Managing Sex in the U.S. Military: Gender, Identity, and Behavior

by Beth Bailey (Editor), Alesha E. Doan (Editor), Shannon Portillo (Editor)

The U.S. military is a massive institution, and its policies on sex, gender, and sexuality have shaped the experiences of tens of millions of Americans, sometimes in life-altering fashion. The essays in Managing Sex in the U.S. Military examine historical and contemporary military policies and offer different perspectives on the broad “How does the U.S. military attempt to manage sex?” This collection focuses on the U.S. military’s historical and contemporary attempts to manage sex—a term that is, in practice, slippery and indefinite, encompassing gender and gender identity, sexuality and sexual orientation, and sexual behaviors and practices, along with their outcomes. In each chapter, the authors analyze the military’s evolving definitions of sex, sexuality, and gender, and the significance of those definitions to both the military and American society.


 

Genres: Research

364 pages, Hardcover

Published May 1, 2022

Reviews

[Rebecca Crunden]

⤑ research tag: in an effort to organise my shelves, I'm going to be labelling the books I'm using for study purposes as I tend to dip in and out of these.

[Sarah Bromlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my usual read, but brought me back to research I did in college. Gender in the military is complicated, but this does a good job of contextualizing it in military history and policy.