Camouflage Isn't Only for Combat: Gender, Sexuality, and Women in the Military

2. Amazons and Butterflies: Gender and the Military

2 2 2 2 2 AMAZONS AND BUTTERFLIES Gender and the Military If you’re too feminine, then you’re not strong enough to command respect and lead men into battle, but if you’re strong and aggressive you’re not being a woman. It’s like a double standard. —Captain, Air Force, lesbian The Acquisition of Gender There is little disagreement that the recognition of sex, and subsequently gender, is critical to the organization of daily life. Even the youngest of children are well aware of what constitute “girl things” and “boy things” and that knowing what and who fits where is critical. Small children are quick to question those who do not fit the rules. “Are you a boy?” a three-year-old asked a woman. When asked why he thought the woman was a boy, he responded, “Because she always wears pants.” A great many of the “rules” have changed. 26 Women wear pants, men have long hair, police “men” are women, nurses are men, and so on. Nonetheless, we still struggle to assign gender norms to many of the activities that govern our daily lives. For many years, and by many people even today, gendered behaviors were considered to be “natural” extensions of one’s sex, one’s status as females or males. Functionalism “explained ” that it made sense that women would provide the bulk of child care and men would be the breadwinners. Women, after all, did bear the children. Men, of course, were stronger and better suited to tackling the demands of labor. Although these arguments no longer dominate the discourse on gender, they are adhered to by some with great tenacity and continue to influence public debate over the roles of women and men in our society. Whether the argument is over reproductive rights or sexual harassment, notions of what is “natural” for women and men continue to shape our experiences, both publicly and privately . The continuing debate over the origin of gendered behaviors (i.e., nature vs. nurture) is evidence of this fact. Both academic research and popular culture continue to explore questions such as: Are boys “naturally” more aggressive than girls? Are girls “naturally” more nurturing than boys? Do differences in academic skills have their foundation in our biology ? And so on. Even with a definitive answer seemingly impossible , the quest goes on. Regardless of what research reveals, it seems clear that the answers we believe to be correct shape much of our perspective on the roles of women and men in society. This is especially so when the question is whether or not women can or AMAZONS AND BUTTERFLIES ■ 27 should fill the role of warrior. If women are the “caregivers” of society, should they be in a role that may require them to kill or be killed? If women are more nurturing, can they be expected to fill the military role successfully? Our beliefs about the naturalness of gender influence how we answer these questions. Throughout the twentieth century, women have struggled to eliminate barriers that blocked them from full participation in a number of settings. While this book focuses on the occupational setting of the military, it is virtually impossible to distinguish between the rules that govern who we are as women and men on any given job and those that define who we are when we are not on the job. The general rules about gender carry over to the workplace and structure what we experience there. The way in which specific occupations become gendered has been described as “sex-role spillover” (Gutek, Larwood, and Stromberg 1986). “Sex-role spillover” suggests that people endow a job with the sex-role expectations of the numerically dominant sex. When an occupation comes to be seen as “female ” or “male,” it is then easy to assume that one’s ability to do that work is somehow “natural.” A by-product of this perspective may be the assumption that those who are not “naturally ” suited are not, in fact, capable of doing the job at all. Male-dominated occupations not only affirm masculinity but become vested with cultural and psychological significance . “Jobs have mystiques, auras . . . attached to them that go well beyond the content of their tasks. Jobs bring their occupants prestige or dishonor, a sense of being manly or womanly . . .” (Epstein 1990: 91) Not only may occupations be28 ■ AMAZONS AND BUTTERFLIES come gendered because of who fills them...