Faludi, single gender situation

A single-gender Society The Citadel, as described in Susan Faludi’s work “The naked Citadel”, is a place of arcane traditions, contradictions, and hidden motives. Not surprisingly for a traditionally all-male institution, many of these mysteries revolve around the role of gender. Describing it as a bastion of masculinity, while not entirely false, would be an oversimplification, as would thinking of it as a backwards institution full of hypocrisy. As is inevitable in an insulated institution attended only by males, the Citadel is a place where “the rules of gender [can] be bent or escaped”. (Faludi 282) Cadets, as Citadel students are known, hold contradictory or even hypocritical views about the various genders. Freshmen joined the school to be made into the Citadel’s vision of a “whole man”, but are bullied and beaten by upperclassmen like women in abusive households. Furthermore, they still hold the upperclassmen in high regard after such incidents. There are required courses on respect for women, yet many cadets disrespect their “dates”, at times turning to violence. Perhaps strangest of all for this culturally conservative institution is the fact that it is not unknown for a cadet to date a drag queen from the local bar. There are two explanations for these oddities. The first is that cadets don’t care if their ideas on gender are sensible; they are just blindly following tradition. The second, and much more interesting, option is to explore these contradictions in terms of the hidden and public transcripts from James C Scott’s “Behind the Official Story”. Sexism, the line between “making men” and homosexuality, and the relations between upperclassmen and freshmen can all be explained in terms of hidden transcripts, and Scott’s more generalized ideas on power relations. The hypocrisy between what is taught and what is practiced regarding treatment of women is hardly unique to the Citadel. The idea that women “must be sheltered and protected not only