Maintaining Male Exclusivity: Porcelain Privilege in the Military

Abstract

Current debates about bathrooms and bathroom policy contribute to a long history of how space shapes norms and expectations about privacy and gender equity in the workplace. The military serves as a significant site of discussion, particularly as the Department of Defense moves forward with efforts to integrate women into combat positions. Relying on an analysis of 27 focus groups with a total of 198 participants we collected from Special Operations in the U.S. Army, we examine bathrooms as a site where male soldiers contest and resist female integration. Using Sasson-Levy and Katz’s concept of institutional de-gendering and re-gendering, we argue that men’s resistance to gender-neutral toilets is an effort to re-gender Special Forces and maintain the hegemonic masculine culture that acutely defines it.

Keywords

special forces gender integration gendered organizations toilets equity stereotypes

The military is the largest male-dominated organization in the United States. Defined by masculine codes and rules that have been constructed over decades, the military’s culture and policies have created a gendered institution that has facilitated discriminating against women (Belkin, 2012; Duncanson, 2009; Enloe, 2000; Hinojosa, 2010; Mackenzie, 2015) A complex labyrinth of combat and leadership exclusion policies, dating back to 1948, have restricted women’s career paths in the military (Morden, 1990). More recently, the military’s 1994 Direct Ground Combat and Assignment Rule (DGCAR) has limited the positions available to women. The implementation of DGCAR closed approximately 15% of all positions across the armed forces to women, translating to about 142,000 (29%) positions in the Army, 43,400 (25%) positions in the Marine Corps, 33,300 (9%) in the Navy, and 2,300 (1%) in the Air Force. However, in 2013, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta repealed DGCAR, which restricted women from serving in combat positions. Military departments were provided with a January 2016 deadline for “expeditiously” integrating women into previously unavailable positions, including elite nonconventional units (Panetta, 2013).

The military has vowed to use gender-neutral “occupational performance standards,” to determine positions; however, this policy change has not been embraced by all. The prospect of integrating women into all units, including those within Army Special Operations Forces (SOF), faced resistance from the cloistered all-male units, many of whom were hoping SOF units would be exempted from the policy. In male-dominated workplaces, men will often come together to “resist women as equals” due in large part to the “comfort” ideals men construct about what it means to be with other men (Bird, 2003). According to Sasson-Levy and Katz (2007), as institutions actively work to “de-gender” the workplace, a corollary “re-gendering” of the institution subtly takes place. As the prospect of gender integration in the Army’s Special Forces (SF) units has become a reality, the toilet, as a gendered concept, has become an increasingly salient focal point where men actively attempt to re-gender the organization in the face of organizational change.

In this article, we analyze focus group data collected from U.S. Army SOF to examine how men serving in SF use the bathroom as an embodied space and gendered site to resist organizational change. Using Sasson-Levy and Katz’s concept of re-gendering, we argue that men’s resistance to gender-neutral toilets is an effort to reinstate a strict gender binary in SF and maintain the hegemonic masculine culture that acutely defines it. We begin with a brief overview of the historical emergence of bathroom politics in the United States. Then, we contextualize our research in a theoretical framework based on military masculinity. Next, we discuss our current study, including the setting of SF, the data, and methods of analysis. Turning to our results, we examine the ways in which men invoke the themes of hygiene, risk, and privacy in an attempt to re-gender SF. Finally, we discuss how our findings from the military context contribute to broader discussions of women’s integration into male-dominated workplaces.

Bathroom Politics

In the United States, a toilet is euphemistically referred to as a bathroom or restroom, which obfuscates its function and underscores long-held cultural taboos that discourage discussions of defecation, urination, and most acutely, menstruation in mixed-gendered company (Moffat & Pickering, 2019). The legacy of these embodied, gendered cultural norms continue to frame contemporary discussions about toilets in the United States, which according to Anderson (2009) has led to “cultural fears of genital exposure [that] prevent us from realizing social equality.” As constructed in the United States, bathrooms are political spaces that function as both “an instrument and institution,” where gendered concerns and policies over privacy, safety, and comfort often collide (Anderson, 2009; Cavanaugh, 2010; Halberstam, 1998; Kafer, 2013; Molotch, 2010; Muñoz, 2009; Skeggs, 2001). Social anxiety about the toilet and bodily functions is gender-separated in the United States, where the cultural taboos governing notions of privacy and decency have been reinforced for more than 100 years through the establishment of sex-segregated toilets.

The first sex-segregated bathroom was created in Massachusetts in 1887 when shared toilet facilities became an issue in workplaces. Nearly 30 years later, in 1910, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued national guidance about bathrooms, which stated that sex-segregated toilet facilities must be provided in all places of employment (Miles, 1998). Since its inception, segregating bathrooms was a gendered practice “rooted in the ‘separate spheres’ ideology of the early century, an ideology that considered a woman’s proper place to be in the home” (Kogan, 2007, p. 5). Representing the public sphere, workplace bathrooms were established so that White men could tend to their bodily functions while working.

The creation of women’s toilets was also entrenched in the separate spheres’ ideology. Stemming from the prevailing gender, race, and class norms, these restrooms were places for “respectable” women to have a sanctuary as they moved around public space. Female restrooms were viewed as a “necessity” because of norms dictating that affluent White women needed domestic surroundings and protection from the dangers of the public sphere. Belonging to the sphere of the home, White women were constructed as a delicate group in need of privacy and comfort in a public space, and protection from the potential dangers that lie in wait in men’s bathrooms. Modeled after the home environment, public ladies’ restrooms slowly began dotting the rural landscape (O’Bryan, 2013). Yet the absence of widespread public bathrooms meant that women’s public movement was restricted and their ability to easily participate in the workforce was stunted as some employers were slow to implement these guidelines.

Contemporary policies and arguments regulating bathroom use continue to be steeped in politics, spanning beyond the tangible physical boundaries they occupy. Framing conversations about toilet use in terms of “safety,” “privacy,” “cleanliness,” or “comfort,” operate as coded language used to subvert the underlying motives that seek to protect and police bathrooms as a protected, privileged space. Penner (2012) argues that the modern construction of privacy and decency affected the voracity of gendered bathroom divisions. She notes that changes to the status quo bathroom arrangements are “bitterly contested” because our toilet relations reflect the operation of power.

This contestation over toilet space is easy to discern when embodied difference shows up to disrupt the status quo such as people of color, people with disabilities, or the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer (LGBTQ) community fighting for access to public toilets (Browne, 2004; Cavanagh, 2010; Stones, 2017). For instance, transgender and gender-nonconforming bodies have been pathologized in the United States as abnormal and deviant. As LGBTQ activists’ push for transgender rights has become a more mainstream pillar of the movement, political backlash has ensued, which has been reflected in the dozens of “bathroom bills” introduced in states beginning in 2013 (Kralik, 2019; Stones, 2017). These bills, discussed in terms of cisgender women’s safety and privacy, seek to restrict access to spaces such as toilets, locker rooms, or any other sex-segregated facilities (Kralik, 2019; Stones, 2017).

Women working in the male-dominated military also embody differences that pose a threat to the status quo. Plaskow (2008) contends that the lack of women’s bathrooms in public space has been a mechanism for restricting women’s movements and establishing which bodies are welcome into a profession. She notes that the lack of bathrooms for women “function[s] as an explicit argument against hiring women or admitting them into previously all-male organizations.” Bathrooms function in this way as a place for controlling access, those who do not have the facilities are unable to fully participate (Browne, 2004; Skeggs, 2001). Embodied in the language of comfort, privacy, and safety, we argue that men’s resistance to gender-neutral toilets is an effort to re-gender SF and maintain the hegemonic masculine culture that acutely defines SF.

Masculinity and the Military

Hegemonic masculinity, which is reinforced through routines, training, policies, and day-to-day practices, has been used to exclude women from significant portions of the military, even as more women enter the military (Duncanson, 2009). The “hard-bodied” masculinity that defines the military serves multiple goals such as aiding in the recruitment of new members and fostering the successful execution of the organization’s missions (Atherton, 2009; Kimmel, 2000; Sasson-Levy, 2003). Even as more women enter the military, Enloe (2000) suggests that the military’s emphasis on gender differences is used to keep women in subordinate positions and maintain hegemonic masculinity as a central aspect of the military’s identity.

Bird (2003) posits that although men benefit from mixed-sex workgroups, they find it easier to “be themselves” when focused on specific ideals of masculinity. Familiar gender tropes such as constructing men as “protectors” and women as “needing protection” have continued to underscore much of the contemporary resistance to full gender integration despite the demographic changes that have occurred in military membership and counterarguments raised regarding women’s physical abilities (Feitz & Nagel, 2008; Mackenzie, 2015). Since 1973, the percentage of women serving in the U.S. military among enlisted ranks has increased seven-fold from 2% to 14%, and among officers, women’s share has quadrupled—rising from 4% to 16% (Patten & Parker, 2011). However, the influx of female soldiers into the U.S. armed forces has done little to quell the gendered culture of the military or alter expected gender roles.

In many male-dominated organizations, women are held up to demonstrate what masculinity is not; they are in a sense a “foil” used to demonstrate what organizational members are not or should not be (Prokos & Padavic, 2002). Gender stereotypes that reflect prevailing societal stereotypes are easily relied upon to demarcate women as “othered,” reinforcing implicit hierarchies within and beyond the organization (Enloe, 2000; Goldstein, 2003; Kimmel, 2000, 2008; Mackenzie, 2015). Feminist scholars have demonstrated that these so-called inherent gender differences are attributable to culture and environment, where existing social and power structures in society create meaning for groups, which varies according to additional aspects of identity such as race, age, class, and sexual orientation, and changes over time (Asencio, 2002; Butler, 1990; Fausto-Sterling, 1992).

Rather than being static, gender performativity in the military is fluid and subject to change depending on the context (i.e., location), leading scholars to suggest that although masculinity functions as an “ideology that justifies and naturalizes unequal power relations between men and women,” it is not simplistic or necessarily binary (Anthias, 2012; Atherton, 2009) Belkin’s (2012) definition of military masculinity reflects this more robust and dynamic conceptualization. He “conceives of military masculinity as a set of beliefs, practices and attributes” that is performed through the “property of bodies, institutions, and cultures as well as a performance of gender.”

Female soldiers have adopted a myriad of strategies to operate within this masculine environment (Kimmel, 2000; Sasson-Levy, 2003; Sasson-Levy & Amram-Katz, 2007). Sasson-Levy (2003) found that women took on the mannerisms of male soldiers while downplaying sexual harassment and abuse. Other studies found that women adopted strategies that focused on their identities as soldiers, distanced themselves from other women in the organization, and proved their ability to physically compete with men, while they maintained feminine practices in social situations (Kimmel, 2000) Thus, while gendered structures and hierarchies endure in the military, gender performativity and relationships are more pliable, contradictory, and dynamic.

Institutional De-Gendering and Re-Gendering

The combat exclusion policy exemplifies this tension between institutional change and gender performativity. As Mackenzie (2015) argues, the policy has been “an evolving set of rules, guidelines, and ideas primarily used to reify the all-male combat unit as elite, essential, and exceptional” (p. 20). In 2013, the military rescinded DGCAR. This dramatic shift in policy recognized what many military leaders, politicians, and civilian advocates for gender equality had long asserted—the combat exclusion policy was at odds with the de facto reality that women were already engaged in direct combat (Keenan, 2008). By the time DGCAR was rescinded, more than 280,000 women had been deployed as support personnel for ground combat units operating in Iraq and Afghanistan; more than 800 women were wounded and over 130 died (Burrelli, 2013). In a move toward creating a more gender-equalitarian institution, the military adopted gender-neutral occupational performance standards, opening previously unavailable positions to women.

Several studies suggest that gender integration in the military can have “gender-positive secondary socialization” that facilitates the reduction in gender stereotyping and better understanding between the sexes (Ellingsen et al., 2016; Sasson-Levy & Amram-Katz, 2007). Other research has found that similar organizational arrangements that help women “fit in” may help alleviate women’s isolation in male-dominated professions (Hulme, 2006). Incorporating unisex toilets can also have an impact on lessening perceived gender differences between men and women soldiers (Ellingsen et al., 2016).

However, as Sasson-Levy and Amram-Katz (2007) contend, the process of de-gendering the organization vis-à-vis “deliberate structural changes” can simultaneously stimulate a re-gendering of the organization vis-à-vis “hegemonic gender beliefs” enacted in subtle ways that are more challenging to disrupt. Within this context, where the military has de-gendered the institution by rescinding an outward-facing policy, the bathroom has emerged as an obvious space of defense for men to re-gender the workplace.

The Present Study

Our research is part of a larger project designed to identify and examine the potential barriers and benefits of integrating women into 18-series military occupational specialty in SF. It was conducted in 2013–2014 after DGCAR was rescinded but when Special Operations (SO) was still considering requesting an exemption to the policy change. We conducted 27 focus groups, with a nonrandom sample of 198 participants during multiday site visits across five military bases. Twenty-three focus groups consisted of active-duty male SF operators serving as enlisted soldiers, warrant officers, and commissioned officers and four focus groups with women serving as enlisted soldiers and commissioned officers working in units housed in Army SO.

We used a sequential exploratory mixed-methods design, where the focus group data were used to develop two surveys that were administered to all-male SF operators and all-female operators assigned to Army SO Command (Hesse-Biber, 2016). During this time, transgender service members were officially barred, so our data focus on the male–female binary reinforced through military categorization. Given the lack of data available on the topic, we were interested in developing theory from soldiers’ lived experiences using grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2006). This article mainly relies on data from the focus groups.

The U.S. Army SF (commonly known as the Green Berets) is an elite component of SO Command. Less than 10% of the men who apply make it through screening and assessment. Focusing on nonconventional warfare tactics and indigenous forces engagement, SF teams are regularly deployed in small 12-person units called Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA). All men in our study came from SF. Female participants in our study came from Civilian Affairs (CA), Military Information Support Operations (MISO), and Cultural Support Teams (CSTs)—also units within Army SO. CA, MISO, and CST all serve as support units for SF. CA and MISO are long-standing gender-integrated units. CA focuses on engaging with local populations and building strategic connections with local leaders. MISO focuses on intelligence gathering and analysis. CST is a new unit, developed in response to current military conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. CSTs are exclusively female and are recruited to deploy with SF units to interact with women and children.

Our professional position as military outsiders, who lacked a preconceived agenda regarding military policies, was advantageous for building rapport. The SF community is small, generally older, and less racially and ethnically diverse compared to the broader Army. We were sensitive about collecting information from participants that could easily identify them, thus we refrained from asking about demographic information. However, participants occasionally shared this information. Pseudonyms are used for all participants. We obtained human subjects’ approval and each participant was required to sign a written consent form.

In designing the focus groups, we were sensitive to workplace hierarchy. To reduce potential power dynamics within the focus group, in 20 focus groups, participants were divided by rank with enlisted soldiers, warrant officers, and commissioned officers in separate focus groups. We also conducted three focus groups with full ODAs, which gave us an opportunity to observe how participants engaged among members of their small group. The four focus groups conducted with female soldiers contained a mix of enlisted soldiers and commissioned officers due to the limited numbers of women serving in these positions. All focus groups were recorded and transcribed. Based on the field notes, the sample of participants appeared to generally reflect the demographics of the SO.

Focus group data were analyzed based on repeated close readings of the transcripts using a grounded theory inductive approach (Charmaz, 2006). Ultimately, more themes emerged from our data than we present here. Three general themes emerged around participants’ discussion of bathrooms: hygiene, risk, and privacy. These themes were not discrete; participants often blended them together when discussing their views on gender integration. In the following, we present the underlying themes that animate soldiers’ concerns while deconstructing how they employ coded language of comfort and discomfort to re-gender the workplace.¹

Results

Toilets were not a focus of our larger project, and we did not include specific questions in our focus groups regarding bathrooms. However, bathrooms were mentioned, unprompted, 352 times in our 27 focus groups. Table 1 contains the results from the survey question on bathrooms, which confirmed the gendered nature of this space.

Table 1.
Male and Female Responses to Integrated Bathroom Facilities.

Q: How often would you be willing to use unisex shower/bathroom facilities (e.g., use facilitated by flip signs or scheduled times designated use depending upon who is using the facility)?

Responses Male, % Female, %

Not at all 32.83 9.74

Some of the time 18.22 12.31

Most of the time 12.78 17.44

All of the time 36.17 60.51

Nearly one third (32.83%) of men would never be willing to share a unisex bathroom facility with women. While well over half (60.51%) of women indicated they would be willing to use unisex facilities all the time. Our focus group data provide nuance for this stark survey finding. As participants elaborated on the workplace bathroom spaces, they drew on three major, yet implicit, themes that re-gendered SF, describing it as a workplace where women did not belong.

Hygiene and Risk

Male focus group participants opposed to unisex bathrooms frequently citing concerns related to women’s embodied hygiene needs, and the risk women’s bodies posed to men and women’s safety during deployment. Two related issues underlined men’s protests. The first concerned their anxiety that rescinding DGCAR would force men and women to transgress cultural taboos and norms governing sex-segregated toilets, particularly surrounding menstruation. The second issue revealed their inherent fear that integrating women into men’s bathroom space will necessarily mean a loss, not of privacy for women but of the privileged status of men-only spaces.

Othering women’s embodied hygiene needs was deployed as a reasoned explanation for excluding women while glossing over men’s underlying discomfort with women’s bodies. As Peranovic and Bentley (2017) noted, men’s attitudes of disgust toward menstruation are partially caused by the social stigma women face dealing with menstruation. Trying to distance themselves from a “woman’s problem,” some of the men in their study linked their discomfort to a lack of knowledge about women’s bodies and repulsion at what menstruation entails. In our study, similar stigma emerged in the men’s focus groups.

Using the language of hygiene and risk was a mechanism through which men could re-gender the organization, while de-gendering was occurring through policy change. Feminized bodies were used to illustrate why women posed an added “risk factor” in the field that infringed on men’s ability to get the job done. For instance, after Gary asked the basic question—“Is she going to use the bathroom in front of the other guy? Is he going to use the bathroom in front of her?”—he quickly transitioned from the physical bathroom space of the institution to the alleged obstacles women’s hygiene needs presented in the field:
[Females] can only stay in those types of environments for so long before they have to be allowed to shower and just feminine hygiene stuff in general that was not available there. So, you have to bring them in and take them out within three to five days or the whole thing couldn’t happen.
Without referencing a particular policy or medical facts, Gary erroneously states that women must be “allowed to shower” and they need to have access to special hygiene “stuff” that their male counterparts do not. He views these perceived unique needs of women as an explicit reason they are not welcome in SF.

Men frequently pointed to the risk of yeast infections (ignoring that men also experience yeast infections), citing it as a compelling reason women needed bathroom facilities with showers, which is simply not feasible in the field. As John explained, women get “yeast infections and other things” and the risk of contracting these medical conditions meant “women need to shower and take care of hygiene on a regular basis.” John constructed women’s bodies and hygiene needs as irrevocably different from men’s and then proceeded to document the hardships women’s hygiene needs would create on an SF team.
I’m the medic. Now I have to bring a whole slew of stuff on top of that whereas before I could have gotten away with this box and this box over here. Now I have to bring a microscope, I have to bring this drug, I have to bring this box of drugs, I have to bring more child-birthing kits and all that kind of stuff. Now you’re taking the availability of supplies—because we’re limited on what we can carry—and you’re cutting down what I could possibly use for trauma or for some other infectious disease out there and I have to get rid of it because—for a vaginal infection? I mean, seriously?
As men continued to discuss bathroom spaces, and the disruption to the status quo women presented in the field, their conversations continued to center on embodied difference, which they characterized as burdensome, unclean, and at times simply gross. Menstruation was a focal point for men. Pulling these themes together, Steve explains why embodied difference marks women as unfit for serving:
I mean [the] potential for yeast infections and everything without being clean. A woman has a menstrual cycle and all that. These are all things that could definitely be complicated in a situation where you are just pretty filthy and you’re living in a dirty environment and you have no way to take care of yourself.
Steve is quick to define the “environment” as a gendered workspace that is inhospitable to women. Although Steve does not express similar concerns about men’s hygiene risks in the field, he is quick to point out that women cannot “take care” of their needs in this masculine workspace. Similarly, Joe succinctly added, “the point is there’s certain things a woman’s body does that has to be attended to every so often.”

Conversely, women discussed menstruation as a regular part of their lives. Echoing other women, Susan summed it up, “I can handle myself. I’ve done this since I was 16. This is part of my normal life, it happens.” Unlike their male colleagues, women did not view menstruation as a “risk” that required separate facilities or limited their ability to perform in the field.

While menstruation was simply an integrated aspect of women’s lived experiences, for men, it was an irrefutable source of othering. Menstruation also provided men with a larger platform for framing their opposition to integration. By tying emotional stereotypes of women to menstruation, men had cover to present their stereotypes as neutral information founded in biology. Noting how “difficult” women can be while they are menstruating, Peter explained to the group:
It’s like a rollercoaster with women. One week can be really good and then all of a sudden, it’s that time of the month and it’s just—you can’t even be around them. And that’s officer and enlisted, is my experience.
Using sweeping language, Peter implicated all women as being emotionally unstable while menstruating. He carefully noted that women, regardless of their professional role or rank, should be avoided while they menstruate. Drawing on his personal experience, Chris also explained that men need sex-segregated bathroom facilities to shield them from the emotional chaos that is triggered by menstruation:
I’m not being a jerk. I mean, hell I’ve got five sisters, and I’ve got a wife. I know there’s a period there during the month that you’re just, what the hell happened to you and who are you?
Mirroring many men in the focus groups, Chris positions himself as a reasoned and fair person who is offering an insider’s objective insight. He provides a disarming qualifier, emphasizing that he is not being a “jerk,” and that he cares about women, before issuing a gender stereotype.

Emphasizing embodied difference, feminized bodies functioned as a focal point where men had cover to re-gender SF while overtly masking their opposition to gender integration. Pointing out corporeal differences between the sexes was viewed by male focus group participants as an acceptable starting point where they could resist integration and illuminate how women were ill-suited for the profession. Quickly pivoting, men wove gender stereotypes into their opposition, firmly underscoring that the presence of women would disrupt and irrevocably harm SF.

Privacy

Male focus group participants opposed to unisex bathrooms, frequently framed their concerns in terms of privacy, arcing back to the separate spheres’ ideology rooted in the early twentieth century. But as Penner (2012) contends, this framing serves to cloud the deeper purpose of maintaining the prevailing hierarchy of power. Unlike the re-gendering occurring through discourses of hygiene and risk, based on cultural codes and stereotypes, privacy discourses frequently entailed re-gendering through proposed structural changes as well. Male participants often viewed women’s presence in the team room as analogous to women in a male locker room. They suggested that integration would disrupt the privacy of the SF team room as well as create a space where women would not be afforded privacy. The team room, however, not only serves as a place to change clothing while at work but also the main meeting and collaboration area.

De-gendering this male-only space disrupts male privacy and the ideals that men construct about hypermasculine homosocial spaces (Bird, 2003; Hinojosa, 2010). It also complicates this area as a protected and exclusive workspace for men. Facing impending integration, men in our study regularly advocated for creating a private, exclusive space for women to preserve the privacy they currently maintain. For example, Robert argues for re-gendering the institution with sex-segregated facilities:
If you had an all-female team and they had their own operating facility you wouldn’t have these problems. So, I wouldn’t have to worry about coming back from the gym in the morning and coming here, which is the only place that I can shower, the showering there, changing and going back to my team room to conduct our work throughout the day. So, if, I know how it sounds, if they have their own teams that’s the only way that I can see it possibly working.
Robert centers his argument against female integration on the fact that the team room is the place where he showers, changes, and does his work throughout the day. To maintain the gender-segregated privacy typically associated with a postworkout shower, he argues that women should have complete segregation in the workplace.

Matt also discussed the privacy of the team room and ties it directly to homosocial bonding and cohesion. He argues:
This is a place where we come and I feel that we can—you can speak pretty damned freely in your team room, and you can say what you want, what’s on your mind. And you want to talk about holding your tongue—there’s a lot of things that you don’t hold back in a team room. It’s behind closed doors. That’s team business. You do what you need to do to get whatever accomplished and you say what needs to be said. You put a female in the mix and then there’s people getting offended. That’s another huge hurdle.
Matt views this disruption of team room privacy as detrimental to the cohesion and work of SF. Using what Bird (2003) refers to as male comfort ideals, Matt constructs the team room as a place where men can freely speak their mind without “holding back.” He views women as a spoiler in this private, male-only space, and an obstacle that will also derail the team’s ability to accomplish its work. Matt’s views reflect those of most men.

When asked about the number one reason they oppose women joining SF, over a third of men surveyed cited a disruption to cohesion. The lack of privacy for people in SF made it into the top three reasons why men opposed women’s integration, though it was not listed by a single woman as a top reason they might oppose integration. Less than 20% actually tied their number one reason to a lack of physical qualifications (see Table 2 for the top reasons listed).

Table 2.
Reasons for Opposing Women in Special Forces.

If you oppose females serving in any combat job in Special Forces, which of the following factors is the single most important factor in shaping your opinion?

Male Responses Female Responses

First most reported reason The presence of females will disrupt small unit cohesion 35.42% Most women are not physically qualified 13.85%

Second most reported reason Most females are not physically qualified, 18.63% The presence of females will disrupt small unit cohesion, 7.69%

Third most reported reason There is little privacy for males and females in combat specialties like Special Forces, 6.12%^a,b Males will not fight as effectively with females present, 4.62%

Do NOT oppose women in Special Forces Do not oppose women serving in Special Forces, 9.38% Do not oppose women serving in Special Forces, 57.95%

^a This was tied with “males will not fight as effectively with females present in combat units” in the survey. ^bZero women selected this as a response.

Although men often couched privacy in terms of women’s needs—arguing that women would be uncomfortable seeing a man’s body, and they need privacy while getting dressed—in reality, the desire for privacy was male-driven. Men, like Steven, wanted to preserve their daily routines, and women’s presence threatened to disrupt it:
[Women] showed up, and instead of—you know, we had like an open-air gym—instead of lifting weights with your shirt off, because it’s 140 degrees, “Hey guys, a female’s here, everybody needs to have a shirt on at all times.” And of course, everybody gets angry, and of course the women were like, “Hey, it’s not us. We don’t care—we don’t mind at all if you’re wearing your shirts off.” But leadership is so worried about sexual harassment kind of stuff going on that we became very limited in having to remain covered, and dress codes, and everything else.
As Steven points out, the changes that occurred to men’s daily routines were often attributed to women, even though they were driven by male leadership. De-gendering the institution has elevated the need to confront and head off sexual harassment and assault, particularly in previously all-male units. However, instead of dealing with the issues that lead to harassment and assault, privacy discourse serves to suppress fully exploring the prevailing hypermasculine culture that contributes to these issues and centers women’s presence as the problem. Re-gendering occurs through men’s claim-making about women’s needs for privacy and modesty. In reality, as Steven’s quote alludes to, men’s anger is over their loss of privacy and new institutional arrangements that require them to modify their behavior when in mixed-sex company.

Conversely, many of the women in focus groups were rather nonchalant about issues of privacy. Working in a gendered organization meant that they had never experienced exclusive work spaces and therefore did not place a high premium on privacy in regard to bathrooms or team rooms. Women often directly confronted modesty and privacy claims in the focus groups.

Sara discusses the integration of bathrooms and how to maintain modesty without privacy,
All I’m saying is the bathroom’s open all the time. You have stalls. Go in the stall. The showers are closed. Grab your towel, put it on before you get out. You’re not walking around the company naked, and that’s all I’m saying.
She comes off as flippant, but makes a basic point; people can cover themselves in the workplace without making a larger case for privacy.

The discussions of privacy for men were exclusively focused on privacy from women, not privacy from other men, which Corey illuminates.
It’s going to be the problem when you get back to the rear and where you take a shower or you do stuff like that is everybody—like even if we only have one shower and she’s fine with showering with guys. There’s going to be dudes that aren’t fine with that. Eighty percent of this company is not going to go into that shower, not going to happen. They’re like, I’m not going to take a shower with a girl in there. They’re going to have to build a whole new building.
As Corey points out, regardless of how a woman feels about shared facilities, most men will bristle at it. He sees men’s resistance to de-gendering facilities as dire enough to require (ironically) a structural re-gendering, insisting that SF will have to “build a whole new building” simply to integrate. But ultimately, as Corey’s quote revealed, these discussions frequently focused on reinforcing the privilege of maintaining an institutionally gendered space designed for male comfort in the workplace.

Conclusion

Sasson-Levy and Amram-Katz (2007) contend that a male-dominated organization intentionally seeks to create a more equitable institution through structural changes, it will paradoxically experience attempts to undermine those changes. As we have argued in this study, the findings from our focus groups indicate that toilets were a salient space where this process of de-gendering and re-gendering in SF was present.

Toilets served as a focal point where men were able to reassert the masculinized discourse of the military to re-gender the organization as it rescinded DGCAR. Echoing Browne (2004) and Skeggs (2001), the men in our study use bathroom spaces as a site for restricting and resisting women’s ability to enter coveted male workspaces. Invoking the language of hygiene, risk, and privacy, men pointed out the unique embodied differences that mark women as unfit to integrate into SF, while subverting other motives intended to preserve the toilet as a privileged male-only space. Men, having the full privilege of being the default in the military, see any change to the gender hierarchy as a disruption of that system which has come to feel like the natural order.

This study is specifically focused on cisgender people, as transgender service members were not allowed to openly serve at the time of our data collection, and as such we did not collect specific information about transgender service members’ experiences. Further, even as the discussion of transgender service members becomes more prominent, within the military, it is still focused on reinforcing a notion of gender that is binary. A person must identify as one particular sex, and all services, expectations, and physical spaces are established with an understanding of two binary genders in mind.

The language around hygiene, risk, and privacy invoked to discuss women’s “fit” in SF is seen in a number of professions where one gender dominates the landscape. The same arguments have been made to exclude women from professions like policing and firefighting where issues of physicality, privacy, and comfort in locker rooms and firehouses are present. These arguments also resonate beyond uniformed public service professions and have been used in recent high-profile discussions of women in the tech industry or venture capital. Even within our own profession of higher education, as many colleges move toward implementing gender-neutral facilities to provide trans and nonbinary students access to these spaces, dissenters have relied on discussions of privacy, safety, and comfort to resist these changes. There is a deep connection between women’s exclusion from military bathrooms and the exclusion of transgender people from public bathrooms more broadly. In a context where binary gendered bathrooms arise as a place to “protect women and children” from male predators and maintain an illusion of privacy in public spaces at the expense of trans bodies, looking at the case of the military provides an important example of exclusion based upon embodied difference. This difference is any deviation from the established, perceived, neutral territory of cisgender men’s bodies.

Our study provides an interesting and salient barometer for women’s equality in the military context, taking seriously Plaskow’s (2008) assertion that toilet access both “reflects and perpetuates social inequality.” While women are successfully integrated into some divisions, spatial and attitudinal barriers still prevent women from being fully realized and embodied participants within the military and many other male-dominated professions. Men’s discomfort with potentially sharing toilets and team room spaces with women, in contrast to the women’s readiness for such conditions, is an indication that the underlying logic of sexism needs to be addressed in order to sustain and support de-gendering male-dominated professions without triggering a re-gendering of them.

Q: How often would you be willing to use unisex shower/bathroom facilities (e.g., use facilitated by flip signs or scheduled times designated use depending upon who is using the facility)?
Not at all	32.83	9.74
Some of the time	18.22	12.31
Most of the time	12.78	17.44
All of the time	36.17	60.51

If you oppose females serving in any combat job in Special Forces, which of the following factors is the single most important factor in shaping your opinion?
First most reported reason	The presence of females will disrupt small unit cohesion 35.42%	Most women are not physically qualified 13.85%
Second most reported reason	Most females are not physically qualified, 18.63%	The presence of females will disrupt small unit cohesion, 7.69%
Third most reported reason	There is little privacy for males and females in combat specialties like Special Forces, 6.12%^a,b	Males will not fight as effectively with females present, 4.62%
Do NOT oppose women in Special Forces	Do not oppose women serving in Special Forces, 9.38%	Do not oppose women serving in Special Forces, 57.95%

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs or the U.S. Government.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

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

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article: This research was funded by the Army Research Institute, ARO Contract W911NF-11-1-0035, through the Office of Graduate Military Programs at the University of Kansas, coinvestigators were Alesha Doan, Donald Haider-Markel, and Shannon Portillo and The Women’s Foundation of Greater Kansas City, convestigators were Shannon Portillo and Alesha Doan.

ORCID iD

Shannon Portillo

Note

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Q: How often would you be willing to use unisex shower/bathroom facilities (e.g., use facilitated by flip signs or scheduled times designated use depending upon who is using the facility)?
Responses	Male, %	Female, %
Not at all	32.83	9.74
Some of the time	18.22	12.31
Most of the time	12.78	17.44
All of the time	36.17	60.51

If you oppose females serving in any combat job in Special Forces, which of the following factors is the single most important factor in shaping your opinion?
	Male Responses	Female Responses
First most reported reason	The presence of females will disrupt small unit cohesion 35.42%	Most women are not physically qualified 13.85%
Second most reported reason	Most females are not physically qualified, 18.63%	The presence of females will disrupt small unit cohesion, 7.69%
Third most reported reason	There is little privacy for males and females in combat specialties like Special Forces, 6.12%^a,b	Males will not fight as effectively with females present, 4.62%
Do NOT oppose women in Special Forces	Do not oppose women serving in Special Forces, 9.38%	Do not oppose women serving in Special Forces, 57.95%