Comrades-in-[Each Other’s]-Arms: Homosociality,Masculinity and Effeminacy in the Turkish Army

Introduction

This creature—who is convinced that he is a giant, yet faces his own real height all the time and gets hurt in the face of the hardships of life—protects itself with a violent fear. He becomes more of a man after every step he takes and every slap in the face. In between the promise of potency and the discovery of impotency, he becomes a schizophrenic creature that is highly fragile; but one who intends to hide his fragility behind various walls, masks, shows of strength or fun and games.[…] Yet, what do we see behind such walls? A shattered creature, born out of experiences of violence, confusion, submission, desperation and resentment. (Pınar Selek, translation mine)

In the spring of 2017, I applied for a certificate of discharge (colloquially called “the rotten report” or “the pink certificate”) to be exempt from the compulsory military service enforced in Turkey. All I needed to do to convince the Turkish military that I was “psycho-sexually sick” was to put a high stakes solo show before a board of doctors, performing a theatrically exaggerated version of femininity while being, at the same time, as authentic as possible. I did not care about submitting myself to the subjectifying power of the medical gaze: if the interpellation is inescapable, at least I would choose the sort of interpellation that would work to my benefit. Also, it was my chance to be the drag queen I always dreamed of. I presented myself to the board of doctors in full make-up, wearing tight jeans and jewelry; I stood timidly and inclined, without occupying too much space, as I knew that only “real men” stand erect; and, I adjusted my voice to sound the way they expected. I was looking at the ground, too afraid to make eye contact.

Until 2013, the Turkish Armed Forces (Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri; TSK) defined “homosexuality, transvestism, and transsexualism (sic)” as “psycho-sexual defects” under Article 17 and a cause for exclusion from the military service, otherwise compulsory for all male Turkish citizens since 1927. In 2013, the “list of illnesses and disorders” was modified to exempt those with “visible sexual identity and behavioral defects.” In practice though the final decision of exemption is made by doctors, and it depends on the success of the performance of femininity, or the failure to embody masculinity. Until it started to attract public attention, the performance of femininity required to be supported by a visual proof of being anally penetrated, for it irrefutably carries emasculation. However, roughly since 2006, it particularly depends on the manifest visibility of effeminacy. ¹ The medico-military gaze reads (in fact, produces) those men who are “visibly and excessively feminine,” that is, who are effeminate ² , as threatening figures who pose a grave danger to the military order.

In Turkey, like some other geographies of sexuality in the Mediterranean, Latin America, and Middle East, where different epistemes of gender and sexuality prevail, Western discourses and representations of homosexuality fail to capture the social organization of same-sex relationships (Murray 1992). ³ The heteronormative ideal of the masculine/feminine pair is the dominant cultural binary through which male-male relationships have come to be widely understood. That is, one partner is expected to be masculine and insertive, and the other feminine and receptive. Many Turkish men do not even consider themselves gay as long as they are insertive, which leaves their manhood intact (Bereket and Adam 2006; Gorkemli 2012; Öztürk 2011; Özyeğin 2012). If the rectum has been a grave for Western men and masculinity (Bersani 1987), it is even more the case in Turkey where there is much more to lose from the perceived feminization that accompanies anal penetration. As such, the binary of male homosexuality/heterosexuality, which is the organizing principle of modern Western societies according to Sedgwick (1990), is substituted in Turkey by a binary defined less by sexual orientation than by a gendered division between masculine (real) men and effeminate ones. This is not to say that heterosexuality is not the original norm, but rather it implies that sexual orientation and deviancy is primarily understood not in terms of sexual preferences but by gendered performances and practices.

Even though the pink certificate attracted the attention of some scholars (see Başaran 2014; Biricik 2009, 2011), their reading of this phenomenon suffered from the lack of insight that would have been gained by acknowledging that not every gay man or trans person seeks to obtain the so-called rotten report. While the experiences of gay men who obtained the pink certificate provided a roadmap to interpret the critical role of effeminacy for the medical gaze and the military, the presence of gay men in the army allowed me to unveil an overlooked fact. The case of gay men in the Turkish Army has never been illustrated before and it has paramount potentials for this study. The respondents helped uncover the interwoven mechanisms that regulate masculinity, effeminacy, and homosociality.

Many queer men in Turkey fear not only the familial and community pressure but also the social and material consequences of being officially considered a sexual deviant by the military or the state. Instead, they are coerced to serve in the army, where they must conceal (or camouflage, so to speak) their sexual orientations and act like “real men” to survive. A shift of focus onto gay men who did serve in the military not only enriches our understanding of military regulations and medical gaze but also orients us toward a more nuanced interpretation of effeminophobia and away from mainstream discussions of institutional homophobia. As Richardson (2009) claims, “[o]ften what is labeled homophobia should more correctly be termed effeminophobia.” Here, phobia should be understood not in terms of a psychological fear but instrumental disavowal of effeminacy. The limited literature on effeminophobia fails significantly due to its crude and Western-centric psychoanalytical and postmodern fallacies (i.e., fear and panic experienced in the face of the plasticity of gender). It is unreasonable to assume that men recognize the plasticity of gender or the renunciation of masculinity in the face of effeminacy (see Pascoe 2005; Pronger 1990;). It is equally problematic to dismiss effeminophobia as the societal fear of effeminate men and gender transgression (Allan 2014; Sedgwick 1991) without actually acknowledging what is at stake in keeping heteronormative gender norms intact.

In this article, based on the revealing case of the Turkish Armed Forces, I demonstrate the ways in which the homosocial architecture of the military is sustained as safe as possible by means of an effeminophobic surveillance and abjection that is enacted both by the medico-military gaze and by the soldiers. I define the homosocial safe zone as a place where the transgression of homosocial bonding will not result in emasculation or risk heterosexuality, and the privileges it confers on men and masculinity. I understand masculinity as a “potential property of bodies, institutions and cultures, as well as a performance of gender” (Belkin 2012, 4). Deriving from the concept of “military masculinity” ⁴ that I borrow from Belkin (2012) and based on the findings of my own field work, I also raise that military masculinity is not only fragile and frustrated by the immense homoerotic tension but also structured by a contradiction: it is expected to form a profound bond with others for the sake of military cohesion and, simultaneously, to avert any kind of bonding that might undermine its masculinity. Military masculinity, therefore, is constructed by unresolvable paradoxes and irreconcilable practices because of the blurred lines between intended homosocial bonding and prohibited homosexual intimacy.

Methodology

This article is the final product of a master’s thesis. It is based on seven oral histories of gay men and a trans woman (then identified as a gay man) who served in the military, and five oral histories of gay men who obtained the certificate of discharge, including myself. In addition, I interviewed a psychiatrist who worked at a military hospital and attended the medical examination of draftees who claimed to be homosexual or trans. Respondents range from 25 to 45 years of age. The oldest attended the military service in 1995, and the youngest in 2014. I reached my respondents, who served in different military units from distinct cities and in different years, over the course of 2015 and 2016 through snowball sampling and through personal connections. All of them went through the medical examination in the same military hospital in Istanbul, except myself. Of the respondents, the earliest discharge issue date is 1990 and the latest 2012, whereas I obtained mine in 2017. As a result of the general reluctance and fear to talk about the certificate or the military service, it was unfortunately not possible to encounter more respondents even after a yearlong search.

It is important to note that non-heterosexual people who are out of the closet are likely to enjoy a higher degree of economic and educational status in Turkey. This fact has created a middle-class sample with a certain level of high education. All of the respondents, with one exception, have at least a bachelor’s degree. The level of education is a determinant factor in the results of this investigation since it determines one’s rank in the military service and their success in obtaining the discharge certificate. All names used here are pseudonyms, except that of Murat, who asked me to use his real name.

Based on the data collected, in what follows, I first address the ways in which the military regulations and the medical gaze define, produce, and subsequently instrumentally abject effeminacy. Following Sedgwick’s reading of homophobia (1985, 89), I contend that effeminophobia too serves to preserve homosocial relations both by directly abjecting those who are not masculine enough and by regulating masculinity itself. Next, I uncover the violently effeminophobic dynamics created by, for, and around soldiers’ homosocial relations. There, I discuss how—contrary to widespread assumption, especially in geographies where homosexuality still remains to be a relatively foreign concept outside of narrow upper/middle class circles—the real peril to homosocial bonding and military masculinity is not homoerotic intimacy or gay sex per se. As long as effeminacy is absent, anything can be tolerated.

Finally, I would like to clarify that based on how it is used by my respondents and employed by the Turkish Army, I use effeminacy to refer to visible (e.g., body language including posture, gesture, facial expression, and lack of body/facial hair) and audible (e.g., speech and intonation) signs of femininity enacted by bodies that are perceived as male. As I explain throughout this paper, in the institutional framework of the Turkish Army, femininity/effeminacy should not be mistaken for gender identity in the Western sense; instead, it is more accurate to interpret it as a corporeal performance, which may or may not have anything to do with one’s personal experience of gender. ⁵

The Medico-Military Gaze: In Quest of Visible Behavioral Defects

Militaries are gendered—or, more accurately, masculine—institutions (Barrett 1996; Connell 1990; Enloe 1990; Lehring 2003; Mosse 1996; Walby 1996; Yuval-Davis 1997), and although the obligatory military service for all male citizens is considered the most sacred duty in Turkey (Altinay 2000), some are rejected because they are not considered real men. In the Turkish Armed Forces Health Regulation, under the section of Mental Health Illnesses (Health Regulation 2013), it is indicated that those who suffer “visible sexual identity defects and behavioral defects” are not permitted within the military. The key words here are visible and behavioral as it is crystal clear that the visible behavioral defects are the ones that appear on the surface of a body. The following description by Önder (35; year of discharge: 2008) underscores the role of effeminacy for the medical gaze.

I was thinking that the beard would be a problem. I went to the meeting close shaved—although I never shave my face in my ordinary life…. For them, the image of a gay person is “parlak” (meaning, in Turkish, without facial or body hair) and, second, a little bit feminine. I did not exaggerate it too much. Some men even put on make-up, but I didn’t do that…. I just wore skinny pants and a feminine shirt.

According to military regulations (Health Regulation 2013), a draftee must be suspected to cause “undesirable situations” ⁶ in order to qualify for the discharge certificate. One cannot help but imagine what those undesirable situations would be, which are apparently expected from effeminate men. Bérubé (1990) interprets the historical military ban on homosexuality in the U.S. as a way of keeping the military safe for homoeroticism that is not likely to pose a great hazard once it is assumed that all soldiers are heterosexual. A psychiatrist who worked in a military hospital and whom I had the chance to interview admitted that even though he does not personally agree with homosexuality being a sickness, he somehow had to convince the military that the draftee in question is a danger to military order. The only way to do that was through spotlighting that person’s effeminacy. ⁷ However, for Önder, neither being “a little bit feminine,” as he put it, nor showing his pictures that were published in an LGBT magazine was enough to convince the medical gaze. According to Önder, a doctor told him, “When I look at you, I see that you are a real man. Why would we give you the discharge certificate?” One has to be explicitly effeminate and not “a little bit” in order to obtain the certificate.

The fetishist gaze presupposes it has the ability to discern who is a “real man” with an instantaneous glance. As part of my examination, the psychiatrist asked whether I was planning to take female hormones. Shocked as I was with this inappropriate question, I tried to explain that I was gay, not a trans person. She, unimpressed, said she understands that; yet, I still have facial hair and they are not sure whether I am feminine enough to be exempt from the service. I include, as follows, the relevant part of the discharge certificate I was issued:

The patient looks feminine; he has increased self-care [I believe this refers to make-up]; his gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice are womanly…. It is decided that the patient might cause functionality and adjustment issues [referring to the undesirable situations] in the service due to his sexual manners and behaviors.”

The assumption regarding the constitutive role of effeminacy in shaping the military’s institutional perception of sexuality is also supported by the kind of proof accepted as evidence of genuine homosexuality. If a male Turkish citizen does not wish to serve in the army because of his sexuality or gender identity, he has to demand to attend the medical examination. The military doctors (primarily male psychiatrists) enjoy the authority of making the final decision of who is defective. Nevertheless, the possibility of obtaining the rotten report unjustly generates an immense problem for the military and for the doctors: what if heterosexual men finagle to obtain the report? Thus, the solution is to subject the draftees to a very invasive medical examination to decide who is lying and who is veraciously homosexual.

Until very recently, the medical examination included the following elements: personality tests ⁸ ; pictures or videos clearly showing having been anally penetrated and having enjoyed it; visual proof of public appearances in women’s clothes; testimony of relatives; observation at a hospital for a few weeks (to monitor the authenticity of one’s effeminacy); and rectal examinations. Murat (45; year of discharge: 1990) attended the medical examination when the process was overwhelmingly more violent and humiliating. He expressed that the moment he entered the examination room, he felt himself in an Auschwitz concentration camp when he saw naked men who were, literally, marked on their arms. The worst part, he said, was when he was asked whether he was able to control his anus. The relationship between the rectum and effeminization especially became clear when Fahri (25; service year: 2013/2014), who served in the army as a mental health counselor, shared an anecdote. In his second or third month in the service, two men were caught by other soldiers while having sex. Immediately after this incident was brought to commanders’ attention, the soldier who was in the receptive position (bottom) was expelled from the army whereas the other soldier, with his manhood intact, merely received a warning.

The types of acceptable proof sought by military doctors explicitly indicate that the medical gaze is less interested in (or capable of) diagnosing “homosexuality, transvestism, transsexuality [sic]” than in tracing the marks of the archenemy of masculinity: effeminacy (Connell 2005; Kimmel 2011). The presumably scientific authority of doctors is nevertheless deeply rooted in cultural stereotypes: what separates a real man (who can be a soldier) from a rotten one is simply about effeminacy. It is also telling that the House-Tree-Person (HTP) personality test includes a scale of femininity-masculinity, and those who obtained the discharge certificate had an average of femininity more than “normal.” I had the chance to see Orben’s certificate (33; year of discharge: 2012) where it was written that the “patient” had “an average of femininity more than normal,” and, consequently, was diagnosed with “advanced psycho-sexual defects.”

The homosocial zone is not safe by itself but must be rendered so through institutional means. Hence, I read the effeminophobic abjection by the Turkish Army motivated less by the exclusion of effeminate men per se than by the security of homosociality. As it will become even more clear in the next section, I argue the reason why the reason effeminate men are considered a threat to the military order and to its homosocial roots is that they violate the inviolable assumption that all soldiers are real men because of which no one or nothing can irrevocably damage the homosocial safe zone.

There Is a Limit to Your Love: Effeminacy

For a man to be a man’s man is separated only by an invisible, carefully blurred, always-already-crossed line from being “interested in men”. (E. K. Sedgwick, 1985)

In Turkey, the military service remains a rite of passage in the thorny and sweaty route to manhood—especially for those who cannot prove their manhood through educational or economic successes (Açıksöz 2012; Altinay 2000; Biricik 2009, 2011; Helvacıoğlu 2016; Selek 2008). In the laboratories of manhood, compulsory military service seeks to make a men out of young and callow boys. The disciplining of the conscripts’ docile bodies (both in a Foucauldian and literal sense) is imperative to create units that can serve cohesively (Foucault 1995). The question of cohesion is vital for the proper function of an institution that brings together thousands of men (Cohn 1997; Herek and Belkin 2005). And it is not so much about a mere organizational cooperation between soldiers as it is about homosocial intimacy. The soldiers are not mechanical entities, but social beings with sentiments, emotions, and desires—which may become even more intense within the army where emotions are insulated and oppressed exhaustively.

Homosociality refers to “social bonds between persons of the same sex” (Sedgwick 1985, 1). Although the term connotes a kind of sociality and relationality that is not homosexual, the continuum between male homosocial and homosexual intimacy is always charged with amorphous homoerotic tensions: “[t]o draw the ‘homosocial’ back into the orbit of ‘desire,’ of the potentially erotic, then, is to hypothesize the potential unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial and homosexual […]” (Sedgwick 1985, 1). ⁹ Especially in environments such as fraternities and male-only militaries, the unavoidable bodily and emotional affectivity between men is conspicuously intensified (Cohn 1997; Kiesling 2005; Sedgwick 1985). Hence, the military service—wherein which “the most intimate male bonding” takes place (Sedgwick 1990, 186)—enables and invites conscripts to have considerable homosocial affectivity that could not be safely enjoyed to such a degree in any other environment (Cohn 1997; Flood 2008; Herek and Belkin 2005).

Notwithstanding, homosociality is intrinsically structured with contradictory and irreconcilable objectives that have to be accomplished by the conscripts. On the one hand, they must embody norms and ideals of hegemonic masculinity (e.g., heterosexuality and unfemininity), whereas on the other, they are expected to form deep homosocial bonds with their comrades. This, however, may endanger their masculinity since homoerotic desire is often emasculating (Kimmel 2011, 140–41), in particular when it is not readily known if the desire falls in the domain of homosocial or homosexual. The cohesion, thus, depends on a sufficient degree of emotional affectivity, while forbidding excessive emotional and physical intimacy. It would require simultaneously the distance and the closeness, the separation and the intimacy. Cohn (1997, 145) says:

So we have a paradoxical situation of an institution that constructs and upholds the most rigid stereotypes of hegemonic masculinity but at the same time provides a context that allows men to transcend some of these limits: the rigid constraints that typically prevent men from bonding with other men. These constraints break down in a controlled but nonetheless real way.

Homosocial bonding in the name of military cohesion would present no harm to military masculinity if it were easy to separate what is praised and what is cursed, what is welcomed and what is abjected in an environment exclusively dominated by men who spend six to twelve months in barracks, sleeping, showering, and dressing together. As Hakkı said (30; service year: 2010), “You are imprisoned there for a long time without going out.…Naturally, there is an emotional affectivity between men. Name it as you wish: brotherhood, friendship or love.…But it sure is something more than a mere friendship.” Yılmaz (32; service year: 2009) shared, “You can touch the ass or the penis of another soldier jokingly. Yet, as soon as you stop smiling and do it in a serious way, they would tell you ‘what the fuck are you doing?’” Similar to fraternities, “homosocial desire is created and displayed by using linguistic and social indirectness,” (Kiesling, 2005, p. 695) which takes the shape of “innocent jokes” in the service. ¹⁰ Fahri (25; service year: 2013/2014) told a telling story about an erotic love poem written by a soldier for his comrade, which expressed his wish to “put his head between his comrade’s legs.” Curiously, the soldier read the poem publicly and they all laughed together. It seems that the already opaque boundaries of homosocial desire are grayed even further when the desire is camouflaged and “broadcasted,” (Kiesling 2005, 708) but not in privacy. Notwithstanding, when not broadcasted or made an object of ridicule, the declaration of love presents a deadly threat to the safe zone of homosociality. “[I]f men speak their homosexuality, that speaking threatens to bring into explicitness,” says Butler (1997, 121), “and, hence, destroy, the homosociality by which the class of men coheres”—especially if the utterer is not read as masculine. This, Veli thinks (41; service year: 1995/1996), is what happened when he declared his love to another soldier with whom he had a “special intimacy” (including a physical one). “The love of my life has turned into a ghost and never spoke to me again,” he said.

As a matter of fact, violations of homosociality by masculine men are more often than not condoned within the Turkish Army. Transgressed intimacies do not necessarily annul one’s masculinity or heterosexuality as long as the safe zone is secured through the exclusion of dangerous figures, which requires an effeminophobic surveillance, control, and abjection executed both by the Turkish Army and soldiers. The sexual and erotic bond inherent to male homosociality and the prevalence of homoerotic jokes such as penis grabbing has been previously discussed (Agostino 1997; Aldrich 1992; Muir and Seitz, 2004). What has escaped the attention however is the question of what the boundaries are (if any) between the intimacy that is tolerated and the intimacy that must be condemned at any cost. In Turkey, two men walking arm in arm, hugging each other, or holding hands would not necessarily cause a homosexual panic; bodily proximity between men only becomes a source of societal and individual distress when they fail at performing masculinity.

Except for Selim (29; service year: 2014/2015), who believes “[t]here are no boundaries in the military environment…what happens there stays there.…They would think that you’re just horny, nothing more,” all of the respondents pointed out that there is indeed a limit to jokes and intimacy between soldiers and it is femininity/effeminacy. Fahri (25; service year: 2013/2014) noted,

The limit is femininity. The femininity is extremely important. There is no distinction between homo and hetero in the service. They suppose that if one is feminine, you can fuck him. And, the top [insertive] participant can get along with that without being called faggot.…They think that ‘I can fuck him and still be a real man’. But if you are effeminate, you cannot sexually approach anyone, not even for fun.

It was Fahri who mentioned the unfortunate story of a soldier who was repeatedly raped by other soldiers secretly in the barracks at night and beaten by the same group of people in front of other soldiers in the daytime, over and over again. In the face of vague norms and lack of rigid boundaries, preserving an inviolable masculinity becomes even more difficult, compelling soldiers to do their share of the task in maintaining the safe zone so they could still enjoy its benefits without risking masculinity. By means of humiliation and punishment of the soldier who is proven guilty as charged for being feminine, the rapist soldiers recuperate their masculinity despite having transgressed the limits of homosociality. The castigation, expectedly, is carried out in a public spectacle so as many men as possible can witness and reaffirm the injured masculinity of the rapists. Masculinity is contingent on external affirmation, which, in turn, leads to further debilitation of a masculine identity that begs for incessant validation (Collinson 1992).

Guarding the homosocial safe zone and fragile military masculinity requires more than instantaneous acts of rejection and physical violence. When those who are deemed dangerous enjoy higher military ranks, then rather subtle and implicit tactics are employed as novel protection strategies. These strategies include collective silencing/forgetting and the revelation/ridiculing of masculine-passing. The former is directed towards the institutional obliteration of dangerous violations of homosociality committed by seemingly masculine soldiers, whereas the latter functions as a public alert and warning mechanism to let everyone know whose masculinity is a sham and therefore a destructive peril to homosocial bonding, which is established on the premise that authentic masculinity is natural and cannot be performed (Halberstam 1998). As Veli brought up (41; service year: 1995/1996), the protection of the safe zone may sometimes require a collective silencing when a relation between two soldiers, none of whom appeared to be effeminate, is revealed; it is a strict taboo to talk about this story for it carries the risk of undermining the quintessential premise of homosocial safe zone. “Literally no one said a word about those two guys for months,” said Veli to express his astonishment in the face of this phenomenon, which he did not know how to interpret.

When it comes to the policing of passing, the strategy followed by soldiers to secure a homosocial zone is even more novel. All of my participants considered and defined themselves as feminine or “different than heterosexual men.” Not only do they speak and act femininely, they also are incapable of entering heterosexual circles as they “do not enjoy football or girls.” They well knew that their presence in the army was not acceptable. They felt that their bodies, and their ways of being and living were not appropriate, and, most importantly, they understood that they could not be themselves if they wanted to survive the service. I would like to think of their experiences as passing both because of the performance and the vulnerability involved in it. Although they had different techniques of passing, they shared the constant control of their bodies in order to avoid identification. The suppression of effeminacy is the first step to be taken if one seeks to avoid being outed in the Turkish Army. In addition to autocensure himself, for instance, Fahri created an imaginary girlfriend. Hakkı (30; service year: 2010) chose not to be seen around people whom he and the others were suspecting that were gay. “I knew that he was gay as he knew that I was gay. So, I knew that I cannot be seen around him, let alone be seen with him.” For Hakkı, it is simply too dangerous to be associated with others who are passing, since their companionship might reveal his open secret.

Performing masculinity by effeminate bodies is not allowed in the army—it is ridiculed if not suppressed—for it is too dangerous that effeminate bodies can penetrate into the homosocial safe zone. The fragile military masculinity polices the instances of (in)authenticity with the intent of affirming the heteronormative assertion that masculinity is natural and cannot be faked or performed. The vulnerability of passing, according to Butler (1993, 129–130), results from the fact that it can only be successful insofar as the performance cannot be read as such. However, no matter how strong and convincing the performance, it is likely to fail at some point, especially in spaces of panoptical surveillance and control. Hakkı, Selim and Fahri shared their futile attempts to pass as “real men,” and how, in spite of their enormous efforts, they all were read as fake imitations of masculinity and publicly ridiculed. One day, during the outdoor exercises, a soldier with a big smile on his face publicly asked Hakkı if he knew Club 17, which was known to host homosexual men. “I did my best. I don’t know how to fight, but I did know that I had to be tough there. I tried a lot not to act like myself…in order to conceal my homosexuality, I did my best work. Yet, still, they were talking behind me and knew what I was.” (Hakkı). The reason none of the three encountered physical or sexual violence, but instead faced public ridicule, was their educational backgrounds, which allowed them to serve in higher ranks in the military hierarchy. Seren, on the other hand, joined the service with her elementary school degree and enjoyed no authority whatsoever. When her passing was revealed, she was sexually and physically abused by other soldiers and received death threats.

Conclusion: The Military Is Where the Masculinity Is Born (Dead)

The production and maintenance of masculinity is a collective endeavor that requires homosocial enclaves whose success primarily depends on the abjection of effeminacy. The existence of homoerotic tension and opaque boundaries produces situations in which homosociality, and military masculinity thereof, is in great danger and calls for immediate protection. In the Turkish Army, the protection takes the shape of effeminophobia more so than homophobia. It is self-evident that homophobia and effeminophobia are radically inseparable from each other; nevertheless, I argue for an analytical separation of the two with the purpose of doing a reparative cultural analysis that seeks surprise rather than validation (Sedgwick 1997). Specifically in geographies where sexuality and deviancy is understood in terms of femininity and masculinity, effeminacy takes on the meaning of a constitutive outside that must be kept at a critical distance to protect homosocial spaces and the production of masculinity.

As Butler (1990) wrote almost three decades ago, doing gender can never be a fully successful endeavor and is always destined to fail, one way or another. The failure is almost necessary for masculinity given the paradox of homosociality: masculinity is only possible as a homosocial enactment (Bird 1996; Flood 2008; Karioris 2016; Kimmel 2011). Only other men can approve its authenticity. Nevertheless, it is homosocial desire itself that can sometimes compromise masculinity. In fact, Belkin draws attention to the “irresolvable contradictions” that are inherent to military masculinity such that service members are coerced to embrace “traits and identifications that have been framed as binary oppositions” such as masculine/feminine and stoic/emotional (Belkin 2012, 4–5). The military masculinity is structured by a contradiction because of which it is inherently fragile. What is expected from conscripts is to reconcile the irreconcilable and spend endless (and probably fruitless) effort in protecting their masculinity.

The double bind of masculinity (Bordo 1999)—that is the mutually incompatible tasks that must be achieved—puts soldiers in a state of constant trial and inevitable failure, which, in turn, engenders the necessity of recovering masculinity through violent strategies. Bosson and Vandello (2011, 82) draw attention to the aggression and violence engendered by the precarity of masculinity which is “a gender status that is relatively difficult to earn and easy to lose,” if not intrinsically unattainable. For Sedgwick, this precariousness and the violence that follows is the result of the double bind of homosocial desire which is “at once the most compulsory and the most prohibited of social bonds” (1990, 187). As manifested, the fact that the lines between homosociality and homosexuality are very fine does not mean that they do not exist. The constant and violent interventions to mark these lines show that they do and must exist to guarantee the production of masculinity and to safeguard the homosocial safe haven. Although it is argued by some that homosocial intimacy might potentially lead up to subversion of heteronormativity and masculinity (Chen 2012; Hammarén and Johansson 2014), the evidence here suggests the opposite, inviting us to pay more attention to culturally and spatiotemporally specific formations of masculinity and homosociality.