Good Soldiers Don’t Rape
Sexual violence is a significant problem within many Western militaries. Despite international attention to the issue and global #MeToo and #TimesUp movements highlighting the impact of sexual violence, rates of sexual violence are going up in many militaries. This book uses feminist theories of 'rape culture' and institutional gaslighting to identify the key stories, myths, and misconceptions about military sexual violence that have obstructed addressing and preventing it.
It is a landmark study that considers nearly thirty years of media coverage of military sexual violence in three case countries – the US, Canada and Australia. The findings have implications not only for those seeking to address, reduce, and prevent sexual violence in militaries, but also for those hoping to understanding rape culture and how patriarchy operates more broadly. It will appeal to students, scholars and general readers interested in gender, feminism and the military.
“The title of this book – Good Soldiers Don’t Rape – is a provocation, and one that is designed to dislocate and unsettle commonly-held beliefs about military sexual violence. There are multiple widely accepted, and almost taken for granted, stories about this kind of violence, including that its perpetrators are ‘bad apples’ and that militaries have zero tolerance for it. The problem is that this isn’t the case.”
— Megan Mackenzie, Author
Praise for “Good Soldiers Don’t Rape”
“Megan MacKenzie is writing about us! The title might seem to put three militaries – the Canadian, Australian and US – on center stage. But her careful study of how we tell our own stories of military men's rapes of military women and military men shines a disturbingly bright light on our own complicity: we are the ones denying military realities. MacKenzie reveals how, repeatedly, we – civilians – choose the comfortable narratives that allow us to deny male soldiers' sexually abusive actions. After reading "Good Soldiers Don't Rape," our comforting militarized denial should be harder for us to hold on to. That's the good news.”
— Cynthia Enloe, author of Twelve Feminist Lessons of War