Sacrificing the Feminine to Fit In and Embracing the Feminine to Stand Out

Using in-depth interviews with 50 U.S. servicewomen, this study explores how institutional values, peer surveillance, and social control in the form of harassment function to devalue and regulate femininity in the military space. In a context that takes an essentialist view of gender that conflates femininity with weakness and assumes the ideal servicemember is masculine, many servicewomen respond by sacrificing femininity to avoid workplace harassment and to try to fit in. Women not only suppress feminine identity markers but also engage in defensive othering and posturing against other servicemembers perceived as more feminine to distance themselves further from femininity, reinforcing the gender binary. Further, this study uses interviews with women who served on Female Engagement Teams ( fet ) and Lioness Teams to highlight additional organizational meanings around femininity. While these programs were framed by the military as humanitarian in nature, fet and Lioness team members used essentialist views of gender to claim their femininity made them superior at intelligence-gathering, counterinsurgency, and combat missions. While this enables them to contest the masculine ideal of a servicemember, it ultimately leaves the gender binary intact. Overall, the military’s adherence to gender essentialism, coupled with a femmephobic environment, functions to regulate femininity in ways that uphold both the gender binary and a hierarchy that privileges masculinity over femininity.