DADT vs. DOMA

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On September 20th 2011, 18 years of institutional discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered service people came to an end. Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) was passed during the Clinton administration as a "compromise" that allowed LGBTQ men and women to serve in the military, although not openly, and under constant threat of being "outted" and thus terminated.

In Charlotte Hooper's article Masculinities, IR and the ‘Gender Variable’, I was drawn to the sections in which she discusses how military combat has served to influence, and has been influenced by, constructions of masculinity within our culture; does the end to DADT signify a shift in prevailing norms about masculinity? Or are continuing inequalities, such as the ban on gay marriage, just cast in relief by this one positive step in public policy?

Hooper comments that the popular myth in our culture casts military service as the fullest expression of masculinity, as it is an enduring demonstration of men's "natural aggression" (479), as well as being explicitly tied to civic duty and fulfillment of the requirements of citizenship. She notes that, "Full citizenship rights are often denied to men who do not participate in defending the state, in much the same way as they have been for women" (481). Interestingly, in his remarks after signing the DADT repeal Act of 2010, President Obama acknowledged this fact when stating to LGBTQ service people:

"You've been asked to carry the added burden of secrecy and isolation. And all the while, you've put your lives on the line for the freedoms and privileges of citizenship that are not fully granted to you."

The reason I found this particular part of his speech so interesting was that the context in which he talked of the privileges of citizenship were explicitly in the public sphere. Indeed, he was not alluding to the ability to marry, adopt children, or a host of other "privileges" that belong to private sphere, but only to the "privilege" of serving one's country. With regards to the Defence of Mariage Act (DOMA), the President has been decidedly less activist, deciding not to repeal it, but has instead decided not to defend the statute. This kind of deliberate non-action for DOMA contrasted to the action taken in striking down DADT speaks volumes to the masculine norms which are held most sacred in our culture, particularly those that require both men and women to define themselves in the public sphere, and keep quiet about their private lives. A sentiment that is echoed by Republican Candidate Rick Santorum's in his comments during a televised debate that "any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military".

I feel that Mr. Santorum's perspective feeds in to why DADT is taken more seriously than DOMA. It is directly related to what Cynthia Enloe is getting at when she points out that debate often centres around a "shrunken definition of what is political" (97) or what is an acceptable topic to broach in an arena full of "real issues" if one wants to be taken seriously. Topics such as marriage may be "too hot to handle" (Enloe, 95) for the Commander in Chief, as he cannot politically afford to be feminized by championing a "private" issue.

Going back to Hooper's argument, another reason for the more high profile nature of DADT over DOMA could be the particular importance that the military holds, both symbolically and practically, in society. Perhaps the military, as a particularly significant institution and bastion of hegemonic masculinity, has an interest in accepting service people's different gender identities so that the military's core beliefs and structure remain unchallenged. By celebrating DADT and ignoring DOMA, the government and the military embrace the gays and lesbians who most conform to and already perform institutionalized masculinity, while shunning those who seek to challenge gender roles in the private sphere. In this way, as Hooper suggests, masculinity is still reinforced by the system regardless of the gender of the soldier.

By choosing to legitimize LGBTQ soldiers but not LGBTQ husbands, wives, mothers and fathers, I find it hard to be sure that DADT doesn't further validate the preferences for masculine values and traits in society by effectively offering the LGBTQ community equality for the price of service, instead of granting them the "privileges of citizenship" that heterosexual couples enjoy and that Obama and others are so eager to point out. So, although I am fully supportive of its repeal and am glad to see that Obama has come through on one of a long list of promises, I remain skeptical that this constitutes any real shift in how gender is perceived, and won't hold my breath for DOMA's demise.

-E.

Works Cited:

Enloe, Cynthia. "III 'Gender' is not enough: the need for a feminist consciousness", International Affairs, 80:1 (2004): 95-97. Online.

Hooper, Charlotte. "Masculinities, IR and the 'gender variable': a cost benefit analysis for (sympathetic) gender sceptics", Review of International Studies, 25 (1999): 475-491. Online.

Obama, Barack. (2010, December). Remarks on Signing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010. Speech presented at the Department of the Interior, Washington D.C.

Post-9/11 post

I begin this blog only a few days after the 10th anniversary of an event that changed global politics forever, what is known locally and abroad simply as 9/11. On the day of the anniversary, I read an article by David Bromwich on the Huffington Post entitled "What 9/11 Makes Us Forget". The article is essentially a reminder of the hegemonic nature of US foreign policy, the events directly leading up to the unprovoked war in Iraq, and the lack of accountability in both political camps. Bromwith's post prompted me to think about how such a major event can alter our realities, and limit the scope of questions we ask, as well as the answers we seek, in order to justify self-serving military intervention. In a similar fashion, the articles written by Jan Jindy Pettman, Ann Tickner, and Marysia Zalewski prompted me to question how feminist IR responds to, and is responded to, in a post 9/11 world that is seemingly less welcoming of criticism.

My first thoughts to write about this topic came to me as I read Ann Tickner's article and came across a section in which she points out the criticisms levied against teaching about women, other cultures, and non-western thought. William Bennett, the United States Secretary of Education from 1985-1988 is said to blame the unpreparedness for 9/11 on what he called "an easy-going relativism and tolerant multiculturalism that has pervaded our universities and sapped our intellectual and moral energy". Bennett seemed to belong to a camp which might be tolerant of feminist thought, so long as the "real matters" of IR (those dominated by the interests and subjects of men, i.e. war, trade, alliance) are not interfered with. I found myself wondering whether Bennett, and Lynne Cheney who is also noted in Tickner's article as being against feminism in education, have a bias against feminist disciplines because of their backgrounds in the Cold War era marked by uncertainty and militarism, and whether the similarly uncertain post 9/11 generation will see feminism as an interference and distracion from the current political and economic uncertainties we face today. Does the post 9/11 world see feminism as a threat to solving the more "pressing" issues traditionally privileged by IR?

Although no doubt some people see feminist IR as threatening the status quo in governance and cultural expectations of gender, this post is more concerned with whether or not the status quo is a threat to feminist IR. On the international relations themed website "Theory Talks", Marysia Zalewski gave an interview which directly applied to what I've been thinking about, and afraid of. She notes that,

"9-11 IR has vigorously returned to an explicit focus on the supposed ‘big questions/issues’; the ‘evil enemy’; good versus bad, war against terror, the axis of evil… We’ve seen these ‘big questions/issues’ clearly emerge through the Bush administration, which deflected attention away from a whole other range of issues that we might have been looking at."

Jan Jindy Pettman also recognizes a shift in feminist IR since 9/11 in her article when she noted the disappearance of women from public view unless they reinforced the justification of military action (Pettman, 6). Her point brought to mind how the acceptable expressions of gender are used to continue and perpetuate a narrative of militarization, while unconventional expressions or criticisms of gender norms are ignored, or condemned. Is the role of feminism overshadowed by the "big issues", or can feminist scholars on the front and side lines influence the ontology and methodology used in contemporary IR?

In her article, Ann Tickner goes on to describe how the intellectual, which for this post I will take to be synonymous with "feminist intellectual", is "an exile in his or her own society, who raises embarrassing questions, is unsettled, unsettles others, and stands on the side of the weak and unrepresented."(Tickner, 386) I can only hope that the discipline of feminism is such that its activist roots, connections to real men and women, and interdisciplinary nature will help those who are exiled find a place for their voice elsewhere, whether on the side or front lines, so that even when placed in the periphery, it might end up encircling the center.

Works Cited:
Pettman, Jan Jindy. "IFjP: Tenth Anniversary Reflections: In the Beginning…", International Feminist Journal of Politics 11.1 (2009): 2-9. Online.

Tickner, Ann. "On the Frontlines or Sidelines of Knowledge and Power? Feminist Practices of Responsible Scholarship", International Studies Review 8 (2006): 383-395. Online.

Zalewski, Marysia. “Feminist International Relations: Making Sense…”, Gender Matters in Global Politics: A Feminist Introduction to International Relations, Ed. Laura J. Shepherd, 2010. NY: Routledge.