Dozens and perhaps hundreds of Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps instructors “have been accused of sexually abusing or harassing students in the

Photograph Source: Ed!(talk)(Hall of Fame) – CC BY-SA 3.0

Dozens and perhaps hundreds of Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps instructors “have been accused of sexually abusing or harassing students in the past five years” (New York Times, September 26, 2025).

JROTC operates in 3,400 public schools “where veterans teach teenagers about topics such as military history, life skills, and marksmanship to half a million students each year” (New York Times). Instructors have “limited training on being teachers.”

In 2022, the Times reported that “33 instructors had been criminally charged with sexual misconduct… over a five-year period.” Students have often been “automatically enrolled into what is supposed to be an elective course.”

“[T]he Trump administration and its supporters have laid out plans for expanding JROTC” as a means of increasing military recruiting.

How does all of this reflect what’s happening with sexual assaults in the US military? According to a study by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, “sexual assaults in the US military… [are] likely two to four times higher than government estimates” (NBC News, August 14, 2024). Here are some of the study’s estimates of military sexual assaults: “75,569 cases in 2021 and 73,695 cases in 2023” (NBC News).

Why the surprise at sexual assaults in both the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Program and in the military itself? One of the unwritten rules or norms of militarism is that the spoils of war belong to the victors. The military reflects a kind of hypermasculinity. Combine these factors with national chauvinism, and sexual assaults can and won’t be far behind. Sexual assaults against both women and men in the military don’t only happen in war; they routinely take place on military bases. The case of Vanessa Guillén, killed at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2020, after being repeatedly sexually harassed, is telling (Newsweek, March 13, 2023).

There was an argument over the past decade that the investigation of sexual assaults in the military be taken out of the hands of company commanders and given over to independent military investigators. The investigators, “called the Offices of Special Trial Counsel” (NPR, January 4, 2024), exist within each branch of the military as of 2023. In the far-right political climate that includes the military, independent investigations are perhaps beyond the contemporary symbolic horizon.

The discontents of militarism are obvious. First, there’s the massive empire enforced from around 750 US military bases. Then, there are the weapons manufacturers and their investors. Third, there’s the sexual assault that comes from the hypermasculinity described above. Finally, there’s the massive production of carbon emissions from military adventures.

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