Abstract
The chapter contrasts mechanisms of exclusion documented in the military’s self-representations over the past five decades with changes that would be required to degender the military’s regime of heteromale privilege. It considers possible effects of technological developments, such as drones and other “unmanned” aerial strategies, which suggest forms of service no longer predicated upon military masculinity. High-tech modes of engagement should eliminate barriers for women that have been grounded in stereotypes about women’s “weakness,” removing the centrality of physical strength from warfare. Yet my examination of military self-representations suggests that technological developments alone will not degender the military. The military’s responses to women’s continuing struggle to attain equal opportunities and treatment within the armed services suggests that far more must be changed to reconstruct the U.S. military as a gender-inclusive organization. The chapter identifies the kinds of institutional transformation that would be required to “degender” the U.S. military.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Goldstein (2001) includes “ecofeminism” as part of “difference feminism” “because it begins from radical connectedness” (47).
- 2.
In particular, see Chap. 4, “Violated Bodies: Combat Injuries and Sexual Assault in the U.S. Military.”
- 3.
In particular, see Chap. 6, “Gender and Military Recruitment Since the Lifting of the Combat Ban.”
- 4.
Daggett (2015) offers a similar argument suggesting discursive measures have attempted to secure and stabilize the “disorientation” produced by death through drones but that they have not yet been able to do so “reliably” (361).
- 5.
See Daggett (2015) on the importance of the distance/proximity frame (referred to as distance-intimacy binary by Daggett) as one of two main axes of reference that makes war intelligible, and through which drone warfare as a form of war becomes unintelligible through its inability to “fit” traditional axes of framing.
- 6.
Though used by Haraway’s Manifesto of Cyborgs (1985/1991), I borrow this phrase to hone in on Haraway’s eloquent explanation of “fracturedness.” Unintelligible matters, such as the atrocities associated with war, are arguably unintelligible because they are fractured, requiring calibrated parameters or boundaries, or “axes” as Daggett (2015) writes, through which they are discursively made to make sense.
- 7.
It is also worth considering how other forms of militarized masculinity fare if drone warfare has difficulty calibrating with the military’s hegemonic version of militarized masculinity. Does drone warfare bring forth the possibility of another form of military service, one which rejects gendered conceptualization of service from ascending above the masculine warrior through the relationship it produces between the soldier and machine? The previous chapter, for example, suggests that the Air Force, in particular, has been heavily promoting and advancing a technology-driven depiction of military service in its social media recruitment material. In theory, technological developments should give us cause for optimism. Cyborgs—as originally imagined by Haraway (1985/1991)—may provide the possibility for removing gender, or rendering gender irrelevant from warfare all together. But Manjikian (2014) argues that military technology and narratives are building “super soldiers” instead of cyborgs. Through this narrative, drone operators are positioned as “controlling technology” as opposed to being controlled or dependent on it. Instead, the relationship between the soldier and technology mimics narratives associated with “ways in which man has traditionally utilized and subdued nature and thus, in this way reinforcing a binary distinction between that which dominates and that which is dominated” (Manjikian 2014, 56 referencing Kaplan 1994). Perhaps not surprisingly then, my assessment of Air Force recruiting posts on Facebook echoes a favoritism for positioning techno-based military service as that which is most suitable for male recruits and which can be mapped onto understandings of masculinity. In particular, the technocentric messages produced and disseminated by the branch work diligently to disassociate notions of military valor, honor, and prestige as being that which can primarily be achieved as a result of sacrifices (bodily maiming, injury, or death) made in or in proximity to combat environments by recalibrating (acceptable) performances of masculinity as being those which display control over robotic technologies that enter combat war theaters on their behalf. Militarized masculinity conducted from afar, as a way to try to advance claims that valor and prestige can be achieved without necessitating the risk of loss of limbs or bodily mutilation from serving in combat.
- 8.
Though used with increased frequency, drone warfare should not be thought of as new. As a tool of foreign policy, the United States has used contemporary versions of unarmed drones since 2000 specifically in relation to the surveillance of the nation of Afghanistan, and weaponized unmanned drones since the 9/11 attacks on the United States, and the resulting, subsequent policies of the George W. Bush administration.
- 9.
The Air Force has, however, worked toward providing mental health support to drone operators since 2017. In particular, the branch has brought in physicians and psychologists to work together with chaplains counseling operators. See McCammon (2017).
- 10.
In February of 2013, then Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, created the “Distinguished Warfare Medal”—more colloquially known as the “Nintendo Medal”—to honor service members participating in combat operations from remote stations. The medal was particularly favored by the Air Force, the primary military branch to engage in and operate drone and other autonomous aerial forms of warfare for the military. The Air Force hoped that recognizing the service of drone operators through the medal program would help retain them despite serious “burn out” rates. Instead, the medal was eradicated just a few weeks later at the request of the new, incoming Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel. After a subsequent two-year review, the Pentagon rolled out a new form of recognition for drone operations, a quarter-inch sized “R” (“Remote”) pin that could be added to any non-combat related award medal (Tilghman 2016).
References
Acker, J. 1992. From Sex Roles to Gendered Institutions. Contemporary Sociology 21 (5): 565–569.
Bayard de Volo, L. 2016. Unmanned? Gender Recalibrations and the Rise of Drone Warfare. Politics & Gender 12 (1): 50–77.
Belkin, A. 2012. Bring Me Men: Military Masculinity and the Benign Façade of American Empire, 1898–2001. New York: Columbia University Press.
Brown, M.T. 2012. Enlisting Masculinity: Gender and Recruitment of the All-Volunteer Force. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burke, C. 2002. Women and Militarism. Accessed February 20, 2006. http://wilpf.smilla.li/wp content/uploads/2012/10/Unknownyear_Women_and_Militarism.pdf.
Clark, L.C. 2018. Grim Reapers: Ghostly Narratives of Masculinity and Killing in Drone Warfare. International Feminist Journal of Politics 20 (4): 602–623. Published Online.
Cohn, C. 2000. ‘How Can She Claim Equal Rights When She Doesn’t Have to Do as Many Pushups as I Do?’ The Framing of Men’s Opposition to Women’s Equality in the Military? Men and Masculinities 3 (2): 131–151.
Connell, R.W. 1987. Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Daggett, C. 2015. Drone Disorientations: How ‘Unmanned’ Weapons Queer the Experience of Killing in War. International Feminist Journal of Politics 17 (3): 361–379.
Department of Defense. 2019. DoD Personnel, Workforce Reports & Publications – Table of Active Duty Females by Rank/Grade and Service. Published April 2019. Accessed June 27, 2019. https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/dwp/dwp_reports.jsp.
Duncanson, C., and R. Woodward. 2015. Regendering the Military: Theorizing Women’s Military Participation. Security Dialogue 47 (1): 3–21.
Eichler, M. 2014. Militarized Masculinities in International Relations. Brown Journal of World Affairs 21 (1): 81–93.
Enloe, C. 1983. Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women’s Lives. Boston: South End Press.
———. 1990. Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
———. 2000. Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
———. 2002. Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ferguson, K., and P. Turnbull. 1999. Oh, Say, Can You See? The Semiotics of the Military in Hawai’i. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
Francke, L.B. 1997. Ground Zero: The Gender Wars in the Military. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Goldstein, J. 2001. War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Greenwald, G. 2012. Bravery and Drone Pilots. Salon. Accessed September 20, 2016.
Haraway, D.J. 1985/1991. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, 149–181. New York: Routledge.
———. 2017. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Old Saybrook, CT: Tantor Media.
Holmqvist, C. 2013. Undoing War: War Ontologies and the Materiality of Drone Warfare. Millennium – Journal of International Studies 41 (3): 535–552.
Hooper, C. 2001. Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kaplan, L.D. 1994. Woman as Caretaker: An Archetype that Supports Patriarchal Militarism. Hypatia 9 (2): 123–133.
Kronsell, A. 2012. Gender, Sex and the Postnational Defense: Militarism and Peacekeeping. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kunashakaran, S. 2016. Un(wo)manned Aerial Vehicles: An Assessment of How Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Influence Masculinity in the Conflict Arena. Contemporary Security Policy 37 (1): 31–61.
Levy, Y. 1997. How Militarization Drives Political Control of the Military: The Case of Israel. Political Power and Social Theory 11: 103–133.
Lorber, J. 2000. Using Gender to Undo Gender: A Feminist Degendering Movement. Feminist Theory 1 (1): 79–95.
———. 2005. Breaking the Bowls: Degendering and Feminist Change. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Lutz, C. 2002. Making War at Home in the United States: Militarization and the Current Crisis. American Anthropologist 104 (2): 723–735.
Manjikian, M. 2014. Becoming Unmanned: The Gendering of Lethal Autonomous Warfare Technology. International Feminist Journal of Politics 16 (1): 48–65.
Martin, Rachel. 2011, December 18. Report: High Levels of ‘Burnout’ in U.S. Drone Pilots. NPR. Accessed March 21, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2011/12/19/143926857/report-high-levels-of-burnout-in-u-s-drone-pilots.
McCammon, S. 2017, April 24. The Warfare May Be Remote But the Trauma Is Real. NPR. Accessed March 27, 2019. https://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525413427/for-drone-pilots-warfare-may-be-remote-but-the-trauma-is-real.
Press, Eyal. 2018. The Wounds of the Drone Warrior. The New York Times. Accessed March 27, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/magazine/veterans-ptsd-drone-warrior-wounds.html.
Tilghman, A. 2016, January 6. DoD Rejects ‘Nintendo Medal’ for Drone Pilots and Cyber Warrior. Military Times. Accessed February 15, 2019. https://www.militarytimes.com/2016/01/06/dod-rejects-nintendo-medal-for-drone-pilots-and-cyber-warriors/.
UN Women. 2016. Gender Mainstreaming. Accessed February 15, 2019. http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/gendermainstreaming.htm.
Wilcox, L. 2017. Drones, Swarms, and Becoming-Insect: Feminist Utopias and Posthuman Politics. Feminist Review 116 (1): 25–45.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Szitanyi, S. (2020). Conclusion: The Challenge of Degendering the Military. In: Gender Trouble in the U.S. Military. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21225-4_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21225-4_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-21224-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-21225-4
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)