The Senate hearings held last week on sexual assault in the military were laughable. "Laughable" in the sense that some of the statements made by those senators were shockingly sexist and mind-bogglingly inappropriate.

Jeff Sessions of Alabama blamed pornography, specifically, and "a culture awash in sexual activity", for the high number of assaults. Georgia's Saxby Chambliss suggested, with appropriately naïve exclamation, that it's not nurture but nature that's the problem:

"Gee whiz, the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur."

Not only is their science iffy, but their logic also fails on its surface. Pornography exists outside military bases, and surely there are hormones awash in the culture at large. So, are the alarming increases in sexual assaults, you know, everywhere else? As a matter of fact, instances of rape and sexual assault against women have been on a steady decline (dropping 58% between 1995 and 2010), despite increases in the reporting of such crimes. The only place sexual assault has seen a dramatic rise is in the military.

To be fair, women are joining (pdf) the military more often than they used to: they make up 14% of enlisted soldiers (up from 2% in 1973) and 16% of officers (up from 4%). John McCain appeared to argue that maybe this was the problem, and indicated that the solution would be to warn women away from service:

"Just last night, a woman came to me and said her daughter wanted to join the military and could I give my unqualified support for her doing so."

At the time, I mocked McCain for his hesitancy; by his logic, an even better solution to the problem of sexual assault would be a military made up of only women. Or perhaps he should discourage men from joining as well: for sure we would solve the problem of sexual assault in the military if there were no military at all.

But McCain's full remarks actually hint that he's given the issue more thought than his colleagues:

"At its core, this is an issue about defending basic human rights but it's also a long-term threat to the strength of our military. We have to ask ourselves: if left uncorrected, what impact will this problem have on recruitment and retention of qualified men and women?"

McCain's thinking is often pretty inscrutable – it's the maverickiness – so I can't say for sure if he's onto what I think he's onto, but as far as I can tell, McCain was the only member of the armed forces committee to even suggest that sexual assault is a problem for men in the military as well as women. And not just in the "it looks bad"/honor/integrity sense: the Department of Defense report that spurred such outrage (and the hearing) found that 12% of those who reported sexual assault were men.

What's more, the data extrapolated from a survey of those who experienced sexual assault (whether it was reported or not) indicated that men were the victims of assault even more often than women. Indeed, if the survey data is truly reflective of reality, men are the victims of a majority of sexual assaults in the military: an estimated 14,000 men, as opposed to 12,000 women. (Since there are so many more men than women overall, the percentages of sexual assault victims among all male and female soldiers look more like what you'd expect: 6.1% of female soldiers, and 1.2% of the men.)

Still, the staggering number of sexual assaults on men – and 98% of them are committed by other men – puts to lie the chauvinistic fantasies of Sessions and Chambliss. I guess, though, if you really believe sexual violence is caused by "hormones" and out-of-control lust, then maybe you'd also concede that sex-crazed young men aren't picky about the gender of their victims. I don't think that's the case, however. I think these numbers suggests something darker about the already-disturbing data: that there's not something about women's presence in the military that leads to high rates of sexual assault; it's something about being in the military.

I should clarify: it's something about being in the military today, at this moment in history, fighting the kinds of wars we're fighting with the kinds of troops we have. Most of my immediate family has served at one point or another, and I generally hold the view that those drawn to fight for our country are more honorable than the public at large and hold themselves to a higher standard of personal behavior. That's part of what makes the report so chilling – these people are the best of what our country has to offer, and they are subject to (and signed up for) a level of discipline that most of us don't want and couldn't stomach. So, what explains the horrific behavior among those who are in general exemplary citizens? Is it just a failure to screen against predators?

The brass questioned last week admitted that's a possibility. Under questioning from McCain, General Jack Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted there are "inadequate protections for precluding that from happening, so a sex offender could, in fact, find their way into the armed forces of the United States."

Personally, in looking for answers to this menace, I can't help but notice the other set of statistics that illustrates a form of corrosion among those who aim to be invincible: the growing number of soldiers and veterans diagnosed with mental illnesses and chemical dependency. In the past 12 years, the number of suicides among active-duty troops has reached record levels: last year, more died by their own hand than by enemy fire. The two epidemics are equally embarrassing to military leaders, perhaps there's a further connection, as well.

In discussing the problem of suicides and depression, some analysts have wondered about the role played by the tactics of modern warfare: it is more random, more prolonged, "asymmetric", and, as we have been reminded this week, fraught with confusion about who the enemy is. Troops serve longer and more numerous tours, and function for longer periods under tangential supervision. There's a clear psychic toll.

It's a truism among feminists – if not senators – that rape is a crime of violence, not of sexual attraction. It's a function of rage, not lust. Could it be that the real crisis in today's military is tied to not who these soldiers are, but the nature of what we're asking them to do?