Abstract
In recent decades, LGBT inclusion in the military has increased rapidly, with many countries eliminating bans against the LGBT service. The Armed Forces interact with the values of the societies they serve and the so-called “power of identity” does not exclude the armed forces. So LGBT people want to exert their right to enter any position in the military. These changes have raised questions on the suitability of LGBT people to serve and on the effects of their service on the armed forces. Without neglecting a historical overview, this chapter discusses some aspects connected with LGBT issues in military life: the effects of their presence on the effectiveness and on the high standards of morale and duty, good order and discipline, loyalty and cohesion. The chapter also underlines how full military inclusion for transgender service members hasn’t been accomplished yet and how a number of prejudices and forms of LGBT-phobia still exist today.
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Notes
- 1.
In use since the 1990s, the term LGBT (enlargement of the initialism LGB) has become mainstream as a self-designation and has been adopted by the majority of sexuality and gender identity based community centers and media in the United States and some other English-speaking countries. The initialism LGBT is intended to emphasize a diversity of sexuality and gender identity-based cultures. And is sometimes used to refer to anyone who is non-heterosexual or non-cisgender instead of exclusively to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Transgender people is a collective term that describes individuals whose sexual identity and/or sexual expression partly or always differs from the norm of the sex that they have been assigned at birth. The term includes transsexuals, intersex persons, transvestites and other gender variant people. Only transsexuals people undergo hormone therapy and surgery (sex-reassignment) in order to change his/her physical sex. LGBT initialism is controversial: some argue that transgender and transsexual causes are not the same as that of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people (LGB) whose issues can be seen as a matter of sexual orientation or attraction while transgender and trans-sexuality have to do with gender identity, or self-understanding of being or not being a man or a woman heedless of sexual orientation.
- 2.
Historical records propose that Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon were all either homosexual or bisexual (Humphrey 1990); in his relationship with Nicomedes of Bithynia Caesar was believed to have had the passive role.
- 3.
For example, Burg’s (2002) attempts to examine the nature of homosexuality in western military history has been criticized by many.
- 4.
Some Greek philosophers wrote on the issue of homosexuality in the military. In Plato’s Symposium, Phaedrus commented on the power of male sexual relationships to improve bravery in the military.
- 5.
Plutarch—in his Parallel lives. The Life of Pelopidas—is the source of the most substantial surviving account of the Sacred Band of Thebes.
- 6.
The Templar’s Order—officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church around 1129—was among the most wealthy and powerful of the Western Christian military orders. The organization existed for nearly two centuries during the Middle Ages and was a greatest skilled fighting units of the Crusades. Non-combatant members of the Order built fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land and managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, innovating financial techniques that were an early form of banking. In France, in 1307, many of the Order’s members were imprisoned, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake. The Pope Clement V, under pressure from Philip V, disbanded the Order in 1312 (Barber 1978, 1994).
- 7.
The French Foreign Legion, established in 1831, was exclusively created for foreign nationals willing to serve in the French Armed Forces. As its personnel come from different countries with different cultures, the Foreign Legion needs not only military skills but also a strong esprit de corps as a way to strengthen them enough to work as a team. So Legio Patria Nostra (The Legion is our Fatherland) is the motto of the Foreign Legion.
- 8.
UK armed forces banned gay personnel from serving until a European Court of Human Rights ruling in 2000.
- 9.
Although women constituted only about 2% of military personnel, in making his book Bérubé interviewed 71 people who served in World War Two, of which 8 were women.
- 10.
For further discussion on the distinctive features of military culture, see chapter Military Culture by J. Soeters, in section IV of this volume.
- 11.
The traditional warrior models exclude not only women, but also ethnic minorities from their symbolic representation (for example, Dandeker and Mason 2001).
- 12.
Masculinity is a gender process—usually associated with the male sex—that shapes gender relations and personal identities. Men are most often held to—and judged by—their culture’s current standards of masculinity. Gendered expectations are fixed into social relationships and institutions, and influence the way individuals understand each other and live in society. Social scientists examine the role of masculinity in regulating gendered norms and interactions. Masculinity has been problematized by many scholars in the field of “men’s studies”, challenging the idea that it has a “core” or an “essence” because it is influenced by the ethnicity, “race”, disability, religion, age and class; as such, gender may not always be the primary base of identity (Brod 1987; Brod and Kaufman 1994; Petersen 2003).
- 13.
The concept of “machismo” typically, but not only, dominates the Latino culture.
- 14.
The importance of military uniforms in the gay imagery is witnessed by the fact that gay military associations have more than once asked for permission to walk in gay-pride parades wearing uniforms.
- 15.
A detailed explanation of LGBT Military Index is provided in “Index Methodology” (Polchar et al. 2014, p. 89). To access the complete LGBT Military Index visit www.lgbtmilitaryindex.com.
- 16.
The primary data source for the estimates of transgender military service is the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), which was conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality (Grant et al. 2011).
- 17.
According to American Psychiatric Association (2013) the gender dysphoria is the experience of an enduring and profound conviction that the sex assigned at birth does not match the self-identified gender. Elders et al. (2015 p. 203) report that «in the newest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5), a comprehensive classification of psychological conditions and mental disorders that reflects the most up-to-date medical understandings, gender identity disorder has been replaced with gender dysphoria, a diagnostic term that refers to an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and the physical gender that they were assigned at birth, and to clinically significant distress that may follow from that incongruence. While gender identity disorder was pathologized as an all-encompassing mental illness, gender dysphoria is understood as a condition that is amenable to treatment».
- 18.
In their study, Elders et al. (2015) analyzing US Defense Department regulations and considering a wide range of medical data, conclude that there is no compelling medical reason for the ban on service by transgender personnel, that the ban is an unnecessary barrier to health care access for transgender personnel, and that medical care for transgender individuals should be managed using the same standards that apply to all others.
- 19.
On the link between social cohesion and motivation in combat see MacCoun et al. (2005).
- 20.
Kristin Beck (born Christopher Beck), former United States Navy SEAL, gained public attention in 2013 when she came out as a trans woman. She published her memoir in June 2013, Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy SEAL’s Journey to Coming out Transgender detailing her experiences. Beck served for twenty years in the U.S. Navy SEALs before her transition and took part in seven combat deployments. Beck was a member of a special counter-terrorism unit and received multiple military awards and decorations, including a Bronze Star with Combat Distinguishing Device and a Purple Heart. A similarly high decorated soldier (Star with Combat Distinguishing Device and a Purple Heart) was Leonard Matlovich, a Wietnam war veteran. Despite his twelve years of exemplary service, despite his amazing performance ratings, despite his military medal and decoration and his shrapnel wounds, the Air Force demanded his discharge. Matlovich was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays and a famous gay men in America in the 1970s. His photograph appeared on the cover of the September 8, 1975, issue of Time magazine, making him a symbol for gay and lesbian service members.
- 21.
In the Unites States the psychiatry’s determination of homosexuality as a mental illness shifted the military’s focus from the sexual act to the individual, thus during many years the screening procedures deemed homosexuality as a personality type that was unfit for military service (Bérubé 1990).
- 22.
After many years of the British Army admitting transsexuals, in January 2015, official news arrived that captain Hannah Winterbourne underwent a sex-change (male-to-female) operation. Captain Winterbourne continues serving the British Army and has no intention to be discharged. The novelty is that until that date only soldiers or petty officers had openly reported about their experience.
- 23.
Until then transgender personnel remained unable to serve openly and continued to be barred from service by military medical policies (Kerrigan 2012; Harrison-Quintana and Herman 2013). These medical policies set up exclusions for what are deemed to be “psychosexual disorders,” counting trans-sexualism, cross-dressing or a history of gender transition (Witten 2007). Transgender people who desired to join the US armed forces were prohibited from doing so if their transgender status was known.
- 24.
- 25.
When discussing military regulations, very often the family is overlooked or forgotten about, but it is important to remember that many homosexual and transgender troops are married and/or have children. On military family see chapter Military Families: A Comparative Perspective, by Karin Modesto De Angelis, David G. Smith and Mady W. Segal, in section IV of this volume.
- 26.
In the last years, the situation has been slowly changing; the Department of Defense’s extension of certain military “additional benefits” to same-sex spouses—which are not explicitly prohibited under the Defense of Marriage Act—was announced in addition to “member-designated benefits” which were already available to same-sex spouses. In June 2013, the Pentagon announced plans to begin issuing identification cards to the same-sex partners of service members, which will allow them to access education, survivor, commissary, travel, counselling and transportation benefits, but not health care and housing allowances.
- 27.
Homophobic incidents include all acts motivated by hatred towards individuals or groups because of their real or perceived sexual orientation. The violence can take a multitude of forms including physical, sexual or psychological violence, attacks towards individuals or groups or their belongings. The threat of violence can also be reported, especially when it is repetitive and creates fear in the victim.
- 28.
For an analysis of stress and trauma, see chapter Anxiety and Stress in the New Missions, by Henning Soerensen and Claus Kold, in section VI of this volume.
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Zaretti, A. (2018). Lesbian Gay Bi-sexual Transgender (LGBT) Personnel: A Military Challenge. In: Caforio, G., Nuciari, M. (eds) Handbook of the Sociology of the Military. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71602-2_20
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