Language and Gender in the Military: Honorifics, Narrative, and I ...

Such a display is important since, following the line of reasoning presented previously, which contends that willingness to fight is foundational to the construction of masculine identity and performance, to be in a job which is closely involved in combat allows more vivid performance and presumption of masculinity.

The proximity to combat can be key to analyses of gender performance in a military environment due to restrictions placed upon women in the military. With some exceptions, namely service on combatant ships and aircraft, women are excluded from most jobs deemed too close to direct combat, such as duty in the infantry or in battle tanks. Combat-related restrictions have a heavy influence in the Marine Corps, in which the great preponderance of jobs are deemed combat positions. Interestingly, these combat restrictions have little effect in controlling women’s physical proximity to hostile action, particularly in the types of military operations now underway in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some restrictions, however, are not driven by proximity to combat, notably women’s restriction from service aboard submarines. Women are restricted from submarine duty because the Navy has stated that modifying the ships in order to accommodate berthing and privacy concerns is cost prohibitive. The reality is that women’s restriction from close-quarters conditions has to do, in large part, with men’s and women’s sex drives. The accepted assumption seems to be that men will not control themselves sexually with women present—an assumption which reinforces notions of masculinity and is therefore taken as a legitimate reason to restrict women’s military roles. The possibility that a woman might become pregnant, to the disruption of a submarine’s mission, is another reason offered as to why women may not serve aboard submarines. The basis for this argument is unclear. If this argument is founded upon the inconvenience inherent in removing a pregnant female from aboard a submarine, it somehow presumes that never, in the history of the deployment of submarines, has a male required medical evacuation. If, however, it is founded upon presumptions regarding the circumstances under which a woman would become pregnant aboard a submarine, such speculation is hardly reason for denying that duty to women as a category of persons.