Analysis: Legalize sex to reduce sexual assaults at military academies

Bruce Fleming, a professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy and author of Bridging the Military-Civilian Divide, suggests a response to high numbers of reported sexual assaults at military acdemies. Here's an excerpt:  

True sexual assault is of course a heinous crime and a big problem. But by and large the situation at Annapolis is not of this nature: Rather, there's a lot of sleazy but predictable young-adult behavior being made into something much worse by the over-reaction of the brass, and by their inability to draw distinctions between truly bad behavior and problems created by the unwillingness of a repressive system to acknowledge reality. Reportable behavior includes full-fledged sexual assault as well as "unwanted sexual contact" (which includes "unwanted touching of ...sexually related areas of the body"). I'm not sure that "unwanted sexual contact" in whatever gender combination can ever be completely stamped out in a college populated by libidinal 18- to 21-year-olds where men and women live cheek by jowl in alternating rooms, and where up to four men or four women share a single room. However, I can tell the brass how to radically decrease it and reduce the tension among students to a manageable level: legalize sex at the service academies.

Read the full article at TheAtlantic.com.