UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY
THE ILLUSION OF GENDER
EN 101: COMPOSITION
SECTION 21 E
LTC SEAN D. CLEVELAND
BY
CADET COREY LESSER ’17, CO C1
WEST POINT, NEW YORK
8 OCTOBER 2013
____ MY DOCUMENT IDENTIFIES ALL SOURCES USED AND ASSISTANCE
RECEIVED IN COMPLETING THIS ASSIGNMENT.
____ I DID NOT USE ANY SOURCES OR ASSISTANCE REQUIRING
DOCUMENTATION IN COMPLETING THIS ASSIGNMENT.
SIGNATURE: ___________________________________________________________
Lesser 1
There is a quiet crisis in American society—a threat to American culture so subtle that it
has escaped widespread notice as it has for generations. Journalist Susan Faludi’s “The Naked
Citadel” calls this threat a “psychic and economic crisis point for manhood” (85). The past
several decades have witnessed a rise in American sexual experimentation and general confusion
surrounding the concept of gender. A desire to label gender has created a predicament of gender
ambiguity. Faludi uses the illusory pseudo-military trappings of The Citadel as a metaphor for
the similarly illusory trappings of gender classification. Gender is not simply a black and white
concept, but rather a complex performance based upon both environment and personality.
Society presents incorrect gender classifications as an unnecessary and unrealistic solution to the
problem of intolerance. Simply removing the societal boundaries of gender would solve the
aforementioned discrimination problem, replacing labels with a holistic concept of gender as a
performed part of identity.
The metaphor embodied by the Citadel Academy manifests in the antebellum appearance
and traditions of the quasi-military academy, culminating in the hyper-masculine behaviors of
the cadets. Faludi describes the campus scene as “hokey” and “childlike”, with “stage prop
artillery [and] toy soldiers [squaring their corners]” (82). Nearby residents and alumni of the
prestigious southern institution consider it “the last vestige of male bastionship” (101). Faludi
paints an image of an all-male antebellum university attended by crisp, clean-shaven cadets.
However, this is a misleading characterization. Women may attend the Citadel’s night classes,
accounting for seventy-seven percent of nighttime students. Though the institution seeks to
maintain an image of Southern gentry transforming into men, the real face of the Citadel is much
darker. Within its walls, the cadets offer a microcosm of the gender crisis, acting as a “barometer
of national anxieties” (87). Tellingly, she argues that the fourth-class cadets play the part of the
Lesser 2
female in the cadet hierarchy. The best “knob” maintains the cleanest room and most meticulous
uniform—qualities traditionally associated with women. They also suffer from a unique form of
“domestic violence” in the form of heavy abuse by upper classmen. In response to this, Faludi
claims “the bombast masks a deep insecurity about employment and usefulness in world where
gentleman soldiers are an anachronism” (85). The cadets exhibit such hyper-masculine traits
because they struggle to find their role within society. They over-perform the masculinity taught
at the Citadel to feel some sense of power over their environment. Faludi offers a truly shocking
gender dynamic when she visits a Charleston drag club, the Treehouse.
Upon speaking with the drag queens at this establishment, she discovers that eight of the
ten have dated cadets before. These relationships certainly seem to undermine the institution’s
obsessively crafted gentleman soldier image. An unnamed cadet reportedly told a drag queen,
“[y]ou’re more of a woman than a woman is” (107). Indeed, drag over-emphases either
masculinity or femininity to the extreme. Thus, the statement about a drag queen being “more
woman” is accurate; the performer has overemphasized everything society deems feminine. In
the 2006 film, She’s the Man, Amanda Bynes’ character participates in a sort of drag as she
impersonates her brother in order to get on the men’s soccer team. She over-emphasizes her
masculinity in order to become friends with the captain of the soccer team. Her performance as a
man influences her relationships with those around her and their reactions to her identity. In his
assessment of drag performance, Jay Senett defines drag as “a temporary, performed presentation
of the self” (40). Senett addresses whether this performance is all for show or a true
representation of the self within the shell of the physical body, noting:
“While drag may disturb our notions of gender and encourage slippage between
two gender identities, at its core drag performance relies on the existence of a
Lesser 3
permanent, fixed and biologically determined ‘body’ beneath the trappings of
drag. But what happens to our understanding of drag if we assume that the body is
not fixed, but is in fact constructed by performance and the audience expectations
of that performance?” (40)
It is questionable whether the drag queens dating cadets are men acting as women or
whether they truly see themselves as women. This question cuts to the heart of gender identity
confusion. It demonstrates the difficulty in mapping such identities to a set nomenclature because
the answer is different for each drag queen. It also raises the key distinction about whether the
physical being or the mind defines gender. In his compelling personal statement, Senett, a female
to male transgender, says, “[b]ut the me the world sees is not the me who sees the world. Don’t
get me wrong. I am a man…a white heterosexual man. Your eyes tell you that. My look is
unassailable. But am I man?” (44). Here, Senett makes the distinct difference between being a
man and being man, a distinction at the center of transgender identity crisis. Senett’s case
clarifies the incongruence of the concept of gender, cutting to the crux of the gender
classification problem.
The necessity to classify every different manifestation of gender lies at the heart of the
problem of American cultural understanding of gender. In her study on feminist theory and the
body, Janet Price claims that “all kinds of people, all kinds of identities, in other words, are
simply not accounted for in the taxonomies we live with” (126). Classification creates the
assumption that everyone must fit into a category. However, countless shades of grey accompany
the performance of gender, thus defying categorization. It is unrealistic to place boundaries and
labels on something as ephemeral as identity. Like identity, gender consists of a wide range of
factors and determinants, both the classifiable and the intangible. This plethora of characteristics
Lesser 4
makes accurate classification of gender next to impossible, thereby leading to segregation and
discrimination against various genders.
Some believe that the new classification of gender is nothing more than a scheme by
psychologists to further their own careers. This argument states that the rise in homosexuality
and trans-gender persons over the past half-century stems from the growth in psychological
taxonomy. Those men characterized in earlier centuries as simply more effeminate than most
become homosexual by psychology’s definition. Roman and Greek cultures favored male sexual
attention for pleasure, using women for purely procreative purposes. In this argument, varying
gender performances are nothing more than a ploy for attention. This argument is weak and
presents a clear post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. It argues that because the labels did not exist,
the traits of that gender performance did not exist—the rise of gender classification followed the
existence of gender confusion, therefore the categorization caused said confusion. Others may
present the arguments of hard science and biology, even resorting to the use of religion to
support the concept of only two genders. God is all-powerful; would He make such a mistake as
to accidentally place a woman in a man’s body? However, these arguments fail in the sense that
they rely on the out-dated definition of gender as a physical-biological state and an ad populum
appeal to some commonly shared religious beliefs. Neither of these arguments addresses the
concept of gender as a part of identity, simply dismissing gender as something controlled by
external forces.
When sexuality and gender comingle with the concept of identity, it appears less
reasonable to attempt labeling said characteristics. Steven Cohan claims, “[i]f our analyses are to
challenge dominant power structures, it is crucial we not allow masculinity to stand apart from
femininity, and imperative we not think about gender separately from sexuality, race, region,
Lesser 5
age, and class” (214). In order to break free of the current methodology of approaching gender
and sexuality, classification must not factor into the equation. Mexican American fathers see
gender far different than Jewish American fathers, “for masquerades change according to who is
looking, how, why, at whom” (Cohan 216). The definition of masculinity to a cadet at the
Citadel is very different from the definition of a similar young man attending University of
California Berkley. American popular culture suffers from a reliance on the hyper-masculine,
most notably in Hollywood, music, and professional sports. On this subject, Cohan writes, “[t]he
doubling and hyping of masculinity…only highlights how much masculinity, like femininity, is a
multiple masquerade” (224). These varying opinions and beliefs serve to emphasize the
definition of gender as an act, subject to over—and even under—performance. When seen in this
light, gender is impossible to distinguish from the other intangible factors of personality and
identity.
Pre-defined gender classification caused the current identity crisis facing the American
people; thus, it is clear that the solution to the problem of unnecessary classification lies in the
removal of such close-minded nomenclature. However, this may not offer the only solution, or
even fix the problem altogether. The gender identity crisis is coming to a head as societal
definitions of masculinity and femininity change. Stay at home fathers only account for 3.5% of
stay-at-home parents, and yet that number has more than doubled in the last decade (Ludden).
On the other hand, 24% of top executives of major corporations and 14% of CEO’s globally are
women (Serrafin). America faces a significant shift in gender and sexuality—a change that will
inevitably alter the face of the nation and conventional thoughts surrounding masculinity,
femininity, and everything in between.
Lesser 6
Works Cited
Buck, Emily, CDT C-1 ’15, assistance given in Writing Center on 16 September 2013 and 7
October 2013. Discussed specifically organization, style, weakness of conclusion, and
relevance of quotes.
Cohan, Steven, and Ina Rae. Hark. Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood
Cinema. London: Routledge, 1993. Print.
Faludi, Susan. “The Naked Citadel”. The New Humanities Reader, 4th ed. Ed Richard Miller and
Kurt Spellmeyer. Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012. 77-109. Print.
Lesser, Shawn, father, assistance given over the phone on 30 September 2013. Discussed a
counterargument to the thesis of the paper.
Ludden, Jennifer. "Stay-At-Home Dads, Breadwinner Moms And Making It All Work." NPR. 15
May 2013. Npr.org. National Public Radio. Web. 19 Sept. 2013
Potter, Edward T. "The Clothes Make the Man: Cross-Dressing, Gender Performance, and
Female Desire in Johann Elias Schlegel's Der Triumph Der Guten Frauen." The
German Quarterly 81.3 (2008): 261-82. Jstor. Web. 10 Sept. 2013.
Price, Janet, and Margrit Shildrick. Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader. New York:
Routledge, 1999. Print.
Sennett, Jay, and Sarah Bay-Cheng. "“I Am the Man!” Performing Gender and Other
Incongruities." Journal of Homosexuality 43.3-4 (2003): 39-48. 12 Oct. 2008. Web. 10
Sept. 2013.
Serafin, Tatiana. "C-Suite Sees More Female Leaders Reaching Top." Forbes. Forbes Magazine,
08 Mar. 2013. Web. 19 Sept. 2013
She’s the Man. Dir. Andy Fickman. Dreamworks, 2006. Film.