Gyroscopic Investing

MediumTex wrote: I'll bet things haven't changed that much, it's just being reported more now than in the past, which is probably true of rapes of all types.

Ad Orientem wrote: The dirty little secret, men have always been by far the principle victims of sexual assault in the military. I spent ten years in the Navy. No one ever talked about it. But we all knew it happened. A lot of times it wasn't gays. And my guess is a lot of it wasn't exactly assault. When you are deployed for six months people get desperate. And of course men just don't admit to that kind of stuff.

Ad Orientem wrote: The dirty little secret, men have always been by far the principle victims of sexual assault in the military. I spent ten years in the Navy. No one ever talked about it. But we all knew it happened. A lot of times it wasn't gays.

MediumTex wrote: I remember reading an article that cited a study of men who were deployed in any kind of all-male group effort such as a military campaign or a large construction or mining operation in a remote area where there are no women.  The study observed that men who are not otherwise homosexual when given the choice between male and female partners will often begin to engage in homosexual behavior when they are surrounded exclusively by other men.  Once they are out of the all-male situation they typically go back to a strongly heterosexual orientation (assuming that was their orientation to start with).

murphy_p_t wrote:

MediumTex wrote: I remember reading an article that cited a study of men who were deployed in any kind of all-male group effort such as a military campaign or a large construction or mining operation in a remote area where there are no women.  The study observed that men who are not otherwise homosexual when given the choice between male and female partners will often begin to engage in homosexual behavior when they are surrounded exclusively by other men.  Once they are out of the all-male situation they typically go back to a strongly heterosexual orientation (assuming that was their orientation to start with).

This seems to back up the assertion, that sexual orientation is a choice, rather than something innate, in many people.

MediumTex wrote:

Ad Orientem wrote: The dirty little secret, men have always been by far the principle victims of sexual assault in the military. I spent ten years in the Navy. No one ever talked about it. But we all knew it happened. A lot of times it wasn't gays. And my guess is a lot of it wasn't exactly assault. When you are deployed for six months people get desperate. And of course men just don't admit to that kind of stuff.

I remember reading an article that cited a study of men who were deployed in any kind of all-male group effort such as a military campaign or a large construction or mining operation in a remote area where there are no women.  The study observed that men who are not otherwise homosexual when given the choice between male and female partners will often begin to engage in homosexual behavior when they are surrounded exclusively by other men.  Once they are out of the all-male situation they typically go back to a strongly heterosexual orientation (assuming that was their orientation to start with).

I remember thinking that the study's findings were really not that surprising, even though they were a little unsettling.

If the study's findings apply to even a small percentage of men, in a force the size of the U.S. military it would make sense that some of these encounters might be nonconsensual.

Like I said in a post above, I think that stuff like this has always gone on, it is just being reported more now.  It's probably also true that some of the attacks are more violent than they might have been in the past, for the same reason that all levels of sociopathic behavior seem to be getting uglier at their extremes, whether you are  school shooter, a rapist, a white collar criminal, or a terrorist.