GIRLS, GUYS AND GUNS - TEACHING MALE DOMI NATION IN THE ARMY

For teaching young men to assume their dominant position in social rel ations between the sexes, the military institution depends on various material props, particularly weapons. During target practice and in th e care of weapons, officers employ an openly sexist language comparing the possession of a weapon to the possession of a woman. At the same time, in practicing the use of weapons, which is often compared to sex ual activity, the rifle symbolically replaces the phallus as an attrib ute of masculinity. Not easy to accept intellectually, this ambivalent representation of weapons induces, in boys doing their military servi ce as they build their masculinity, the fear of going insane and/or be ing thrust into femininity.