Military rape: Saxby Chambliss, hormones and problems at the top 
 
 The Senate armed services committee is holding hearings on military sexual assault. But the BBC's Katty Kay wonders if the attitudes of those tasked with addressing the problem are actually making it worse. 
 
 Gee whiz, there's a hook-up culture in the US military, where hormones are running rampant and before you know it, these things happen. Sew together the comments of a couple of elderly white men in positions of power (the US Senate and the Pentagon) and that's the grossly misleading picture that emerges of sexual assault in the American armed forces. 
 
 US Senator Saxby Chambliss, the 69-year-old Republican from the US state of Georgia, is the latest person to utter absurdities about what is being correctly described as a "cancer in the US military". 
 
 Saxby Chambliss plans to retire in 2014 
 
 Here is what he said at the Senate armed services hearing today: 
 
 "The young folks who are coming into each of your services are anywhere from 17 to 22 or 23. Gee whiz, the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur." 
 
 I'm not sure what's more offensive, the boys-will-be-boys "gee whiz", or describing groping, rape and sexual assault as "these types of things", or the idea that somehow hormones make this inevitable. 
 
 Now I confess I don't have a hotline to the inner workings of Senator Chambliss' brain, and maybe he didn't mean to suggest that, but it certainly comes across that way. 
 
 We will wait to see if the senator apologises, which is what General Mark Welsh was forced to do after he suggested the "hook-up culture" of young Americans was to blame for the epidemic of assaults. 
 
 Here's what he said a few weeks ago: "So they come in from a society where this occurs. Some of it is the hook-up mentality of junior high, even, and high-school students now, which my children can tell you about from watching their friends and being frustrated by it. The same demographic group moves into the military. We have got to change the culture once they arrive. " 
 
 As others have pointed out, this is not just absurd. It is outrageous. 
 
 A hook-up is consensual; assault is not. It is a crime. 
 
 Which all illustrates how depressingly hard it will be to change the problem of rape and sexual assault in the military. If these kinds of comments reflect the attitudes of even some people at the top, no wonder young women feel they won't be listened to if they report instances of abuse. Because, gee whiz, these types of things are part of hormone-riddled life. ||||| DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz slammed Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) for claiming that hormones are to blame for sexual assault in the military, calling his remarks “grossly, dramatically, horrifically insensitive.” 
 
 “For a United States senator or anyone to write off sexual assault and the personal violation of a woman or man to raging the hormones of youth shows just how dramatically out of touch the Republican Party is,” Wasserman Schultz told MSNBC’s Martin Bashir on Tuesday. 
 
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 Schultz was responding to Chambliss’s testimony earlier in the day at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing to discuss how to address the growing problem of sexual assault in the military. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: New battle over military sexual assault) 
 
 “The young folks that are coming into each of your services are anywhere from 17 to 22 or 3,” Chambliss said at the hearing. “Gee whiz, the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur.” 
 
 “He should apologize,” Wasserman Schultz said. “And I think he should think about whether if, God forbid, a sexual assault happened to a daughter of his, would he think it was okay for a Senator to just chalk the assault up to raging hormones?” 
 
 Wasserman Schultz not only reamed Chambliss, but also placed blame on the Republican Party. “It’s just unconscionable that from the highest reaches of power in the Republican Party in the United States, you have an individual who is so dismissive of sexual assault against anyone, particularly in the military, where we’re supposed to have rigid adherence to rules and to respect and to duty and to honor,” she said. “And sexual assault is obviously none of those things.”
– Sen. Saxby Chambliss is being slammed today for suggesting hormones might be the cause of sexual assault in the military, reports CNN. "The young folks that are coming into each of your services are anywhere from 17 to 22-23. Gee whiz—the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur," the Georgia Republican told the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing yesterday. That's the kind of response you're going to get when "elderly white men" are in charge of fixing this problem, writes Katty Kay at the BBC. And it demonstrates why the military hierarchy, full of commanding officers who may well agree with Chambliss, shouldn't be the ones prosecuting sexual assault, adds Amanda Marcotte at Slate. "For a United States senator or anyone to write off sexual assault and the personal violation of a woman or man to raging the hormones of youth shows just how dramatically out of touch the Republican Party is," DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told MSNBC, as per Politico. The criticism is coming from Republicans, too. "Perpetuating this line of thinking does nothing to help change the culture of our military," says Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, co-chairman of the military sexual assault prevention caucus. "We must be focused on combating this issue directly." Finally, the New Yorker responds with a satirical piece, in which Chambliss blames his remarks on "declining levels of brain function created by nature."