Special men: The gendered militarization of the Canadian Armed Forces

Introduction

The phenomenon of militarization—the encroachment of military values, symbols, and practices on civilian life—has, since the attacks of 11 September 2001 and the ensuing Global War on Terror (GWOT), received considerable academic attention. Concomitant with the militarization of civilian space has been its masculinization, which has been noted by feminist and critical scholars to be inextricably linked to militarization through the fetishizing of masculine-coded attributes such as stoicism, valour, courage, and physical strength. In Canada, the militarization of society after 9/11 has been explored through analyses of children’s literature, drama, yellow ribbon campaigns, and the Highway of Heroes. ¹ This important research has quite reasonably focused on the militarization and masculinization of civilian society, where its effects are most readily noticeable and concerning.

However, the militarization of Canadian society has run in parallel with a less-visible and equally pernicious masculinist remilitarization of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF.) This is being accomplished, I argue, in two ways: material and narrative. ² Materially, this remilitarization has been effected by the creation, funding, and deployment of de facto male-only special forces units and command structures throughout the CAF, and by the privatization and de-militarization of support roles within the military, positions historically filled by women. Narratively, it has been enacted by the post-9/11 emphasis on an aggressive combat role for the CAF, and by repeated invocations of the need for the re-allocation of defence assets to the frontline “teeth” away from the support “tail.” Together, these effects have reified an existing gendered binary within Canada and the CAF, with the net result that women are less and less able to access the benefits that Canadian society extends to CAF members and veterans, as these benefits are increasingly granted on the basis of “combat service.” Begun in the 1990s and accelerated under former prime minister Stephen Harper, this masculinist remilitarization has been obscured from civilian view by the “state of exception” precipitated by the GWOT, by the uncritical celebration of special forces in the Canadian media, and by the generally low level of knowledge of military matters in Canada. Answering Cynthia Enloe’s call to think seriously about the military and its consequences for society, ³ I adopt a feminist approach to the question of “why SOF?” (special operations forces) in order to underscore the ways in which gendered processes of transformation within the CAF have been able to occur with little public or academic debate. This article seeks to adumbrate this remilitarization and, in doing so, contribute to a better understanding of how Canada has been changed since 9/11.

This paper begins with a discussion of the status of women within the CAF, and an explanation of how the small gains made by women in the military are seen as threatening to the CAF. I then discuss the creation and exploitation of a “state of exception” in Canada in response the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Following this, I highlight the increasingly prominent role of SOF in Canada, and discuss how the social construction of “special forces” has allowed a side-stepping of the debate over women in combat. Finally, I conclude by reiterating my argument that the academic focus on the militarization of Canadian civilian society since 9/11 ought to be complemented by an understanding of how the CAF itself has been remilitarized and remasculinized.

The CAF as an exceptional space

This argument begins with the recognition that “the military” itself is a space, and a contested space at that. In explicit rejection of the assumption that both the existence of “the military” and the way it does things are natural, I adopt a relational conception of space as “the medium and result of social relations, social struggle, and natural processes, which yield particular physical configurations and processes.” ⁴ In recognizing that the Canadian military is a space, we can begin to explore how the mostly male nature of the CAF is neither an accident nor a given, but instead the result of a potent, deliberately created mix of misogyny, homophobia, invented tradition, and biological determinism. Moreover, this recognition allows for the exploration of the processes by which the CAF has arrived at its current form—its demographics, its organizational structure, its missions—and what these processes tell us about the construction (and reconstruction) of the Canadian state and society. Understanding the CAF as a place of relational dynamism, in which Canadian society and its gender roles are both reflected in and constructed by the military, makes it easier to see subtle transformations at work, rather than deterministically accepting Canada and its military as unchanging, patriarchal monoliths.

I argue that the rise of SOF in Canada and the militarization of Canadian civil society since 9/11 are linked, and that the expansion of special forces within the CAF ought to be thought of as a process of remilitarization and remasculinization. Societally, militarization is a discursive process by which structures and attitudes are adjusted to allow for “an intensification of the labor and resources allocated to military purposes” such as, primarily, the production of violence. ⁵ Within the military, where the production of violence is already a goal—if not the goal—remilitarization means the increase of attention and resources devoted to the production of a particular form of hyper-masculine warrior violence, one that is in direct opposition to Canadian society and its supposed norms of civilian oversight, sexual equality, liberalism, and anti-racism. Inextricably bound up with this remilitarization (or de-civilianization) is remasculinization, the reinvigoration of patriarchal structures via the “revival of the images, abilities, and evaluations of men and masculinities” and the “firm delineation of gender boundaries and reinstatement of the masculine as opposed to the feminine” in a national or military culture. ⁶ As militarization itself is a gendered process, reifying as it does patriarchal hierarchies of sex and race, remilitarization is the process whereby small victories in the realm of sexual equality in the CAF are undone, and the primacy of hegemonic masculinity reasserted.

Women in the CAF

In accordance with the ostensibly Canadian values of equality, tolerance, and justice enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, since the 1980s efforts have been underway to change the decidedly male demographics of the CAF, with mixed results. On paper, the Canadian military is a progressive, gender-neutral environment, in which there are no jobs—not even submariner—from which women are barred. De jure, the CAF has been completely integrated since 2001, with every trade open to women. The progressiveness of Canada and its military is a popular point of reference, boasted of by politician and commander alike. ⁷ Officially, the CAF operates “in a gender neutral environment” and has done so “for a generation.” ⁸

De facto, however, the number and occupations of women in the CAF tell a different story. In 2014, women made up approximately 15 percent of the CAF as a whole, when reservists were included. ⁹ While the percentage of the military that is female has steadily increased, the gains have been slow, and the total number of women in the military has stagnated. For example, in 1977, with less than 70 percent of jobs open to women, women made up 5.6 percent of the forces. In 1995, after complete integration (except for submarines) it was 11 percent, with more than 14,000 women serving. ¹⁰ In 2017, twelve years later—and after repeated attempts to recruit more women in order to reach a stated goal of 25 percent of the military being female—there are still only approximately 14,000 women in the CAF. Moreover, the proportion of women in combat roles remains very small: only 2.5 percent of the regular force Army combat arms, for example. ¹¹ With these statistics in mind, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion feminist scholars have come to again and again: whatever the rhetoric, women are not accepted as full, equal participants in the Canadian military. ¹²

Even these meagre equality gains by women have been met with overt and covert opposition. Since the 1990s, civilian commentators, retired servicemembers, and military analysts alike have expressed dismay over the alleged dilution of the CAF’s warrior ethos by the admission of women (and gays, and racialized minorities) into combat units. ¹³ Often, the laments over the “social engineering” or “political correctness” perceived to be at the root of women’s military integration are echoed by those who see a similar, feminized weakening or fracturing within civil society, in which “traditional” values of patriotism, duty, and service are ignored in the pursuit of social justice. ¹⁴ Integrating the Canadian military, critics allege, has led to its feminization: as Hutchings explains, this refers not only to the increase in the number of women serving, but also “to a decline in the capacity to engage in so-called real war,” ¹⁵ due to the substitution of feminine values such as compassion and cooperation for the masculine warrior qualities of toughness, competitiveness, and bloodlust.

In Canada, fears of the feminization of the CAF are often twinned with complaints of its civilianization; both women and bureaucrats are viewed as diluting the essential nature of the military. Civilianization has been blamed for everything from dampening the CAF’s warrior spirit to diminishing its ability to conduct precision rifle drills in a suitably impressive manner. ¹⁶ “In Canada, civilianization of the military can be traced to the Canadian Forces Reorganization Act of 1 February 1968, commonly known as ‘unification.’” ¹⁷ This unification, initiated by the Pierre Trudeau government, was a deliberate move designed to rationalize and streamline the military, and eliminate the constant squabbling and resource competition of the three individual services. The reorganization also included the 1972 establishment of the National Defence Headquarters, a combined civilian–military unit. The military was unimpressed, and complained that the military “was facing a crisis of military ethos” due to the imposition of civilian values, which “displac[ed] their proven military counterparts and… erod[ed] the basic fire of the Canadian Military Society.” ¹⁸

Even when not ruining Canada’s military ethos, civilian government and bureaucracies are criticized for imposing too much oversight and paperwork on the military, and for attaching too many strings to the military’s spending power. ¹⁹ Rather than trying to manage the military according to civilian norms, the government ought to hand over the money and “get out of the way.” ²⁰ Imposing civilian standards of efficiency and diversity on the military is unfair, it is argued, because, as former chief of defence staff Rick Hillier bluntly put it in 2005, “We’re not the public service of Canada, we’re not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to kill people.” ²¹ Hillier’s flamboyant rhetoric relies on gendered assumptions about the civil service as soft, weak, inefficient, overly intellectual, whose members are overpaid but chronically underperform, safe behind the skirts of their unions. ²² Critics allege that public sector employment “hampers” private sector growth, and that the private sector is where “investment and innovation” thrive. ²³ The civil service is thus described in feminine terms, against the masculine-coded “bold” business or the risk-taking free market. ²⁴ This gendering is unlikely to be accidental, given the demographic makeup of the federal civil service in Canada, which in 2014 was 55 percent women employees, including 45 percent of its executives—gender ratios unmatched in the private sector, and only more female-friendly when provincial civil service jobs like nurses and teachers are taken into account. But the process of gendering the public service as feminine, soft, and passive goes beyond the material reality of its female workforce; gendering the civil service as feminine is a deliberate act of power, one which is designed to simultaneously devalue the civil service and valorize the masculine, whether private enterprise or the military. At the root of this gendering move is the unease on behalf of its critics that the civilian bureaucracy wields power—power that critics desire for themselves. ²⁵

When the first study of civilianization was undertaken in the early 1980s, most of the senior military personnel polled felt that there was a detrimental reduction of the “uniqueness” of the CAF underway, that a distinct military ethos ought to be promulgated, and that “the differences between the CF and civilian government be formally recognized.” ²⁶ This was explicitly not because of a mutual recognition of the separate but equal attributes of each organization, but rather a determined effort by the military to distance itself from the weak, feminized, ineffectual, and non-warrior civilian sphere. As Peter Kasurak observes, when authors and soldier-scholars advocate for a more defined, separate, unique military ethos, “contempt for all things civilian runs very near to the surface.” ²⁷ In the 1980s, the effeminacy of civilian society was a persistent concern in military and other right-wing circles in the US, as well. There, the cultural divide that had burst into flames over Vietnam was still smouldering, with some revisionist historians placing the blame for America’s defeat on civilian reluctance to commit overwhelming force, and identifying this civilian intransigence with a feminine, liberal aesthetic. The solution was for America to “man up,” as evidenced by the retrograde masculinization of politics and war under Reagan. ²⁸

The two weakening narratives—civilian and military—were notably intertwined under Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, which proposed as cure a “return to history,” a history in which war, Great Men, the United Kingdom, and Whiteness were preeminent. ²⁹ While Harper and his supporters were able to create their own narrative of Canadian history, the un-womaning of the CAF has been more difficult to accomplish. Even with what one assumes to be a sympathetic government in power, opponents were unable to undo the framework supporting the integration of women into the CAF, nor could they actively suppress the recruitment of female soldiers. ³⁰ Instead, the government and the CAF leadership have been, together, constructing what Giorgio Agamben calls a state of exception—places and manners of suspending the rules, making it possible to do things that are otherwise illegal, or extra-ordinary—in order to remake the CAF into an aggressive, masculine, and progressively male-only force. ³¹ The post-9/11 state of exception has reversed the trend towards post-Cold War civilianization of the military, in which “the utility of previously accepted [military] customs and practices [had] become increasingly challenged as irrelevant or even harmful.” ³² The state of exception removes the CAF from the position of a large, costly bureaucracy that might be legitimately expected to conform to civilian social values of gender equity, and re-forms them as untouchable professionals, whose expertise in necessary violence renders them beyond civilian reproach. In this dual exception, the CAF leadership has been able to bypass the legal requirement to admit women by invoking the need for a particular sort of military capability: special forces.

Blue “teeth” and pink “tails”

Both the alleged threat to military efficacy posed by female soldiers, and the CAF’s apparent inability to recruit and retain women in significant numbers, can be in part traced to the enduring linkage of masculinity and soldiering. Belying the official rhetoric of “a soldier is a soldier, regardless of sex,” the CAF’s record of sexual harassment and assault, its almost exclusively male leadership, and even its latest recruitment campaign targeting women specifically, suggest that the Canadian military, like most others, is an institution steeped in sex- and gender-based divisions. ³³ Military values, and soldiering itself, are both masculine and masculinist: that is, soldiering is seen by those within and outside of the military as something that is manly, that men do naturally, ³⁴ and the attributes that are valued by the military itself, while ostensibly neutral, are in fact commonly attributed to men and masculinities. ³⁵ Some have argued that the military’s existence as hallowed, separate space depends on its masculinity, since “the military depends on the maintenance of zones of distinction between men/women, home/polis, war/peace, inside/outside” ³⁶ and civilian/soldier—distinctions which are themselves rooted in a hierarchical, gendered binary. ³⁷ However, the masculine identity of the military is fluid, unstable, subject to constant flux and challenge, and must be constantly reconstituted through the “feminine constitutive other.” ³⁸ Even when recruits are male, the masculinity of soldiers cannot be taken for granted, and must instead be developed and nurtured by the military through training and socialization. Thus, becoming a “soldier” entails becoming a “man,” even if—especially if—the recruit is a woman. ³⁹ As Whitworth notes, “part of what goes into the making of a soldier is a celebration and reinforcement of some of the most aggressive, and insecure, elements of masculinity,” ⁴⁰ elements like misogyny and homophobia that serve to reinforce the divide between masculine soldier and the constitutive other.

Thus, the default soldier in the CAF is male, yes, but more importantly, masculine, and women who seek entry to the military are expected to conform to this template. For women in combat roles in the CAF, one’s competency is assessed not only in strictly task-based terms, but also in how well “you participate in or put up with masculine activities… such as drinking, swearing, making sexual innuendos, and watching pornographic movies.” ⁴¹ Women who hope to succeed in the military are explicitly or implicitly required to adapt to the masculine atmosphere by denying their femaleness, lest their presence be seen as de-gendering and thus “emasculating” the institution. ⁴² Even when the femaleness and femininity of women soldiers are suppressed, however, their presence creates profound unease in the CAF. With women now fighting—and dying—in combat, that constitutive feminine other is in jeopardy, as is the masculine identity of the CAF. If women can be combat soldiers, then soldiering can no longer be a man’s job—and soldiers can no longer be made men. ⁴³

The concern over the gender confusion apparently wrought by women in the military reflects a “broadly-shared cultural aesthetic of gender” in Canada. ⁴⁴ The sharp divisions between what is masculine and feminine, and what roles are appropriate for men and women, inhibit the participation of women in the military. In 2016, the CAF launched a recruitment campaign aimed specifically at women, in which the military’s—and society’s—ambivalence towards female participation was palpable. One of the goals of the campaign was to recruit sufficient women so as to change the CAF’s violent, sexist, and sexualized culture, the subject of considerable public attention since the publication of the Deschamps report in 2015. ⁴⁵ Women, and their inherent female differentness, the subtext reads, could bring about a necessary “taming” of the unruly male ranks. The 2016 campaign seemed to highlight this desired femininity: Access to Information requests showed that the CAF asked the advertising firm responsible to show female recruits “putting on makeup” to “add a feminine touch” to the ads, and that the whole campaign strike a “brighter, more feminine tone” that de-emphasized combat, in order to appeal to women. ⁴⁶

The desire to recruit women through “softness” in imagery is connected to a long-standing stereotype of women as “natural peacemakers,” biologically hardwired to be less aggressive and more cautious than men. Many militaries attempt to recruit women as “feminine people,” in order to harness the specific soft skills that female soldiers are thought to bring, such as better communication and cultural sensitivity. ⁴⁷ However, this same stereotype has made women’s integration into the armed forces difficult, and supports a gender binary “that characterizes men as active, women as passive” and damages their credibility as combat soldiers. ⁴⁸ Whether consciously or not, the CAF leadership reinforced this binary in their recruitment campaign, by emphasizing that its goal was to “educate [women] about the opportunities, the fact that [the CAF’s] not just combat arms,” ⁴⁹ from which women are implicitly excluded. Indeed, statistics support the existence of a gendered binary combat/noncombat binary within the CAF. Overwhelmingly, women’s participation in the CAF is concentrated in non-combat roles, with approximately half of servicewomen serving “in one of six occupations: resource management support, supply technicians, logistics officers, medical technicians, nursing officers and cooks.” ⁵⁰

The identification of women and femininity as best suited to technical or support roles has profound implications for the full integration of women into the CAF, and for society more generally. Supporting soldiers and armies by providing food, shelter, laundry, health care, and craftwork had until the advent of professional standing armies in the twentieth century traditionally been done by women. After professionalization, soldiering became a direct act of masculine transformation, taking “women’s work” and making it instantly vital to the war effort simply by virtue of its being now done by men:

A man who carried ammunition, nursed soldiers, or cooked for an army in the First or Second World War was still considered a soldier, in a way that a woman who once did so never was. What gave the man this soldierly identity was his masculinity. Because he was a man, he had theoretical eligibility for combat, even though he might never actually fight. ⁵¹

Adding insult to injury, the Conservative government in 2015 introduced the Veterans Hiring Act, which gave veterans “priority entitlement” to internal and external federal public service competitions, and mandated that wounded veterans—most likely men—“be first in line for any civil service jobs.” ⁵⁶ A similar policy in the United States has had dramatic results: there, where one third of new hires are veterans, the federal civil service is 57 percent male, as well as disproportionately white. ⁵⁷ Given that the focus of 2015’s legislation is on injured and disabled veterans, who can be expected to be drawn from the male-dominated combat trades, we should expect there to be a slow, but steady, masculinization of the Canadian federal civil service, should the policy continue. This means that not only are women less likely to qualify for military service benefits through the privatization and outsourcing of support roles within the CAF, but in the future they will be less able to secure similar pay, pension, and job security benefits through participation in the civil service—a double penalty, in effect.

Remilitarizing the Canadian military

Thus, within the GWOT state of exception, the gendered binaries of tooth/tail and soldier/civilian have become only more entrenched. In addition to an acceleration of a defeminization process begun almost as soon as women were granted full access to the CAF in the 1990s, Canada has since 9/11 seen an increase in the use of special operating forces/special forces (SOF/SF) troops and units, which has as a side effect the exclusion of women from the most vaunted roles within the CAF. This trend towards more special forces—both in their creation and their deployment—has been observed in Western countries more generally, many of whom, like Canada, are keen to avoid the sort of political and public controversy that can stem from the deployment of more visible military assets. ⁵⁸

Beginning under the Harper Conservatives, whose “Support the Troops” mantra found favour with members of the CAF weary of what they perceived to be Liberal neglect, the CAF has undergone an identity shift, away from peacekeeping and towards warfighting. This remilitarized identity for the CAF has led to the creation of a gendered hierarchy within the military, in which male-only special forces are given more honour, more resources, and more attention, having been constructed as an elite “warrior class” whose violent hyper-masculinity, however unpalatable, is now needed. ⁵⁹ This hierarchy exacerbates already-existing tensions between the “tooth” and “tail” ratio of the CAF, and accords even more of the defence budget to SOF and SOF-adjacent units—that is, to male-only spaces, and away from the non-combat positions in which women are more likely to be found. Since 9/11, the exceptional circumstances of the GWOT have facilitated the public acceptance of the military need for special soldiers and units, and legitimated the move away from an integrated military whose primary role is believed by most Canadians to be peacekeeping. ⁶⁰ This exception has been abetted and encouraged by both the government and the military, who have at times expressed dissatisfaction at their being lumbered with the peacekeeping label. ⁶¹ Its accomplishment has been deliberate, and required the investment of resources to win over the hearts and minds of Canadians.

Operationalizing the state of exception has required the substitution of a more aggressive public image of the CAF, one more suited to ostensible wartime. As a reminder of the “kinetic” role of the CAF, the military in 2006 launched Operation Connection, which saw military personnel, vehicles, and equipment featured at civic events such as sporting events, community celebrations, and the Canadian National Exhibition. ⁶² Also in 2006, the CAF introduced a new recruitment campaign, with a series of slick, up-tempo, and cinematic videos featuring grainy images of armed combat and the slogan “Fight with the Canadian Forces.” ⁶³ To complete the symbolic transition, the Conservative government rebranded the military the “Canadian Armed Forces,” doing away with the Chrétien-era “Canadian Forces” moniker and stressing the new name’s appropriateness, given the military’s fighting role. ⁶⁴ Public opinion polls suggested that the campaign to reinvigorate public confidence in the military worked, and that Canadians did, as the bumper stickers proclaimed, “support their troops,” even if they still viewed them largely as peacekeepers. ⁶⁵

Canada’s special men

As the centerpiece of the newly reinvigorated and aggressive CAF, special forces have since 9/11 become ever more prominent, accelerated by the 2006 establishment of CANSOFCOM—the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command—now the CAF’s fourth element alongside the army, navy, and air force. The creation of CANSOFCOM was the highlight of then-chief of defence staff Hillier’s “CF Transformation” process, begun in 2005. ⁶⁶ Canada’s special forces footprint was, until 9/11, fairly limited. Since the disbandment of the quasi-SF Airborne Regiment in 1995, after its ignominious involvement in the murder of a Somali teenager and subsequent cover-up attempt, ⁶⁷ public and political interest in Canadian SOF was low. The CAF had been forced to undergo considerable soul-searching and reform in the wake of the Somalia scandal, with multiple civilian-led inquiries into the organization and conduct of the Airborne Regiment and the CAF more generally, the reformation of its military justice system so as to more closely resemble the civilian system, and an overhaul of its officer education program. ⁶⁸ Modern special forces capability was begun with the establishment in 1993 of JTF2, a unit whose anti-terrorism role was originally performed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). JTF2 quickly outstripped its domestic anti-terrorism mandate, with reputed missions in the former Yugoslavian conflicts and an integrated role in the US-led special forces Task Force K-Bar in Afghanistan. Proponents successfully argued that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the post-9/11 security environment more generally, evidenced a pressing need for Canada to acquire even more SOF capabilities. ⁶⁹ By 2015, CANSOFCOM had nearly doubled in size to approximately 2,000 personnel, and was the beneficiary of substantial capital investment and budgetary largesse, including a new facility for JTF2 on appropriated land in Trenton, Ontario. Canadian CANSOFCOM troops have been publicly acknowledged as being deployed to train local forces in Belize, Jordan, Kenya, Niger, Mali, and Jamaica, and form the backbone of Canada’s contribution to the fight against ISIL in Iraq. However, there is little parliamentary oversight of the deployment of SOF, with much about their membership, numbers, and budgetary impact veiled from public view for operational reasons. ⁷⁰

Special forces are commonly described as being composed of “special men, special training and special missions.” ⁷¹ They are elite commandos within the military, “high attribute” ⁷² “modern warriors” ⁷³ whose existence and identity are often cloaked in secrecy, and whose presence in a battlespace lends an intensity and urgency to a mission that marks it as more difficult, more complex, and more important than other military tasks. Entrance into special forces units like Canada’s JTF2 is highly competitive, with much made of the fact that comparatively few aspirants are admitted, due to the celebrated difficulty of the selection process. ⁷⁴ The gruelling physicality of special forces recruit screening has become an important part of the mythology surrounding such units, such that the not-infrequent deaths and career-ending injuries experienced by would-be special soldiers are viewed not as problems with the screening process, but rather as evidence of its utility and necessity. As one former Special Air Service (SAS) officer puts it, “We have to keep [deaths] in perspective. There can be no compromise.… These people are trying to get into the SAS, not the Girl Guides.” ⁷⁵ In Canada, while the details of SOF selection are not publicized to the extent they are in the UK and US, the same emphasis on physical strength and fitness dominates. The “ruthless” and “gruelling” selection ensures that SOF troops are “very unique people” whose fitness levels far outstrip their regular army colleagues. ⁷⁶ Indeed, it is “the man” beneath the body armour that makes special forces so effective, “the ascendancy of an indomitable warrior spirit” ⁷⁷ rather than sophisticated weaponry or advanced tactics. With ostensibly science-based measurement standards and performance evaluations, Canada is able to “select guys who are very good at operating in an uncertain environment.” ⁷⁸

The uniqueness of the special forces soldier is a common narrative in both military and media accounts about SOF units, and at the core of their elite status within both the military and, arguably, society. Because SOF units are “perpetually assigned special or unusual missions” which reportedly “require only a few men who must meet high standards of training and physical toughness,” ⁷⁹ they are constructed as different—separate from the CAF as a whole. That difference is explicitly stated in pragmatic terms: “What SOF does is special,” and therefore “who SOF is” is different. The pragmatism implied in “special men for special missions” makes the physical standards for would-be SOF seem unassailable and beyond debate. Special forces missions require “men of steel,” “warrior-diplomats” with “guts and wits” whose physical attributes are matched by a “foundation of moral factors: intellect, boldness, perseverance, courage.” ⁸⁰ Described by the military and the media in such glowing terms in a constant stream of stories of “secret” SF units and recruitment, it is common for men—even former soldiers—to lie about having served with SF units in past conflicts in order to benefit from the reflected glory. ⁸¹

Silver wings upon their chests/These are men ⁸²

While the language used to describe SOF soldiers hints at what that “difference” might be, it bears stating clearly: special forces operators, in Canada and elsewhere, are men. This exclusive maleness is an offshoot of the CAF’s inherent physical androcentrism, which has contributed to the grudging nature of the integration of women into the military more generally. When women have been granted admission into combat roles, it has stemmed from either civilian-imposed legal necessity (as in Canada) or desperation for recruits, with changing labour market patterns creating situations in which too few suitable men are available. ⁸³ In most cases, however, the participation of women is allowed only under strict conditions of physical parity, in which women are expected to meet mostly the same existing physical standards as men. The physicality of soldiering, and thus the necessity for male-privileging physical standards, is taken as a given, as something that must be met or matched for women to be fully integrated into the modern military. The constant reiteration of the discriminating physical standards required for admittance to special forces units, as well as the emphasis on the demanding physicality of special operations tasks, seems to suggest a kind of “hyper-masculinity” is inherent to SOF—that is, a “masculinity centered on aggressiveness, toughness, excessive physicality, strength and sexual potency.” ⁸⁴

As Sylvester notes, bodies are important loci of “war enthusiasms,” ⁸⁵ and the exclusion of women from combat has transitioned from a legal or moral struggle to a distinctly embodied one. For the combat arms in particular, soldiers’ bodies are paramount, a “critical and almost primary reference point.” ⁸⁶ Female bodies—on average smaller, slower, “weaker” than male bodies—are viewed as doubly threatening to militaries: as hindering their male colleagues on the battlefield, and as tempting them sexually everywhere else. Soldiers’ bodies, male and female, are believed to be uncontrollable, animalistic, un-disciplinable, such that bodily functions of sex, tears, or menstruation will forever inhibit the effective collaboration of men and women. To this end, while combat roles have been opened to women in many Western nations, in many cases physical standards have been tightened or modified to effectively prevent the participation of women, even as research suggests that one overlooked aspect of women’s bodies—namely, their brains—could be of immense benefit on the battlefield. ⁸⁷

The urgent need for military effectiveness invoked by the GWOT has effectively silenced any real discussion of changing standards to enable greater female participation, even as the CAF struggles to recruit and retain enough members. Nowhere is this silence more marked than around the issue of women in special forces. Ostensibly, special forces units in Canada and many other militaries are mixed-sex; anyone who meets the initial selection standards may try out. That few (if any) women have ever met these initial standards, much less been selected for special forces service, has met with little public outcry, even amongst those who would otherwise advocate for full inclusion—such is the symbolic power of the special forces narrative.

Special how?

The symbolism of special forces is indistinguishable from its material reality; indeed, the two are mutually constitutive. The reputed stealth, secrecy, and danger of SOF missions, and the image of special forces soldiers as exceptionally fit, strong, intelligent, and resourceful individuals—as elites—are inextricably linked. Special forces are what special forces do, and since the public (and the military) is told that SOF units do things that “prove beyond the capabilities of general purpose forces,” ⁸⁸ the exclusionary maleness of SOF becomes unquestionable. However, the non-debate over the physical requirements for SOF units ignores the extent to which the establishment and use of special forces is driven by mythology and government desire, not military technical or tactical need—that is to say, the extent to which “special forces,” and their missions, are deliberately, normatively constructed. ⁸⁹ When, during World War II, British prime minister Winston Churchill ordered the establishment of special forces commandos, it was in order to bolster military and civilian morale after a series of defeats at the hands of the Nazis. Churchill was looking explicitly for the kind of military response “of the sort that made good media material.” ⁹⁰ The daring, boisterous, and media-friendly image of those early commando units became a template upon which the Canadian special forces were built. Proponents of SOF themselves recognize that for all their emphasis on the pragmatic necessity of near-insurmountable physical screenings, “appearances are more important than the reality”—that is, the symbolic presence of special forces troops is “a victory unto themselves.” ⁹¹ Candid discussions of Canadian special forces include the acknowledgement that at every stage of their development, from foundation to current usage, their role as reputational shibboleth—as establishing Canada as a member of an exclusive “club” of SOF nations—is a crucial element of their strategic utility. ⁹²

In Canada, the imagery and narrative around the founding of special forces units has sometimes obscured the extent to which the proposed capability is less strategic tool than marketing razzle-dazzle. One illustrative example is the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN)’s new “Maritime Tactical Operations Group” (MTOG), whose development in 2014 was linked to the RCN’s counter-terrorism and anti-piracy responsibilities. Although the MTOG is not technically a SOF unit, the press for the MTOG is careful to note that the “elite” “carefully screened,” “intensively” trained and heavily armed team is “designed to be capable of working with Canadian special forces.” ⁹³ However, this aggressive countenance is in some ways a sham, an expensive answer to a question no one has posed. The MTOG’s stated mission is to conduct boardings of vessels suspected of harbouring illegal passengers and goods—something the RCN has been doing without incident for decades. ⁹⁴ Moreover, the RCN does not—and did not, even at the height of its support to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—have the legal rules of engagement to board vessels whose crew are attempting to oppose the boarding (the MTOG’s stated raison d’etre). This crucial detail is, unsurprisingly, nowhere to be seen in any of the unit’s promotional material. There is more general evidence, too, that special forces are in many Western democracies, being mis- or over-used—being called upon to do tasks better-suited to conventional forces. ⁹⁵ The reasons for this are complex; in some cases, they reflect an explicit political desire to obscure military action from public view by assigning it to more secretive special units. ⁹⁶ For example, Canadian special forces have since 2013 been training the Niger military, a role that will in 2017 be taken over by regular infantry soldiers equally able to instruct in “marksmanship, reconnaissance, and other basic military skills,” ⁹⁷ arguably a task that SOF need not have been assigned in the first place.

The strategic and tactical utility of special forces per se is a matter of intense, passionate debate within the military community. Notwithstanding this larger debate, I argue that the non-material aspect of special forces—the manner in which special forces are both symbolically constituted and symbolically employed—provides an opening for discussion as to whether the increasing encroachment of male-only “special” units on the CAF is justified. If, as it would seem, special forces in Canada are being created and employed for reasons other than military necessity and utility, their elevation within the CAF provides evidence for what Karen Davis and Brian McKee have called “warrior-creep,” in which a masculinist “warrior framework” or cultural ethic, once reserved for combat arms, is increasingly described as essential to all military roles. ⁹⁸ Begun in the 1990s—as women were admitted into all jobs in the CAF—this warrior creep involves the application of androcentric, female-excluding physical standards to military jobs that do not require them, raising unnecessary and illegitimate barriers to female participation. If the growth of special forces in Canada cannot be justified on the basis of strict military necessity—if what special forces do isn’t, in fact, always all that special—then the requirement for special forces to be special is also suspect, and the physical standards used to exclude women from their ranks are thus rendered indefensible.

Conclusion

Throughout this article, I have argued that gendered processes of militarization are at play not only in Canadian society, but in the CAF as well. It can be difficult for civilian researchers to engage with technical, “internal” issues within the military, such as the creation and use of special forces. However, these internal issues are never completely divorced from the larger Canadian social context, and as such are worthy of closer academic scrutiny, especially from feminist and critical scholars. In focusing on special forces as a case study, I have shown how seemingly pragmatic or technical military decisions can have broader negative societal consequences, and as such are legitimate venues for critical inquiry. While not the root cause of the continued exclusion of women from meaningful participation within the CAF, the ever-increasing importance of special forces in Canada has contributed to a larger problem of female exclusion from combat. The disparity between the benefits offered to non-combat and combat soldiers continues to widen, as women miss out on the panoply of informal societal welfare benefits accorded to veterans with explicit reference to their combat service. ⁹⁹ Combined with an increased push towards military efficiency and the shedding of deemed-unnecessary support or “tail” roles, the exclusion of women from meaningful combat participation is leading to the exclusion of women from the military—and now the civil service—more generally. Moreover, the continued growth of SOF exemplifies the larger trend towards the claiming of militaries as excepted spaces wherein civilian rules do not apply. Beyond the exclusion of women, this exception-making has broader implications for notions of civilian oversight, transparency, racial equality, religious accommodation, and the equitable distribution of public resources. To ignore the military as a militarized social space means taking the military at its word, leaving its gendered and gendering policies unchallenged.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding was provided by the Government of Canada, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.