Managing Sex in the U.S. Military

The U.S. military is a massive institution, and its policies on sex, gender, and sexuality have shaped the experiences of tens of millions of Americans, sometimes in life-altering fashion. Currently, as an institution, the U.S. military is struggling with a massive and intractable epidemic of sexual assault; it is whipsawed between externally mandated requirements that may conflict with internally driven initiatives such as the conflicting directives to allow and then to ban transgender servicemembers; it is analyzing the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; it is attempting to deal with the impact of extended war on servicemembers’ families, and it is beginning to allow women to serve in the combat arms. Each of these is a critical issue to the military, but also ties to ongoing questions about sex, gender, and sexuality in American society and to broader issues of civil military relations. And—most essentially to us—each of these contemporary issues ties to a longer history within the military and to a broader historical context.