Skip to main content
Log in

Looking and Acting the Part: Gays in the Armed Forces — A Case of Passing Masculinity

  • Article
  • Published:
Feminist Legal Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Reference

  1. E. Kosofsky Sedgwick, The Epistemology of the Closet (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 7.

    Google Scholar 

  2. The Special Report from the Select Committee on the Armed Forces Bill [henceforth, HC Paper (1995–1996) No 143]. I also refer to previous quinquennial Armed Forces Bill Select Committee Reports, that is, HC Paper (1990–1991) No 179, and HC Paper (1985–1986) No. 170.

  3. Ministry of Defence’s Report of the Homosexuality Policy Assessment Team, February 1996, henceforth: HPAT 1996.

  4. R v. Ministry of Defence, ex parte Smith and other applicants [1995] 4 All E.R 427–453, henceforth R v. MoD [1995].

  5. Rv. Ministry of Defence, ex parte Smith and other appeals [1996] 1 All E.R. 257–275, henceforth R v. MoD [1996].

  6. S. Seidman, Difference Trouble (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 154

    Book  Google Scholar 

  7. L. Moran, The Homosexuality of Law (London & New York: Roudedge, 1996), 5.

    Google Scholar 

  8. This approach is developed from the work of various Queer Theorists such as Butler and Sedgwick (which will be referred to throughout the text) as well as Steven Seidman’s work especially his attempt to go beyond Queer Theory in his essays collected in his book Difference Troubles (supra n.7, at 4) and in his edited collection Queer Theory/Sociology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996). However I also owe a debt to authors who have introduced me to praxis in the form of engaged, ethical academic research/activism; for example: A. Bottomley & J. Conaghan, “Feminist Theory & Legal Strategy”, Journal of Law and Society 20/1 (1993), 1–5

    Google Scholar 

  9. L. Stanley, Feminist Praxis (New York & London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1990)

    Google Scholar 

  10. E.M. Schneider, “The Dialectics of Rights & Politics: Perspectives From the Women’s Movement”, in At The Boundaries of Law: Feminism & Legal Theory, ed. M.A. Albertson Fineman & N.S. Sweet Thomadsen (New York & London: Routledge, 1991), 301–319

    Google Scholar 

  11. M. Foucault & G. Delcuzc, “Intellectuals & Power: A Conversation Between Michel Foucault & Gilles Dcleuze”, in Michel Foucault: Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, ed. D.F. Bouchard (New York: Cornell University Press, 1977), 203–217.

    Google Scholar 

  12. E. Goffman, Asylums (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1962), 12.

    Google Scholar 

  13. This is presented here as a fear of a sexualising “look” from an embodied homosexual onlooker. However, because this could be described as being an example of scopophobia, a fear of being looked at, perhaps this alleged “look” could be more accurately described as a gaze, which is a more spectral, disembodied seeing. This distinction is made by both Kendal Thomas and Kaja Silverman: K. Thomas, “Shower/Closet”, Assemblage 20 (1993), 80–81

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. K. Silverman, Male Subjectivity at the Margins (New York: Routledge, 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  15. S.D. Westbrook, “The Potential for Military Disintegration”, in Conduct Effectiveness: Cohesion, Stress and the Volunteer Military, ed. S.C. Sarkesian (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1980), 244–278,251.

    Google Scholar 

  16. A.M. Smith, “A Symptomology of an Authoritarian Discourse”, New Formations 10 (1990), 41–65,49. One cannot but surmise that the unfixity of sexual orientation of a number of young recruits must result in “defences” against same-sex sexual expression occurring especially in the “special” non-privacy and intimacy of the Forces’ environment referred to above. Perhaps the demonization of the practice of homosexuality and concentration of this in the articulation of “the homosexual” figure, as in the discussion of homosociality (later in this paper), is one such mechanism. According to D.H.J. Morgan, “Theatre of War”, in Theorizing Masculinity, ed. H. Brod (London: Sage Publications, 1994), 165–182, at 167: it cannot be denied that this is indeed part of the story, “... especially where young men are coming to terms with or to an understanding of their own sexuality away from home and in the company of men...”.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Captain Lyons, HC Paper (1990–1991) No. 179, para. 631, 89.

  18. Rear Admiral Brown, HC Paper (1985–1986) No. 170, para. 669, 185.

  19. Hansard, Commons, 9 May 1996, col. 489.

  20. S. Hall, “Ethnicity: Identity and Difference”, Radical America 13/4 (1991), 9–20.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Hansard; Commons, 9 May 1996, col. 489.

  22. Cited in Weekly Hansard, Commons, 9 May 1996, col. 508.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Captain Lyons; HC Paper (1990–1991) No. 179, para. 622, 88.

  24. Lord Justice Simon Drown, R v. MoD [1995], at 439,427.

  25. HC Paper (1995–1996) No. 143, para 775,102.

  26. P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 82.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  27. K. Thewelict, Male Fantasies Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), 145.

    Google Scholar 

  28. M. Foucault, Discipline & Punish (London: Penguin Books, 1977).

    Google Scholar 

  29. Bourdieu, supra n.33, at 86.

  30. E. Goffman, Stigma (London: Pelican Books, 1968), 93.

    Google Scholar 

  31. I am indebted here to: Lauren Berlant’s essay, “National Brands/National Body: Imitation of Life”, in The Phantom Public Sphere, ed. B. Robbin (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 173–208, in which the material circumstances which contributed to successful racial passing are demonstrated.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Mr Cashman; HC Paper (1990–1991) No. 179, para. 717, 100.

  33. J. Butler, Bodies That Matter (New York: Routledge, 1993), 5.

    Google Scholar 

  34. J. Butler, “Gendering the Body: Beauvoir’s Philosophical Contribution”, in Woman, Knowledge & Reality, ed. A Garry (New York: Routledge, 1989), 253–262, 256.

    Google Scholar 

  35. M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkley: University of California Press, 1984), xix.

    Google Scholar 

  36. This has been observed by numerous authors; for example Hunt and Wickham: “... it should be noted that his attention to resistance is never as developed or as full as his analysis of power...”: A. Hunt & G. Wickham, Foucault and Law (London: Pluto, 1994), 17. However, as regards this Foucauldian over-theorisation of power, Colin Gordon describes Foucauldian power as composed of three elements: its discourses, its practices, and its effects. According to Gordon, these three elements never fit together or correspond C. Gordon, Michel Foucault Power/Knowledge (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980), 246–255. Therefore, implicit but not explicit in Foucauldian power are the conditions for resistance or subversions and “unintended consequences” (Hunt & Wickham: 1994, 29).

    Google Scholar 

  37. J. Ahearne, Michel de Certeau: Interpretation and Its Other (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 162.

    Google Scholar 

  38. J. Fornas, Cultural Theory and Late Modernity (London: Sage Publications, 1995), 59.

    Google Scholar 

  39. M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol I (London: Penguin Books, 1978), 101.

    Google Scholar 

  40. E. Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 1.

    Google Scholar 

  41. C. Stychin, “To Take Him ‘At His Word’: Theorizing Law, Sexuality and the US Military Exclusion Policy”, Social & Legal Studies 5/2 (1996), 179–200, 194.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. J. Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1963), 163.

    Google Scholar 

  43. J. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 65.

    Google Scholar 

  44. A.M. Smith, New Right Discourse On Race & Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 71.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  45. R. Gashe, The Tain of the Mirror (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 172–173.

    Google Scholar 

  46. S. Critchley, The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida & Levinas (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 15.

    Google Scholar 

  47. C. Douzinas & R. Warrington “The (Im)possible Pedagogical Politics of (the Law of) Postmodernism”, The Critical Lawyers’ Handbook, ed. I. Grigg-Spall & P. Ireland (London: Pluto, 1992), 31.

    Google Scholar 

  48. J. Terry, “Theorizing Deviant Historiography”, Differences 3/2 (1991), 55–75, 57.

    Google Scholar 

  49. A. Lingis, Foreign Bodies (New York: Routledge, 1994), 175.

    Google Scholar 

  50. P.D. Jacobson, “Sexual Orientation and the Military, Some Legal Considerations”, in Out in Force, ed. G.M. Herek (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996), 39–61,39.

    Google Scholar 

  51. J. Butler, Excitable Speech (New York, Routledge, 1997), 107.

    Google Scholar 

  52. Stychin, supra n.68, at 192. Carl Stychin is the author of Law’s Desire, (New York: Routledge, 1995). He is an avid advocate of Queer legal Theory, with an emphasis on “theory”. The focus of my discussion here is primarily his essay of 1996 supra n.68), which exemplifies what can be described as a Queer legal theoretical analysis of the US Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy.

  53. L. Bersani, Homos (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 4 & 5.

    Google Scholar 

  54. M. de Certeau, Heterologies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), 228.

    Google Scholar 

  55. W. Godzich, “Foreword”, in Heterologies, ed. M. de Certeau (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986), supra n.112, at xii.

    Google Scholar 

  56. H. McManners, “Army To Lift Ban On Gay Soldiers”, Sunday Times, 5 April 1998, 1.

    Google Scholar 

  57. M. Simpson, Male Impersonators (London: Cassell, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  58. A. Sinfield, “Foreword”, in Male Impersonators, ed. M. Simpson (London: Cassell, 1994), ix–xii, supra n.129, at xi.

    Google Scholar 

  59. D.A. Miller, “Anal Rope”, in Inside/Out, ed. D. Fuss (New York: Routledge, 1991), 119–141, 131.

    Google Scholar 

  60. L. Shawver, And The Flag Was Still There: Straight People, Gay People and Sexuality in the US Military (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995), 39.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Additional information

I would like to thank the following people for their various “involvements” with this paper: Andrew Cullis, Ann Cronin, Elena Loizidou, Rob Shields, Jonathan Cox, Scott Lash, Angela Mason and especially Leslie J. Moran.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

McGhee, D. Looking and Acting the Part: Gays in the Armed Forces — A Case of Passing Masculinity. Feminist Legal Stud 6, 205–244 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03359630

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03359630

Navigation