It was a very difficult issue…. You had to be there at
the time. You had to hear from the troops…. from
the academy superintendants who had to try to
figure out how to accommodate this in very, very
close barracks life… where you tell people who are
going to be living with and sleeping in the same
room with, you had to hear from the families who
were concerned that this was going to affect our
whole base life. There was a whole agenda coming
in and it was not appropriate for that agenda to be
presented to us. You should have heard from our
chaplains who were having difficulty with this, so it
wasn’t just a matter of a bunch of old generals. It
was a difficult issue for us on one of the most
fundamental issues of human behavior, sexuality
[in] an organization that is designed for applying
the force of the state. . . (Colin Powell in 2008)
The country has changed tremendously in fifteen
years, and sure, review the policy.
…but at the same time, I’m not sure we should do
away with it.
--Colin Powell in 2008
• "I know that I have served with people
who are gay, I know that. They just didn't
say it. I didn't ask, and they didn't tell.
Okay? Let me also remind you, that the
foremost obligation of any president is to
preserve the nation's forces, and that's
to have the best possible military that
you can possibly have, and therefore,
policies concerning the military should
be tailored to one object and one object
only, and that is how we can best secure
our nation's security...and improve our
nation's defenses.”
• This is “not a civil rights issue.”
– Senator John McCain, July 2009 Air America
Interview
“The Time Has Come”
In testimony before the
Senate Armed Services
Committee, General Petraeus
said that he supported a
review of the military's Don't
Ask Don't Tell Policy
BUT, Petraeus also said that
eliminating DADT could
negatively impact military
function.
• retired U.S. general
John Sheehan says
Dutch troops failed to
defend against the
1995 genocide in the
Bosnian war because
the army was
weakened by the
inclusion of openly gay
soldiers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/18/john-sheehan-retired-usg_n_504992.html
• "Now is the time to write your
elected officials and chain of
command and express your
views. If those of us who are in
favor of retaining the current
policy do not speak up, there is
no chance to retain the current
policy.“
– Lt. General Benjamin Mixon, head of
U.S. Army Pacific in a letter published
in Stars and Stripes
• Gen. James Conway, commandant
of the Marine Corps, told the
Senate Armed Services Committee
in February that he opposes lifting
the ban on openly gay people
serving in the military.
—most senior military officer to
openly express his opposition
to repeal.
• "I would not ask our Marines to
live with someone who is
homosexual if we can possibly
avoid it. And to me that means we
have to build BEQs (bachelor
enlisted quarters) and have single
rooms."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/26/marine-corps-generaljame_n_515564.html
• "forced cohabitation" and
resulting "sexual tension ...
will hurt discipline and
morale.”
• "People are human, people
have sexual feelings and
they're not perfect. . .
Prejudice is wrong, but
feelings about sexuality are
different."
• if the law were repealed,
the number of HIV-positive
service members would
probably increase.
• “transgenders in the military.”
• gays would spread “HIV
positivity” through the ranks.
• “inappropriate
passive/aggressive actions
common in the homosexual
community”
• “forcible sodomy” and “exotic
forms of sexual expression”
• “a group of black lesbians
who decided to gang-assault”
a fellow soldier.
– Elaine Donnelly in testimony
before House Subcommittee in
July 2008
Race versus sexuality:
• I think that it is a different issue… I think
sexuality, and sexual preferences, in the
confines of barracks life is a different issue.
Will it ultimately be resolved….?
• What has changed?
• What hasn’t?
• Are possibilities for military inclusion greater
for gays and lesbians and for women than
they were seventeen years ago?
• Is military inclusion a valid and/or validating
aspiration?
History of debates about military
inclusion
• Military culture
• Sex-violence-masculinity
• Relationship of those concepts to state power as
institutionalized in the military
• The military has changed:
• repeal of DADT seems possible, if not likely
• Women occupy more positions in the military
• But, women and gays and lesbians is still conditional
• sexual harrassment and violence directed at female
and homosexual servicemembers continues
U.S. Military Today
• Fighting two wars
• All-volunteer force
• Challenges of recruitment and
retention
• Homosexual discharges have
fallen off since 2001
• Women are 15% of U.S. military
troops
• Who is allowed to serve?
• DADT Repeal
• Rising Reports of Sexual
Assault in the Military
Theorizing Citizenship
• Formal legal status (citizens/aliens)
• Different dimensions of belonging, recognition, and
participation in the nation state
– Social citizenship (TH Marshall) – civil or legal rights,
political rights, social rights
– Expansion of Marshall’s concept: economic or cultural
citizenship, consumer citizenship
• Brenda Cossman, Sexual Citizens : The Legal and Cultural
Regulation of Sex and Belonging, 2007.
• Citizenship as political engagement/obligation
(implies a normative ideal of citizenship)
• Citizenship as gendered, racialized and/or
sexualized in nature (exclusionary)
Citizenship as a
technology of governance
• Technologies of citizenship are “modes of
constituting and regulating citizens: that is,
strategies for governing the very subjects
whose problems they seek to redress.”
(Cruikshank, 1999, 2).
• Explores how different subjects are
constituted as members of the polity.
Sexual Citizenship
• A set of rights to sexual expression and
identity (builds on TH Marshall)
• Idea of belonging
• Privatization of political or democratic
engagement (Berlant 1997)
• A new politics of intimate or everyday life
(Plummer 2001)
Citizenship has always been sexed
• Scholars of sexuality explore ways in which
citizenship has been constituted through the
discourses of heteronormativity
– Citizenship has long been associated with
heterosexuality
– With its emphasis on either rights or political
participation in the public sphere, citizenship has
presupposed a highly privatized, familialized, and
heterosexual sexuality
“Sexual Strangers”
• Shane Phelan: sexual minorities are neither
enemies nor friends – they may be neighbors,
but they are ‘not like us.’ (Phelan, 29).
• This exclusion, this strangeness, this denial of
full political citizenship, Phelan argues, is “at
the core of contemporary American
understandings of common life.” (Phelan, 5)
Pitfalls of Inclusion
• disciplinary and normalizing nature of inclusion
(Berlant)
• Normalization is a strategy for inclusion in the
prevailing social norms and institutions of family,
gender, work, and nation.
• neutralizes the significance of sexual difference
and sexual identity
• “render[s] sexual difference a minor, superficial
aspect of a self who in every other way reproduces
the ideal of a national citizen.” (Steven Seidman,
1997, 324).
Now sexed differently:
• once private sphere of intimate life has been
politicized
• demands for civic inclusion by gays and
lesbians, women, and others has led to a
revision and expansion of the meaning of
citizenship
• issues once relegated to the private sphere are
themselves the proper subject of political
representation
Sexual citizenship is changing
• [H]eterosexuality no longer acts as a
preemptive bar to all forms of citizenship. Gay
and lesbian subjects have begun to cross the
borders of citizenship, unevenly acquiring
some of its rights and responsibilities and
performing some of its practices. They are in
the process of becoming citizens, a complex
and uneven process of crossing borders,
reconstituting the terms and subjects of
citizenship as well as the borders themselves.
• But sexual citizenship is about more than the
process of gays and lesbian subjects becoming
citizens. It is also about the process of straight
subjects becoming and unbecoming citizens.
• How do the sexual politics of the military
affect what Phelan calls “the core of
contemporary American understandings of
common life”?
• What is the relationship of the military to
gender and sexuality?
• And specifically, to gender and sexual
violence?
Military
•
•
•
•
•
•
Military as an exceptional institution
Military as a representative public institution
What is the place of privacy in the military?
What is the place of sexuality?
Relationship of military to civilian life
Relationship to gender difference:
protector/protected dynamic
• Who is qualified to speak about or regulate
military society?
• Has it changed to reflect increasing acceptance of
women and GLBTQ Americans in the broader society,
such that discriminatory military policies are
anachronistic and ripe for change?
• Is it just a few old-timers like John McCain who stand
in the way of more just and inclusive military?
• Or does It remain a crucial site for the installation and
conservation of heterosexual male dominance in
American society?
Tactical uses of gender and sexual
violence
•
•
•
•
Military academies
Abu Ghraib
DADT
Sexual harrassment on
the basis of gender and
sexual orientation are
rampant in the military
• Problems for women
reporting sexual assault
• Problems for gay men
and lesbians
Military Inclusion and Civil Rights
• Symbolic importance: military as “proving
ground” of citizenship and national belonging
• Means to attaining civic credibility for various
groups
• Practically, nation’s largest employer –
discrimination allowed or disallowed there
impacts many and has consequences for
broader society
Feminist critique
• Liberal, rights-based arguments in favor of
military inclusion are misguided
• Military is fundamentally masculinist and
misogynistic
• “The military is characterised by an inflated
and coercive masculinity.” (Sheila Jeffreys,
2007)
• Male soldiers are trained to kill on the basis that
they are men and that women are the ‘other’
against whom they can recognize themselves.
• Women are also . . . the ‘other’ that male soldiers
are to defend and die for.
• Even the motherland that they fight for is usually
gendered female
• Masculinity and the othering of women and
homosexuality, gendered female, are used in
training as soldiers are insulted with female
epithets.
(Sheila Jeffreys, 2007)
• According to a 2003 survey, 28 percent of women
using the Veterans Administration health care system
experienced at least one sexual assault during
military service.
• A 2005 study estimates that more than half of
women in the reserves and National Guard suffered
sexual assault or harassment during their service.
• DOD report, released 3/17/2009, found 2,923 sexual
assault "reports" in fiscal 2008, which is roughly an 8
percent increase compared to fiscal 2007.
• Sexual trauma, combined with combat trauma,
makes women more vulnerable to post-traumatic
stress disorder. (NPR report, 2007)
• "I am not focused on numbers right now," said Casey. "We
need to create an environment and culture which rejects
assault, where someone feels comfortable in coming forward
(to report assault)."
Casey said he believes by placing more visibility on sexual
harassment and assault, the problem will be fixed faster. By
using the Army structure in place, training can be pushed
down through the ranks.
"Every leader needs to see sexual assault as fundamentally
counter to the warrior ethos," said Casey. "It's all about
leadership and leaders setting the right examples."
• "Sexual assault not only hurts its victims
physically and emotionally, it tears at the
moral fiber that gives our Army, our team, its
strength," said Lt. Gen. Thomas P.
Bostick, deputy chief of staff of the Army for
personnel, G-1. "The crime of sexual assault is
fundamentally against our warrior ethos."
• Begun in 2008, the SHARP program held its first summit that
year,
• During the 2009 SHARP summit, former Secretary of the Army
Pete Geren explained why the Army is taking steps to reduce
the presence of sexual crimes.
"It's a problem that we in the Army are going to address
because in the Army we are different," Geren said last year.
"We're going to eradicate sexual assault from the life of our
Army, and we are going to do it because we are a valuesbased organization. That's what sets us apart from the rest of
society."
U.S. Army: I. A.M. Strong Campaign
Soldiers attending the BOSS conference came away understanding that preventing sexual assault is one of the highest priorities
of the Army's most senior leadership. Hearing it straight from the Army's top non-commissioned officer served to underscore
that point.
"As the Army moves out front in these efforts, I need you to ask yourself and each other, 'What can we do now to prevent sexual
assault?'" said Preston. "It's about bringing the team together, being a leader. Looking out for our fellow Soldiers and taking
them under your wing to keep them safe."
"Our Army values and the Warriors Ethos should make it a given," said Preston. "But to remind you and all our Army Soldiers, I
want to reinforce that it's your duty as a Soldier to:
INTERVENE:
"When you recognize a threat to a fellow soldier, I expect you to have the personal courage to INTERVENE and prevent sexual
assault. As a warrior and a member of a team, you must INTERVENE.
ACT:
"As a brother, a sister, a fellow Soldier, it is your duty to stand up for your battle buddies, no matter the time or place. Take
ACTION. Do what's right. Prevent sexual assault. ACT.
MOTIVATE:
"We are Soldiers, MOTIVATED to engage and keep our fellow Soldiers safe. It is our mission to prevent sexual assault and to live
the Army Values and take care of our fellow Soldiers. We are all MOTIVATED to take action, to promote SAPR programs and
become advocates within our communities. We are strongest...together."
Women in combat
• In the early 1990s, Congress lifted the ban on
women flying combat aircraft and serving on
combat ships
• women may not be assigned to ground
combat units.
• not allowed to serve in the infantry or as
special operations commandos.
• But women are serving in support units as
truck drivers, gunners, medics, military police,
helicopter pilots and more.
• In Iraq and Afghanistan, US troops are waging
war against guerrilla insurgency
• Enemy tactics includes use of improvised
explosive devices, mortar attacks, suicide
bombs and rocket-propelled grenades
• unpredictable nature of attacks blurs the
distinction between front-line and rear areas
• The extraction of sexual access to women through
superior power, higher status, means which do not
involve direct physical force or its threat, should be
understood as ‘sexual exploitation’.
• Interestingly, one significant form of torture at Abu
Ghraib was turning the Iraqi male prisoners into
women. One prisoner reported that ‘he was
threatened with rape by a U.S. soldier. “He drew a
picture of a woman on my back and made me stand
in a shameful position holding my buttocks,” he
said’ (Langton, 2004). In a workplace culture such as
this military prison it is hard to see how women
soldiers could achieve equal respect.
• Lynndie England reported one instance of
prisoners being degraded by being treated as
women, ‘Iraqi prisoners crawled over broken
glass wearing only sanitary towels, shamed
soldier Lynndie England said yesterday’(Crerar,
2004). Similar torture techniques, of
humiliating Muslim prisoners with the
uncleanliness of women, were employed at
the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in the
same time period. An Australian prisoner,
Mamdouh Habib reported that a prostitute
was told to stand over him and menstruate on
him
• Of the unrestricted reports, 2,061 involved men
assaulting women, up more than 10 percent
from 1,864 in 2008.
• The number of men reporting assaults by other
men also rose, to 173 in 2009 from 123 in 2008,
a 40 percent increase. There were 17 reports of
women being assaulted by women; there were
nine in 2008. Other categories remained little
changed: There were 252 reports in 2009 of
victims not knowing their assailants' gender,
compared with 255 in 2008. In 2009, there
were 13 reports of women assaulting men;
there were 14 in 2008.
Queer Critique
• Military enforces a model of citizenship that is
at odds with queer identity
• relegates sex to the realm of the private
• Inclusion runs risk of legitimating certain
segments of GLBTQ population (gay men and
lesbians) at the expense of transgender and
bisexual people
Citizenship and Military Obligation
• Military service as an
important marker of
citizenship
• Military as nation’s
largest employer
(fairness and
nondiscirmination)
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
• “Don't ask, don't tell"
passed by Congress in 1993.
Under the law, GLBT
members are allowed to
serve unless they:
-- Make a statement of their
sexuality , publicly or even to
family and friends (and are
later turned in)
-- Attempt to marry a person
of the same sex
-- Get caught engaging in a
homosexual act
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell at
http://hopesvoice.org/?p=1381
• Since "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" went into effect,
roughly 13,000 servicemen and women have
left the military because of the rule, reaching
a peak of 1,273 in 2001.
• The number has fallen as the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan increased the demand for troops.
Last year, 428 gay men and women left the
military, according to Defense Department
statistics.
• About 80 percent of those came forward
themselves and acknowledged they were gay.
The remaining 20 percent were brought to the
attention of commanders by a third party.
The DADT Digital Archive
Feminists Theorize the Military
• Military as a site for the
preservation of
heterosexual masculinity
• Protector/protected
distinction
• Sexual dimensions of
military culture
• Are these kinds of claims
still relevant given the
current composition of
the U.S. Armed Forces?
• The symbolic power of the U.S. military lies in the ease with which it ties
the archetypal and patriarchal role of protector (warrior) to the state
(motherland).
• Masculinity is foundational to the militarized protection myth.
• All military archetypes and actors are implicitly and explicitly measured by
their masculinity and their worth determined accordingly.
• The dominant military archetype. . . is the warrior hero.
• This archetype relies on and glorifies (hyper)masculinity, whiteness,
heterosexuality, moral and national superiority, and violence--all of which
are sanctioned during times of war.
• Not all masculine figures are entitled to be the warrior.
– almost exclusively white
– men of color can be the combatants but are denied legitimacy as a warrior
representing the U.S. state
– the warrior hero is the antithesis of that which is feminine.
• the military is characterized by an inflated and
coercive masculinity
• this helps to explain why there is a serious
problem of sexual violence in the US military
from male soldiers towards their female
counterparts.
• Masculinity is central to the basic enterprise of the
military… Male soldiers are trained to kill on the basis that
they are men and that women are the ‘other’ against
whom they can recognize themselves. Women are also
offered as the ‘other’ that male soldiers are to defend and
die for. Even the motherland that they fight for is usually
gendered female (Yuval-Davis, 1997).
• Masculinity and the othering of women and homosexuality,
gendered female, are used in training as soldiers are
insulted with female epithets.
• This masculinity is deliberately created by militaries
through the provision of prostitution and pornography
which enable men to ‘other’ women and understand
themselves as masculine.
Abu Ghraib
•
•
Interestingly, one significant form of torture at Abu Ghraib was turning the Iraqi
male prisoners into women. One prisoner reported that ‘he was threatened with
rape by a U.S. soldier. “He drew a picture of a woman on my back and made me
stand in a shameful position holding my buttocks,” he said’ (Langton, 2004). In a
workplace culture such as this military prison it is hard to see how women soldiers
could achieve equal respect. When the prisoners were not being humiliated by
being treated as women they were treated as dogs, an equally abased category.
Thus one prisoner said, ‘they forced us to walk like dogs. We had to bark like a dog
and if we didn't, they started hitting us’ (Langton, 2004).
Lynndie England reported one instance of prisoners being degraded by being
treated as women, ‘Iraqi prisoners crawled over broken glass wearing only sanitary
towels, shamed soldier Lynndie England said yesterday’(Crerar, 2004). Similar
torture techniques, of humiliating Muslim prisoners with the uncleanliness of
women, were employed at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in the same time
period. An Australian prisoner, Mamdouh Habib reported that a prostitute was
told to stand over him and menstruate on him (Habib, 2005).
Women in Today’s Military
• distinctions between combatants
and noncombatants blurry
• definitions of combat have
evolved to serve military ideology
and political purposes at the
expense of gender equity and/or
equality.
• female soldiers of all races and
ethnicities are serving in combat
zones even though they are in
noncombat roles.
• Thus, women are participating "in
the line of fire" without those in
power incurring the political
consequences of making that
service into an explicit policy.
• The "military's privileged
position makes it ... a
fundamental site for the
construction of gender,
that is, the defining of the
boundaries of behavior-indeed, of life possibilities
for people we call men
and women" (p. 5).
Weinstein and D'Amico
(1999)
• Combat exclusion
results in “the
institutionalization of a
two-class system that
legitimizes the glass
ceiling and furthers the
chasm between the
female-noncombatant
and the male-warrior.”
• "Without the concept of
'women' as social
inferiors from whom the
male soldiers must
differentiate themselves
by their actions, the male
soldier might have no
founding myth to hang
onto, no rationale"
Sheila Jeffreys, 2007,
p. 18
Military Women in “Double Jeopardy”
•
•
•
•
“Women in the military are in double
jeopardy" from enemy attack and the
repeated use of gendered violence (i.e.,
rape), harassment (i.e., routine scrutiny,
rumors, sabotage), and intimidation by those
allegedly on their side (p. 16).
Violence towards women is not confined to
the body; also discursive: "They called you a
'pussy' all the time ... or a fucking little girl"
(Faludi, 1999, pp. 145-146).
Female soldiers of all races and ethnicities
experience gender stereotyping, ridicule,
ostracism, and a lack of mentorship
opportunities in the U.S. military.
Thus, femininity is devalued and women are
subordinate and objectified while male
camaraderie is reified through women's
marginalization.
• “To begin to un-gender the
military, we have to recognize
that we must also examine
and undo other social
hierarchies that intertwine
with, support, and maintain
the current gender divisions"
D'Amico & Weinstein, 1999, p.
260
• Economically disadvantaged
women and women of color
are disproportionately
recruited and subsequently
placed in low paying support
positions in the military.
Should women pursue equal
opportunity in the military?
• However, in the case of the military, there is little evidence so far of
changed cultural attitudes towards women as a result of the entry of
women.
• In Iraq 15% of US soldiers are women (Leonard, 2004). The US military has
been encouraging women's participation in the military because of a
serious need for numbers. It is not equal opportunities that fuels this
drive. But the numbers have not created greater safety for women. Indeed
it is the large presence of women in the military that is being blamed by
some for the sexually violent behaviour of the male soldiers. The fact that
there are so many women and that a woman was in charge of the military
prison at Abu Ghraib, has been used as evidence for the idea that women
harm morale and order (Marquez, 2004). One newspaper article
suggested that in the case of Abu Ghraib it was the presence of women in
the military police that encouraged the ‘obscene misbehaviour that the
photos reveal’ (Leonard, 2004 Mary Leonard, Abuse raises gender issues,
Boston Globe (2004, May 16).Leonard, 2004).
•
The presence of women does not seem to have alleviated misogynist attitudes. It
may be that it is the very presence of women that is creating the wave of rape of
women soldiers with which the US military is now faced. The male soldiers may be
acting out of resentment of the intrusion of women into their male enclave and
against such unnatural situations as having women officers (Miller, 1997). The
Miles Foundation sees its role as changing military culture to discourage the rape
of women soldiers. They seek better definitions of rape in military justice systems,
greater willingness to believe women when they report, and support for the
women rather than hastened discharge. Their campaign is based on the
assumption that it is possible to change the military. But this raises the question of
whether it is possible to create an effective military, that is one in which soldiers
are prepared to kill persons they do not know and with whom they have no
quarrel, without masculinity. A military without masculinity may be unrecognizable
and may not be capable of aggressive warfare where there is no reasonable cause.
Equal opportunities for women right now, however, in militaries that are founded
in the degradation of women, does not look like an achievable goal. If aggressive
masculinity is the necessary foundation of the military rather than being an
unfortunate hangover of patriarchy, then women cannot be equal in this
institution.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal
• “American society has
changed tremendously
in the last fifteen years.”
-Colin Powell, Jr.
Reviewing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
• What was the rationale
for the policy in 1993?
• Who has been affected?
• Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in
practice
• Rate of discharge has
dropped off since 2001
• Policy problematic in
light of recruitment and
retention challenges
Opposition to Repeal
•
"This successful policy has been in
effect for over 15 years, and it is well
understood and predominantly
supported by our military at all
levels," McCain said. "We have the
best-trained, best-equipped, and
most professional force in the history
of our country, and the men and
women in uniform are performing
heroically in two wars. At a time
when our Armed Forces are fighting
and sacrificing on the battlefield, now
is not the time to abandon the
policy.“
Sen. John McCain, March 2010
•
Military command
Public and Private Dimensions of
Sexual Citizenship
• Military as representative
public institution
• Need to respect privacy of
heterosexual troops
• Enforcement of privacy of
homosexual troops
• Double standard on public
expression of sexual
preference
• The threat of “outing” and its
implications for public/private
debate
• Berlant and Warner: public sex
Arguments against Repeal
•
Heterosexuals . . . will be required to live in forced cohabitation with professed (not discreet) homosexuals, on all
military bases and ships at sea, on a 24/7 basis.
•
Such a policy would impose new, unneeded burdens of sexual tension on men and women serving in highpressure working conditions, far from home, that are unlike any occupation in the civilian world.
•
Repealing the 1993 law would be tantamount to forcing female soldiers to cohabit with men in intimate quarters,
on all military bases and ships at sea, on a 24/7 basis. Stated in gender-neutral terms, forced cohabitation in
military conditions that offer little or no privacy would force persons to live with persons who might be sexually
attracted to them.
•
Inappropriate passive/aggressive actions common in the homosexual community, short of physical touching and
assault, will be permitted in all military communities, to include Army and Marine infantry battalions, Special
Operations Forces. Navy SEALS, and cramped submarines that patrol the seas for months at a time.
•
The ensuing sexual tension will hurt discipline and morale.
•
Individuals whose beliefs and feelings about sexuality are violated by the new policy will have no recourse.
•
Forced cohabitation with homosexuals in the military, 24/7, would be unfair, demoralizing, and harmful to the
culture of the volunteer force, on which our national security depends.
•
We are talking about human sexuality and the normal, human desire for personal privacy and modesty in sexual
matters.