Australian Army Journal

GENDER AND SEXUALITY
Sexuality, Cohesion, Masculinity and
Combat Motivation: Designing Personnel
Policy to Sustain Capability
In any event, hyper-masculinity appears to be deeply embedded in combat
unit culture and plays an important if unmeasured role. Constructive change in
combat units will involve more than ‘tweaking’ current training to strip proscribed
‘masculine’ manifestations and reproducing the mixed culture of support units
which is unproven in sustaining close battle. Battles and wars are won by
cohesion. The fact that cohesion in mixed support units has proven sufficient
for supporting roles is not proof that the same culture will be adequate for those
whose job is to kill and maim at close quarters. Analysis and new models are
needed and change must be carefully and positively communicated and managed.
If manifestations of hyper-masculinity are simply treated as misogyny and
dogmatically prohibited without persuasive explanation and this is allowed to be
understood by male soldiers as emasculation of their established combat identity,
the consequence may be at odds with intent: resentment, demoralisation and
clandestine ostracism of women.
Even if Army develops and proves an alternative or modified model for developing
cohesion that is effective in combat units, it will remain threatened by human
sexuality. It seems obvious that actual sexual relationships in the team will introduce
jealousies that will erode trust and threaten the primary loyalty of the individual to
the group. The challenge is that even innocent rapport or unacted desire can have
a similar effect: possibility is destructive. The condition that will logically sustain
trust in small teams is belief that intra-team sexual relationships will not occur.
Before leaders can construct policy to support this belief they need to understand
the mechanisms that make disruptive sexual interactions likely and thus make that
belief so difficult to establish.
The regulatory challenge of consensual sex
Do observers who dismiss sexuality as a policy challenge misjudge the relentless
force that maintains life itself? ‘Sex drive’ is not crude inclination striving against
considered rational choices, but a subtle and complex distortion of decisionmaking
processes. Human evolutionary success is a result of highly cooperative
group behaviour. This became possible when violent male sexual competition
was reduced by social order mechanisms, including notions of sexual morality.
However, clandestine sex outside socially approved relationships is an effective
genetic strategy, 51 explaining the propensity for illicit sex demonstrated by
non-paternity rates. 52 Policy to manage sexuality should understand it as a
sophisticated psychological mechanism that appears to modify the sense of
right and wrong and allow the disregard of risk in order to rationalise and take
opportunities for sex. 53
Australian Army Journal
Culture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 66