Sister Act

Lesbians more likely to be discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” than gay men.

Lesbians in uniform are more likely to be ousted from the military than their gay male counterparts, say Pentagon statistics obtained by the University of California at Santa Barbara. While women comprise 15 percent of all active-duty and reserve members of the military, they also make up more than one-third of the 619 people discharged last year due to their sexual orientation.

The Air Force was the branch that presented the most glaring disparity, say researchers, where women make up 20 percent of personnel but 61 percent of those expelled, marking an uptick from the previous year and the first time women in any branch of the military represented the majority of those dismissed under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Why are women getting discharged disproportionately more than men under this policy?

“I think the results are expected in the sense of the sexism that still exists in our society and in the military in particular,” says Malcolm Lazin, founder and executive director of the national and international Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered (GLBT) civil rights organization Equality Forum. “This is a convenient way to eliminate women from the armed services.”

Equality Forum undertakes high impact initiatives, produces documentary films, coordinates GLBT History Month and presents the largest annual national and international GLBT civil rights forum.

This all boils down to what Lazin calls “old-fashioned sexism.”

“Women are supposed to conform to a stereotypical image and if they don’t, they are treated in a disparaging way,” he adds. 

Citing an article recently published in the Joint Force Quarterly by Colonel Om Prakash, USAF, Lazin contends that despite these statistics, attitudes towards gays and lesbians in the military are improving.

“The good news is that for the first time, the military is ready to address the prejudice against gays and lesbians in the military,” Lazin says.

“This article essentially said that there is no underlying scientific basis to exclude gays and lesbians based on military cohesion or any other reason,” he explains. “I think the Department of Defense is now willing to seriously consider these issues and they are issues that are particularly profound for lesbians and women in the military.”

Rhode Island-based writer Amanda Fox served in the Air Force as a meteorologist with her now-wife, who was a cryptological linguist. The couple married in Massachusetts.

Fox, who entered the Air Force at the end of the Reagan administration, before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” says that during that time there was an active “gay underground” in the military, but then even in that environment, “women were still very much on the outside.”

“Even in that framework of our gay community, the stereotypical gung ho male was still preferred,” she explains. “If a man was caught, he could explain himself to a somewhat sympathetic commanding officer, but women more likely to just be dismissed.”   

“Men generally get a pass on this, but women are still not seen as being as valuable,” Fox notes. “It doesn’t matter if the charge is true or not, women are more likely to be discharged.”  

During her time in the Air Force, Fox says, she observed cases in which women were dismissed with little to no evidence of indiscretion. “At a hearing, they don’t even need to have evidence, the woman can still be discharged based on the supposition itself,” she explains. “They don’t need any evidence that you are involved in homosexual activity; there doesn’t even have to be a smoking gun.”  

Fox says that the scenario sounds unbelievable, even to her. “It almost seems too ‘Hollywood,’ like the film GI Jane, but it really is that easy to do,” she explains. “That scene where they took the photo of her with her friends at the beach, it really was like that.”

Like Lazin, Fox says that things have improved for gays and lesbians in the military in recent years. “The attitude was changing a bit by the time we got out in 2003,” she notes. “What we hear is that it is a little bit better now.”  

Fox contends that as women have advanced in the military, discrimination against them has increased. According to Pentagon statistics, in 2007, 49 percent of Air Force personnel discharged for being gay were women, up from 36 percent in 2006. In the Army, women comprised 14 percent of personnel and 36 percent of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" discharges in 2008; in the Navy, women made up 14 percent of the personnel and 23 percent of the discharges, and in the Marines, women made up 6 percent of personnel and 18 percent if those discharged under the policy.

“Women are still seen, especially by the old guard, as only there to fill support roles,” Fox maintains. “They want them in nursing, as support staff, morale recreation and welfare, and cooking, but as women became pilots, were more likely to [engage] in combat, as they would rise up in the ranks, the old boys’ network just got tighter and tighter and tighter, and they would try to squeeze out a woman in authority.”

The ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' policy, Fox says, has done little to nothing to advance gays and lesbians in the military.

“When ‘Don’t Ask’ was instituted it never made homosexuality in the military okay, it just meant that when you enlisted they no longer asked the question, ‘Are homosexual or have you ever engaged in homosexual activity?’, which meant you did not have to lie about that in order to go through the enlistment process,” she explains.