Conservative columnist Mackbuin Thomas Owens writes in a Washington Times column published yesterday that women’s rights advocates are waging a “feminist attack on military culture” with their “recent moral panic over alleged rampant sexual assault in the military.”

“The charge of rampant sexual assault is only the latest campaign in a war on military culture,” he writes.

Owens claims that the figures on sexual assault in the military must be inflated because of a discrepancy between the number of people who said in an anonymous survey that they faced harassment and the number of official reports of harassment – a disparity that’s easily explained by the fact that many cases of harassment go unreported. He even claims that efforts to curb sexual harassment represent “the de facto criminalization of normal relations between the sexes of the sort that come about when young males and females are thrown into proximity.”

Essentially, Owens argues that feminists who believe women shouldn’t face discrimination in the military or sexual harassment are somehow hypocritical: “Are women ‘hear me roar’ Amazons, or are they fragile flowers who must be protected from ‘sexual harassment,’ encouraged to level the charge at the drop of the hat?”