ABSTRACT
The Department of Defense (DoD) estimates that one in three women in the US military have been sexually assaulted by their fellow servicemen, and the numbers of sexual assaults and rapes are rising. American reactions have been apathetic toward what has been described as epidemic levels of rape. The rape of US soldiers by US soldiers has been interpreted as a response to the fear of admission of women into the world of soldiering and especially onto the fields of combat. The expression "moral panic" is sometimes used to conceptualize a reaction that is disproportionate to the social problem itself. Cultural complex theory is one way to attempt to make sense of the motivation behind these behaviors. The military, as a last bastion of uninhibited hypermasculine expression, demonstrates how the credo of American exceptionalism still permeates the culture. Rather than protecting the people, the military and its Congressional overseers are protecting their own unquestioned presumptions.
