This is one of the many reasons why Shannon Faulkner’s battle to enter The Citadel put many feminists in an equivocal position analogous to that of some gay rights activists faced with the issue of gays in the military or gay marriage—they felt trapped into having to argue that a member of the group whose rights they were committed to defending should be permitted to do something that down deep they thought should not be done by anyone ever. And they were further forced into arguing, for exigent strategic reasons, that the admission of a member of their group would not change the institution she sought to enter, even though down deep they thought that change was exactly what such an institution needed and what opening it up might help provide.

Mary Anne C. Case, “Disaggregating Gender from Sex and Sexual Orientation: The Effeminate Man in the Law and Feminist Jurisprudence”, in The Yale Law Journal, in Diane H. Mazur, “A Call to Arms”, in Harvard Women’s Law Journal, in “Case Study 1: Shannon Faulkner and the Citadel”