Analysis of The Naked Citadel by Susan Faludi
Susan Faludi recounts a world where young men march in rigid formation, endure brutal hazing rituals, and absorb the belief that masculinity requires absolute dominance over both body and emotion. In "The Naked Citadel," she explores how The Citadel military college in South Carolina constructs a particular vision of manhood through isolation, humiliation, and exclusion of women. Her 1994 investigation arrived at a turning point when Shannon Faulkner sued for admission to the all-male institution, forcing The Citadel to defend traditions that had remained largely unquestioned for over a century.
Faludi argues that beneath the school's rhetoric of honor and discipline lies a system designed to produce men terrified of anything coded as feminine, including vulnerability, compassion, and emotional honesty. This essay examines how Faludi exposes the anxieties driving The Citadel's resistance to integration and what her analysis reveals about American masculinity at the end of the twentieth century.
The Citadel opened in 1842 as a military arsenal and school in Charleston, positioning itself as a guardian of Southern tradition and martial values. By the time Faludi arrived, it had developed an elaborate system for transforming teenage boys into what administrators called "whole men." Fourth-class students, or knobs, spent their first year subjected to constant verbal abuse, physical exhaustion, and rituals designed to strip away individual identity. Upperclassmen screamed insults inches from their faces, forced them into stress positions, and controlled every moment from wake-up to lights-out. The college defended these practices as character-building, claiming they forged bonds stronger than family and prepared young men for military service. Yet fewer than half of Citadel graduates actually joined the armed forces, suggesting the school served purposes beyond military training. Faludi recognized that The Citadel functioned primarily as a refuge where men could perform traditional masculinity without the complications of modern gender relations.
Faludi's central insight concerns what cadets and administrators feared more than any external threat: the presence of women. When Shannon Faulkner applied in 1993, initially concealing her gender, The Citadel fought her admission with extraordinary intensity, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees. Administrators claimed that admitting women would destroy the school's unique educational mission, though they struggled to articulate precisely how. Faludi discovered that the real anxiety centered on exposure and vulnerability. The Citadel's rituals required young men to shower together, march together, and submit to physical and emotional breakdowns in front of peers. Many cadets told her they valued the school precisely because it offered escape from the pressure to perform romantically or sexually for women. One upperclassman explained that dating required constant self-monitoring and fear of rejection, while The Citadel provided clear rules and guaranteed belonging. Faludi argues that the institution functioned less as a training ground for leadership than as a sanctuary from the perceived demands of femininity.
The methods Faludi employs reveal deeper contradictions within The Citadel's construction of masculinity. She documents how the school's hazing practices forced knobs into positions traditionally associated with feminine submission: kneeling, serving upperclassmen meals, absorbing verbal abuse without response, and enduring physical violation during shower inspections. Upperclassmen referred to knobs using feminized insults, calling them weak and pathetic until they proved themselves through endurance. The system operated on a logic of purification, as if masculinity could only be achieved by first experiencing and then rejecting anything coded as feminine weakness. Faludi interviewed cadets who described the process as rebirth, claiming they emerged as stronger, more confident men. Yet she also found widespread eating disorders, anxiety, and emotional numbness among students. The Citadel promised to build men but seemed equally invested in destroying any traits associated with women, including the capacity for emotional connection and self-reflection.
Supporters of The Citadel's single-gender status argued that young men needed separate spaces to develop without distraction or competition from women. They pointed to declining male college enrollment and rising concerns about boys falling behind in education, suggesting that institutions like The Citadel provided necessary support for struggling young men. Faludi takes this argument seriously, acknowledging that many cadets did arrive at the school feeling lost or inadequate in civilian life. Some had struggled academically, socially, or within families where they felt unmoored. The rigid structure and clear hierarchy offered them purpose and belonging they had not found elsewhere. However, Faludi questions whether the solution to male anxiety should be further separation from women rather than examination of the masculine ideals causing that anxiety in the first place. The Citadel taught young men that strength meant emotional suppression and that equality with women represented a threat rather than an opportunity for growth.
Reading Faludi's account now, more than twenty-five years after The Citadel admitted its first female cadets in 1996, her analysis remains uncomfortably relevant. The anxieties she documented have not disappeared but have found new expression in online communities, political movements, and ongoing debates about gender roles. The Citadel ultimately survived integration, though not without continued resistance and ongoing challenges for women cadets. Faludi's essay endures because she identified something larger than one Southern military college: a crisis in American masculinity rooted in the belief that male identity requires female absence. The young men she interviewed were not monsters but products of a culture that taught them to fear vulnerability and equality in equal measure. Until we examine the costs of defining manhood through dominance and emotional invulnerability, institutions like The Citadel will continue to attract young men seeking refuge from a world that demands they be more than the narrow definition of masculine the school provides.
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