Months after the Womenâs March in Washington and shortly before the dawn of the #MeToo era last year, Rep. Martha McSally dismissed new sexual misconduct training for the military because male soldiers and sailors would find it to be âa waste of timeâ and would grow to resent their female colleagues.
McSally, an Air Force veteran and the GOP nominee to replace Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., is running during a wave of women candidates driven, in part, by the backlash against men in power who have been accused of sexual impropriety.
Several of McSallyâs congressional colleagues accused of sexual misconduct have been driven from Congress since Trumpâs election, and Trumpâs second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is in jeopardy after a woman alleged that when he was a teenager, he and a friend attempted to rape her at a party.
But McSally has been reluctant to forcefully demand the military change the status quo to protect soldiers and sailors — both men and women — from sexual misconduct.
In 2012, nearly 2,000 Arizona service members, split equally between men and women, reported being survivors of military sexual assault. Cases of sexual misconduct in the armed services reached an all-time high nationally in 2016, when over 6,000 cases were reported.
McSally blamed âa culture of gender biasâ and claimed that âdouble standardsâ favorable to women created an environment of male resentment that was the âroot causeâ of sexual misconduct.
In a May 2017 hearing of the House Armed Services Committeeâs Military Personnel Subcommittee on sexual misconduct at military academies, McSally said soldiers didnât want to âtalk moreâ about how to deal with women.
âSometimes we’re doing knee-jerk additional training,â she said, âbut then, what you do is you have the guys rolling their eyes saying, âWhat a waste of our time. We should be learning how to fight and kill the enemy, and now weâre having to talk more about how to deal with women,â and then, it pisses them off more and then that adds to more resentment.â
It wasnât the first time McSally spoke out against âknee-jerkâ reactions and âdouble standardsâ in the military.
In a March 2017 hearing of the subcommittee, McSally cautioned against implementing new training policies to address sexual violence while calling for an end to so-called double standards that favor women such as not having to cut their hair.
âI still think there is things that we all need to be addressing, that we are not inculcating any sort of subtle resentment, you know, towards the other gender,â McSally said at the hearing, âAnd from my view, that includes things like integration of basic training and women should be cutting their hair and not having any obvious double-standards of a different experience.â
Two years earlier, McSally voted against a bill that would have removed complaints of sexual assault from the chain of command, which she said would make commanders less responsible for the behavior of their subordinates.
Instead, she called for addressing underlying âculturalâ issues in the military that allow harassment and sex crimes to perpetuate.
âWeâve got some Neanderthal people in the chain of command who now are going to feel like itâs not their problem anymore, but it is their problem,â McSally told USA Today. âItâs not just about prosecuting the crime when it happens. They need to be the ones who create a culture to make sure thereâs no toleranceâ for behavior she calls a âvery significant problem.â