Talking Politics

(By Kate Arnold-Murray) The military is one of the largest and most politically influential institutions in the United States, and yet its inner workings remain a mystery even among many Americans. As the sociolinguist Edith A. Disler has argued, the military is commonly understood through “the monolithic notion of the military as an arbiter of American masculinity” ( 2008, 20 )—an assumption that continues despite the increasing role of women and visibility of LGBTQ+ servicemembers. In talking about “queering” the military, Dr. Mararac draws on queer theory to show how the U.S. military not only enforces societal norms like masculinity and compulsory heterosexuality, but also has the ability to challenge them. For instance, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (a federal law that prevented the marriages of same-sex couples from federal recognition) in 2013, the U.S. Department of Defense began to give equal rights to same-sex military couples who had go...