pvt dick johnson- sexism in the new army

Last December (1971), ten thousand basic trainees at Ft. Ord, California, boarded buses going home for Christmas leave. As the groups of green-clad youths assembled for departure, news photographers clustered around them, anxious to film “the beginning of a sentimental journey.” Each throng of soldiers hailed the newsmen with uplifted arms, fingers shaping the familiar V. At Christmas, these “boys in uniform” had a disturbing message for America: get out of Vietnam. Today the Army is composed of soldiers of a new type who in countless casual ways spout out “fuck the Army” and who don’t much care who is disappointed or irritated by the sentiment.

One reason the antiwar movement has been able to win popular support among the soldiery is for an analysis which says that the objective role of the Army is the protection of American corporate interests, and not “the defense of democracy,” as the government would have people believe. Radical and pacifist ideas hold sway in the barracks. Those few soldiers who voice support for the war are ostracized by their fellows, and “okay dudes” badmouth the war and the government from top to bottom. Vietnam or Stateside, the story is the same: Short-term soldiers are fed up with militarism. Given this state of affairs, the perplexing fact is that somehow, the war continues; somehow, the military manages to train and use young people for its purposes. Despite their generally antiwar outlook, most soldiers do as they are told. The antiwar movement has been unable to generate a sustained wave of GI resistance to the Army, because it has failed to understand the subjective forces which make the soldier obey, perform, and fight.

The movement’s error has largely been one of assuming that since patriotism is the official justification for the war, soldiers must still be attached to patriotic myths or else they would cast down their arms. But the truth is that patriotism is already dead, even among most career sergeants (“lifers”) and officers. The subjective role of the military is not the confirmation of a soldier’s patriotism, for patriotism has lost its meaning. Instead, the Army confirms the soldier’s manhood, and this is what motivated him to cooperate despite his political skepticism about the war. American soldiers know that their homes and hearths are not endangered by “Charlie Cong,” but they feel that if they reject the military, by refusing to enter it or by opposing it from within, their masculinity will be placed in question. As one private remarked, “There’s no way of knowing if a pacifist is really opposed to war or if he’s only a coward.” Demands of the male ego take precedence over considerations derived from an analysis of international politics.

The military establishment is, of course, wise to the temper of its troops. In creating the New Army, it has practically shelved anticommunism as a motivating mythology, but smartly retained the male-supremacist rewards for which “the service” has always been known. The incoming recruit is not told to “sound off like you’re an American”; today’s soldier would laugh at that. Instead, the exhortation is “Sound off like you’ve got a set of balls.” Bayonet instruction may be punctuated with the following chant:

“Men, what is the spirit of the bayonet?”
“To kill, drill sergeant.”
“Men, will you kill?”
“Yes, drill sergeant.”
“Men, why will you kill?”
“Because we have balls, drill sergeant.”

Soldiers who file applications for discharge as conscientious objectors are no longer harassed with such questions as “What are you, some kind of Commie?” Instead, the query is “Are you some kind of pussy or something?” The Army’s propaganda films still pay lip service to “the struggle against world communism,” but the more effective content is delivered in such lines as “In Vietnam, you’ll be able to find a way out of no way, to do what you thought could not be done.” Vietnam becomes the conflict in which the soldier expects to prove, not that America is just, but that he is mighty, resourceful, invincible, “able to do a man’s task in a man’s world.”

Five years ago radicals were regarded as “alien subversives” by their NCOs and officers. The newer attitude is revealed by the following incident. During a “shakedown inspection,” drill sergeants discovered a small cache of revolutionary literature in a soldier’s locker. Their comment on the discovery was, “Soldier, you read a lot. But not the right kind of stuff, you ain’t got no fuck books.” The sergeants viewed him not as a traitor to his nation, but as a traitor to his sex. His offense against Army mores was not that he neglected to read patriotic literature—no one does—but that he failed to interest himself in the literature of male dominance.

Nor can the Army’s practice of homosexual exclusion be traced to any patriotic origins. Alexander the Great and a large proportion of his troops practiced homosexual love. In the New Army, radicals may be discharged; homosexuals always are. One suspects that homosexuals are discharged and women exempted from the military because their presence in great numbers would contradict the effectiveness of the prevailing chauvinist mythology.

The Women’s Army Corps serves the Army in two ways. Objectively, WACs are nurses and secretaries. Subjectively, they are part of the negative side of motivation mythology. For example, soldiers must periodically pass a physical fitness test which includes a one-mile run. Before the race begins, male soldiers are usually warned, “We’ve got WACs who can run the mile in seven minutes, so you men should be able to do it in six.” The prediction is usually disproved, but the male soldier tries harder to fulfill it because the accusation of femininity hangs over his head. Traditionally, the troops have been taught to believe that “all WACs are either whores or lesbians,” and both designations are disapproving ones in the soldier’s vocabulary.

But, since the effective mores of the Army are changing, one now hears a new insult as well: “All WACs are ‘gung-ho’; after all, they volunteered for the service.” The real causes of WAC enlistments are usually poverty and the oppressiveness of family life. Most WACs enter the service to escape tyrannical parents, “the customary age of marriage,” and ghetto life, not to glorify the flag. Male soldiers sympathize with other males who join to escape the police, paternity suits, and a future as unskilled or uneducated workers, but their reasoning does not cross sex lines. The antiwar movement has anticipated the new insult. In the past few years, several groupings opposed to the war have encouraged young men to join the Army for the purpose of agitating inside it, but no such organization has encouraged young women to join the WACs. Conducting missionary work inside the armed forces is probably a poor idea, but not one whose positive aspects can be refuted by resort to chauvinist misconceptions.

If John Wayne spoke for the soldiery fifteen years ago, he no longer does. The ranks are sick of patriotism. If John Wayne was respected for personifying “balls” and the flag, only his balls hold attraction today. This circumstance reflects the strength of the antiwar movement in one sense. Imperialism now commands less influence over its soldiers than it formerly did. But this victory is not enough: the system has been able to “take care of business” in Vietnam (and elsewhere) despite the decline of patriotism.

The Vietnamese and other victims of the war cannot care much why American soldiers continue to bear arms against them. But if the struggle against imperialist military intervention is to continue gaining ground, the antiwar movement will have to take the role of sexism in the New Army into account.