Key Phrases: Peace activists, gendered power structure, male hierarchical institutions
Key Names: Gay Pride March, Women’s Army Corps
Key Ideas/Quotes: Jean Grossholtz grew up around ideas and stories of equality and justice. These ideas helped her overcome the obstacles she has encountered throughout her life as a lesbian and even empowered her to fight for what she believed in despite the consequences in the army.
“I learned I could be somebody. That I could do all the things they asked me, that I could stand against the harshest, most angry of my peers and survive.”
The Army breaks the spirits of soldiers, dehumanizes them, and breaks their identity. It teaches them not to reveal who they are as people because it will show vulnerability. Soldiers covered their true identities because they were afraid, but Jean rebelled.
“I knew that I had to organize my life to destroy the idea that war and dying in war was glorious. This blatant disrespect for life was wrong.”
Along with this idea of heroism, she dealt with the Army’s internal war against homosexuality. The army taught her she could not love her own kind, but she was sick and tired of feeling ashamed and living a lie. The Army demanded her to think less of herself but she couldn’t take it any longer.
“As confidence in my own abilities grew, confidence in who I was emerged.”
She realized that the army was wrong; that there was nothing wrong with her loving a woman. She marches to proclaim the right of gay/lesbians to serve in the military; to make a statement against the Army’s gendered system of power.
“You can no longer deny my existence. Those of us in uniform are not just robots wound up and set out to kill and be killed at the bidding of the world economic order. We have lives that you do not approve of, we have thoughts and values that reject yours.”
The Army is gendered male: a male hierarchical institution. If gay/lesbian people are openly accepted and acknowledged in the Army, that male ideology is broken.
Questions:
Why does the Army feel the need to suppress soldiers’ gender/identity? Since the military is the global force of America; a face of America, is there a reputation that it suppose to uphold?
If homosexuals were acknowledged in the military how would the perceptions of women change in patriarchal societies?
My Response
The Army trains soldiers to become numb to emotions and in a sense make them inhumane. Otherwise they would not be able to be a soldier because they wouldn't be able to pull the trigger, and that is why I am against war. I believe the Army brainwashes soldiers and that is why veterans suffer with psychological problems when they come back home. I know this is not the case for many, and I really do appreciate the soldiers that are in or went to war because I can only imagine how much they have sacrificed. It is the male hierarchal institution that I oppose.
They suppress the identity/gender of soldiers because they are afraid of who their soldiers could be as people, as females, as gays/lesbians. They do not want to show any possible “weaknesses” women and homosexual people have, they try to uphold the tough façade of the Army. The social construction of the strong heterosexual macho man is evident, and it is heart wrenching to read about the struggles gay/lesbian people face in the military.
I admire Jean Grossholtz because I can see how strong of a woman she is. Not only did she deal with the discrimination as a homosexual but she also dealt with the social constructions of women.
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