Washington ? Maybe he was right to compare sexual assaults in the military to “friendly fire.” Last week, an advocate for victims, Scott Berkowitz, told a panel of investigating congresswomen that “while these friendly fire attacks leave no trail of blood, they leave many damaged souls in their wake.” No doubt about it.

But “friendly fire” is the chosen term for a tragic mistake. It’s what we say when one soldier is hurt by another … accidentally.

Sexual assault is, however, no accident. Certainly not the kind of assault reported by 129 female soldiers in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Bahrain. Not the kind experienced by about 3 percent of all military women in 2002.

These are intentional attacks. Women trained to fight for their country found themselves in a retro battle of the sexes.

Such stories told by female soldiers are reminders of the hot spots where women can get caught between time zones and images. On the one hand, military women are on the cutting edge of equality, recruited to be anything they wanted to be. On the other hand, they became something they didn’t want to be: victims.

Of course, this is not just a military story. It echoes on other playing fields of change.

Just a few weeks before the panel met in Washington, I was in Boulder, Colo. On the front page of the newspaper that morning was a dramatic photograph of the University of Colorado’s women’s basketball team. On the same page, there was yet another chapter in the endless sex scandal swirling around the university and its football team.

The main street in town has a store named “Title 9.” The president of the university is a woman. There is a strong women’s athletic program as well. But on the same campus there are ongoing reports of football recruits being wooed with sexual favors.

Seven women have said they were sexually assaulted by players or recruits since 1997. Three have filed federal lawsuits claiming the university’s hostile atmosphere contributed to the attacks.

Indeed as an uncomfortable example of this duality, one sports pioneer, Katie Hnida — the first female place kicker — also says she was assaulted by a teammate. Friendly fire? Football coach Gary Barnett dismissed her charge with disparaging comments about her playing — “It was obvious Katie was not very good” — as if one related to the other. Friendly fire chief?

Joanna Starek, a former Division I swimmer who now teaches women’s studies at the university, said over coffee, “This is where the world is. Athletics is one of the most empowering things, a space where there’s been real movement for women. And on the other side of athletics is a male-dominated bastion of power.” The same can be said of the armed forces.

Everywhere, it seems, a new culture of empowerment coexists and clashes with a old subculture of abuse. The momentum toward equality pulls against the undertow of a familiar hierarchy.

As a partial explanation, Starek said that when women push their way onto male turf, some men push back. Last year, at the nearby Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, it was revealed that women cadets on their way to becoming the fighting elite faced sexual harassment as if it were just another hurdle.

But most of what is happening shows a society in uneven transition, with mixed messages in confusing stereo. The conflicting realities affect young women especially. “These young women have grown up with feminism like fluoride in the water,” said Starek of her students, “but the institutions have not necessarily changed.” Things have moved so far for the “post-feminist” generation, she adds, that “it’s sometimes hard for them to believe it (assault) could still happen. But it does happen. “

Today we are pushed and pulled. Women in the military take their case to Capitol Hill. But rape is still the most underreported violent crime, and women soldiers are still reluctant to report assault because they fear being victimized twice or having careers ruined.

Many women in college resent being held responsible for not getting raped. But many are also vulnerable to self-blame, and others still believe that a woman who drinks with the football team has said “yes” to the football team.

Living in the crosshairs of old and new ideas, in the cacophony of these mixed messages, it is all the more remarkable when women take on retro institutions, whether alma mater or military. They push forward and, of course, they remind us that the fire that wounded them was not friendly.

Ellen Goodman is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.