Troxel 1 Hannah Troxel Sex and the State Final Paper The Pink Camouflaged Disease Join the

Pink Army! declares a website set up by Florida Hospital (Pink Army). As a part of the Hospitals breast cancer prevention program, visitors can enlist as a foot solider, go on missions, and receive their own dog tags in order to present a unified front against breast cancer (Pink Army). The programs logo features a pink camouflage army helmet, complete with pink ribbon and lipstick bullets tucked into the band. The overall effect is, frankly, rather kitschy perhaps Florida Hospital went overboard with the almost tongue-incheek army terms and the ever-present pink but the program serves as an extreme example of an existing, pervasive tendency in the world of breast cancer. The use of military language that of armies, battles, and veterans when talking about breast cancer spans from feminist activists, to prevention campaigns and media depictions. It is so common that it may seem like the natural, and thus correct, vernacular to use. But beneath the veil of naturalness, there is both a tension between masculine and feminine realms and a trend of euphemization and ordering of bodies. As is often useful (if not somewhat clich) when approaching the topic of breast cancer, we can turn to Audre Lordes The Cancer Journals for insight into early formations of the breast cancer warrior. Lorde refers to herself as a warrior throughout the book, most famously as a black woman warrior poet in a battle in which she could so easily be a casualty (21, 34). In discussing Lordes use of warrior language, Robina Josephine Khalid notes how, in a Western context, the metaphor of warfare is not specific to breast cancer (698). We can recall ACTUPs slogan act up, fight back, fight AIDS, or even more mundane examples, such as fighting

Troxel 2 a cold or framing viruses as foreign invaders. Khalid argues that these metaphors of conflict often only engender more conflict in the individual experiencing disease (699). The military language of Lorde seems fundamentally insufficient when translated to her body for example, when Lorde describes the disconnect between her expectations for her mastectomy scar (i.e. that it would be like a battle scar) and its eventual character as placid and inoffensive (Khalid 700; Lorde 55). This analysis works on the level of the individual body. The phenomenon we see in Florida Hospitals Pink Army works on a much wider scale, beyond the borders of the single bodys battle zone and into the realm of the population. In Foucaults terms, we are not just interested in the implementation of biopower on the individual, but of biopolitics on the populace. Lordes account, while quite personal, does contain elements of the massive, things that go beyond her individual battle. For example, she imagines an army of one-breasted women descend[ing] on Congress to demand better cancer prevention efforts and to break that eras silence on the issue of breast cancer (16). Lordes army consists of women using their aggressions to influence the institution that creates and directs the actual army. Perhaps this is not so much military language as it is militia language; activist David fighting against the Goliath of the government. So while Lorde uses a mass language of armies and battles (informed by and alongside her own personal ambivalent warriorship, directed at disease but not her own body, at institutions but not cancer as a phenomenon), her militant rhetoric has an effect that is quite distinct from that which we see in the Pink Army or in Susan G. Komen for the Cures cries to join the fight against breast cancer (CITE). The military language in question here may well be related to Lordes initial call to break the silence on breast cancer, but as that silence is

Troxel 3 now largely broken1 (NFL teams dress in pink for awareness), what does it mean to wage a battle against breast cancer? The present-day battle against breast cancer, with its foot soldiers and veterans, is a war waged against an enemy that is diverse and dispersed. The military language creates a massive front focused on the disease itself. We do not hear battle Congress for more research funding! or join the war on potentially harmful carcinogens! Rather, by enlisting in the Pink Army or donating to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, we become a part of the battle against breast cancer as a whole. It is a battle coated in pink reaffirming the feminized face of breast cancer (and, in a way, inscribing breast cancer in woman and woman in breast cancer) but it is also covered in camouflage. To approach the militaristic language we must also approach the military itself. John M. McHugh, Secretary of the Army, states in the 2012 Army Posture Statement that the army has a duty and responsibility to all of you, the American people, accomplished by defending this great nation (4). Throughout the Statement, there is a great deal of talk about honor, valor, and service all centered on the protection of the national body. This is the official face that the military as a whole not simply the army presents to the public. Furthermore, we can reach back into popular romanticizations of the military to further delineate what this national body consists of. The tendency to refer to the U.S. as she, the idealization of the nation in the form of a pin-up girl, and other phenomena point to the characterization of the domestic, civilian nation as feminine, as Woman, as that which is protected by the masculine. However, there is also an internal military culture that informs both the ways in which the armed
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This is not to say that all aspects of breast cancer are suddenly open for discussion. Death, dying, the choice not to wear a prosthesis, and other complicated, personal issues that fall outside of the survivor/martyr narrative are still hard to come by. It is clear that Lordes goals have not been fully realized, that the breast cancer talk of today has other uses.

Troxel 4 forces function and the tensions in using military metaphors in the context of breast cancer. Carol Burke describes a string of traditions and rituals that enact the transformation from boyhood to manhood as well as identify the individual as one who successfully conforms toan idealized version of the anonymous soldier (14, 15). But it must be said that these rituals are not one-sizefits-all, unisex endeavors. Not only are the rituals male-specific and masculinity-affirming (through creating the boy/civilian to man/warrior transformation) the military also engages in actual internal violence against women in its ranks. Burke identifies rampant misogyny in a culture in which women and homosexuals take the place of the vanquished enemy (21). Women and other feminized groups are used as insults by drill instructors, but even further the military is notorious for instances of sexual assault and rape against its female members (and even civilians), some of which are recounted by Burke. Although there seems to be an effort to change the militarys public presentation regarding women (e.g. featuring pictures of female members in recruitment materials), internal crimes against women, the structure of who can serve where (men alone are assigned combat roles, which are given far more prestige), and the portrayal of the feminine as that which is unacceptable within the ranks (that which must be vanquished) embed the idea of being truly military within a brutally defensive masculinity. Why, then, even choose to use military language to work through a feminized disease? Why paint the camouflage pink? We can initially turn back to the characterization of the military as the valiant male defenders of feminized domestic America. This portrayal may seem to map onto the breast cancer battle. After all, while anyone regardless of gender or sex can develop breast cancer, breast cancer in the public mind is cemented in womanhood. What better interpretation of military language in talk about this disease than that of a valorous masculinity

Troxel 5 coming in to protect and save the woman-population from the evil invader of breast cancer? However, such a conclusion belies the complexity of the issue. While it may be men who dress up in pink football uniforms to raise awareness, it is women who are featured on the Pink Armys website. Women are characterized as battling breast cancer by having it, by getting mammograms, by buying yogurt festooned with pink ribbons, and by participating in fundraising walks. Although women may not be allowed on the front lines of the actual military, most of the breast cancer armed forces are comprised of them. In some ways, this is warfare that women cannot be kept out of. Recall Khalids discussion of war as a common way to describe disease perhaps that tendency is merely reiterated through this military language. But this too-simple explanation does nothing to alleviate the tension between the anti-woman violence perpetuated by military culture and the supposedly pro-women stance of the battle against breast cancer. However, the transformation the military offers may be helpful in thinking through this problem. Burkes assertion that the rituals of military culture help turn civilians into warriors also implies something about legitimacy and worthiness. Before, you were simply recruit scum; now, you are a full-fledged, honorable soldier. Burke also discusses the efforts of female members to reach this level of legitimacy albeit with great difficulty. Part of the function of military language in talk about breast cancer is this very legitimizing process. Lorde herself can be interpreted as legitimizing her experiences through warriorship, before breast cancer was considered to be of national importance. In a world in which womanly things are often denigrated, it can make sense to talk about what is coded as a womens issue through the lens of a masculine institution. It can turn a woman with breast cancer from a sad woman suffering at home, dealing with her womans problem, to a soldier a brave person confronting a difficult situation.

Troxel 6 But we must remember that the military language of breast cancer does not simply function on the level of the sufferers body. The battle against breast cancer is not so much a war of specifics but instead a campaign against a vague conglomeration of things that make up the idea of breast cancer. We can actually see a parallel here to the dominant type of engagement the U.S. has participated in over the last few decades: asymmetrical warfare, in which dispersed insurgents are often lumped under one name and pursued as a whole group. It is the weeding out of the undesirable from a certain population in order to, ostensibly, maintain order back home sometimes the undesirable at home are neutralized as well. The military, in a way, functions as the ultimate form of population control. By exercising a specifically anti-feminine masculinity and discipline (paradoxically paired with rowdiness and disorder) within its ranks, the military is able to control external masses of bodies and make them legible through the language of combat. It is here in the realm of control and legibility that we find one of the more powerful reasons for military language in breast cancer. Breast cancer, inscribed in woman, denotes bodies gone out of control en masse. Military language, then, provides a way to understand these unruly bodies at the level of the population. People with breast cancer are women and these women are battling a foreign invader instead of being unruly themselves, they too are fighting against unruliness, against disorder of the population. Under military guise, their disordered bodies become agents of order. However, this tenuous conclusion still does not solve the conflict between the masculine military and feminized breast cancer. Perhaps this is a conflict that actually does not need to be sorted out. The Pink Army does not seem to recognize this tension in fact, its feminized army is cast as both fun and powerful. But it is also possible that through highlighting these kinds of hidden disconnects, we can shed light on both the truly un-fun

Troxel 7 aspects of the womens disease and the violent masculine internal culture of the military.

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Works Cited Burke, Carol. Camp All-American, Hanoi Jane, and the High-and-tight: Gender, Folklore, and Changing Military Culture. Boston: Beacon, 2004. Print. Khalid, Regina Josephine. African American Review 42.3/4 (2008): 697-714. JSTOR. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. Lorde, Audre. The Cancer Journals. San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1992. Print. "Pink Army." JoinThePinkArmy.com. Florida Hospital, n.d. Web. 15 Dec. 2012. United States. Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Army Posture Statement. By John M. McHugh and Raymond T. Odierno. N.p.: n.p., February 2012. Print.