United States During World War II
M. Michaela Hampf
While the U.S. Army was at war on two fronts, the question of what it meant to be a soldier were fought over within the military as well as in Congress. The necessity to include women in the war effort and the presence of the first regular women’s contingent, the Women's Army Corps, (WAC) founded in 1943 made it necessary to symbolically re-draw gender boundaries within the military institution as well as in civilian society. In my contribution I argue that despite the formal inclusion of women in the military organization, they were discursively excluded from what was perceived as the virile core of the military profession, namely combat positions. In reserving the status of combatant and protector for Euro-American men while excluding African American men and all women from combat positions, the role of white women as the “girl back home” could be perpetuated. The core of the organization remained white and masculine and the “line of demarcation” between soldiers (historically men, citizens and warriors) and civilians (historically “womenandchildren” (Enloe) and men unfit to serve) was redrawn inside the organization during World War II.
My paper will focus on a series of records of courts martial of cases of alleged homosexuality at Fort Oglethorpe, GA. I will look at the sexual politics of the Army and the WAC and show how the regulation of sexuality was used to reproduce gender difference in the military and civilian society.
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