The “Supermen” Club: Organizational Secrecy and Masculine Identity in an Israeli National Security Organization

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X211064917
• Published date: 01 April 2023
• Date: 01 April 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X211064917

Armed Forces & Society

2023, Vol. 49(2) 330 –349

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X211064917

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Article

1134644AFSXXX10.1177/0095327X211064917Armed Forces & SocietyKepten

research-article2020

The “Supermen”Club:

Organizational Secrecy and

Masculine Identity in an

Israeli National Security

Organization

Aluma Kepten

1



Abstract

How does secrecy shape narratives of militarized hegemonic masculinity? This article

assesses a gap at the intersection between theories of masculinities and organizational

secrecy. Supported by 15 interviews with current and former male workers of a covert

section of an Israeli national security organization, it argues that secrecy is experienced

as both an external hurdle and a central component to the way that men internalize

masculinity. Unable to access social capital outside the security organization, the

respondents of the study construct a social f‌ield inside it through which they can assert

their masculinity. They do so by conceptualizing their jobs, themselves, and the or-

ganization through a prism of sacrif‌icial warriorhood, and actively incorporate secr-

ecy’s constraints into a narrative of “super-men”. This study thus examines secrecy in

the context of a militarized environment, showing the experience of masculinity and a

perceived lack of power-access among members of a dominant group.

Keywords

hegemonic masculinity, secrecy, security organizations, gender identity, Israel

1

The University of New South Wales, Canberra, ACT, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Aluma Kepten, International and Political Studies, The University of New South Wales, C/o School of

Humanities and Social Sciences, PO Box 7916, Canberra, ACT 2610, Australia.

Email: a.kepten@adfa.edu.au

Kepten 331

Ideas of masculinities are strongly linked with notions of warriorhood, militancy, and

national mythos. Power is intrinsic to masculinity, and in militarized societies, those

who are most able to “prove”a militarized masculinity are rewarded. The challenges to,

and negotiations of, masculinity are issues that are central to discussions of militarized

organizations. However, most previous studies into national security organizations

neglect to address the potential effects of secrecy on the formation and exercise of

masculinity. National security organizations are strongly associated with secrecy and

therefore present a clear theoretical paradox, in the tension between the requirement to

“prove”masculinity and the inherent obstacle of secrecy. It is therefore crucial to

understand how secrecy is negotiated within these spaces to analyze how masculinity is

constructed in security organizations.

This article begins to address this gap in theory, and the ways in which organi-

zational secrecy shapes personal narratives of masculine identity among members of a

dominant group in a militarized organization. While other studies of national security

organizations have focused on the structure of secrecy, this one targets the experiences

of gender within the structure. Situated in the intersection between Connell’s (1995,

2005) theory of “hegemonic masculinity”and Costas and Grey’s (2016) discussion of

the symbolic value of secrecy, the article argues that secrecy may be perceived both as

an external hurdle and as a central component to the way that men internalize and

negotiate masculinity. To explore the paradox, the study draws on 15 in-depth in-

terviews with former and then-current male workers of a covert section of a paramilitary

national security organization in Israel, hereafter referred to as “the Organization”. It

focuses on the challenges these men experience due to occupational secrecy, and the

narrative they construct to negotiate their position, as men whose profession would f‌it

society’s hegemonic masculine ideal, but due to secrecy cannot be recognized for it.

The article opens with an overview of the relevant literature, followed by a de-

scription of the data and the research method. The f‌indings are then presented and are

then subject to a discussion of their possible implications. It should be noted that the

material presented here targets only the private sphere of participants’lives and does

not include a discussion of professional or otherwise classif‌ied material. The interviews

were conducted between 2014 and 2016, and an approval from the organization studied

to publish f‌indings was obtained in December 2017.

Organizational Secrecy and Gender Theory

Scholarship on masculinities is rich and growing, particularly in the context of se-

curitized organizations. Masculine identity is an inherently hierarchical construct, and

is the product of specif‌ic cultural contexts (Lomski-Feder & Rapoport, 2000). Oc-

cupational identity can therefore play a vital role in the narration of gender. The

workplace is identif‌ied as a central site for the production and reproduction of mas-

culinities (Wasserman et al., 2018), with militarized organizations being a common

f‌ield for investigation. Many organizations have secrecy constraints that operate as a

guiding aspect of their culture (Costas & Grey, 2014;Grey, 2014). This takes on

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