Every week there is some news story about General so-and-so stepping aside due to investigations. The Canadian Forces Reddit seems to be cheering this shit on, and saying that all of the senior people in the military need to be replaced. Anybody on here with time in have some perspective on what the fuck is going on?
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (58)
sorted by:
Nothing that doesn't happen anywhere else.
I've heard of rapes and sexual sexual harassment happening in the CAF (no organization is completely free of this) but as far as I can tell, most of these high profile cases are just instances of a senior officer having relationships with subordinates.
What people need to understand is that in the military, rank is social status. And everywhere in the world, women tend to go after men of the highest stations they can attain. Women are sexually attracted to high-status men. What that means in the military is the higher your rank, the more women in the ranks throw themselves at you. Just like anywhere else in the world.
What's changing is that now with the whole #metoo movement, men of high rank sleeping with lower ranking women is being viewed as a Harvey Weinstein scenario where before it wasn't.
I recall a few years back a General got in shit for being caught sleeping with one of his subordinates I think in Afghanistan. I remember the public sentiment at the time was "What's wrong with finding love in such a horrible place? Leave them alone!" I even got downvoted heavily in the r/Canada thread on the story for trying to explain the toxic effect of rank-disparate fraternization on the chain of command. I'm going to try and find that thread but I won't hold my breath.
That was before #metoo. Now identical scenarios are viewed as #metoo incidents. That's what's changed. There isn't some spike in sexual assault happening in the CAF. People are suddenly now being retroactively raked over the coals for sleeping with women they outranked at the time.
Where do you think all this is going?
Seems lile the CAF is headed towards a Commisariate style structure with "professionalism and conduct officers" and more secretive ways to rat out people for something they did decades ago. Meanwhile the canadianforces reddit is basically advocating mutiny/desertion with thinly veiled memes.
It's a pendulum. It'll swing back. Just ask anyone who was around for the last Liberal party "racism and sexism" witch-hunts in the 90's.
It will continue to get worse as long as the Liberals are in power though. Their last reign was particularly hard on the military. They used the witch hunts to turn the public against the military thereby manufacturing public consent for gutting the military's budget. They called it the "decade of darkness".
Also keep in mind, the Liberals hate the military. This goes back at least as far Trudeau senior. They see the military as a concentration of patriotic conservative white males with guns. They're the Liberal's natural enemy.