Over 80 Percent of LGBTQ+ Service Members Report Sexual Harassment in Military
Nine years after the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a new report finds that LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. military are at high risk of sexual assault and harassment.
A study published in The Journal of Traumatic Stress finds that more than four-fifths of LGBTQ+ respondents active in the military said they have been sexually harassed during their service. Among lesbian, gay, and bisexual service members, 80.7 percent report at least one instance of harassment, while a slightly higher share of transgender service members, 83.9 percent, said the same. A quarter of respondents claim they have been sexually assaulted: 25.7 percent of LGB and 30.4 percent of trans service members.
These numbers were much higher than the general population. Of heterosexual, cisgender service members who responded to the researchers’ online survey, 55.8 percent had been sexually harassed and 14.1 percent had been assaulted. When compared against each other, that means trans members of the military were over twice as likely to report they’d been sexually assaulted.
In total, 503 responses were included in the report. It was among the first to be directly funded by the Department of Defense on LGBTQ+ victimization in the armed forces.
Lead author Ashley Schuyler said in a press release accompanying the report that the team’s “findings suggest that [LGBTQ+] service members do experience an elevated risk of sexual and stalking victimization, even in this post-‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ era.”
Lesbian, gay, and bisexual service members were banned from serving openly in the military until 2011, when the policy was overturned by the Obama White House. Five years later, the former administration moved to allow trans people to serve in accordance with their gender identity, but months after taking office, President Trump announced he planned to reverse that decision. Although the move was initially blocked in a series of federal court rulings, the Supreme Court eventually allowed the trans military ban to go into effect.
While the rate of sexual harassment and assault was significantly higher for gay and bisexual men than heterosexual men, Schyuler noted the likelihood was roughly equal for queer women. Around 70 percent of lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual women enlisted in the military, for instance, all reported experiencing harassment.
In a statement to the LGBTQ+ news website Gay City News, Schyler pointed to the “value system that values masculine ideals” as one reason for the discrepancy between the self-reported rates among queer women and men. “That could prompt someone to act out against women and gay and bi men,” she claimed. “There’s high risk for women, but we also see a difference for gay and bi men.”
But the fact is that, overall, female service members experience very high rates of harassment and assault. A 2019 report from the Defense Department found a three percent increase in assaults and a 10 percent increase in harassment over the year prior. The majority of victims were women, often in the beginning of their careers.
According to the Pentagon study, sexual harassment and assault were often linked. Women who had experienced harassment in the military were three times more likely to be assaulted.