduates of the Air Force Academy) thought General Rosa 

should have refrained from attempting culture change at the academy and instead focused on 

fixing the perception of the problem—to keep the institution out of the papers.

15. Lisak, interview. Part of the challenge is to collect and interpret large sets of data on the 

military demographic itself. However, as Dr. Lisak has said repeatedly in congressional testimony and DOD inquiries, some data suggests the military is fertile ground for would-be sexually violent offenders. See also Turchik and Wilson’s “Sexual Assault,” 267–77. 

16. DOD, “2011 Demographics,” iii.

17. Lisak, “Predatory Nature,” 6; and DOD, “2011 Demographics,” 13. Thirteen and threetenths percent of the officer corps (N=238,103) and 49.3 percent of the enlisted corps 

(N=1,173,322) represent 43.2 percent total of all active duty DOD forces (N=1,411,425).

18. Lisak, “Predatory Nature,” 6; and DOD, “2011 Demographics.”

19. “2012 Gender Relations Survey”; Lisak, “Predatory Nature,” 6; DOD, “2011 Demographics”; Harrell, Sexual Assault Research; Morris, “By Force of Arms”; Bremner et al., “Childhood Physical Abuse”; Stan, “Sexual Assaults against Men”; Sadler, “Women’s Risk”; Rimmerman, Gay Rights, Military Wrongs; Hunter, Honor Betrayed; Coughlin, “Change the Culture”; 

“Justice Denied Movie”; Stones, Key Sociological Thinkers; “Pentagon Report on Sexual Assault 

in the Military in 2012,” New York Times, 7 May 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/05/08/us/politics/08military-doc.html?ref=politics&_r=0; and Defense Task Force 

for Sexual Violence, Sexual Harassment and Violence. 

20. Lisak, interview.
INTRODUCTION

8

21. Merrill, Thomsen, and Milner, “Premilitary Sexual Assault.” This study linked the number of males joining a small segment of the military to their history of childhood sexual and 

physical abuse related to their self-reported propensity for raping victims prior to joining the 

military.

22. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 299–304.
9

Chapter 2

Organizational Change Theory

Culture is an abstraction, yet the forces that are created in social 

and organizational situations deriving from culture are powerful. If 

we don’t understand the operation of these forces, we become victim 

to them.

—Edgar H. Schein

Organizational Culture and Leadership

What is the impetus to study culture as a social phenomenon? Edgar Schein 

writes that how well we understand a culture informs how we will perceive, 

feel, and act in that culture.1

 The resultant societal order is based entirely on 

individual interactions and whether or not that person conforms to the expectations of behavior to be “in” the culture. Further, an individual may participate in a number of different categories of culture: macroculture as a national or ethnic structure; organizational culture as a categorical designation 

of belonging (private or public employee, etc.); subculture as a specific occupation within an organization; and microcultures within a subculture, such as 

peer groups or coworkers.2

For example, a Roman Catholic priest may identify with his parish as a 

microculture, as another identity shared in the subculture of priests within his 

denomination, as another one of service to the public as an organizational 

culture, and as a macroculture of a citizen of either a church or a state with a 

common set of beliefs. Identities, not necessarily exclusive, may exist simultaneously at different levels. Some links are conscious and obvious; others are 

less so. How much of the priest’s identity is tied up with being male or celibate

or in opposition to other cultures with different values? Cultural categorization is not a means to an end, but it does help clarify how different categories 

of culture affect the individual experience. To understand the culture of an 

organization at different categorical planes is to understand ourselves better 

and recognize the forces acting around and within us.3

A major part of who “we” are has to do with the emotive connections made 

with whom we identify. “We” comes from identifying primary groups, a common sociological phrase that describes a phenomenon in which the central 

emotive driver to the individual is the identity of the group itself.4

 In 1909 

social scientist Charles Cooley wrote that primary groups were
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

10

characterized by intimate face-to-face association and cooperation. They are primary in 

several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and 

ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain 

fusion of the individualities in a common whole, so that one’s very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of 

describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a “we”; it involves the sort of sympathy 

and mutual identification for which “we” is the natural expression.5

Family is the most basic form of the primordial primary group but also 

includes close friendship groups, fraternities and sororities, religious orders 

and cults, street gangs, sports teams, and so forth.6

 In fact, the primary bond 

in such groups copies that of the family. There are clear membership requirements, usually a demarcation of belonging to one primary group at another’s 

exclusion, and subscribing to a loftier group ideology.7

 Primary groups wield 

great influence in the lives of their members because of the emotional connection to the vision of self in the individual, Cooley said. Consequently, 

primary groups “profoundly affect individuals’ inner emotional lives and, 

consequently, their attitudes and actions.”8

 Primary groups are capable of influencing individual behavior, transcending the macro to the micro by their 

very existence.

The state of affairs around their formative experience defines cultures, 

which have evolved over time. If something works, the practice becomes a 

sort of de facto solution to a wider range of problems. Successful practices are 

often codified and normalized as best practices to be emulated in other areas 

of operation. A football team that wins likely studies its success to capture the 

essence of the victory and repeat the process in subsequent challenges. In a 

perfect world, the positive lessons are separated from the negative like wheat 

from the chaff, retaining only the wholesome kernel. Realistically, it is possible that unintended side effects of preserving what has worked for what will 

continue to work in the future.9

There may come a time when a leader recognizes that a cultural change 

must be made to continue success or survival. The reason for the realization 

comes in many ways, but the leader must know how to do a few things effectively. First, the leader must recognize the need to change. Second, he or she 

must be able to assess the culture as is, define the end state, and develop a 

system of monitoring change along the way. Third, the leader must separate 

the desire to change behavior from changing the belief. The organizational 

change goal is long-term and self-sustaining change, in which a new culture 

manifests itself in behavior that matches the desired standard.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

11

Defining the Three Levels of Culture

Culture is not simply the summation of norms, values, behavior patterns, 

rituals, and traditions. It is a concept that goes beyond simple observation of 

behavior. Also, culture defines why the observable is and how it is shared and 

propagated.10 Observable evidence of an underlying culture, such as espoused 

beliefs or traditions, is important to an organization, but such evidence is not 

the culture itself so much as the manifestation of culture. Culture must also be 

thought of as stabilizing, in an unconscious and less tangible way, across an 

entire group. According to Schein, culture is defined

as a pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it solved its problems of 

external adaptation and internal integration, which has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, 

think, and feel in relation to those problems.11

Schein’s model of analyzing institutional culture is presented at three different levels.12 The first, artifacts, describes the manifestation of culture’s underlying beliefs in observable behaviors and processes. Schein warns that the 

norms can be difficult to decipher or assign causality.13 One cannot infer deep 

institutional beliefs regarding the observations of behavior alone because the 

behavior is reflective only of belief and not directly attributable to the “meaning” of the artifact.14 Schein uses the example of pyramids (an observable behavior) built by ancient Egyptians and Mayans (unconnected cultures) who 

demonstrated similar behavior, but for very different reasons.15 The meaning 

of the pyramids differed between the two cultures, so the observer must be 

careful not to correlate the two very different cultures with similar behavior.

Second, Schein distinguishes the role of the individual in the process of 

defining culture: “All group learning ultimately reflects someone’s original beliefs and values, his or her sense of what ought to be, as distinct from what 

is.”16 This cultural aspect speaks to the role of leadership in defining what is a 

declared (though not necessarily shared) goal of individuals in an organization. Leaders socialize their views to the group, which then takes action on 

the individual’s belief and observes the outcome. When the outcome is positive, the group can develop a shared basis for a new, observable norm in an 

institution—which is the process of change.17 An individual belief that is socially validated may then become an espoused belief which the community 

values and internalizes. After an individual’s beliefs are normalized within a 

culture, they may influence the propensity of the group to dismiss ideas to the 

contrary. Individuals have an important role in defining acceptable rules of 

behavior within an organization as long as the group provides validity to the 
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

12

individual’s beliefs. In short, what was an individual’s hypothesis may then 

become a reality shared by the members of a group.18

The role of the individual in organizations depends on the power of influence the person has over the organization, whether he or she is a leader or a 

follower. “Deindividuation” is a phenomenon in which an individual subverts 

his or her identity to the group’s.19 In certain situations, this “eclipsing” of individual characteristics reduces individuals’ “internal constraints on behavior.”20 Deindividuation may also provide a positive outcome, as noted by Duke 

Law University professor Madeline Morris in a study of group behavior: 

“Strong feelings of unity . . . ecstatic experiences, and religious and other conversion experiences are associated with deindividuation.”21

Group behavior theory, as it relates to cultural levels, also accounts for the 

darker side of deindividuation, covering the gambit of crimes such as lynching or rioting.22 In a culture that values the group identity over that of the individual—which tends to have strong and distinctive cultures—the individuals’ and groups’ behavior is not random. Instead, quite the opposite is true. 

The emotional impulses and situational cues that guide behavior are manifestations of individual desires and group cultures. Morris writes that “the situational cues present in the deindividuated situation develop into the contextspecific standards of behavior or ‘emergent norms’ of the situation. In 

conditions of deindividuation, emotional impulses together with situationspecific group norms govern. In turn, those emotions as well as those emergent norms reflect the proclivities of group members.”23

The role of the deindividuated person in a group operates on a scale of 

“acute” to “chronic” forms of submission to group identity, Morris says.24 Rioting or group violence is an example of acute deindividuation while more longterm or chronic forms may manifest themselves in subtle ways, such as those 

of religious cults.25 The deindividuation distinctions imposed on the individual for the group are a matter of normal samples of behavior. Radical and 

acute action that conforms to the group’s culture, such as that of terrorist cells 

or criminal networks, may also be normative.

26 The same behavior may also be 

exceptional in the same group, depending on the identity and behaviors the 

group adopts as normal. Likewise, chronically deindividuated persons may 

participate in subtle behavior, positively and negatively, but also take extraordinarily radical actions. Mass suicides, like those of Jim Jones’s followers at 

Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978, demonstrate this type of extreme behavior. The 

power of culture, especially deindividuated culture, cannot be underestimated when one considers that the Jonestown massacre was the largest single human-caused loss of American civilian life until the attacks of 9/11.27
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

13

Culture matters greatly, and the difference is one of degree. Individuals 

must shed their personal identities, depending on the type of group they join. 

Some institutions prescribe certain codes of behavior that one must assimilate 

to be “in” and not be an “other.” The behavior required to fit in manifests itself 

acutely or chronically, ranging from situations in which individuality is not 

valued at all to those in which the role of the individual is the most important 

aspect of group belonging.

Schein’s third level of culture is “basic underlying assumptions.”28 Basic assumptions tend to be nonconfrontable and nondebatable and are difficult to 

change within a culture. Challenges to observable and unconscious cultural 

norms may be viewed with open skepticism or internal anxiety.29 For example, one sees such anxiety in an individual or organization acting defensively, 

as if the cognitive inconsistency presented by challenging ideas threatened 

the assumptions the group had previously validated. A great deal of effort is 

often expended to validate and uphold cultural beliefs; to attempt to revise 

previous efforts as having been wasted will naturally meet with anxiety. “The 

human mind needs cognitive stability,” Schein suggests, and is generally hostile to attempts to disrupt the stability provided by previously adopted assumptions.30

Again, consider the example of the pyramids built by the Egyptians or Mayans. After the culture accepted that the efforts to build the monuments were 

worth the cost, any person, even a strongly influential leader, would have to 

deal with a great deal of consternation if a proposal to tear them down for the 

good of the culture were made. It would be easier to believe that the previous 

decisions which led to the construction were more valid than the belief that 

they should be torn down. Cultural and institutional inertia must be overcome to successfully challenge previously held assumptions. The assumptions 

validated by the group as worthy of internalizing, in artifacts and the unconscious, begin to inform individual beliefs; these individuals then propagate 

their own influenced beliefs on their level of interaction with the culture. 

The three levels of culture are clearly intertwined in the objective and subjective. Organizational leaders, the central source of beliefs, govern how a 

culture will respond to internal and external problems. Their beliefs, in turn, 

are influenced by their previously held assumptions of acceptable behavior as 

a product of their individual experiences within another cultural context. 

When these leaders are introduced into a new environment and a different 

culture, they will confront the new culture’s previously held assumptions and 

obtain social validation of their views to overcome cultural inertia in response 

to internal or external factors.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

14

The construct offers a few specific problems that must be clarified. Defining cultural characteristics is a subjective endeavor. Artifacts, or observed behaviors, may take their form clearly, even if the form hides meaning. The 

Egyptians had pyramids, the Navy has nuclear submarines, the Air Force has 

spy planes, and the Army has artillery batteries—but what does that mean? To 

people who are part of the respective organization at the lowest level, they 

may (rightly) perceive these artifacts as proof that the organization values the 

objects intrinsically. To senior leaders of each regime, the artifacts may be but 

a small part of a larger meaning.31 The meaning of artifacts to a midlevel commander may represent singular areas of importance since their own personal 

identity is congruent, dependent on each object. One artifact, therefore, can 

take on multiple meanings at different levels of culture.

As both observers and participants in the experiment of cultural causeand-effect interaction, we tend to make observations of particular situations 

before overcoming institutional biases.32 A leader who sets out to precipitate 

a change in organizational culture must consider the three levels of culture 

that exist at different categorical designations. Different categories of culture 

(macro, micro, etc.) may have exclusive or shared levels of culture (artifacts, 

individual contributions, underlying assumptions). Further, there may be different meanings of artifacts at each category of an organization, reflective of 

different cultural realities of the corresponding system. Thus, gaps in understanding the meaning of behavior between different levels of culture should 

be anticipated and accounted for as a leader prepares to change an organization’s culture. 

Managing Cultural Change

Schein’s model of defining culture allows some level of anthropological examination to articulate how a certain culture is defined. The task of changing 

a culture begins with defining what the existing state and end-state goals of 

the culture should conform to, but the topic of how to change a culture is still 

important. How can leaders use knowledge of artifacts and associated meanings at different cultural categories, individual contributions, and institutional 

underlying assumptions to foster change? Certainly, a leader manages change 

to “steer the ship” in the intended direction. Culture change must be planned 

and mitigated against the broadest set of variables as can be reliably accounted 

for; to do so requires pragmatism in a leader’s approach. Additionally, a leader 

must carefully avoid correlating organizational change with cultural change
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

15

since to change the former may not necessarily involve corresponding evidence of change in the latter.

The process of changing can manifest itself in three different stages. The 

first stage is “unfreezing,” or creating the motivation to change. The second is 

introducing and normalizing new concepts and adapting current knowledge 

to new meanings or standards. The last stage is one in which the new concepts 

are internalized so the behavior is normalized. Any change will introduce 

anxiety, which will manifest itself in two principal levels of fear: survival anxiety and learning anxiety. Survival anxiety is the fear that “something bad will 

happen” to an individual, group, or organization if change is not realized.33

Learning anxiety is the apprehension to the process of changing. Survival 

anxiety is the realization that change must be made. Learning anxiety is the 

fear that change will be too costly.

Unfreezing, as Schein labels it, is the process of disconfirming previous 

beliefs or assumptions: “If any part of the core cognitive structure is to change 

in more than minor incremental ways, the system must first experience 

enough disequilibrium to force a coping process that goes beyond just reinforcing the assumptions that are already in place.”34 An institution must undergo three different processes to unfreeze a system in order to foster the 

motivation to change. The first is to expose enough disconfirming evidence to 

introduce disequilibrium and serious discomfort that challenges previously 

held beliefs. The second process is to tie the disconfirming data directly to the 

achievement of important goals and ideals, causing more anxiety. The last 

step is to use the new data to assimilate new beliefs into the existing power 

structure. While the process of change introduces anxiety, it does not threaten 

the loss of identity or integrity of the organization writ large.35

Unfreezing culture involves “unlearning” something while learning something new at the same time. The tension between the two states of knowledge 

is the amount of disequilibrium introduced in the system, which manifests 

itself in the amount of anxiety or resistance to change that overtly or subtly 

becomes evident. Psychotherapists have suggested that in some cases, even 

dysfunctional or irrational behavior toward specific goals may still meet resistance to change due to the amount of “secondary gain” such behavior provides.36 If a person works at a frozen banana stand but eats the bananas because of hunger, the behavior is irrational because it is not profitable to do so, 

but the secondary gain of eliminating hunger incentivizes the employee to 

continue the behavior. A culture unfrozen by disconfirming data must be 

ready to deal with learning anxiety and manage the natural phenomenon in a 

productive way toward the desired end state. 
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

16

For a number of valid reasons, individuals and microcultures will experience learning anxiety when exposed to disconfirming data. Much of the anxiety results from fear, which any leader must be ready to confront and acknowledge. The “fear of loss of power or position” or that newly assimilated 

learning will result in a lower level of power than before, Schein says.37 Individuals having to change behavior or belief may also fear that the learning 

process may make them temporarily incompetent and that they may face 

punishment for such incompetence. Furthermore, many members of cultures 

or microcultures within a larger construct may fear that new information and 

subsequent cultural change will rob them of their personal identity. Dedicated employees may base much of their identity on their life’s work; to 

threaten the classical understanding of the latter may indirectly threaten the 

former. Cultures are largely defined by an “in/out” set of beliefs in which one 

either belongs or doesn’t. New information may make those who are “in” fear 

becoming a deviant. This problem is especially important when one discusses 

the need to change groups or entire cultures because individual acceptance is 

directly tied to the perception of the group’s acceptance. For one to change 

may require all to change, for a failure to adapt to disconfirming information 

may foster ostracizing individuals who changed.

Since disconfirming information causes real and rational anxiety to former 

cultural paradigms, one must expect some level of resistance to change. 

Schein states that “as long as learning anxiety remains high, an individual will 

be motivated to resist the validity of the disconfirming data or will invent 

various excuses why he or she cannot really engage in a transformative learning process right now.”38 These responses come in three distinct stages: denial, 

scapegoating, and maneuvering. Denial is refuting the existence of legitimacy 

in the disconfirming data. Scapegoating, or buck passing and dodging, is convincing ourselves that the data is more applicable to someone else, a microculture, or an institution and that the other entity should change first if anyone/anything should. Maneuvering is the desire to seek special compensation 

or recognition for the effort of assimilating to new information and wanting 

to be convinced that the disconfirming information compels change for longterm benefit.39

Any leader who changes his or her organization should expect some resistance. In fact, a leader who has spent time evaluating what specific areas of 

culture contribute to undesirable behavior can predict how certain information will be received and to what degree it will be resisted. If a leader expects 

strong opposition to an underlying principle or belief yet receives less, possibly the change is not being implemented. No shortcuts exist. Any organization will naturally do everything it can to resist the call to change. Presenting 
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

17

disconfirming information and monitoring its reception become a useful tool 

to a leader. Resistance to the information, even fierce resistance, is proof that 

the organization is questioning its underlying beliefs and is attempting to assimilate new information. The question is how a leader knows when this task 

is complete.

The Five Principles of Organizational Change

Significant change requires significant pain. Schein offers five principles in 

managing organizational change. First, survival anxiety or guilt must be 

greater than learning anxiety. Second, learning anxiety must be reduced 

rather than increasing survival anxiety.40 Charged with the task of transforming a culture in a specific direction and considering the natural human response to change, a leader must minimize learning anxiety, never to exceed 

the amount of survival anxiety. If an apple-stick model replaced the carrotstick model of behavior, then one must compel an institutional desire for apples without the aid of a bigger stick. Schein states that some level of “psychological safety” must be institutionalized to reduce learning anxiety. In doing 

so, a leader must be ready to implement eight activities.41

1. A compelling positive vision: The vision must compel in clear behavioral 

terms what the new standard of operation will be and assure that such 

behavior will contribute to the long-term well-being of the organization. 

2. Formal training: If the new paradigm involves new knowledge or skills, 

formal and informal training must be provided.

3. Involvement of the learner: “Learners” must be able to manage their 

own informal learning process. The goals, as articulated by the leader of 

the organization, are nonnegotiable, but the method of learning can be 

highly individualized.

4. Informal training or relevant team groups: Cultural behaviors depend 

on the action of groups if they are indeed group behaviors. Learners 

must not be ostracized for participating in the new learning.

5. “Practice fields,” coaches, and feedback: There must be time and space 

in order to practice implemented change without fear of reprisal. Feedback is important to groups and individuals alike. 

6. Positive role models: The new way of operating may require demonstration of behavior before it can be normalized within an organization. 
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

18

Individuals in a learning group must be able to observe behavior and 

attitudes in others with whom they can identify. 

7. Support groups which openly discuss learning problems: Learning produces anxiety. Openly discussing such problems promotes joint problem solving and the assimilation of information while reducing perceived deviance. 

8. Consistent systems and structures with the new way of thinking: A system that promotes group responsibility must offer group-oriented rewards and individual-based punishments for nonconformance.42

Transformational change must be approached pragmatically; the problem 

definition and the new expectations of behavior must be clearly defined. After 

doing so, the leader has an expectation of the level of anxiety that must be 

overcome and the amount of effort that will be required to suppress such anxiety. The target must be the less tangible underlying assumptions of the culture, not just the behavioral artifacts to realize long-term gains from change. 

The third principle of culture change deals with defining the specific 

problem that precipitates the change.43 Schein observes that in the beginning, when an organization encounters disconfirming information, “it’s not 

clear . . . whether culture change will be involved.”44 Most change processes 

emphasize the need for behavior change, but Schein points out that the behavior change alone will not produce lasting results without some level of 

cognitive restructuring.45 Alexander Wendt, writing about the power of ideas 

in social theory, echoes this sentiment: “It is often harder to change someone’s 

mind than their behavior.”46 Behavior may be successfully coerced in the beginning of the cultural change, but unless the belief is internalized by behavior change, old behaviors will last after the coercive force is removed. 

Cognitive restructuring begins after an organization has been unfrozen. 

The change process takes place by trial and error based on broadly scanning 

the environment or by the imitation of role models based on psychological 

identification with those models.47 Imitation works best in cases whose definition of the new standard of behavior and the associated concepts with the 

new standards are clear. Scanning works best in situations in which the end 

result may be equally clear as imitation but the means to achieve the standards aren’t necessarily defined.48 In either case, the guiding principle is that 

the goal of the change must be defined concretely in terms of the specific 

problem to be addressed and not as “culture change.”49 In some cases, existing 

culture may help effect transformative change, and in others, perhaps not. 
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

19

The fourth principle of a conceptual model for managed culture change is 

that old cultural elements can be destroyed by removing the people who 

“carry” those elements. New cultural elements can be learned only if the new 

behavior leads to success and satisfaction.50 Once a group has experienced 

success, the resultant culture cannot be changed unless the group is dismantled.51 Over the course of the season, an athletic team will develop its own 

culture. If the team experiences success, then its culture tends to become retrenched, with each “in” member identifying and linking aspects of the culture with the team’s success. If a coach challenged the team with transformative change, he or she would meet great resistance to the change since the tie 

between culture and success is strong. A leader could impose (compel) change 

by behavior modification, but no change would produce culture change unless the modified action produced better results. Thus, in the athletic analogy, 

the team would have to experience even more crushing wins to internalize 

further change.

The fifth and last principle of culture change is that it is always a transformative change that requires a psychologically painful period of unlearning.52

New learning presents a different and easier set of challenges than unlearning. 

It offers efficiency and does not test old regimes of thinking. Having to unlearn previously held beliefs at odds to some degree with new disconfirming 

information is potentially a significantly harder problem to solve. Therefore, 

any leader who sets out to institute a program of lasting change in an organization must consider the amount and significance of change that will cause 

anxiety and resistance and account for it in the model of change. 

In summary, the principles of culture change require the leader to assess 

the culture before attempting change. Organizations have a culture of some 

kind—some with great inertia to overcome and others that are more fluid. 

However, organizations begin assessing their culture by focusing on specific 

behavior. It is crucial that leaders understand that a “culture of behavior” 

rarely exists. Human institutions are much more complex. Organizations may 

have an undesirable behavior or artifact, but culture is more than just describing observable behavior. Consequently, the study of culture begins with the 

study of behavior—the reflection of what a culture values implicitly or explicitly. Leaders can start the organization on the path of a culture change by first 

defining the new behavior required, anticipating a certain degree of anxiety, 

and then enforcing and incentivizing it. The goal is for internalized beliefs to 

guide the organization’s individuals to behave in the desired manner. 
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

20

Assessing Culture Change

The first step of transformative culture change is defining the type of change 

required to operate in a new way. Next, a leader who manages the change 

must assess the organization’s culture and decide whether or not the current 

culture will aid or hinder the change process. Schein offers an in-depth description of ways to rapidly assess culture to inform the leader.

First, most of the culture present at the beginning of a period of change will 

aid the process.53 One need not “slash and burn” every element of old cultural 

regimes in order to institute new ones. However, some elements of old culture 

may have to be excised to allow for new practices. Some aspects of the culture 

will require long-term change to last, as in the case of long-held underlying 

assumptions of acceptable behavior. Others may need more immediate attention and more drastic cultural compellence, especially if harm may be great. 

For example, a culture that tolerates substance abuse and whose primary purpose is to wash vehicles obviously poses less risk to public safety than one 

charged with securing nuclear weapons, and so on. The consideration of 

change must consist of two parts: (1) How much change is being asked of the 

current culture to anticipate the level of learning anxiety? (2) Even seemingly 

minor culture changes can be amplified if the change required must be immediate. These considerations follow a simple business formula—“fast, good, 

cheap . . . pick two.” If the change is large and must be done immediately, the 

solution will not be cheap—and so on. In organizations with vast resources 

(time, money, people), it is possible to make the change no matter the cost. 

However, a carefully balanced trade-off between priorities must exist. Once 

the decision of how much to change the culture is made, there must be a way 

to measure the change to score against priorities.

Schein says that the best way to assess culture is in individual and group 

interview processes, during which various elements of the culture (artifacts, 

individual assumptions, and group underlying assumptions) are qualified.54

Specifically, he favors group interaction to assess culture in terms of both validity and efficiency.55 Next, any assessment must be tied to some organizational problem. Culture is not necessarily the source of the problem being 

addressed, at least in the beginning when specific behaviors are targeted.56 In 

assessing the underlying assumptions of a culture, a change manager must 

always seek to answer the question of whether or not the assumptions aid or 

hinder transformative change in the declared direction. First recognizing the 

assumptions and then attempting to leverage cultural strengths against the 

“old way” of behavior will minimize change and subsequent learning and survival anxiety.57 “It is much easier to draw on the strengths of the culture than 
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

21

to overcome the constraints by changing the culture,” according to Schein.58

Further, a change manager must consider subcultures and microcultures 

within an organization and be prepared to assess them differently corresponding to their relevance to the specified change. For example, in the athletic team example, if one sought to change the culture of anyone associated 

with the team brand, it would be appropriate to formulate change across all 

areas of the team: medical support, players, coaches, administrators, and so 

forth. If the change impetus came from the player’s behavior, one would not 

start a cultural change agenda by examining the role of the team’s medical 

support to change player’s behavior. Lastly and most importantly, any effort to 

assess the culture of an organization must identify underlying assumptions. 

“If the client system does not get to assumptions, it cannot explain the discrepancies that almost always surface between the espoused values and the 

observed behavioral artifacts,” Schein observes.59

Theoretical Summary

Our perception of culture matters, and our culture helps shape our perception of everything around us. Culture is not a list of behaviors or codes that a 

group follows but the set of self-propagating beliefs that manifest in observable behaviors. In short, culture is the cause, and behavior is the effect. A 

leader who seeks to change behavior must first be capable of deconstructing 

the meaning of the artifact that has led him or her to believe that change is 

necessary. What does the undesirable behavior (artifact) mean? The answer 

will likely vary, depending on the purview of different categories of culture, 

and must be pursued to the underlying assumption that manifests itself in the 

behavior precipitating the change. Further, a leader must execute a carefully 

managed plan to change behavior, which may involve fundamentally altering 

the organization’s culture. Leaders must leverage the strength of a culture 

against its weaknesses and preserve the good while abandoning the bad to 

strengthen and enrich an organization. Resistance to change will occur, but 

the process of learning is an exercise in overcoming fears, presenting an opportunity to further strengthen an organization by proving that it can be flexible. Once disconfirming information unfreezes an organization and it starts 

to learn new concepts and new meanings for old concepts, then leaders have 

to lead, allowing subordinates to learn without reprisal and participate in 

shaping their own changing assumptions. Incorporation and internalization 

follow successful learning; building new cultural aspects results in positive 

behavioral artifacts that signify the end of the sought-after change. Some 

changes are long-term goals, and some require more immediacy. Leaders 
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

22

must constantly assess the cultural climate of the organization and be prepared to refreeze various aspects of cultural development to retain the good 

and discard the bad.

Notes

1. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3.

2. Ibid., 2.

3. Ibid., 9.

4. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 691. 

5. Cooley, “Primary Groups,” 691.

6. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 692.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 11.

10. Ibid., 17. 

11. Ibid., 18. 

12. Ibid., 23. 

13. Ibid., 24–25. 

14. Ibid., 25. 

15. Ibid., 23. 

16. Ibid., 25. 

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid., 27.

19. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 725. 

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid. 

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., 727. 

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid.

27. “Jonestown—Facts & Summary.”

28. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 27–28.

29. Ibid., 28.

30. Ibid., 29.

31. Ibid., 53.

32. Ibid., 53–54.

33. Ibid., 301.

34. Ibid., 300.

35. Ibid., 301.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid., 303.

38. Ibid., 304.

39. Ibid., 303–4.

40. Ibid., 305.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE THEORY

23

41. Ibid., 311–13.

42. Ibid., 306–7.

43. Ibid., 311.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid., 308.

46. Wendt, Social Theory, 134.

47. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 308.

48. Ibid., 311.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid., 312.

51. Ibid. 

52. Ibid., 313. 

53. Ibid., 325.

54. Ibid., 315–27.

55. Ibid., 326. 

56. Ibid., 327.

57. Ibid. 

58. Ibid.

59. Ibid. 

25

Chapter 3

Sexual Assault in the US Military

The aim of any strategy—land, sea, air, diplomatic, economic, social, 

political, a game of poker, or the way of a man with a maid—is to 

exercise some kind or degree of control over the target of the strategy, 

be it friend, neutral, or opponent (emphasis added).

—J. C. Wylie

Military Strategy

The DOD goal is a culture free of sexual assault, through an environment of prevention, education and training, response capability, victim support, reporting procedures, and appropriate accountability 

that enhances the safety and well being of all persons covered by this 

Directive and Reference (emphasis added).

—DOD Sexual Assault Prevention Directive, 2012

Dr. David Lisak, a world-renowned clinical psychologist and applied forensic expert, declares that “there is no domain of crime and violence as 

fraught with misunderstanding and misconception as that of sexual violence.”1

 Any discussion of sexual assault in the military requires a great deal of 

effort to explore the context and vernacular of the phenomenon before unpacking any of the other great problems it presents. As recently as 2012 the 

DOD grouped behavior and culture together in stating that its goal was a 

“culture free of sexual assault,” as if the military culture valued or believed in

sexual violation. How has the military sought to define the specific behavior 

of sexual assault, and what has been the effort to separate that artifact from 

underlying culture? This chapter defines the crime of sexual assault and discusses the relevant legal context of the crime in the military. Next, a demographic study of the people who join the military and serve adds to the problem’s setting. Last, this section explores the history of sexual crime in the 

DOD and how the military has moved to stop it.

Definition

Sexual assault can have very different definitions and implications depending on the way the phrase is used. Sexual assault must be viewed differently 

from sexual harassment. Sexual assault is about unwanted and often premed-
SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE US MILITARY

26

itated sexual interaction. DOD Directive 6495.01, Sexual Assault Prevention 

and Response (SAPR) Program, defines sexual assault as 

intentional sexual contact characterized by use of force, threats, intimidation, or abuse 

of authority or when the victim does not or cannot consent. The term includes a broad 

category of sexual offenses consisting of the following specific UCMJ [Uniform Code of 

Military Justice] offenses: rape, sexual assault, aggravated sexual contact, abusive sexual 

contact, forcible sodomy (forced oral or anal sex), or attempts to commit these acts.2

The definition is carefully worded, commensurate with the difficulty of 

characterizing the attacks ranging from a contest of perceptions of consent to 

violent rape. The definition offers a construct in order to discuss the problem 

in this broad context, which is the first task of exploring the DOD’s response 

to sexual assault.

•  Intentional. Sexual assault is not accidental. It is an act in which one or 

more people decide to carry out an attack on one or more victims. 

•  Sexual. The word predisposes the reader into imagining the act of sex. 

However, one must deconstruct the physically and emotionally pleasurable act of sex from the phenomenon of sexual assault. Sexual assault is 

not about sex but is similar to any other violent physical assault. It is 

about the use of violence and the exercise of power and dominance.3

•  Physical. The domain of sexual assault is the physical. Emotional sexual 

distress is best characterized as sexual harassment, which is related to the 

physical act. 

•  Characterized. Justice Potter Stewart famously said in 1964 that he could 

not describe pornography using words but that he knew it when he saw 

it. Sexual assault is similar; even the definition acknowledges the subjectivity of the crime. 

•  Use of force, threats, intimidation, abuse of authority. A victim may be 

coerced in ways more than physical violence. An assault that was not 

physically forced may still have been committed without the willful consent of the victim. The lack of physical brutality in an assault does not 

indicate willful consent. 

•  Victim. Sexual assault has one or more victims. 

•  Consent. The core of the crime is embodied in the concept of consent. A 

victim is so called because that person does not or cannot concede to the 

act. Consent is a subjective personal emotion that evades effective codified definition. Instead, it is helpful to define the lack of the emotion in 

an effort to mitigate subjectivity. Article 120 of the UCMJ states that
SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE US MILITARY

27

an expression of lack of consent through words or conduct means there is no consent. 

Lack of verbal or physical resistance or submission resulting from the use of force, threat 

of force, or placing another person in fear does not constitute consent. A current or 

previous dating or social or sexual relationship by itself or the manner of dress of the 

person involved with the accused in the conduct at issue shall not constitute consent.4

Legal Context

Sexual assault is second only to homicide in revulsion if sentencing standards are any indicator. In some cases, it ranks even higher.5

 For example, in 

Alaska serious sex offenses carry mandatory minimum sentences higher than 

those that result in death because “death can often be caused by reckless neglect” whereas sex offenses were never “reckless—they are at the very least 

knowing, and often intentional. . . . The severity of the sentences in comparison to other crimes was intentional.”6

 The UCMJ’s Article 120 treats sexual 

assault with similar severity although, like its civil court counterpart, overturned or diverted convictions are an area of concern.

Undoubtedly, discrimination and unwanted sexual contact, whether violent or not, are crimes in any military organization. The legal construct that 

codifies the DOD’s penal response to the crime is defined by the UCMJ even 

though the different services may act individually to combat the problem 

within their own ranks. Each service must “align Service prevention strategy 

with the Spectrum of Prevention” consistent with the DOD Sexual Assault 

Prevention Strategy, which consists of six pillars: (1) Influencing Policy, (2) 

Changing Organizational Practices, (3) Fostering Coalitions and Networks, 

(4) Educating Providers, (5) Promoting Community Education, and (6) 

Strengthening Individual Knowledge and Skills.7

Additionally, the “restricted” versus “unrestricted” reporting of sexual assault crimes has created two legal channels from which the victim can choose 

to report. The SAPR Office Directive document states that 

the DOD is committed to ensuring victims of sexual assault are protected; treated with 

dignity and respect; and provided support, advocacy, and care. The DOD supports effective command awareness and prevention programs. The DOD also strongly supports 

applicable law enforcement and criminal justice procedures that enable persons to be 

held accountable for sexual assault offenses and criminal dispositions, as appropriate. To 

achieve these dual objectives, DOD preference is for complete Unrestricted Reporting of 

sexual assaults to allow for the provision of victims’ services and to pursue accountability. However, Unrestricted Reporting may represent a barrier for victims to access services, when the victim desires no command or law enforcement involvement. Consequently, the DOD recognizes a fundamental need to provide a confidential disclosure 

vehicle via the Restricted Reporting option.8
SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE US MILITARY

28

The DOD’s approach to solving the reporting problem is essential to understanding the sexual violence problem. Until rape and other lesser sexual 

offenses are reported in greater numbers, social scientists’ three fundamental 

realities will remain unchecked: “1) most interpersonal violence is perpetrated by individuals who in some way are known to the victim; 2) most of the 

violence is never reported to authorities; and subsequently, 3) most perpetrators of this violence are never prosecuted.”9

 The gravity of the logic should not 

escape the argument—a person commits the crime but usually doesn’t face a 

courtroom to answer for it. Most victims know their attackers and don’t report the crime, and the offenders often get away. Once sexual offenders are 

identified, the military has an effective way of prosecuting them. The system 

has faults, most of which involve identifying the perpetrators. 

Demographic Study of Military Members

Many studies address the ever-changing demographic of the men and 

women serving in the US armed forces. This section highlights certain factual 

cases that examine the nature of the demographic reality alongside the artifact of sexual assault. 

The US military is not a representative cross section of US society. Among 

the various differences of socioeconomic class distinctions, the biggest misrepresentation of the military demographic juxtaposed to society is gender. 

Men are 49.2 percent of the US population but comprise 85.5 percent of those 

serving on active duty.10 Women, who have a slight majority in the larger US 

demographic (50.8 percent), make up only 14.5 percent of the DOD active 

duty force.11 Women serving as officers have increased since 2000 from 14.4 

percent to 15.9 percent in 2011, but the number of enlisted women has fallen 

.5 percent in the same period.12

The DOD is also overrepresented by young people. The population of the 

United States “grew at a faster rate in the older ages than in the younger ages” 

from 2000 to 2010, but the number of young people entering military service 

relative to the general population grew disproportionately in the same time 

period.13 The military got younger from 2000 to 2010 as the US population got 

older, thereby exacerbating the demographic difference of the military service 

member from his or her civilian counterpart. As such, the US population of 

ages 18–24 years as of 2010 was 9.9 percent, up 0.4 percent from 2000.14 The 

average age of a military service member in 2011 was 28.6 (34.7 for officers 

and 27.4 for enlisted).15 Of this aggregate, members of the enlisted corps less 

than 25 years old made up almost half—49.3 percent—of the entire force.16

For the sake of comparison, the number of officers the same age comprised 
SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE US MILITARY

29

only 13.3 percent of the officer corps.17 However, even 26–30-year-olds made 

up only an additional 22.5 percent of military active duty officers.18 In fact, the 

largest number of active duty officers are 41 or older, totaling 25.1 percent of 

the officer force.19

Are any of the key differences between the military service members and 

the civilian public that surprising? It is not shocking that the military is mostly 

made up of young men to fight wars and exercise political will for national 

defense, but why is this so? The artifact of young men self-selecting for military service is a reflection of American cultural norms in which men are predominantly the warriors of the nation. In this regard, the military is a reflection of societal underlying beliefs (the basis of culture) even if the demographic 

reflection is distorted. Why is this so, and what other notions of military service are conjured by the population that employs its men at arms? The analysis of these types of questions, especially as it relates to confronting sexual 

assault, follows in subsequent chapters. 

Trends in Military Sexual Assault

From a societal perspective, violent sexual assault is a relative newcomer in 

the legislative reform arena. It was not until the early 1970s that the United 

States reformed rape legislation to focus the legal issues on the “behavior of 

the perpetrator rather than the victim.”20 With this change, many outdated 

and ineffective legal challenges began to favor protecting the victim of reported assaults against “secondary victimization” whereby the victim’s character and integrity were the target of counteraccusations from defendants.21 It 

was not until the early 1980s that considerable effort went into studying the 

source and effects of violent sexual assault.

Rape was not a new phenomenon, but scientific rigor was finally applied to 

the problem, replacing unorganized and anecdotal vignettes collected by rape 

crisis centers and the like.22 Violent sexual assault, a crime typically involving 

men as the offenders and women as the victims, was not a public issue until 

the mid-1980s. This lack of attention is sadly all too predictable given a woman’s place in society in this period. In 1980 women earned just over half of 

what men did in the workplace at $0.61 to a man’s dollar, down from wages in 

1951.23 The civil rights and women’s liberation movements had achieved codified equality and protection under the law, starting with the 1964 Civil Rights 

Act, but there was (and is) a long way to go toward full equality. The public’s 

perception of the treatment of minorities and women was changing, and it 

was awakening to the problem of violent sexual assault.
SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE US MILITARY

30

A number of popular beliefs about rape were perpetuated in society, resulting in inadequate victim-protection measures. “Rape myths” generally concentrated on the victims of sexual assault—for example, the notion that 

women secretly desired to be raped or cried rape whenever it suited them and 

that men are never the victims of rape.24 As time went on and laws increasingly protected victims and encouraged reporting, new myths came about. 

“Date rape” unintentionally led to the debasing of sexual assault to “rape lite,” 

in which “date rapists” were viewed as less serious offenders and therefore less 

culpable than rapists not known by the victim.25 The notion of shared culpability did less to educate people on the danger of acquaintance rape as it did to 

reinforce classical rape myths by convincing women that they had willingly 

participated in any unwanted sexual encounter because of “too much alcohol 

and too little communication.”26

The legacy of confronting these long-held notions of rape mythology is 

not only multifaceted and real but also internal and subjective. However, 

significant sociological correlations exist between “rape supportive attitudes,” such as self-propagating rape myths, and the presence of organizational cultures with sexual assault problems that must be accounted for in 

any serious conversation on the topic.27 The news is not all bad, though. Research reveals the neurobiological facts around human behavior, and we are 

growing more aware of the fact that how we think affects what we do.28 The 

challenge of changing the thinking and language that informs our actions is 

therefore intellectual and requires us to think differently and acknowledge 

rape-supportive attitudes for what they are. The way the public views sexual 

assault has changed for the better, but the history of such a debate carries the 

baggage of decades of misunderstanding the crime.

As the public grew more aware of violent sexual assault, so did their attention on the sexual assault issue in the military, though this progress came in 

incremental stages. By 1990 Congress had passed sexual assault reform laws 

to prevent the crime. The Student Rights-to-Know Act and the Crime Awareness and Campus Security Act, later renamed the Clergy Act, required colleges to disclose crime statistics and formalize prevention and security procedures on campus.29 By 1998 this law had been modified to include more 

robust victims-rights measures and codify reporting obligations. In sensational fashion, the US Navy “Tailhook” scandal in 1991 had generated interest 

in the US military regarding sexual misconduct. Subsequent investigations in 

2000 into the US Air Force Academy (USAFA) sexual assault scandal led 

Congress to demand that the DOD “develop comprehensive policy regarding 

the prevention and response to sexual assault.” In 2006 the National Defense 

Authorization Act, like previous revisions to the Clergy Act, required the 
SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE US MILITARY

31

DOD to submit annual reports to Congress on sexual assault at US military 

academies.30

The Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office was established as an 

oversight directorate in 2005. What began as a joint task force to develop a 

DOD-wide SAPR policy was transformed into a permanent directorate with 

DOD Directive 6495.01. The SAPR office’s mission was to “work hand-inhand with the Services and the civilian community to develop and implement 

innovative prevention and response programs.”31 The program, which is expanding as public pressure to confront the issue grows, codifies the requirement: “Command sexual assault awareness and prevention programs, as well 

as law enforcement and criminal justice procedures that enable persons to be 

held accountable for their actions, as appropriate, shall be established and 

supported by all commanders.”32

The military has made some major changes in the justice apparatus to confront alleged sexual offenders while protecting the rights of victims. A recent 

program launched by the Air Force at its Judge Advocate General (JAG) 

School at Maxwell AFB, Alabama, became a model to protect the legal rights 

of the assaulted as legal proceedings go forward. Col Kenneth Theurer, the 

commandant of the JAG school, runs the “Special Victims Counsel (SVC)” 

program that trains military attorneys to represent the sexual assault victim 

during any subsequent trials.33 The program marks an important step in mitigating the effects of sexual assault and fostering an environment that encourages military members to report the crime without fear of reprisal or secondary victimization. Before the SVC program launched in January 2013, the 

accused defendant in an assault case was provided legal counsel, and the prosecutor represented the government. Victims, however, were left unrepresented. The government’s desire to prosecute the crime was often at odds with 

victims’ desire to put the incident behind them and/or protect their privacy.34

The SVC program introduced an interesting dynamic in prosecuting these 

attacks in that a new legal counsel party now entered the traditional litigation 

process. Today, as the DOD adopts the SVC program as a model of success, 

victims now have a legal say in the level of intensity at which a prosecution 

proceeds across the spectrum. It ranges from fully open testimony against the 

accused to the withdrawal of charges—all with legal advice and being a part 

of the action instead of a victim at the mercy of a bewildering system.35

The first-order effect of programs like SVC appear successful. Those who 

prosecute and defend sexual assault cases hope that the SVC program will 

provide second- and third-order effects of equal or greater significance. One 

aspect of sexual assault that makes it such a difficult problem to solve is the 

fact that the assault has to be reported to be prosecuted; by any measure, how-
SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE US MILITARY

32

ever, most sexual assaults are not reported.36 Seemingly, victims fear reprisal 

and the secondary victimization that follows the attack.37 The SVC program 

helps satisfy the mandated requirement to prevent such secondary victimization but may prove even more useful as a vehicle to encourage reporting.38

Conclusion:

The Evolution of Problems and Solutions

Sexual assault is a human phenomenon and not one exclusive to the military. It is a crime perpetrated almost entirely by a small minority of serialoffender men against women.39 American society has changed greatly in the 

last 100 years and will certainly continue to do so in the future. Women, once 

excluded from military service altogether and then allowed to participate in 

limited auxiliary roles, today serve alongside men in the most hostile combat 

conditions. This change is reflective of societal demands placed on the military. Laws governing the equal treatment of women in the military evolved 

alongside the growing pressure to integrate them fully into military life. 

However, laws regarding victim rights in sexual assault cases have lagged 

societal progress, and because women are most often the victims of sexual 

assault, this lapse seems too long in coming. Is the trend changing? 

One argument maintains that the military sexual assault problem is little 

more than a paradox—we are finding sexual assault only because we are looking for it. There is some truth to this argument, given the command apparatus 

and bureaucratic capabilities of the very hierarchical military subsociety. The 

problem may not be any worse in the military than it is in the civilian world—

for example, at public colleges. The challenge that the US military cannot turn 

away from, however, is that the military has the capability to change for the 

better.40 Colleges and other public institutions have no central command or 

exclusive legal authority to enforce belief or behavioral changes like the military can and therefore must. It would be a tragedy to have the power to minimize or eliminate the threat of sexual assault in an organization yet do nothing. Military commanders and Congress agree, and the history and evolution 

of the bureaucratic response to the issue reflect such an agenda. Military and 

civil leadership agree on the need to stop the perceived epidemic, leaving only 

one question: How? The military will not change society to be more accepting 

of the sexual assault rates in the military. Instead, the military will have responded to the behavioral problem of sexual assault to satisfy the civil demands placed on it, and that adjustment may eventually foster a change in 

military culture.
SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE US MILITARY

33

Notes

1. Lisak, “Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence,” 1.

2. DOD Directive 6495.01, SAPR Program, 18.

3. Lisak, interview; and Lisak, “Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence,” 8. 

4. Joint Service Committee on Military Justice, “Article 120—Sexual Assault,” 69.

5. Lisak, “Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence,” 1.

6. Alaska State Legislature, “Senate Bill 218.”

7. DOD Directive 6495.01, SAPR Program, 10.

8. Ibid., 5.

9. Lisak, “Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence,” 5–6.

10. DOD, “2011 Demographics,” iii; and United States Census Bureau, “Age and Sex Composition,” 2.

11. DOD, “2011 Demographics,” iii; and United States Census Bureau, “Quick Facts.”

12. DOD, “2011 Demographics,” iii.

13. United States Census Bureau, “Age and Sex Composition,” 2.

14. Ibid.

15. DOD, “2011 Demographics,” iii.

16. Ibid., iv.

17. Ibid. This statistic is not surprising, given the educational requirements of obtaining a 

commission, but it is used to demonstrate the age gap between the youngest elements of the 

officer corps and those in the enlisted corps.

18. Ibid., iii.

19. Ibid., iv. Thirty-one to 35-year-olds make up 20.1 percent of the officer corps; 

36–40-year-olds, 19 percent.

20. Harrell et al., Sexual Assault Research, 4.

21. Ibid., 5.

22. Ibid., 4.

23. “Women’s Earnings.”

24. Lisak, “Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence,” 3.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid., 2.

27. Lisak, interview.

28. Ibid.

29. Harrell et al., Sexual Assault Research, 4.

30. Ibid., 4–5.

31. DOD Directive 6495.01, SAPR Program, 5.

32. Ibid., 3.

33. Col Kenneth Theurer (USAF Judge Advocate School commandant), interview with the 

author, 7 February 2014.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Harrell et al., Sexual Assault Research, 2–4.

37. Ibid., 2.

38. Theurer, interview.

39. Lisak, “Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence,” 8.

40. Theurer, interview.

35

Chapter 4

Theoretical Analysis of Sexual Assault 

in the Department of Defense

The problem with the [DOD’s SAPR] training is that they all dance 

around the issues, and we don’t listen to it. We don’t listen to it because the conversation isn’t real. They won’t say it and we won’t talk 

about it, but we know what it’s about. Men are the ones who rape 

people. And I’m surrounded by men. Men who joke about it and 

even sing about it.

—Anonymous Sexual Assault Victim, 2012

Culture can be a difficult thing to separate from the behavior used to stereotype it. This chapter explores what organizational theory says about the 

origins of sexual assault in the military from a cultural perspective. The first 

task is to dissect the different levels of military culture. Second, assuming that 

an attempt is under way to address the artifact of sexual assault in the military 

culture, the author advances what organizational theory suggests is most effective in managing the change to underlying beliefs. Finally, changing a culture for some end requires an apparatus to monitor the change, which transcends every stage of the change and challenges leaders and followers of the 

military institution.

Organizational theory is not at odds with military culture and should not 

be considered some outside influence that existentially threatens the military 

culture. It is a set of tools and a logical construct that is helpful when one addresses the internal workings of any organization that has some input and 

some output. Overwhelmingly, the military takes a small percentage of America’s young and produces remarkable leaders and followers who, often in the 

face of overwhelming danger, perform heroic acts of service for each other 

and the nation they love. This underlying principle is not in question. However, organizational theory does require that a pragmatic scholar of the situation examine the facts that surround an organization and objectively assess 

the larger picture. It is difficult, even for the sake of argument, to accept the 

existence of an underbelly of a great organization like the DOD that might be 

at fault for egregious violations of basic human dignity. Organizational theory 

and ways to change culture require us to take such a leap if we are to shape our 

current way of thinking about the problem so as to appreciate and better understand the greater context. 
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

36

Levels of Culture: 

Generational Challenges and Subcultural Context

Schein spends a great deal of effort discussing the meaning of behavior at 

different levels of culture. Of the many different levels of culture in the military, a useful and consistent approach is to consider the generational divide 

between senior leaders and the most at risk 18–24-year-old demographic. The 

gap mimics the grandparent/grandchild relationship, and at the very least, 

parent/child age differences. As a practical exercise, consider a proposition 

that magnifies the gap: Is it popular for 18-year-olds to ask their grandparents 

for advice about sex or relationships? If the elder generation broached the 

topic, would the young teens listen or tune them out? The answer, it seems, is 

intuitive, so we must pare the understanding of culture into the theoretical 

categories of subculture.

The military services have their own brand of internal culture, and different specialties enjoy theirs: fighter pilots; artillerymen; infantrymen; submariners, and so on. Additionally, in the macro- or microsense, varying degrees 

of interpretation and participation in the culture exist for a myriad of reasons—none are age. Generational gaps that occur between senior military 

leaders and the young who are most at risk of sexual assault must be bridged 

across military culture, its subcultures, and down into the microcultures. 

These gaps do not mean that generationally older leaders cannot relate to the 

younger demographic since they too were once 18–24 years old.

Sexual violence is not a twenty-first-century phenomenon but one as old as 

the human species. Many people in today’s older generation were probably 

just as at risk of previous victimization as today’s young. Has technology expanded this risk? Today’s youth are more enabled, at younger ages, to access 

sexual content and sexual partners. This situation implies that today’s young, 

in some degree of contradistinction to just one or two generations ago, are 

more likely to have had formative sexual experiences prior to an age that they 

could join the military. If there were a time to study the interaction of civilian 

and military culture, then the contemporary challenge surely compels such an 

undertaking.

The military does not own the problem of sexual assault. It does, however, 

own the military approach to fighting military sexual assault. There is not a 

culture of sexual assault in the military, as the 2012 DOD SAPR directive suggests, because culture is not based on observable behavior but on beliefs that 

underlie the behavior. After all, sexual assault is an artifact of civilian culture 

in the same way it is in military culture. The question is to what degree does 
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT 

37

the artifact represent each underlying belief system. A link exists between the 

two cultures that sexual assault transcends, especially as we consider the military demographic as one drawn from a greater civil pool of candidates. With 

this truth laid bare, it seems counterproductive to think, speak, or act in a way 

that suggests the problem is anything less than the manifestation of a larger 

US culture. With this idea in mind, meaningful dialogue that focuses on what 

is important can occur. What can organizations do to effect positive results? 

The military is a powerful bureaucratic organization with its own legal system and distribution of hierarchical power descended from 1775 when 

George Washington first took command of the Continental Army. Politicians 

like Sen. Kristin Gillibrand of New York are sometimes seen by military professionals as interfering with the role of military commanders when they suggest that the authority to prosecute sexually aggressive crimes be removed 

from the commander’s role. At the same time, the removal could actually alleviate any tension in tight-knit units where a sexual crime occurs since there 

could not be favoritism if the matter were outside the commander’s realm of 

influence. However, any attempt to remove the commander from the prosecution process allows him or her (and their organization) to resist change by 

not having to adopt the new beliefs, which does not provide lasting culture

change. As organizational theory suggests, meaningful change must be accompanied by resistance and anxiety to that change. Attempts to circumvent 

the associated anxiety are therefore attempts to prevent change.

The civilian institution, in this case, laid the blame for a sexually hostile 

environment at the military’s doorstep, as if the military operated in a vacuum from societal influence. Some senior military leaders’ views on the inheritance of such culture problems are juxtaposed to this perception of civilmilitary affairs. Gen Mark Welsh called this generation the “hook-up culture,” 

which helps explain the uptick of military sexual assault.1

 General Welsh was 

lambasted in the news and blogosphere for “outrageous” testimony tantamount to “victim blaming”; those outlets declared that “what the military has 

to confront is criminality, not a hookup culture.”2

 It seems too easy to blame 

the military from the outside, or the society from which the military draws 

recruits, but both arguments have significant weight. Civilian rage over the 

military’s handling of the crisis is warranted because of the prestige of military service and the fact that the military has the legal and authoritative apparatuses to confront the problem. The military also has the right to offer the 

cultural norms of those who enter service as one factor of the problem.

General Welsh was right in principle. There is not a “hook up culture” 

problem so much as a casual-toward-sex cultural reality that the military must 

deal with. Nomenclature matters, and since using slang is inappropriate for 
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

38

academic discussion and congressional testimony, a new way of discussing 

the germane points must be included. First, we must acknowledge that generations of people tend to fit categorical cultural labels for the sake of discussion. “Gen X’ers” and “Baby Boomers” and even the rosy retrospective applied 

to “The Greatest Generation” are but a few. It is not that the current generation of millennials, or “Gen-Y’ers,” has a culture inferior to others, but it is 

certainly formatively different than that of even their peers close in age. The 

DOD report on sexual assault at service academies states as part of “the real 

challenge” regarding “youth culture” that

the Academies must contend with the clash between youth culture and the highly disciplined military culture needed to train future leaders. . . . American youth today generally 

have casual attitudes toward sexual activities, underage and reckless alcohol use, and illegal drug use. Additionally, some young people have been exposed to sexual harassment 

and/or assault prior to their matriculation to the Academies. While these attitudes and 

experiences alone do not cause sexual assault, they may contribute to poor judgment, 

lowered inhibitions, and increased aggression and/or vulnerability to sexual assault.3

Sexual assault is a shared problem between the youth culture and military 

culture. These young people do not deserve to be raped. However, to say that 

General Welsh’s remarks were tantamount to “victim blaming” is ludicrous.4

The military must honestly confront its own cultural aspects that possibly 

foster the problem; political leaders must engage in the same pragmatism. 

Both Congress and DOD leaders should remember that they have a great deal 

of wisdom to offer each other and to individuals at risk. However, these leaders are likely generationally separated from and not necessarily representative 

of people most at risk of a sexual assault, a possibility that may inspire more 

listening than talking.

Generation gaps are only one piece of the puzzle regarding efforts to effect 

change across generational lines. The role of learned sexually aggressive behavior is another reason the generational argument is important. The “intergenerational transmission of violence” hypothesis grapples with relating what 

nonacademics think of when they talk about the “cycle of violence.”5

 The 

plausible argument is that a person who was abused as a child grows to understand that the abuse was a normal thing that older people do to children, so 

he or she does it upon becoming an adult. Similarly, a child who grows up in 

a home in which his or her mother is abused is at a higher risk of modeling 

the same behavior as an adult.

Obviously, the hypothesis of repeated behavior extends beyond violence. 

Positive role modeling can result in generally more positive behavior, and so 

on. The hypothesis does not condemn all children who experience sexual and 

physical violence to repeat the behavior but suggests that certain experiences 
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT 

39

in a child’s formative years often correlate with behavior later in life. The age 

of one party in this model is one of the distinguishing variables between parties and an important one to consider in any familial model of cultural analysis. Age matters because it separates parties along generational lines. Understanding the role of the generational gaps begins with acknowledging that a 

difference exists between the life experiences and perception of the military’s 

senior leaders and the demographic majority they represent.

A 40-year-old who grew up without the Internet until after college has had 

a dramatically different life experience than a 20-year-old who has used a 

smartphone since he or she was 14. The generational gap between senior leaders and the newest recruits is remarkable, especially considering technology 

and its effect on communication and behavioral norms. Most four-star general officers were born in the 1950s, with a few born in the 1940s. Consider 

that the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first-ever orbital man-made 

spacecraft, in 1957. The personal computer was not popular in American 

homes until around 1980, after most of today’s leaders were out of college, and 

affordable commercial Internet did not follow until the early 1990s. This generation has adapted to contemporary technology, unlike the youngest serving 

generation, which has been transformed by or at least formatively affected by 

personal computer technology and the associated social norms.

In summary, the fact that young people want sex is not a modern phenomenon—there has always been some level of capability and intent to do so. 

Whatever the enduring intent, today’s youth have a much better capability to 

act on their impulses than did members of a generation just 20 years older, 

thanks to modern communication norms. 

Forty-nine percent of today’s military enlisted force and 13 percent of the 

officer corps are under the age of 24. This demographic, combined to represent the military force as a whole, represents 43 percent of the total number of 

DOD forces as an aggregate—some 610,000 service members.6

 Computers, 

Internet access, and the information age were a part of life during the formative years of the majority demographic of the military since most were born 

after 1990 and some as late as 1996. It is not a stretch to guess that most millennials had not even heard of Sputnik by the time the “Y2K” glitch loomed. 

If they had heard of it, they probably learned about it from the Internet.

Social media was the informational revolution that mostly changed the interaction of this generation’s members with each other, starting with Myspace 

and Facebook. Today, applications like Tinder are specifically designed to bypass conventional dating norms and seek out those close by who are interested in no-strings-attached casual sex. The smartphone has replaced the local tavern or bar—and kids carry smartphones more and more today. Right or 
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

40

wrong, the technology that shapes how humans interact is here to stay. A 

leader who must deal with the distance between generations as such technology matures experiences both opportunity and pitfalls. The reach of social 

media does not stop at “hooking up” or hanging out and so forth. Social media is also transforming politics and neopolitical activism with a decidedly 

antiauthoritarian tone.7

 This is not to say, however, that young people are detached from political issues today any more than the senior leader’s generation was detached from social networking; however, the means and efficiency 

of participation is drastically different. “Para-politics” is a transformative phenomenon that is not going to happen—it is already happening.8

 The people 

carrying out the transformation are those who have turned from traditional 

social constructs toward the Internet—and they are young.

Sexual Tension in the Ranks

This paper and its methodology hinge on the notion of a military culture 

that is different from American or even human culture. The assumption that 

a military culture exists does not demand much of a leap of faith. “Culture is 

an abstraction” that is powerful in creating forces that guide behavior, Schein 

notes.9

 Further, by failing to grasp the subjective nature of culture and change 

by examining the observable and less objective behaviors, he warns that “we 

become victim to them.”10 To avoid such folly, we must turn our efforts toward 

dissecting military culture.

The role between the DOD organization and the “Patriarchal Family” in 

social science literature is clear: where one finds bureaucratic organization 

that closely regulates human activity through relentless planning, rule following, discipline, duty, and obedience, there is an associated correlation 

with sexual control as well.11 In the Middle Ages—at monasteries, convents, 

and churches—“outrageous sexual behavior” posed organizational problems 

to a degree similar to those in the DOD today.12 Like current reactionary 

policy responding to the organizational reality, the Middle Age reaction was 

to increase severity of punishment.13 Sigmund Freud would later write that 

to “promote social order and civilized behavior the libido has to be brought 

under control.”14

The trend continued throughout the Western world through the industrial 

age, and policy born of puritanical origins transcended not only the workplace but also Western cultural understanding of the role of obedience and 

discipline at odds with human sexual nature.15 The military, after all, stopped 

regulating the sexual practices of homosexuals only recently. This step was 

crucial in deconstructing governmental control of people’s sexual preferences 
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT 

41

in the name of good order and discipline. Critics of the repeal of “Don’t Ask, 

Don’t Tell” (DADT), like Sen. John McCain of Arizona, argued that the repeal 

would ultimately undermine combat effectiveness and serve as a distraction 

to a military engaged in two wars.16 The repeal passed with little drama inside 

military circles, and operations continued unabated even as the military was 

no longer allowed to organizationally repress this particular sexual identity. 

Proponents of the repeal classify this victory as one for human rights while 

opponents point out that perhaps the impact of the repeal has not yet been 

felt. In any case, repealing the law signified a change in underlying beliefs that 

define what it means to serve in the modern US military. Whether the beliefs 

were the military’s or the civilian population’s, the repeal indicated that some 

pressure forced a change in policy.

That the US military has struggled to deal with the balance of sexuality and 

normative guidelines of acceptable behavior is not a surprise when one considers the rich history of like organizations also fumbling to define sexual 

norms throughout the ages. The hierarchical structure of the patriarchal family becomes a “factory for authoritarian ideologies.”17 Continuing the model 

patriarchal organization in the familial context is useful in this case. Just as a 

son and daughter yield to a parent, so do formal organizations like the DOD 

breed a culture in which “one person defers to the authority of another” with 

little question.18 Gareth Morgan offers a salient quotation on the outcome of 

such a familial organization that is tied up in “sexuality versus morality”:

The prolonged dependency of the child upon the parents facilitates the kind of dependency institutionalized in the relationship between leaders and followers and in the 

practice where people look to others to initiate action in response to problematic issues. 

In organizations, as in the patriarchal family, fortitude, courage, and heroism, flavored 

by narcissistic self-admiration, are often valued qualities, as is the determination and 

sense of duty that a father expects from his son. Key organizational members also often 

cultivate fatherly roles by acting as mentors to those in need of help and protection.19

The matriarchal family, which tends to focus on “love, optimism, trust, 

compassion, capacity for intuition, creativity, and happiness,” is directly at 

odds with this male-dominated classical understanding of organizational 

structure and culture.20 The values associated with what society attributes to 

the feminine half of American culture is fundamentally at odds with how the 

same defines masculinity. Critics of patriarchy suggest that turning away from 

a male-dominated hierarchical society and embracing women in authoritative positions will prevent “impotence accompanied by a fear of and dependence on authority.”21 The roles of women in organizations will always “be 

played out on male terms” until a change, either conscious or subconscious, 

leads away from rigid authoritative organizational structures.22
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

42

America, not just the military, credits classical notions of positive service, 

such as heroism, bravery, and strength, with the masculine and associates the 

weaker sex with less desirable traits like weakness, frailty, and vulnerability.

23

Is this choice consciously made or culturally underwritten? The author asks 

the reader to consider if it seems that society goes out of its way to celebrate 

feminine examples of bravery and the like, pausing to reflect on the inherent 

femininity of the act as if it should multiply our wonder. Some words may 

automatically denote sexism. Heroic, brave, aggressive, loving, nurturing, and 

empathetic are a few adjectives whose context is underwritten by individual 

bias and almost immediately distilled to be gender specific. The classification 

of what is feminine and masculine, as well as what is positive military behavior and what is not, should express the military’s underlying beliefs and culture. As such, one underlying challenge facing women who seek to break the 

glass ceiling of executive America is to have to compete in historically Western patriarchal organizations—a common link between the military and 

civil society.

The question, it seems, becomes, can the military organization change and 

should it change? Does the DOD stand to lose part of its identity if it makes a 

conscious turn away from the classical Western patriarchal organization habits dominated by masculine values? Further, can the overwhelmingly male 

culture of the US military be modified simply by changing the demographic? 

The military is not demographically the way it is because that’s what the military wants if you consider military demographics as the artifact of underlying 

American societal beliefs. The military is mostly male because the values ascribed to military service are defined by society as male dominated.

Heroism and everything else that makes one heroic are historically tied to 

masculinity, and the union of the two is partially to blame for the organization we have today. Does it have to be this way? Is positive military service 

and masculinity a “package deal” that America must purchase together if we 

are to enjoy strength? Or can society clearly handle, or even lead, the drive to 

disassociate masculinity from heroism? Lastly, can the change be innovated 

purposefully, or is the task too large to help along faster than evolution allows? Our own biases inform how we will talk about this fundamental challenge to changing culture. However, we must have this conversation. Why is 

the military dominated by male values and servicemen, and what does that 

say about American societal and military-specific underlying beliefs?

Consider a few key takeaways on the role of historical organizational cultures such as the current US military. First, it is demographically and intrinsically factual that the military is, and has been, dominated by a strict male 

authority presence. Though it is too early to tell, this situation could be chang-
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT 

43

ing toward adopting a more matriarchal set of values as equality for men and 

women creeps forward. Are the two value sets mutually exclusive? Can we 

have it both ways? Second, it is useful to examine American society and compare the differences between a military and civil organization. The military 

organization is a microcosm of its larger counterpart and of a distinctly different character in terms of sexual, racial, and age factors.

Women are still not earning equal pay and filling the boardrooms of American business but have made enormous strides in recent decades. Women 

have risen into higher ranks in the DOD as well. However, the key differences 

between civilian and military organizations are the remnants of patriarchal 

notions of authority and dependence. Logically, command and control are 

crucial parts of the military structure, and as a strategist plays a “long game” 

past the next move, military leaders should also be introspectively looking at 

how demystifying sexual behavior from the shadows into the forefront affects 

military culture at large. It may be possible to deconstruct the classical argument of libido versus organizational effectiveness to achieve ideals of liberal 

democracy in both. Doing so will require challenging our most deeply seeded 

beliefs in what our American culture is built on and therefore extremely demanding to present in a manner that balances the fear of change with the 

demand to change.

Evidence of Behavior as Representative of Underlying Culture

Sexual assault is an artifact of military culture but not exclusive to that 

culture alone. It is certainly neither the only nor the most important manifestation of military culture, but it is incompatible with military ideals and civilian leadership’s expectations, as well as the human collective conscience. We 

know not to infer deep institutional beliefs about the military culture by observation alone, but such observation can point us in the right direction of 

discovering underlying beliefs.

Assigning causality in terms of cultural inferences is dangerous ground. 

Still, the DOD must look at the evidence honestly and survey the means with 

which the problem (in this case, the artifact of sexual assault) can be addressed. Simply put, no strategy can solve an artifact problem. This fact is 

obvious and part of daily life. One does not change a malfunctioning light 

with new lightbulbs every day without exploring the cause of exploding bulbs. 

So too, the discussion of a recurring problem such as sexual assault must be 

viewed from the perspective of having an underlying problem. As such, the 

DOD should publicly embrace the fact that there may be a problem with military culture encouraging sexual violence and study all the aspects of underly-
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

44

ing culture, including demographic proclivities. As an organization, the DOD 

must acknowledge that the cultural problem may be very real. The military 

must not only manage the change to promote a nonaggressive sexual environment but also be combat effective. The military mission demands violence, 

but leaders must manage the second-order effects of a culture that exists to 

execute that mission at all times. The USAFA sexual assault scandal is an instructive case that allows a cultural discussion to follow from the realization 

of the artifact.

By the time Lt Gen John Rosa arrived at the academy in 2003, Congress 

had already demanded action on solving what seemed like a festering sexual 

violence problem. General Rosa was an outsider as a graduate of the Citadel 

and only the second Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps graduate to 

serve as superintendent of the USAFA. He immediately decided to observe 

the culture of the organization. To help him understand the issues, he 

brought in experts in sexual assault to take a deep look into the academy’s 

closed society and report on the underlying issues that might lead to such 

behavior. One expert, Dr. David Lisak, commended General Rosa’s change 

in approach to the problem as one defined by a cultural problem versus a 

behavior problem:

In the wake of the sexual assault scandal at the Air Force Academy, both the Academy 

and the Air Force as a whole have undertaken what is perhaps the most comprehensive 

program to confront and prevent sexual violence that has ever been undertaken by a 

major institution. It is still too early to determine the overall effectiveness of the Air 

Force’s new policies and prevention efforts. However, at a minimum, the Air Force has 

already demonstrated that it is possible for a major institution to honestly confront sexual violence, and to do so with the comprehensive initiatives required for a reasonable 

chance at success.24

The program in question had the goal of addressing underlying beliefs of 

the academy culture. Specifically, not having enough women in leadership 

roles at the academy (cadets and regular officers) to serve as role models for 

female and male cadets was a problem.25 The task force investigating the scandal concluded that the number-one cause of the sexual assault problem was 

cultural: not enough leaders across the spectrum had modeled behavior that 

“positively convey[s] the value of women in the military.”26 General Rosa had 

been pressured into solving a public relations situation and not messing with 

the academy’s culture per se. He soon found that the culture of the institution 

was contributing to an environment conducive to sexual assault and set about 

to change it.27

How he did so is the subject of Dr. Lisak’s praise: education. “We cut out a 

drill period, and every Tuesday at 11 o’clock we were doing something about 
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT 

45

honor, respect, and our core values. It was tailored to the audience. Freshmen 

didn’t get the same class as the seniors, because their perspective was different,” Rosa said.28 He added that your audience won’t respect you until you talk 

frankly about sexual assault and the organization’s sexual climate. Respect is a 

two-way street, but this fact can be lost when authority overshadows respect. 

The sentiment of the two—respect and authority—must not be confused.

One of General Rosa’s major achievements in taking on the underlying 

culture of the academy was in acknowledging that the audience garnered 

more respect than it was given. “Youth culture,” it seems, could handle frank 

and open discussions about honor and respect as it relates to sexual activity. 

In turn, by showing the audience the respect to have an honest conversation, 

he increased the cadets’ trust in the military and facilitated better reporting 

and more intellectually honest education programs that won the participation—not just subjugation—of his target demographic.

Dr. Lisak also focused the USAFA faculty on the role of facilitators and 

bystanders in sexual assault, a conversation that would lead to formalized bystander intervention programs across the entire DOD.29 According to General Rosa, “We started calling it the 15 percent rule. Fifteen percent of the 

cadets were always going to do the right thing. Fifteen percent were always 

going to do the wrong thing. The fight is for that middle 70 percent, . . . and 

until you get the facilitators and bystanders to stand up against [sexual assault], you’re not going to stop it.”30 The fight was fought for the victims and 

against the perpetrators, but the battleground that the USAFA faculty and 

experts would wage the war on was the bystander.

Academic research by sociological experts suggests that the risk of sexual 

harassment and assault against women and men is higher in the military than 

in civil society, partly because it is a male-dominated environment.31 Many 

researchers have hypothesized that the nature of this risk is the direct result of 

“organizational cultures that value characteristics traditionally attributed to 

men and with attitudes that women are unsuitable for many roles because of 

the supposed need for physical strength and acceptance as an authority figure.”32 General Rosa found many of these factors at the USAFA. The correlation of women at risk to assault at the academy followed a lack of female 

leadership and supervision in the cadre and the student command structure. 

Is the solution to promote more women to supervisory roles, or is the lack of 

women in leadership positions the natural reflection of a culture that does not 

value femininity?
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

46

Are Women in the Military More Likely to Experience Sexual Violence?

 Published psychological research indicates that women who have served 

in the military are almost twice as likely as their civilian counterparts to experience some form of sexual or domestic violence in their lifetime.33 Research 

that examined the history of 508 women who served in the military in Vietnam or later revealed that 79 percent reported having experienced sexual harassment, and 54 percent reported unwanted sexual contact.34 Thirty percent 

(n=151) experienced one or more completed or attempted rapes.35 Repeated 

rape was a common occurrence in those who said they had been raped, with 

more than one-third of the respondents indicating they had experienced it at 

least twice. Fourteen percent reported that they had been gang raped.36

However, this tragic tale has an interesting twist. The rate of rape in the 

woman’s lifetime was more than twice as likely to have happened outside military service as in the service.37 Added together, women who experienced rape 

in the military alone without other instances of assault in their lifetime made 

up just 12 percent of all the women studied while 25 percent of women had 

experienced sexual violence only during their childhood.38 Regarding the relationship between premilitary violence exposure and subsequent rapes in 

military service, “women who joined the military at age 19 years or younger, 

who were of enlisted rank, or who experienced childhood physical or sexual 

violence or rape prior to service were at least twice as likely to experience rape 

during their military service.”39

The women’s military work environment accounts for another telling sign 

of their risk of being victimized. Women who report hostile work environments are six times as likely to be raped.40 Senior enlisted and officer leadership also identifies with an increased likelihood of sexual violence in the 

workplace, with their behavior (sexually demeaning comments, gestures, 

“quid pro quo” attitudes) being “strongly associated with women’s frequency 

of rape.”41

This particular area of sexual assault needs a great deal of research. Sadly, 

women are likely to experience sexual aggression in their lifetime, regardless 

of the decision to enter military service. Prof. James Daley, who coauthored a 

report with Col Deborah Bostock on the rate of sexual assault victimization 

rates in the Air Force in 2007 that involved interviewing 2,018 Air Force 

women, said that “sexual trauma appears to be common as women grow up.”42

Upon matriculating into the military culture, though, their risk of rape while 

serving—comparatively less than their risk of ever being victimized—is still 

intolerably high versus their prospects outside the service. Nominally, the victimization rates of military servicewomen are around 28 percent in their life-
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT 

47

time versus 13 percent in comparable civilian studies.43 Research indicates 

that 38–67 percent of adult women “recall sexual assault during childhood,” a 

finding consistent with the corresponding rate of women who report the same 

and have chosen to serve in the military.44 Enlistment, workplace environment, off-duty and on-base environment, and ranking officer behavior heavily influence the chain of events that allows sexual violence.45

Even when controlled for established risk factors for sexual violence, such 

as prior victimization and younger age, the military environment is strongly 

associated with rape during military service.46 The previous assault rate 

among America’s women is high, perhaps higher than the military would like 

to believe. In this regard, the rate of women who serve in the military who 

also experience sexual assault in their lifetime is correspondingly high. This 

information hopefully stimulates leaders in positions of power to further reflect on the need to study the cultural and demographic realities of the twentyfirst century American military. Where sexual assault is a societal scourge, 

evidence suggests that women who have been previously victimized are more 

likely to join the military. Such a discovery should cause us to reflect on the 

underlying reasons for the phenomenon’s existence.

The Hypermasculine Military

Unfortunately, sexual assault is a human affliction that transcends age, gender, or social status. It is not a crime of the poor or rich, educated or uneducated. The military’s role in confronting the mounting epidemic should begin 

with understanding the nature of the individual as he or she fits into the group 

and determining how the group can be used to shape the behavior of the individual. One way to look at this problem is to devote more study to the role 

of gender identity from birth to the time the individual joins the group. Gender identity has a great deal to do with the role of masculine versus feminine 

value sets and must be considered in any discussion of sexual violence.

Gender identity is not as simple a task as it may appear beneath a few layers 

of clothes. Other than cases of rare medical exception, at birth men are men, 

and women are women—at least physically. As such, it is a fact that women 

give birth to children and, psychoanalytically speaking, forge the strongest 

bond with them in their most formative years.47 Women—that is, mothers—

are the primary bonded parent with children in their early years. As a young 

girl enters adolescence, she continues to retain the primary attachment with 

her gender identity of being a woman.48 Boys, however, are different. They 

share the primary attachment to the female gender in their younger years, just 
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

48

as their sisters do, but at some point, they must “affirm their masculinity” and 

gender identity. They have to switch whereas girls do not.

Many psychologists support the argument that this shift creates a sort of 

gender asymmetry and fosters the need for some young (and even older) men 

to “separate, distance, and distinguish themselves from the feminine, the 

mother, and to affirm their masculine identification in sharp contradistinction to femininity.”49 The word contradistinction is important in this definition 

because masculinity and femininity are not discussed clinically as parallel 

paths of gender-specific behavior; rather, masculinity is defined as the opposite of femininity.50 The theoretical argument supports that the shift away 

from the feminine at an early age involves the father’s role in child rearing as 

the primary male role model, as well as all-male hypermasculine groups such 

as the military.51 In this regard, military service has strange company: gangs, 

militias, volunteer fire companies, and social clubs (among others), all offer a 

vision of men partaking in “elaborate sets of constructs of masculinity and 

male behavior.”52 But the role of primary parenting in the feminine sense is 

changing in modern times. Women are still the primary caretakers of children; however, men are beginning to fill the role to a greater extent today.53 It 

is possible that greater participation of men in parenting will alleviate the 

gender asymmetry that currently dominates the formative experience (at 

least on a grand societal scale) of the men and women who serve in the military today, but it is yet another area of research that merits further attention.

An additional correlating factor must be considered regarding sexuality, 

gender identity, and masculinity: the sexual abuse of children. This especially 

cruel crime against a vulnerable victim leaves lasting emotional and physical 

scars. Compelling but limited research exists on the likelihood of premilitary 

sexual abuse victims being the perpetrators and/or victims in later sexual violence.54 The current paper broaches this issue in the military context not because the evidence compels it but because the lack of study does.55

Lex Merrill has examined a small segment of naval enlisted recruits in the 

Great Lakes region that showed a propensity for rape perpetration in military men sexually abused as children.56 Further, the evidence suggests that 

previous physical and sexual abuse in adults who join the military occurs at 

a rate higher than exists in civil society—a finding that is perhaps even more 

concerning, given the contemporary realization of the extent of sexual abuse 

in the military.57 Sadly, Merrill’s is one of the few studies that have addressed 

the issue.58 It should be studied on a larger scale to further illuminate the 

psyche of those drawn to military service and to target education and victimprevention measures. Further, a boy who was raped as a child may not even 
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT 

49

be aware of his increased risk to commit a crime or of the fact that his view 

of normal behavior is even objectionable.

A cycle of violence must be broken in order to solve the problem of rape. 

The lack of evidence involving people who self-select to join the military 

strongly suggests that this problem begins when the member is a child. Further, much research has been done on women being prone to rape based on 

certain risk factors, including sexual assault as a child.59 One study showed that 

educating women on recognizing behavior that was consistent with known 

rape-supportive situations quickly lowered the reported frequency of sexual 

aggression within a control group.60 If the military is reasonably confident 

that it can identify persons of increased risk of violence, then it should act to 

educate and prevent the crime as much as possible. The classification is important: crafting focused education programs to a section of a demographic at 

greater risk is an important part of sincere prevention strategy. Prevention 

must go beyond treating everyone the same in order to gain effectiveness. 

Education level, age, socioeconomic indicators, race, ethnicity, and previous exposure to sexual and physical violence may prove useful and effective 

indicators of sexual violence and must be pursued academically to help eradicate sexual assault. However, including the question in a discussion of military sexual assault comes with a cost: acknowledging predators in the ranks 

and the fact that more “prey” may be in the ranks as well. The answer emerges 

after the military devotes significantly more research to the topic.

The DOD and much of the civilian population tend to focus on the predatory nature of sexual violence in the military. Is there a sexual assault “prey” 

problem in the military? Depending on the study, some seem to show a higher 

propensity for men who offend, and others show evidence of women at risk 

for self-selecting for military service at higher than normal rates.61 It is possible, though the author does not agree, that in light of the cycle-of-violence 

problem, the military attracts criminals who seek a haven and that those at 

risk of sexual assault seek out the same structure. If that scenario is true, then 

the combination is a dark and dangerous one.

The Role of Masculinity

Competition is a human condition, and war is its ultimate manifestation. 

Masculinity used to be the basis of military strength because the physical 

strength of the army was the summation of the physical strength of its members. In short, men formed the armies because they were stronger than 

women, and the strength to swing the sword or throw the spear was the dif-
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

50

ference between life and death on the individual level—and between prosperity and subjugation on the national level.

Technology is changing this historical fact. Today, women participate in a 

wider combat role, compared to their auxiliary role prior to 1948. Before congratulating ourselves on deconstructing sexism for achieving this milestone, 

we must consider that the change is due more to the lack of physical strength 

required in many combat roles than to realizing and acting upon a new paradigm of equality. Women have simply been introduced into a still-masculine 

environment. The vision of military service is mostly unchanged from ancient 

times and is dominated by a masculine historical precedent of “aggressiveness” and “toughness.”62 These attributes are not necessarily exclusive of gender, though, and there is no particular reason why the military is forced to 

choose between a masculine or feminine construct. In fact, “it is the very 

combination of aggressiveness with compassion that is required for compliance with the laws of war that require humane treatment of prisoners, civilians, and the wounded,” points out Madeline Morris.63

Environments where sexual harassment or nonviolent but unwanted sexual advances are allowed to take place are factors conducive to violent sexual 

assault taking place.64 The DOD has taken steps to confront any environments 

where sexual harassment is normal but must also consider the role of gender 

asymmetry in military culture. Most officers today cannot imagine a time 

when it was commonplace for a racial slur to be used in a group environment 

by white drill instructors to tear down black service members and deindividualize them, yet the same type of denigrations that play on male insecurities of masculinity are commonplace.65 Repealing DADT removed this aspect 

of exclusion and separation that has subconsciously attempted to eliminate 

any feminine characteristics from recruits and distill their subconscious and 

popularized views on traditional masculinity, as if it were the only trait compatible with military service.66

In summary, a number of factors characterize and inform the deeply contextual nature of sexual violence in the US military culture. By thinking of it 

as masculine in nature, one is able to consider what makes it masculine versus

feminine, whether or not one consciously associates values to either. In doing 

so, it becomes easier—albeit still extraordinarily complex—to personally 

identify the traits associated with humans placing values on values and explore what forms the individual perception of cultural artifacts. Different 

people will invariably occupy different levels of interpretation in hierarchical 

organizations, and each will also have his or her own formative lens to interpret. In the case of sexual violence, the need to deeply study the role of traumatic childhood experiences is of greatest importance if one seeks to general-
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT 

51

ize on a larger cultural level. Gender identity, family dynamics, and childhood 

trauma all define how and why each person will assimilate into a hypermasculine culture. Whether or not the DOD chooses to approach the myriad of 

problems, it will certainly have to deal with the consequences of such societal 

issues with every new recruit.

Managing Change

American Soldiers moving south from Normandy after D-day in World 

War II carried with them the France Zone Handbook No. 16.

67 For all practical 

purposes, the book was a travel guide for Soldiers visiting brothels in Paris. As 

Gen George S. Patton said, “A soldier who won’t [expletive deleted] won’t 

fight.”68 Is this the case? Some social science research suggests a strong link of 

sexual tendencies tied to combat or even violence—a possibility that, if true, 

is a troubling starting place for military leaders confronting the paradox.69

When approaching the problem of sexual assault as a cultural artifact of a 

hypermasculine organization such as the military, we must first discuss the 

impact of changing the culture before doing so. To paraphrase Schein, unmanaged culture change can be disastrous.70 In the theoretical construct laid 

out in this paper, sexual assault has been treated as an artifact of a hypermasculine military culture. The culture is managed by senior leaders, but individual members at lower ranks constitute the majority of the force as well as 

the demographic most at risk of sexual violence. The disconfirming evidence 

compels leaders to foster a different environment for the 43 percent of military members demographically predisposed to sexual violence. The question 

is not only how to change the culture but also if it should be done at all.

Can the military change from a hypermasculine culture into something 

less gender specific while maintaining military effectiveness? Unit cohesion is 

a core tenet of military command, and the ideological basis of classical military cohesion has until recently been a masculine one.71 This gender discriminator, where physical and emotive factors play, between us and them can 

serve a useful purpose in bonding those who would otherwise have nothing 

in common. Stripped to its core, the group would at least identify with being 

manly. The gender basis, it seems, is the core of cohesion in the US military.72

To engage in culture change and not just suppress or alter the artifacts (via 

reporting or definitions) will require a pivot from this underlying and permeating masculinity. In effect, the military must redefine the basis of cohesion 

from masculinity to an ideological basis, as many other groups have done 

independently of gender.73
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

52

The answer to what this may be is extremely difficult to articulate and the 

subject of the next chapter. Regardless, the DOD needs competent and loyal 

service members—not competent and loyal service members who act like 

men. Using the historical patriarchal familial structure as a model of Western 

military organization has served its purpose, but it has come with a cost that 

only now is being fully acknowledged. Defining the military on a masculine 

basis encourages those who are prone to offend to join because it meets many 

of their psychological needs.74

Notes

1. Schogol and Davis, “Welsh Explains ‘Hookup’ Comment.”

2. Clift, “General Blames Increase.”

3. Defense Task Force for Sexual Violence, Sexual Harassment and Violence, 8.

4. Schogol and Davis, “Welsh Explains ‘Hookup’ Comment”; and Clift, “General Blames 

Increase.”

5. Merrill, Thomsen, and Milner, “Childhood Abuse,” 252–61.

6. DOD, “2011 Demographics,” 13. Thirteen and three-tenths percent of the officer corps 

(n=238,103) and 49.3 percent of the enlisted corps (n=1,173,322) represent 43.2 percent total 

of all active duty DOD forces (n=1,411,425).

7. Miller, “Fix the Crisis.”

8. Ibid.

9. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3.

10. Ibid.

11. Morgan, Images of Organization, 216.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid. 

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Franke-Ruta, “‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ ”

17. Morgan, Images of Organization, 218.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid., 218–19.

20. Ibid., 219. For more on the negative aspects of a dependence on authority, see Morris, 

“By Force of Arms.”

21. Morgan, Images of Organization, 218.

22. Ibid.

23. Lisak, interview.

24. Lisak, “Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence,” 9.

25. Defense Task Force for Sexual Violence, Sexual Harassment and Violence, 8. The task 

force used the same generalization as an element of the US Naval Academy and US Military 

Academy as well. 

26. Ibid., ES–1. 

27. Rosa, interview.

28. Ibid. 
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT 

53

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. Sadler et al., “Women’s Risk,” 263.

32. Ibid., 325.

33. “History of Sexual Violence”; and Turchik and Wilson, “Sexual Assault,” 268.

34. Sadler et al., “Women’s Risk,” 266.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid., 266–67. Twelve percent (n=61) of all respondents experienced rape solely during 

their military service, and one-fourth (25 percent, n=126) experienced sexual violence only 

during their childhood. Fourteen percent of respondents experienced sexual violence both 

prior to and during military service.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid., 267.

40. Ibid., 268.

41. Ibid.

42. “History of Sexual Violence.” 

43. Ibid.

44. Sadler et al., “Women’s Risk,” 272.

45. Ibid., 277.

46. Ibid., 269.

47. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 749.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid., 750; Rimmerman, Gay Rights, Military Wrongs; and Stones, Key Sociological 

Thinkers, 237–38.

52. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 750.

53. Ibid., 750–51.

54. Lisak, “Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence”; Merrill, Thomsen, and Milner, “Childhood Abuse”; Turchik and Wilson, “Sexual Assault,” 267–71; and Lisak, interview.

55. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 749.

56. Merrill, Thomsen, and Milner, “Childhood Abuse,” 252. 

57. Lisak, interview. Dr. Lisak indicated that the report showed a correlation to other research he has done at rates higher than civil averages. Merrill, Thomsen, and Milner, “Childhood Abuse.” This article was a focused methodology on a Navy populace, which was compared only to other samples for method validation. Daley and Bosteck, “Current Sexual 

Assault.” This report raised the same issue regarding women who join the Air Force, stating 

that they were twice as likely (28 percent versus 13 percent) to experience rape at some point 

in their lives, including childhood.

58. Merrill, Thomsen, and Milner, “Childhood Abuse.”

59. Gidycz et al., “Sexual Assault Self-Defense.”

60. Ibid., 173.

61. “History of Sexual Violence.” This study specifically studied USAF women. 

62. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 751.

63. Ibid., 753.

64. Rimmerman, Gay Rights, Military Wrongs, 87.
THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT

54

65. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 736; and Rimmerman, Gay Rights, Military Wrongs, 87. 

Pussy, gay, fag, or—truncated to its core—girl are all insults that target masculine insecurities 

while also creating an environment that fosters an attitude degrading to the other in which 

women or feminine characteristics are viewed negatively. 

66. Stones, Key Sociological Thinkers, 236–37.

67. Gimlette, Panther Soup, 62.

68. Ibid.

69. Grossman, On Killing, 136–37; and Sherman, Untold Story, 78–79.

70. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 299–314.

71. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 751–52.

72. Ibid., 753.

73. Ibid., 751–56. Specifically, Alcoholics Anonymous, some religious orders, communist 

party cells, and the French resistance underground are a few examples of strongly cohesive 

groups that were indifferent to gender in their fundamental organization.

74. Ibid., 755.
55

Chapter 5

Recommendations

Continued research identifying the relative power of factors that promote and maintain a sexualized military environment is necessary 

in order to develop interventions and policies to decrease the level of 

risk and increase the protection for women.

—Anne Sadler, Brenda M. Booth,

Brian L. Cook, and Bradley N. Doebbeling

American Journal of Industrial Medicine

Organizational culture theory says a great deal about how the military can 

approach the topic of sexual assault. A brief summary sets the context for this 

chapter’s proposed strategy to combat the crime. First, the way individuals 

think and perceive things around them is the product of their culture, which 

is informed by their personal and assimilated beliefs. Thoughts and words 

underlie all of our actions; in the commission and prevention of sexual assault, the psychological profile of those most at risk (both offender and victim) must be accounted for. Second, not much research exists on the role of 

deindividuation, power and submission, and sexual tension in historically 

patriarchal organizations such as military service. The traditional view of 

military service is predominantly a masculine narrative and, subconsciously, 

so are the values held so dear by military and civilian culture. The masculine 

military complex is self-perpetuating and comes with the risk of attracting 

individuals who are (1) demographically at risk of sexually assaulting and, 

more controversially, (2) psychologically more at risk of crime and victimization. Third, and the focus of most of this chapter, is the role that military leaders can play in confronting sexual assault in the military. The military has 

both the legal jurisdiction and moral impetus to help right societal wrongs, as 

it did with racial integration and the assimilation of openly serving gays and 

lesbians. The solution is one that gravitates around education.

Two aspects of culture are at play: societal culture at large, with challenges 

that the military inherits (such as the demographic drawn to service), and 

military culture, which theory and psychological research suggest may inadvertently exacerbate sexual-related violence. Culture manifests itself in observable artifacts, though not entirely, and one must acknowledge and change 

the underlying beliefs to cure behavior. The final question, then, is how can 
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military leaders affect the underlying beliefs of their superiors, peers, and 

subordinates?

Culture is developed over time by the shared learning of a collection of 

people in order to normalize acceptable behavior. Adapting military culture 

to one that rejects violent sexual assault intrinsically and retains its important core of military identity is a major challenge. Some cultures are strongly 

based on underlying assumptions that justify their existence and transcend 

almost all areas of their operation. Doctors, for instance, have the strongly 

socialized and accepted belief that their primary duty is to “first, do no 

harm.” In the case of a professional military, the underlying purpose of existence is to fight and win wars on behalf of the public it protects and serves. 

However, we can change the military culture to remain potent and lethal 

without the side effect of hosting aggressive sexual deviancy. Expanded research that targets military culture, honest education programs, and demographic engagement with thoughtful and open dialogue is a step necessary in 

making long-term changes in beliefs. According to organizational theory, 

normalized behavior will follow. 

Deciding to Change

No meaningful change will occur until the DOD embraces the reality of 

the situation today. Evidence suggests that the military culture is prone to 

sexual assault psychologically and demographically, which manifests itself on 

the front pages of newspapers and in testimony on Capitol Hill. But what if 

the artifact of sexual assault cannot be changed in the military? This failure 

might suggest that military service comes with the “occupational risk” of sexual assault. This position is morally and politically disastrous to defend and 

one not likely to be the subject of testimony before Congress any time soon 

but would offer an even tougher point to ponder: Can we have the world’s 

most dominant military, capable of extraordinary violence in short order anywhere in the world, without attracting and further fostering aggressive personalities who are predisposed to sexual violence as well?

The way society decides to have its military fight its wars plays on how the 

human element will react to the demand. For instance, long, drawn-out wars 

with low body counts do not necessarily offer valuable investment on the dollar. Research suggests that post-traumatic stress disorder is strongly correlated to the realities of modern military service spatially and temporally.1

 One 

minute our Soldiers are convoying while being shot at and blown up, and the 

next they are chatting with their kids at home via Skype. The decompression 
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time from combat to the home front can be a matter of hours, and in the case 

of remotely operated weapon systems, like remotely piloted aircraft—minutes. Killing a hut full of purportedly enemy combatants before 10 a.m. and 

making it home in time to eat lunch with the kids and see your work on CNN 

are traits of modern war that affect the psyche of the war fighter. This aspect 

leads to a discussion of nature and nurture that forces us to answer the question of whether the nature of the war fighter is changing and how the DOD is 

nurturing such a change. Apparently, we want Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and 

Marines who operate with the dependency of a light switch. Realistically, society may ask too much of its service members. Unfortunately, extracurricular violence, including sexual violence, may be a manifestation of this demand. Where does the military begin?

Redefining the Basis of Military Service

The DOD must set out on an arduous journey to change its hypermasculine culture. Masculinity is defined as the opposite of femininity. That definition in military circles is that male values are at odds with feminine values 

and, particularly, with women.2

 The 1991 Tailhook convention brought the 

hostile sexual environment of the military to the forefront of public debate in 

a way wearing shirts declaring “Women Are Property” and “The He-Man 

Woman Haters Club” will tend to do.3 Fortunately, this behavior is no longer 

acceptable, but unfortunately, the core of the problem has yet to be addressed. 

The misogynistic symptom belies the greater problem—the organizational 

disdain for everything other than masculine. Viewing sexual assault as the 

manifestation of underlying cultural beliefs and doing something to change the 

behavior are the first major step toward positive, lasting cultural change.

The use of any language that portrays nonmasculine behavior as unacceptable to military service should be eradicated from the vernacular of military 

service members in the same manner religious or racial slurs were in the past. 

Emasculation is not congruent with feminization: the goal is to remove the 

focus on classical masculine values, and we cannot do so by counterbalancing 

with an intermilitary feminine awakening. The DOD should not challenge 

masculinity to foster yet another other to compete with; instead, it should 

operate a scheme of incentives and disincentives that target stereotypical 

masculine behavior. The task is a tall one that requires rethinking even the 

way society thinks of heroic acts in the masculine tone. Naturally, this change 

will encounter resistance because it threatens exactly what the institution 

holds dear. However, if we intend to bring about lasting change for the good 
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of the institution, such resistance is proof that the change is meaningful and 

deep rather than an attempt to rake over the surface and rearrange the artifactual ground truth.

A person’s primary identity is his or her gender, and the next is family. 

Gender selection—“are you a boy or a girl?”—is simple enough on the surface 

but remarkably less so if one considers the psychological tides that shape behavior as children grow into adults. In fact, the gender basis is as complex as 

family dynamics. By dropping the “macho man” façade, which involves only 

one acceptable behavior the institution values of men and women, one eases 

the tension that many young adults feel when they join the service and disincentivizes those who would seek to use the military as an excuse to engage in 

hypermasculine and hypersexual activities such as assault and rape. The military does not value individuality because the common understanding of cohesion has been that the masculine is the foundation of service. However, it is 

time to embrace the idea that one man or woman is as different as another, 

just as one family is different than another.

The argument is not for androgyny. Men are not born women and vice 

versa, and that fact will never change. We are born with a nature and are nurtured to behave in certain ways. The comparison should not exist when it 

comes to the mission a military is supposed to accomplish: win the nation’s 

wars. As long as the military advertises itself as a bastion of masculinity to 

those longing to prove themselves as manly (which includes some women), 

any achievements that military members make will continue to reinforce the 

macho culture.4

 Western tradition is based on the role of men fighting wars. 

Today the military is dealing with this anachronism, which still shapes our 

thinking. As difficult as it may be, it is time to move past the in and other argument inside our ranks. We must figure out concrete steps that can bring 

women and nontraditional views of masculinity into the in and reserve the 

other for something that matters: enemies that mean to do our country harm. 

After all, we are in this together, just as though we were a family.

Strengthening the already present familial aspects of military service is one 

idea for forging a more resilient culture. One can do so by reexamining fraternization rules and determining how this action can change the existing 

regulatory structure to address cultural realities of the target demographic 

and foster a family mentality. Madeline Morris suggested such an approach to 

change the base of the military culture toward the familial and away from the 

masculine.5 After all, she states that the military (and other Western organizations) already copy so much of the patriarchal family organization construct 

anyway, why should it not adopt the corresponding incestuous taboo as well?6

In a family, at least in any conceivable functioning family, there is an accepted 
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taboo against sexual relations among relatives—one that could translate to 

the proposed military model.

Fraternization is commonly understood as inappropriate relationships between officers and enlisted troops that ultimately affect good order and discipline. The unprofessional relationship policy isolates the young enlisted men 

and women from their officers, ensuring a wide chasm between the two. This 

definition could be expanded to fit a familial model of behavior, which might 

include banning any intimate personal relationships (or the appearance 

thereof) inside whatever the family unit would come to be in this new system. 

Serious downfalls, however, accompany this strategy. First, it would involve 

regulating and repressing sexuality, which is highly correlative with the patriarchal organizational structure underlying the current military culture. Second, since when has banning sexual relationships been effective at actually 

changing beliefs or behavior?

Changing the basis of the military culture toward a familial ideology is 

easier said than done, a trait not exclusive to altering military culture. However, the family already serves as an important role in military training and 

ideology—it’s just that the military is a family with nothing but fathers and 

sons who demand obedience and strive to be worthy of recognition, respectively. Expanding the family model to include an incestuous taboo is a logical 

extension of the familial analogy, but it is also a perilous path along which any 

journey of culture change must travel. Morris was seeking a new underlying 

basis of identity other than masculinity, but the family model is not strong 

enough to invite a new strategy. Still, what other basis of identity could replace classical masculinity?

Recognizing Military Sexual Assault 

as a Leadership Problem at All Ranks

The generational divide between senior leaders and the 18–24-year-olds 

that make up the majority of sexual assault victims and perpetrators is a serious issue that must be accounted for in coming up with any strategy to confront sexual assault. However, culture trumps strategy every time.

7

 Sexual assault is the behavioral manifestation of the military culture for a number of 

possible reasons but is certainly predisposed demographically. Although 

we’re all in this together, the egalitarian attitude toward shared problems does 

not encourage responsibility and ownership. In short, we are privatizing leadership “wins” and socializing failure as if it were systematic. It may be systematic, but change starts with the individual. It is observable in acts of moral 
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courage that lead our peers, subordinates, and even our superiors—from the 

top of the chain down.

The goal of effective leadership is to change the underlying beliefs of the 

military culture and in doing so, transform the artifactual manifestation of 

sexual assault as criminal behavior incompatible with military service. Leadership is not a task that is its own reward; rather, it should have some purpose 

which must be recharacterized as culture change—not behavior repression. To 

break down the necessary steps to liberate our leaders to lead, we must first 

examine who follows and what their role in leadership is.

A crucial task facing leaders is determining who their followers are. We 

must consider followership as important as leadership in changing military 

culture. The leadership answer to the generational sexual assault problem 

might go deeper and could cause the military to exchange its classical leader/

follower model for a leader/leader-in-training model.8 As a congruent part of 

military education commensurate with a service member’s grade, followership should be teaching members whom to follow and how to lead. We must 

encourage young Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines about what behavior 

to model and teach them the difference between good leaders and, unfortunately, the bad leaders they may have to follow. This effort would condition 

future leaders and teach those at risk (with little power, education, and impressionable vulnerability) the skills to avoid placing themselves in compromising situations. This approach has the added benefit of helping inspire 

young service members to surround themselves with positive role models 

who will further groom future leaders with the same attributes. The difficult 

but necessary side of this approach will be embracing the fact that bad leaders 

exist or, in General Rosa’s words, the “bottom 15%’ers” in our system.9

 A 

leader walks a fine line by teaching a group of his or her 100 service members 

that, statistically speaking, roughly 15 of them are poor military leaders and 

should not be followed. Nevertheless, such honesty, even if not always anecdotally true, may be the difference in winning the attention of the 18–24-yearold demographic that the DOD is fighting to influence.

Formalizing education requirements on followership early in a career, 

which would transition to leadership education as the member advances, 

would inspire young service members to lead among their peers. This area, 

the peer-influence arena, is a gold mine for culture interests and the target of 

all efforts to infiltrate it. In effect, focusing on education earlier in young service members’ careers (not training, education!) would be the way to help redefine “macho” behavior. We cannot change the value of behavior by enforcing some standard. It can happen organically only within the ranks of the 

18–24-year-old subculture and only by their own leadership. It is time to arm 
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them with the vision of acceptable leadership and followership behavior so 

they can learn the kind of behavior to which they should aspire and what kind 

of behavior is suspect. The process starts with honesty and a discussion of 

what we, the DOD, value in leadership and followership—and by acknowledging the presence of individuals in the ranks who would misuse their power 

to commit sexual assault.

Young followers must also lead. Historically, young people—either enlisted 

or in the officer corps—are matriculated into service with little to add for 

leading people, at least culturally. Several unwritten rules accompany the classical hierarchical military organization chart—rules that seek to limit young 

members’ place in shaping norms and policies. This approach is incompatible 

with the problem of sexual assault. In fact, only the young people, who are the 

most likely to experience sexual assault as the perpetrator and as the victim, 

can lead us out of this mess. The rest of us should be doing everything in our 

power to facilitate their ability to police their own ranks.

Of course, peer leadership in the 18–24-year-old demographic can do only 

so much in isolation from other grand cultural considerations in the military, 

but it is the most important area to focus on. The campaign is not so different 

from operational planning in the military: a task (culture change) must be 

accomplished; we have certain means to accomplish it (effective peer leaders); 

and we have ways of using the means to achieve the object of the operation. 

The ways start with education to modify behavior and normalize patterns of 

leadership and followership among the 43 percent of military members between the ages of 18 and 24. The operational way of using the target demographic is to set conditions for effective peer leaders to be recognized above 

their peers. The strategic vision of this approach must be to empower commanders with the authority to prosecute individuals who fall outside the new, 

rigorously enforced model of behavior and reward those who step up to the 

challenge (i.e., giving stripes to those who show they possess the qualities 

valued by the DOD). Senior leaders cannot lead the youngest generation of 

military service members out of a sexual assault crisis, so those members who 

lead above their grade should be recognized as accomplishing what field 

grade and general officers cannot.

Summary

So far, the author has proposed that organizational theory is a useful tool 

to apply to the case of sexual assault in the US military. The culture of the 

military is informed by American societal preconceptions of what it means to 
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have a military and, in fact, what it means to be brave and aggressive or weak 

and empathetic. This is to say that the military is the way it is because it is an 

artifactual reflection of underlying American cultural beliefs and values. Psychoanalytical research suggests but does not prove, in the larger societal context, the existence of a statistical link between military service and a male 

psychological predisposition to offend and a female predisposition to succumb to victimization. The military must address sexually aggressive behavior by punishing offenders, protecting victims from postassault victimization, 

and studying the psychological impact of a changing generation entering 

military service. Armed with better knowledge of this generation’s risk factors, leaders can then better design education, promotion, and command apparatuses that encourage a leader/leader-in-training model of behavior that 

allows those most at risk to be empowered to shape their surroundings. Only 

then will the military be able to root out those who do not belong in positions 

of trust in the US military.

Notes

1. Lisak, interview.

2. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 716–17.

3. Ibid., 717.

4. Lisak, interview.

5. Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 755.

6. Ibid.

7. Merchant, “Culture Trumps Strategy.”

8. Thanks to Col Jeff Smith (SAASS commandant) for this input.

9. Rosa, interview.
63

Chapter 6

Summary and Conclusions

Studying military sexual assault as the product of deep-seated underlying 

beliefs instead of people behaving badly has important implications for how 

the US military can effectively combat sexual violence. The sexual assault 

problem is complex, but such a challenge should not intimidate leaders and 

followers charged with eradicating it. “Culture change” should not be tossed 

around when one considers the source of such a disruptive and hurtful crime 

as sexual assault. The road to change is paved with honest appraisals and 

pragmatism. We should not assume that the process will be easy in an organization as large and bureaucratic as the DOD. If we are comfortable making 

the change, then we are doing it wrong. This paper has raised a number of 

controversial issues that must be frankly discussed to win the trust of the 

public and our brothers and sisters in arms.

The evidence presented in this paper suggests two main reasons for the 

sexual assault epidemic in the US military today. The first is demographics. 

Sexual assault is an almost exclusively male problem from an offender’s perspective, and the military has many men. In this regard, the problem is a statistical propensity to accept more people who may commit sexual assault simply because the military recruits more men. This analysis does not discover 

underlying issues. The important question is, why do more men than women 

join the military?

The answer leads to the second area of concern—the psychological study of 

the demographic propensity to serve. The psychological approach seeks to 

determine whether a higher percentage of the number of men who join the 

military are more likely to commit sexual assault due to a number of underlying issues such as previous sexual and physical abuse or gender identity disequilibrium. Considerable psychoanalytic research that suggests military 

members may be at higher risk of sexual assault has been available as far back 

as World War II.1

Recently a magazine article praised the military for taking “in-your-face” 

steps to acknowledge and confront a phenomenon of repeating sexual offenders in the ranks—as if this discovery were something new.2

 Much of the literature on the propensity of serial predators is as old as the story of sexual 

predation and not limited to any sort of contemporary renaissance in academia.3

 The troubling problem is that it is taking so long for the military to 

assimilate this information in order to confront the possibility that it has a 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

64

higher propensity for serial sexual predation. If we want to stop treating patients, we have to seek out the source of the disease. When it comes to sexual 

violence, this means taking a long look in the mirror and having difficult and 

honest conversations about dark subjects like childhood sexual violence, the 

role of macho behavior by gender-insecure men, or even the historical understanding of what it means to be in the military.

This essay offers a road map to start such a journey. Edgar Schein’s methods 

for assessing and modifying culture offer great promise for the military leader 

who must confront an issue like sexual assault. The topic fills volumes of 

books, and the selection of subjects on culture change offered in this paper 

represents only a few that must be considered. However, consider we must. 

The key goal of this paper was not to change military culture per se but to 

change the way people may think of how behavior, including sexual assault, is 

underwritten by underlying beliefs and values—some conscious, others less 

so. Culture underwrites behavior and should be studied for this reason.

The way the military views sexual assault and the vernacular used to describe the crime, its perpetrators, and its victims matter greatly. By viewing 

the former as an artifact, we are able to separate the behavior from the underlying belief; that is, we can sever the symptom from the cause. The symptom 

in this case is violence that has a sexual manifestation and is perpetrated 

within and by a certain demographic against another. However, sexual assault 

and demographic disparities compared to those found in society at large are 

symptoms of a greater societal culture—one born of a patriarchal society and 

further advanced by a military subculture (with its own subcultures and microcultures). Sexual violence is not the culture itself, and talking of the problem as if the military has a “culture of rape” is no more helpful than ignoring 

it altogether.4

 The military does not have a rape culture; rather, it has a hypermasculine culture like few others in the United States, and that culture may 

propagate sexual assault at higher rates than occur in society at large. Sexual 

assault must be considered a possible undesirable outcome of such a culture.

Second, the role of the individual in defining culture is multisided. Contemporary literature tends to focus on the role of the leader who manages 

culture change, but the latter requires others to internalize and act on the 

new direction laid out by the leader. In essence, followership is just as important as leadership because leaders are so empowered only by those that follow them. Today’s followers are tomorrow’s leaders, and for this reason, it 

may be useful to shape a promotion system (especially in the 18–24-year-old 

demographic) to one that rewards peer leadership instead of classically described followership.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

65

In any case, the DOD must act in positive ways to encourage leading 

among peers and reward such behavior. Restructuring and completely rethinking the positive and negative effects of changing fraternization rules to 

open the pool of available leadership and followership opportunities represent only one such idea. The strategy should be to empower the 18–24-yearold demographic most at risk of sexual violence in the military to lead each 

other. To do so is neither hyperbole nor rhetoric but an education strategy 

that empowers those at risk to recognize situations in which they are in danger and act to prevent the crime at the grassroots level. The strategy should 

not—and cannot—be to impose values across generational lines. Egalitarianism will not work to solve this problem because although we are all in this 

together, the problem is remarkably disposed to affect our youngest service 

members. Leaders should be held accountable for setting the conditions for 

their subordinates to lead each other and change their culture. Perpetrators 

should be prosecuted fully, and victims should be protected before, not just 

after the crime.

We must first question and embrace what lurks beneath the behavior to 

eliminate the threat of sexual assault. Organizational culture theory is one 

such powerful means of evaluating the sources of sexual assault. We should 

abandon the preconceived biases toward sexual assault and approach the 

problem with relevant, formidable strategic understanding informed by psychological study and demographic consideration—just as the Panama Canal 

project transformed America. However, more information needs to be gathered, analyzed, and published. The main finding of this paper is that if the 

military wants to institutionalize a resistance to sexual violence, then it must 

first study the phenomenon pragmatically, including delving into the psychological makeup of the men and women who choose to join.

The DOD should spend more energy collecting information to reveal the 

factors that lead to higher risk and so inform a strategy to minimize the threat 

of sexual violence in the military. The seeming lack of attention given to the 

underlying basis of what military culture is or is not only points to the insignificant role that organizational culture theory plays in the discussion right 

now. For that situation, we have only ourselves to blame. Whether or not you 

agree with the argued role of military or societal culture in sexual assault, 

there is no question that it is not studied enough in the military—or by the 

military. By including the disconfirming and uncomfortable concepts of a 

cultural predisposition to sexual violence in the military as part of the discussion, we can only make ourselves, the military, and our nation more resistant 

to the crime.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

66

Notes

1. Morris, “By Force of Arms.” In fact, World War II records of violent sexual crime in the 

military—one of the richest histories of the propensity for this type of violence available—are 

still used in modern studies of the phenomenon. 

2. Bateman, “Tackling Military Rape.”

3. Lisak, “Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence,” 3–8; and Morris, “By Force of Arms,” 654. 

For more information, see either Dr. Lisak’s extensive bibliography at “Lisak,” accessed 4 April 

2016, https://1in6.org/?s=Lisak, or his works cited in “Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence.”

4. Coughlin, “Change the Culture.”
67

Abbreviations

DADT Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

JAG Judge Advocate General

SAASS School of Advanced Air and Space Studies 

SAPR Sexual Assault Prevention and Response

SVC Special Victims Counsel 

UCMJ Uniform Code of Military Justice

USAFA US Air Force Academy

69

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ISBN: 978-1-58566-262-3

ISSN: 1941-3785

AFRI

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