Hope, A & Eriksen, M. (2009). From military sexual trauma to ‘organization-trauma’: Practicing ‘poetics of testimony’. Culture & Organization. (15)1

From Military Sexual Trauma to ‘Organization-Trauma’: Practicing ‘Poetics of Testimony’ Angela Hope1 University of the Incarnate Word hope@uiwtx.edu Matthew Eriksen2 Providence College meriksen@providence.edu Abstract: In this descriptive essay, the authors attempt to demonstrate the inadequacy of positivist and modern theoretical approaches to understand and respond to sexual trauma and other forms of traumatic organization violations, which occur before and in the aftermath of sexual trauma, in the armed forces. Modern theories which advance colonizing rationalities, positivist epistemes, and male-identified narratives are contested in their ‘thrones of privilege’ to no longer remain the dominant and “only” legitimate judgers of what is deemed “true” knowledge and reality, specifically in the context of sexual trauma and violations in organizations, who is violated, what constitutes a traumatic violation, and its effect on the victim. Building upon the work of critical management scholars, knowledge/language around the topic of traumatic violations committed by the organization itself as the unit of analysis and how this relates to military sexual trauma in total institutions, specifically the armed forces, is constructed using the concept of ‘organization-trauma.’ This concept is crafted using the discursive practice coined by Rebecca Chopp, a contemporary constructive theologian, as the ‘poetics of testimony’ which is employed by the authors in a particular application. The interdisciplinary practice of poetics of testimony is proposed as an alternative discourse for both scholars and practitioners (psychologists, managers, chaplains) to employ when inquiring into the nature and processes of the sexual trauma experience in totalized institutions, particularly, but not exclusively, the armed forces. This discursive praxis provides space for survivors to narrate their own traumatic experiences including the processes which lead to traumatic experience, the nature of the trauma, and the post trauma experience. This type of engagement is important for not only understanding trauma in organizations, but for preventing and meaningfully responding to its occurrence. 1 Angela Hope is a captain in a US Army Reserve Civil Affairs unit, and has been in the service for over eight years. All of the material in this article comes from unclassified sources and the views expressed in this article reflect Angela’s personal scholarship. 2 Matthew Eriksen was a Professor of Management at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in the 2001-2002 and 20032006 academic years. During that time, he taught five directed studies on gender and leadership, wrote a number of articles, and did a number of presentations with female cadets concerning the experience of female cadets and officers in Coast Guard as well as about his and the female cadets’ attempts to change the gendered culture of the Coast Guard. Key words: organization-trauma, military sexual trauma, poetics of testimony, workplace violence Preface This article contemplates how one, in an effort to voice the realities and truths of sexual violence and trauma in the military, can challenge the positivistic and dominant epistemes of bureaucratic institutions within and outside military structures in order to be meaningfully heard, to name reality, as well as have that reality be perceived as legitimate. It is our contention that the poetics of testimony, a discursive methodological practice coined by Rebecca Chopp, a contemporary constructive theologian, is one meaningful and efficacious way to undertake this task. Throughout this article, we implicitly posit that trauma studies and theological studies are interdisciplinary fields which can inform the study of organizations. As reflexive scholars and authors, we understand the impossibility of “true objectivity” and at the same time recognize that our experiences cannot be separated from our scholarly perspectives and creations (Cunliffe, 2003; Eriksen, Chaves, Hope, & Dugal, 2007). Instead of this being a “flaw,” this creates new aboundary possibilities for meanings and understandings to unfold—in this case inquiring into the nature of military sexual trauma and other forms of traumatic organization violations3 in totalalized institutions like the armed forces. Both authors have had many experiences within the U.S. armed forces involving experiencing or witnessing accounts of military sexual trauma, traumatic violations, and other sexist violations. Angela suffered from multiple military-related traumas: military sexual trauma and organizationtrauma, a central term crafted in this article using the poetics of testimony which will be expounded later. The crafting of this essay was part of an important reflexive, phenomenological journey. It was a journey about developing voice through witness (support) and resistance to normativity. In retrospect, we realize that this essay was more than simply voicing a new idea or practice—it was about developing agency and bearing witness. Over the creating and recreating of this work, Matthew’s role shifted from that of an epistemic agent to that of an agentic witness, a concept we find useful in discourses dealing with trauma and the organization. Agentic witnessing is about encouraging the facilitation of voice-claiming and experience-naming, without imposing one’s own personal analysis. It is a kind of sacred listening and being fully present with the experience of the Other. It calls for giving witness to the space in between two voices which in turn inspires a creative energy which reinvigorates the will, both through language and the body. Angela’s voice, with her experience of military sexual trauma and organization-trauma, became increasingly stronger in this relational shifting. This is evidenced in the content and style of this article. We hope to make our readers aware of this dynamic operating through the text and how it informs our critical analysis of sexual trauma and organization-trauma suffered by women and men in the armed forces. Introduction Sexual harassment, rape, sexual violence, and military sexual trauma are not new to the armed forces. Military sexual trauma is the clinical term used by organizations like the US Department of Veteran’s Affairs and the United States military to define the aggressive and violent acts of repeated sexual harassment and forms of sexual assault to include rape committed against a soldier by other 3 The term organization violations coined by Jeff Hearn & Wendy Parkin will be articulated fully later in the paper. 2 soldier(s).It is commonly associated with the development of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.4 A study conducted by the VA found that in the National Guard and Reserves 60% of women are victims of military sexual trauma. A large portion of this percentage is sexual harassment. 27% are victims of sexual assault and 11% of rape (House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs—Democratic Office News Release, September 29, 2005) (Bennett, 2005). 1,171 sexual assaults on women in the armed services were reported in 2004 (Glamour, 2006). In March 2008, Congresswoman Jane Harman of California, chair of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence wrote in the LA Times: In 2006, 2,947 sexual assaults were reported…According to DOD statistics, only 181 out of 2,212 subjects investigated for sexual assault in 2007… were referred to courts-martial [or 8% of rapes reported]… Another 218 were handled via nonpunitive administrative action or discharge, and 201 subjects were disciplined through "nonjudicial punishment," which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist. In nearly half of the cases investigated, the chain of command took no action; more than a third of the time, that was because of "insufficient evidence."(Harman, 2008) Positivist academic literature, in its quantitative approach, on sexual violence in the armed forces, including the quotes above, does not begin to reveal the lived experiences, nature, and processes of the military trauma experience when a sexual violation(s) has occurred, specifically in an institution where the mobility and power of the trauma survivor is extremely limited. Through the work of theologian Rebecca Chopp and critical management scholars, we embark on a discursive practice to disrupt the current sanctioned methods of positivist episteme and colonizing forms of modern theory and rationality as the only efficacious lenses for describing the realities of the military trauma experience as it relates to sexual trauma and for aiding in the prevention of sexual violence in the armed forces and other male-dominated total institutions.5 This prompts the creation of a space for an alternative representational understanding of military sexual trauma, which allows one to go beyond this understanding of military sexual trauma as starting and ending with a statistic, into a space where the complexities of military sexual trauma can be charted. In other words, the ontological nature of military sexual trauma does not so much constitute an event but suggests a process which has a before and after around the traumatic event(s). This article, in particular, gives heed to the violating experiences which occur in the 4 5 See http://www1.va.gov/wvhp/page.cfm?pg=20 Total institution refers to the closed, isolated nature of an organization which involves the total or attempted control of bodies in organizations (i.e. psychiatric hospitals, military, church). They have ideologies and cultures operating within strong physical and social barriers (Hearn & Parkin, 2001). (J. Hearn & Parkin, 2001). 3 aftermath of a military sexually traumatic event—coined organization-trauma. Organizationtrauma refers to a form of traumatic violation(s) which manifest before and after a heinous traumatic event (e.g rape, sexual assault), not necessarily committed within the organization (e.g. rapist), but more often than not committed by the organizational establishment—the unit of analysis. The term ‘military sexual trauma’ suggests a static, quick event. From here on, the term the military sexual trauma experience will be used to signify the sexually violating act(s) and the violating acts which occur prior to and in the aftermath of sexual trauma. The military sexual trauma experience, as a term, suggests a process which can incorporate the forms of insidious trauma which take place before the sexually traumatic event6, as well as the traumatic violations which occur following the sexual trauma. Importantly, it incorporates not simply the culpability of the perpetrator(s) of sexual trauma, but the perpetrators and complicitors within the organizational establishment. In other words, the military sexual trauma experience incorporates both aspects of organization-trauma and military sexual trauma. The Current State of Positivist Research on Workplace/Organizational Violence In positivist research, organizational violence, or as it is more often referred—‘workplace violence,’ is still in its intellectual infancy. Workplace violence is a relatively new research topic in management research and is still in the process of being operationalized or named by researchers who locate themselves within a functionalist and managerial framework. The definition of workplace violence varies somewhat across the few studies which have been conducted thus far. However, the sem(e)nal literature on workplace violence suggests the following about workplace violence: 1) Workplace violence includes both assault and threats of assault directed towards employees (Jenkins, 1996). 2) Workplace violence can also be referred to as workplace aggression. Violence carries connotations of physical, direct, and active aggression, and aggression carries connotations of verbal, indirect, and passive aggression. 3) Some researchers are suggesting that workplace aggression can be used to refer to both violence (physical) and aggression (psychological and verbal). Others like LeBlanc & Kelloway (2002) suggest that workplace aggression and violence should be used separately, where the latter refers to the physical, overt manifestations of harm to others, and the former, in referencing the verbal and more covert forms of hostility.(LeBlanc, 2002). A workplace violence typology has been put forth by California Occupational Heath and Safety Administration which categorizes workplace violence into three different types. The first pertains to violence or threats of physical violence committed by someone outside the workplace. The second type is when the perpetrator is a customer or client of the organization. Finally, the last one is the “disgruntled employee” who has been laid off, dismissed, or angered for some reason (COSHA, 1995). Flannery (1995) identified the five main types of workplace assailants: the angry customer, the medically ill person, the batterer in a domestic dispute, the criminal, and the disgruntled employee.(Flannery, 1995). 6 Forms of insidious trauma is a topic for another article, but it should be acknowledged simply because trauma is often a discourse defined in reference to men’s experiences and from a position of privilege. For more see, Brown, Laura S., “Not Outside the Range: One Feminist Perspective on Psychic Trauma,” in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1995) pp. 100-112. In this chapter, Laura S. Brown, a feminist clinical psychologist, clearly critiques and raises the limitations of the prevailing definition of trauma. She calls to attention the ways in which trauma is caused by the “constant presence and threat” of “an assault on the integrity and safety of those who are not members of the dominant classes.” 4 Limitations of Current Positivist Literature and Research The first limitation of functionalist publications on workplace violence in management literature is that sexual violence is rarely mentioned7 and gender is often not a variable with a few noted exceptions (Hearn & Parkin, 2001; Hope 2008).8 Medical scholarly journals which engage in the discourse on workplace violence such as Aggressive Behavior and the American Journal of Industrial Medicine have published articles which address gender as a variable and/or investigate rape in the armed forces (Knight, Gurthrie, Page, & Fabes, 2002; Sadler, Booth, Cook, & Doebbeling, 2003). Nonetheless, the notion of sexual violence and trauma is marginalized to other forms of violence. In their study, Sadler et al mention the gender-bias in research and that women are studied less often than men (Niedhammer I, Piciotti, & Bonenfant, 2000) despite the fact that women are twice as likely as men to be physically attacked at work (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1996). Although Sadler et al’s article is currently an anomaly in positivist literature and they should be commended for their contribution, their article does not delve into the nature and processes of sexual trauma in the armed forces—why it is pervasive, the role of the organization in normalizing sexual violence and the scapegoating of sexual trauma victims, why women, proportionately speaking, comprise the majority of victims and men the majority of perpetrators, and so forth.9 (Statistics, 1996). (J. Hearn & Parkin, 2001; Hope, 2008) Another limitation with the literature on workplace violence is that the unit of analysis is the individual, who is most often the “disgruntled employee” or the “angry customer” (Hoobler & Swanberg, 2006; Hope, 2008). We are presented with a one-sided construct of workplace violence that paints the subordinate as the perpetrator committing violence or aggressive behavior against a superior or against the organizational establishment—the perpetual victim.10 The organization itself as the unit of analysis is never explored in the study of violence as a possible progenitor of traumatic violations towards employees. This approach would create a more holistic and balanced analysis of the realities of organizational aggression, trauma, and violence. These above critiques are made within the functionalist paradigm. However, even if the scientific management approach were to incorporate sexual violence and trauma, gender as a moderating variable, and investigate the organizational establishment as a committer of traumatic violations, we would still claim that the functionalist framework is not only insufficient for “finding” knowledge and preventing sexual trauma in the workplace, but also reinforces the marginalization of the survivors’ narratives. The epistemological foundations of positivism and modern theorizing, in the way they are mobilized, often uphold rather than challenge the male7 The exception is an article called: How organizations should respond to rape in the workplace by Lee and Kleiner in a practitioner journal called the Journal of Employment Counseling. While containing helpful information, it does not address the gendered nature of workplace violence and why violence is more common to occur against women (Lee & Kleiner, 2003). 8 According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 1992 to 1996, approximately 51,000 incidents of rape and sexual assault occurred in the workplace. Women are four times more likely than men to be murdered in an occupational setting. Many studies show that women seem to report more rates of victimization at work than men in many countries. 9 The authors find that sexualized workplaces, barracks, and drugs/alcohol were associated with increased odds of rape 10 We are suggesting the possibility that the organizational establishment can also be the unit of analysis and the perpetrator of organizational violations and violence. 5 identified, hyper–rational, and disembodied grandnarrativity on military sexual trauma. In other words, they do not allow for the articulation of the military sexual trauma experience. The Poetics of Testimony in Critical Organizational Analysis At this stage of the paper, our language will shift from the functionalist (scientific management) language rooted in the paradigmatic epistemic claims of positivism and white-male biased ontology to language which embodies social constructivist epistemological and ontological leanings. We critique the modern theoretical paradigm of positivist episteme from a position outside the modernist theoretical framework—one the starts with experience and then looks to alternative forms of theory to aid in describing realities rather than looking to (modern) theory to judge what can be deemed true and real. From here on, we address the topic of the armed forces and organization violations (not ‘workplace violence’) from a position located in the poetics of testimony, a critical method crafted by theologian Rebecca Chopp as a starting point for both survivor and responder/ researcher to employ when engaging in the discourse around violence, violations, and trauma. The poetics of testimony allows trauma survivors such as such as holocaust survivors, African Americans, rape and incest survivors to partake in the use of “discursive practices and various voices” to narrate their lived experiences and realities which cannot be revealed through positivist rationality and male-identified narratives (Chopp, 1998). Testimony is a discursive practice rather than a pure theory. The act of testifying is “to vow to tell to promise and produce one’s speech act, rather than to simply formulate a statement” (Ibid, 2). Its purpose is to challenge how the real is (re)presented and created by “summoning us to question the role of modern theory as the court of the real” (Ibid). In other words, testimony in whatever form it takes is knowledge and (re)presents reality. Chopp does not seek to displace theory altogether but posits that we need to reshape theory as a response to this ‘moral summons’ to bear witness to narratives and testimonies of trauma survivors. This suggests that in order to meaningfully combat the phenomenon and organization traumas, the starting point lies in first bearing witness in a way which permits the survivor to be the first “author” of their realities. Modern thought declares that “human reason is the chief arbitrator of reality, and revelation does not yield empirical truth as judged by reason” (Ibid, 4). Using the analogy of the courtroom, reason and modern theory sit as the Judge. In this trial by reason “testimonies become powerless, emptied of spirit, not convincing of proof” (Ibid, 5). Testimony becomes representative of “jarring witnesses” (Ibid.). Testimonies, which do not conform to the experiences of privileged European American men and women who rely on modes of modern theory and colonial rationality,11 are deemed emotional, irrational, and not credible enough. Thus, the modern theorist is like a judge, prosecutor, and jury. If not careful, scholars and practitioners in and outside the military run the risk of placing themselves in a position to “judge” the evidence. This gives order to history by forming a coherent grandnarrative which, in practice, silences Others’ voices, sustains imbalances of power, and indirectly upholds traumatic oppression in the organization. Chopp calls for a reversal of the analogous courtroom in which testimonies are scrutinized and judged by modes of modern theory. Reason is no longer the judge but is placed on trial along with the whole courtroom for its ability to speak credibly. Holocaust survivor and 11 What we mean by colonial rationality: reason manifests through rationalities as opposed to rationality. Colonial reason refers to the rationality that is privileged above others and deemed universal or generalizable in nature to all human experiences. 6 professor of literature, Elie Wiesel makes the observation that, “If the Greeks invented tragedy, the Romans the epistle, and the Renaissance the sonnet, our generation invented a new literature, that of testimony” (Wiesel, 1977, 9). Through alternative discourses like poetry, literature, alternative narratives, marginalized rationalities, and alternative theories which can speak to the unspeakable, the survivors of trauma and violent oppression are empowered to become epistemic agents in the narrating and naming of their experiences in ways that they feel more accurately (re)presents their lived experiences. (Wiesel, 1977) In other words, in relation to this article, when it comes to crafting discourses on the military sexually trauma experience, modern theories which advance colonizing forms of rationality, positivistic grandnarratives, and male-identified perspectives are contested in their ‘thrones of privilege’ as judgers of truth-telling concerning traumatic experiences. In the grandnarrativity of positivist episteme (scholarship) and colonial rationality (practitionership12), trauma survivors’ experiences of sexual violence along with what occurs in the aftermath of sexual trauma can be named, analyzed, and (re)presented by people who claim to be objective; in reality, many of these people have never experienced what it means to be a woman or marginalized male in the military and/or a survivor of sexual violence and trauma, and are unaware of their complicity in the ruling relations13(Smith, 1990). The poetics of testimony “seeks not so much to argue as to refigure, to reimagine, and refashion the world” (Chopp, 1998, 6). Through the practice of the poetics of testimony, military sexual trauma survivors’ experiences no longer become secondary, silenced, or (mis)represented. Trauma survivors, instead, are provided the space where they can become epistemic and ontological agents of their truths, realities, and experiences. The responder/researcher takes the role of agentic witness while the survivor becomes the judge, jury, and witness to their own experiences. The poetics of testimony is about using theory as opposed to being ruled by theory. “[P]oetics utilizes even theory as a way to rename and refigure the real against the representations of dominant discourses” (Chopp, 1998, 6). Theory, even modern theory itself, is not ontologically imperialistic and oppressive, but the problematic occurs in the way it is deployed as a domination system, specifically as a gavel to numb into submission and silence. Next, Angela will practice the poetics of testimony and give her testimony of the military sexual trauma experience. She is a survivor of military sexual trauma, but also a survivor of what she calls organization-trauma—a kind of institutional rape which can occur prior to and/or in the aftermath of a sexual/violent trauma. “Testimonies are neither subjective nor objective, but are collective and social” (Ibid, 7). Rather than representing an objective Truth or one’s unique experience, they shed light on what a marginalized social group experiences. Angela will utilize postpositivist and critical theorizing first, and then provide ethnographical narratives to better describe the nature and reality of organization-trauma, without speaking directly of her own sexual assault. Without naming the experiences of other women survivors of the military sexual 12 Practitionership refers in this essay to those practitioners who may come in contact with those who are survivors of sexual trauma such as psychologist, military supervisors and the military establishment, social workers, coworkers, military chaplains and nonmilitary ministers. 13 “The Ruling Relations are those real and abstract social forces that represent the translocal, the overarching institutional control in our lives. They are the interconnected organizations and institutions that govern and/or teach individuals to govern, to control and to reinforce the social rules and structures that influence and shape our lives. These are political structures, and management structures, corporations, and health institutions, but she also always includes those institutions of education and the academy where she and we also spend our time and energies.” Quote taken from a paper reviewed by Angela. The authorship is unknown at this point because of anonymity in the reviewing process 7 trauma experience, she posits that this testimony which is reflective of the ‘collective and the social’ does speak in a way which delves beneath the surface into the lived collective experiences of many women and men who have suffered from military sexual trauma and organization-trauma in total institutions, particularly within but not limited to the armed forces. Angela’s Testimony Critical Theories of Violence in the Organization To frame these narratives and experiences, I will first articulate some of the postpositivist, critical theorizing on organization violations and violence in total institutions put forth by Jeff Hearn, Wendy Parkin, and Robert Johnson. Then I will show how embedded in the ethnographical narratives are a multiplicity of multifaceted organization violations—the conglomeration of these organization violations creates the phenomenon of organization-trauma in the military. I use the term ‘organization’ as opposed to ‘organizational’ to make the distinction that this is not necessarily about traumatic actions occurring within an organization in the aftermath of military sexual trauma, but traumatic violations committed by the organization, the system, and those who strongly identify with the organizational culture. Jeff Hearn & Wendy Parkin have written extensively on violence and what they coined ‘organization violations’. The term refers to those “organizational structures, actions, events, and experiences that violate or cause violation or are considered as violating. They are usually, but not necessarily, performed by a violator or violators upon the violated” (Hearn & Parkin, 2007, 163). The term allows for what often gets excluded from the definition of violence to be considered. Hearn & Parkin assert that forms of organization violations are not part of a linear progression of increasing intensity, severity, and thus “seriousness,” rather violations exist across different levels (Ibid; Hearn & Parkin, 2001). They develop a framework placing workplace violations in three categories: macro-level, meso-level, and micro-level. The macro-violations refer to the structural violations and oppressive systems such as patriarchies which may not involve direct physical violence. Meso-violations refer to physical violence, bullying, harassment, rape. Micro-violations refer to the mundane and taken for granted acts and may not involve overt physical violent acts but can be defined as “supposedly gender-neutral (which are gendered) management practices, organizational dynamics or decision making” (Hearn & Parkin, 2007; Martin, 2001). Violations can manifest across these different levels in the forms of (J. P. Hearn, W., 2007; Martin, 1990) …verbal, emotional, psychological, cognitive, representational and visual attacks, threats and degradation; enactment of psychological harm; physical assaults; use of weapons and other subjects; destruction of property; rape; murder. Violation can be dramatic or subtle, occasional or continuous, chronic and endemic (as in slave workplaces), generally invisible and ‘unnecessary’ (as inequalities are so entrenched), normalized and naturalized (as in the acceptance of sexual harassment as part of some jobs), an indication of changing power relations… or a reassertion of power by dominant groups (as in men’s response to women’s power). (Hearn & Parkin, 2007, 164) This language provides a meaningful starting point for articulating the realities of military sexual trauma, especially with respect to the pre-traumatic events and the post-trauma experience. 8 The military is a unique organization because members within it have limited mobility and freedoms compared to civilian workplaces, again making the traumatic experience distinctive. Robert Johnson investigates the nature by which violence is produced inside total, closed organizations. He has emphasized that “the institutional arrangements that….structure situations and, to a lesser extent, develop dispositions that (1) neutralize normal moral restraints against violence and (2) supply the motives and mechanisms necessary to carry out violence or to permit violence to occur, on a regular basis” (Johnson, 1986, 184). He contends that bureaucratic policies, training, procedures, and routines assist in dehumanizing acts in total institutions (Ibid). The limitation of Johnson’s work is that he does not adequately address power relations and the social relations of gender and sexuality. Bessant summons us to consider the role of social relations and the interconnectedness of power, gender, and sexuality. “In relationships in which large power disparities exist, then equality can easily slip into violence” (Bessant 1998, 9). She refers to this type of violence as opaque violence.(Bessant, 1998) Hearn & Parkin, along with others, name the importance of including sexuality, gender, race, and other social factors in the topic of organization violations. Most forms of violence as violations are committed by men against women, children, and other men. “…[T]here is male domination in men’s reactions to violation, formally in policies or more informally in terms of collusion, avoidance or other responses” (Hearn, 2001). In the armed forces, masculinity codes and macho environments encourage the silencing of women’s voices and enable men to behave in certain ways in order that they may not be seen as “weak” or a “pussy” (Ibid; Collinson & Hearn, 1996). Not only is the totalized nature of the military organizational body critically important for understanding the military sexual trauma experience, but so is the gendered nature of the military. (Collnson & Hearn, 1996) Within the military organization, technical rationality and male-identified perspectives are heavily mobilized through discourse and representation. While these perspectives are not necessarily intrinsically evil, they are employed in ways which order reality, a process of ordering done without the input or negotiation of the violated. “Theory is a weapon used to bludgeon others into accepting practice”(Grey, 2005, 14). All other voices and perspectives must adhere to these dominant masculinist theories and discourses. In my testimony, I seek to build upon these critical alternative theories just discussed and apply them to my experiences. When modern theoretical and male-identified perspectives are employed in a colonizing fashion, they become the progenitors of the phenomenon I refer to as organization-trauma. Naming ‘Organization-Trauma’ in the Military In the armed forces, due to its closed, rigidly hierarchical nature, violations against women and men are culturally endorsed in day-to-day organizational life more so than they are in civilian, not-totalized institutions.14 Based on my experience, I put forth the claim that women and men, who suffer from rape, sexual harassment and other forms of sexualized violence and trauma in the military (and other closed institutions), may also suffer from organization-trauma. Organization-trauma has to do with the multiple traumatic violations leading up to the sexualized act or acts of violence and those that follow from these acts. The military organizational establishment and its “lieutenants” directly and indirectly encourage 14 When speaking in terms of sexual assault as a violation, veterans report sexual assault at significantly higher rates than civilian women. Additionally, surveys indicate that rates of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among female veterans and active duty members are higher than those found in national civilian surveys (Suris, Lind, Kashner, Borman, & Petty, 2004). 9 organization-trauma. It is a form of scapegoating covertly enacted to avoid threats to the good reputable order of the military organization. According to the Miles Foundation, a non-profit organization which seeks to end sexual violence in the military, less than 8% of rape cases are even sent to a court martial; the rest are ignored or dealt with using administrative means (Sommers, 2005). While I was in my last duty assignment in Germany, the criminal investigator who headed the particular region where I was located told me that 80% of the crimes they dealt with are sexual assault related. Even though the organization itself is not inert or concrete, the dominant discourses, culture, and practices in the military organization help create the mediums for traumatic violations to occur against women and marginalized men. Traumatic violations in the post sexual trauma experience are manifested in a myriad of ways both covert and overt. They can include bullying, sexist managerial practices of resolving sexual “misconduct,” the creation of hostile environments which attempt to drive the trauma survivor to take her own life, another’s life, or at least paint her as “unstable” so that she can be removed “legitimately” from the system. Other traumatic violations which also reinforce the phenomenon of scapegoating the trauma survivor may manifest as epistemic, representational, and psychological violations. Women do not ‘simply’ experience sexual assault, rape, or harassment. They experience trauma related to violations before and after the sexual violence occurs. The event cannot be separated. The difference between these traumatic experiences is that the heinous sexually violating act(s) are committed by a soldier(s). Alternatively, organization-trauma is constituted as a series of traumatically violating experiences which is committed by the organizational establishment either through a colluding group of soldiers whose identity is interwoven with the organizational culture and/or by top management officials. Scapegoating military sexual trauma survivors and the inflicting of organization-trauma on a sexual trauma survivor are ruthless, strategic tactics which are most efficacious in silencing organizational image-threatening realities. (Sommers, 2005) Finding Organization-Trauma in the Narratives Dorothy Smith, sociologist and feminist scholar, contends that through applying the method of Institutional Ethnography, local experiences have the capacity to shed insight onto the ontological and epistemological realities of the translocal (Smith, 2005, 2006). I hope to make this known through the expression of my first narrative, broken into three parts, details exchanges I had with some of my colleagues about a young man who “allegedly” sexually assaulted and sexually harassed at least six different women in my military police battalion this past year. The second narrative is an account of me trying to get help through therapy after bearing witness to military organization-trauma in my unit and having to investigate the sexual violence through what is called a 15-6 investigation. I had been raped myself approximately two years prior to this day in another unit and my post-traumatic stress symptoms were exacerbated. The First Narrative, Part I: Master Sergeant Andrew Smith: Did you hear about PFC Babcock? I guess he was spotted by Sergeant First Class Winn at the Bowling Alley yesterday. He had a beer in his hand and was not in his Army PT clothes. I wonder what the Commander is going to do when he hears about this. Boy, this kid is just asking for trouble. First Lieutenant Angela Hope: Well he has been counseled by the Commander, and he knows that he is under investigation by the Criminal Investigations Department. The way I see it this kid is just adding to his list of court-martial offenses. Now in addition to the rest of the charges that will be brought against him, he will have ‘violating a lawful order’. 1 0 Captain Richard White: See this is interesting because the Commander could probably use this to chapter him out of the army. He could put in the paperwork for disobeying a lawful order, and if he does it soon enough, this Soldier could be out of the army before CID has even charged him officially. And this idiot would be off our hands and the unit would no longer have to deal with him. I mean those guys do not know what they are doing over there at CID anyway. If they charge him, then we will be stuck being his babysitters for more months to come. It sucks that we have already had to supervise and escort him to and from places. I do not see why we get stuck with that duty. MSG Smith: We are stuck with him because he has supposedly acted inappropriately to at least one female in all the other military police units on this facility not just this one. So he has to be near a place where none of those females are. He was just written up by the security guards at the gate for licking his tongue against the window in his car at one of the female guards. He is so stupid. He is just making things harder for himself. I don’t know though. I read the complaint issued by Pond Security and this girl sounds like she was exaggerating to me but who knows. CPT White: What you just said about why we got stuck with him does not make any sense to me at all. One of the females works down the hall so he is still in the same building with a female he supposedly harassed. Who knows why we got this duty but I think it’s just because we happen to be the only full staffed office since the unit is on deployment. 1LT Hope: You guys, regardless, of the whole violating his restriction, he should not just be chaptered out of the army and not have to answer for any of the things he has done to the women of our battalion. He needs to go to jail and serve time. MSG Smith: Well that ain’t up to you ma’am! You don’t have any say in what should or should not happen to him. He is just a product of society; it ain’t the military’s fault he did this and he should not be part of this military. 1LT Hope: Well it ain’t up to you either…. (interrupted) CPT White: Yes that’s it. The Commander can take make the call to chapter him out or not. Ultimately it’s always comes down to the Commander and whatever he wants to do is what goes. In this excerpt, my voice, a woman’s voice, is marginalized, cut off, and not seen as quite as knowledgeable as the men with whom I speak. The complaint issued by the female security guard is scrutinized and questioned. Her story is being re-presented through the perspective and voice of men. The voices of the women who have been violated by PFC Babcock are similarly not heard either. I am not sure if this is worse, but instead of being scrutinized or questioned, their narratives are insignificant and not worth mentioning altogether. The objective is to ‘get rid of the problem’ or to use ‘objective’ administrative processes which are written from a male perspective, and consequently, to utilize these processes to keep the traumas of these nameless women unnamed, rather than address and acknowledging the institutional culpabilities. The particular form of hyper-rationality inherent is: there is a problem child and the problem child needs to go simply because the military could not possibly consist of less than honorable soldiers. It was a mistake that this soldier was allowed in the military—an organization which is intrinsically free of sexism and misogyny. The common defense proclaimed is that: “Society promotes rape. This is a problem of society. Blame society.” The dominant rationality utters nonsensical the idea that the military creates the environment for sexual violence. In an organization, sometimes one has to consider that the few bad apples leave out the possibility that the barrel or the water the apples is infected. Instead this group of men colludes to form a coherent dominant narrative which silences and further violates the dignity of those sexually violated. In this dialogue, we see epistemic violations towards alternative perspectives which challenge the power and privilege of the military system. Representational violations are committed in that these men feel they have the right to speak for what should happen to a man 1 1 who violated Others’. There is no concern for addressing cultural and institutional structures and organizational leaders that allow and facilitate injustice. Representation of sexual trauma is not merely a conceptual exercise; rather the representation of the military sexual trauma experience by military leaders has material consequences in the day-to-day lives of military personnel. These representations create certain knowledge that regulates social practice (Hall, 1997). We see that through policies and administrative practices, post sexual trauma violations are more likely because the perpetrator can simply vanish back into society without answering to his violent acts. The ability of the establishment to simply brush away (the likely course) the problem, rather than resolving it by holding the institution and the perpetrator accountable, only perpetuates the continuation of the military sexual trauma experience. Part II 1LT Hope: Hey Sergeant First Class Fred Irvin, do you have a minute? SFC Irvin: Yes, ma’am. What can I do for you? 1LT Hope: Well I wanted to talk with you about PFC Kelly. She approached me and I am concerned about her. You know that she was raped by a soldier in the transportation unit last summer right? SFC Irvin: Yes that is a shame. 1LT Hope: I know it really is. Well you heard about what is going on with PFC Babcock and how apparently he physically assaulted and sexually harassed Kelly too—not long after the rape? SFC Irvin: Oh yes, I am well aware of what is going on. I have talked with her and told her that she can talk to me anytime and if she is having a hard time at work, she can leave for a bit if she needs some air. 1LT Hope: That is great, but there is more going on than I think you realize and she is uneasy about talking to you so I am here to try to facilitate how we can make things better for her She is going through a very bad time and is dealing with the aftermath of suffering from rape. So more than ever, we have to be supportive and be understanding to what she is trying to say even if it does not make sense to us…. SFC Irvin: You know ma’am, maybe you can talk to her for me. I have wanted to say some things to her, but I don’t know what to say so if you talked to her maybe she will listen more. 1LT Hope: Okay tell me more… SFC Irvin: The Soldiers are telling me that she is going out, acting crazy, and getting drunk. She starts flirting and if you ask me, she is asking for trouble. She is acting slutty and you know, ma’am, she is going to make herself look bad for court. I am not sure she is stable right now and I think maybe you might want to talk to her for me. She should not be flirting and drinking like that anyway. What does that say about her? She comes in to work and she can never focus on her work. I have tried to be patient with her but she has become so unproductive here. Maybe it might help if it came from you, being a female and all, that she should act more appropriately when she is out. I dunno…she is just so hard to communicate with. She says she is fine and she can work, but her slack is just getting worse. 1LT Hope: Well sometimes women who have been traumatized partake in self-destructive behaviors. They develop post-traumatic stress disorder. I don’t think she is being slutty or acting undignified, I think we should try and understand why she might be doing that. I will speak with her though. SFC Irwin: Thanks, ma’am. You know I just don’t want to see her get annihilated in court because if she acts like this, it is not going to make her look good. 1LT Hope: Sure. Anyway, I also wanted to talk to you about initiating a compassionate reassignment for her. I believe this option is available to her. The reason is that she would like a break. This is basically what she told me in so many words. She knows she is not performing like she should be here. But her context is really unfortunate. She lives close to the man who raped her and she is scared he will come after her or hurt her son. She sees Babcock on a regular basis at work. She is having trouble focusing at work because she often gets emails from CID about her case. She has no family here in Germany and does not have a good support system to get through this. If you could look into getting her reassigned somewhere close to her family in the states, this would be great. Will you do this? 1 2 SFC Irvin: Sure, ma’am. I can look into it. The woman is accorded the carrier of sexuality, carnality, and emotionality (Hearn & Parkin, 2001). Her courage to face each day after her rape is mistaken for insanity not just by this supervisor but by other (senior to her) military leaders in her department. She is painted as crazy, emotional, slutty, incompetent, weak and she is badgered about her (mis)behavior on a daily basis. Recently, I discovered that the NCO in the narrative given the name “Irvin” was reassigned to another unit because he allegedly was sexually harassing soldiers under his command. This scenario is a typical sexist practice which is common in the mainstream discourse of the military. She is being talked about, gossiped about, scrutinized and judged for her behaviors —behaviors which are misrepresented because of who she is (e.g. a military woman), what she experienced (e.g. rape), and because this threatens the organizational reputation and image with which many soldiers strongly identify, including those soldiers in her shop. Additionally, she is trapped in the system and unable to leave the military. I had a conversation with this young woman before I left Germany. She wanted to be able to leave the military because of what happened to her. She felt it was her right to leave if something this bad had happened to her and she should have the choice. This may seem rational to her and I, however, this again is an “irrational” managerial practice in the eyes of those who run the armed forces. The military is a patriarchic institution. As such, it is “male-dominated, male-identified, and male-centered (Johnson, 2000, 129).” Stating that the military is male-identified means that the organization’s understandings, representations, and practices are created from a male perspective, and this perspective is defined as normal, “the way things are”. In such an institution, women find themselves silenced and find men representing their experiences—in the case of calling Kelly ‘slutty’ and ‘crazy.’. In the eyes of the military, treating everyone from this “male-dominated, male-identified, and male-centered” perspective is seen as treating everyone equally and perhaps even justly (Johnson, 2000, 129). In reality, treating everyone the “same,” which really masks male normativity, replicates existing unequal outcomes of the past (Amundsen, 1977). These unequal outcomes manifest in keeping Kelly trapped in a system when she needs help and cannot heal while she is undergoing the chronic experience of organization-trauma. Part III: 1LT Amy Wright: Hey, What’s up? 1LT Hope: Can you tell me what is going on with Kelly and her being compassionately reassigned? 1LT Wright: Yes, there are two positions which are options, but both of them are slated to deploy to Iraq in the next year, so she might be better off here. 1LT Hope: Are these locations close to home? 1LT Wright: No there are not any. 1LT Hope: So much for the word compassion in compassionate reassignment. 1LT Wright: Well the compassionate reassignment is based on the needs of the army and she cannot be sent where she simply wants to go. The female lieutenant with whom I am speaking does not understand the depth of what is going on with Kelly and what she is experiencing. Despite the fact that she is a woman, she embodies the hegemonic ideology of the hypermasculine perspective. Here, further psychological violations are occurring in the crushing of Kelly’s hopes to find some refuge since she cannot leave the military. She is bludgeoned with bureaucratic rationality with its emphasis on mission 1 3 first, organizational efficiency first, combat readiness first. Instead, Kelly is now further violated with the knowledge that she may be sent to war without even given any time to properly heal from her multiple traumas. Both the rapist and the victim are irritants to the military organization. The victim irritant must be subdued and controlled; if she cannot be tamed into submission and defeat, then she must be declared crazy and unfit for duty. I recently spoke with this young woman and found out that they put her in the psychiatric ward against her will. She later went a second time voluntarily in order to be away from the abusive supervision and hostile environment which gradually intensified in her shop. Later, the military psychiatric organization discharged her because she was “mentally unfit” for duty. The Second Narrative 1LT Hope: I am here because I am re-experiencing post-traumatic stress and I need help. I just got finished with a 15-6 investigation. I was appointed as the investigating officer to look into this soldier who sexually assaulted, physically assaulted and harassed, bullied over five women. What has really got me upset is that I had to fight to do a thorough investigation. My command wanted me to conduct it within a day even though I have two weeks to do it legally. When I told them it involved more than one female and I wanted to go ahead and investigate the other alleged incidents, they tried to prevent me from doing so. I fought them and I don’t know how they let me do it…I am also trying to recover again now from the memories of my own rape 2 years ago. CPT Therapy: Well yes this must be hard for you. 1LT Hope: Yes it is. You know for me it is not my rapist which I feel the most violated by but the military institution. I feel like the institution is creating the environment for this to occur and then when it happens they don’t deal with it or they punish you for coming forward. In my experience, the institutional rape or the cover-ups, the management practices, the slander, the gossip was more traumatic than the rape itself for me. I felt like they wanted to make me crazy or drive me to kill myself if I did not keep silent. It felt like a conspiracy of collusive acts where the military establishment was the perpetrator. I had more hatred for the Chief of Staff of the state national guard who was determining the outcome…the outcome of what happened to MY BODY…I had more hatred for him than I did for the man who raped me. People like him create the man who raped me. I can’t explain it, it just seemed like being raped was just one part of the violence and trauma I experienced. CPT Wright: Well you are using transference and your reality is becoming skewed I think. (weak smile) 1LT Hope: (Biting my lip) No I don’t think so-- it is my reality though… as I experienced it. I have friends who feel the same way I do. We are triggered when we wear the uniform, have a male supervisor, etc. CPT Wright: Yes well these are normal feelings, but we have to try and get you to focus on what is really going on now and what really happened back then, and provide you the therapy you need so you can be productive again. 1LT Hope: I don’t think you get what I need. I don’t know. It’s like the Catholic Church. Many survivors of sexual abuse cannot set foot in the Catholic Church because they feel betrayed by it. The institution is supposed to be loving and Christ-like but because their stories have been silenced for so long, they can no longer trust in the organization. I’m not saying my experience is akin to the survivor of child molestation at the hands of the priest. I am just trying to get you to understand where I am coming from. The military has committed the worst act—betrayal. It 1 4 has raped me too. So much for the whole caring about soldier and putting soldiers first…it’s all saving their reputation and sacrificing those of us like me…hanging us out to dry CPT Wright: Okay LT, You have been through a lot and actually our time is coming to an end. I want you to come back in a couple days and I am going to have you take a couple tests so that we can properly diagnose you and figure out what to do next. [Two days later, I took the MMPI personality test and another one on PTSD which I cannot remember the name of it except that it was based on the same functionalist framework. Within a week, I retuned to my therapist to hear my sentencing] CPT Wright: Well the results are in. The test on PTSD was invalidated because of the way you responded to one of the questions. I think this may have been because you mentioned that your worst or most severe trauma was the trauma which occurred after you were raped, and then you answered the rest of the questions with this in mind. The other tests show that you are a very emotional and dramatic person; you perceive your realities differently and these realities are not real or what is actually so…this is because you like to use colorful words and embellish on your experiences. [Her diagnosis of me after two 40 minute sessions was that I did not validate the criteria for PTSD though she still chose to say I had it. Also she diagnosed me with histrionic personality disorder with narcissistic traits. When I got off of my active duty tour and saw a social worker from the VA, I told her of this experience and she mocked this psychologist and said I should have kicked her and walked out the door. She also told me that there is no way I could be histrionic.] I am sitting in a room with another woman who tells me that I have the condition of hysteria. Here I am trying to articulate my experiences and be an epistemic agent, and I am judged and diagnosed with the “woman’s condition.” In the psychiatric organization within the military organization, I am experiencing the continued traumatic violations--representational, epistemic, and cognitional in nature. Therapy is primarily instrumental. It is used to “correct” the errors of my ways of thinking so that I can become a docile, productive body again; I have strayed too far with what I said and threatened the good order of the military status quo. Feminist scholar Sue Campbell critiques the assumptions of cognitive therapy because it makes the assumption that one’s cognition is in error. These must be 'repaired' in accordance with the decree of scientific policing (Campbell, 2001). This experience is a subtle violation committed by the organization and its overly rational discourse through the medium of a patriarchal woman. This particular violation is my latest traumatic violation which I experienced in my experience of chronic institutional rape or organization-trauma—an experience which started four years ago. Concluding Thoughts In this article, we show that military sexual trauma in the military is not just the act of rape or sexual harassment in and of itself, it is much more. It is complex, process-oriented, and multifaceted. It occurs before and after the actual act(s). Secondly, in order to show this, we confront and resist the dominant managerialist framework in its positivist and functionalist epistemology and ontology, and we present knowledge around the construct organization- 1 5 trauma through a discursive methodological practice known as the poetics of testimony. The poetics of testimony, an interdisciplinary practice, provides for meaningful praxis for small “n” narratives to dismantle the colonizing narratives in organizations which seek to marginalize and perpetuate organization-trauma and military sexual trauma against women and men in the military and other totalizing institutions. Testimonies should be heeded as real knowledge valuable to understanding the phenomenon of the military sexual trauma experience. Trauma survivors’ voices should be heard without imposing our own epistemic biases. Scholars and practitioners inside and outside the military system are summoned to bear witness to the testimonies of survivors of traumas. 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