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?
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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.
Throw in the fact that the forces stopped being a meritocracy a long, long, time ago and that most members are intensely dissatisfied with an increasingly out of touch senior leadership that's interested more in it's own advancement than the welfare of the troops and its no wonder the rank and file are cheering when senior officers get taken to town.
If we're going back 20 or 30 years to look for faults, there's a few senior leadership types I'd like to see brought to justice for causing deaths and injuries that were swept under the rug, but that's not gonna happen because "sex" is not in title of the offense.
Yup. I remember the days when it was a big deal to find out which coroiprals got selected for leadership training that year. It was highly competitive. Now they just hand it out like candy. I've also taught on leadership courses that had explicit "no-fail" policies. We were told that if a candidate failed a hard-assessed task, it was our fault as as instructors for "not mentoring them adequately". Why have tests at all if people can't fail them? They basically just removed all quality control from the leadership selection & training system. That was the moment I realized it was a sinking ship.