Conclusion

This chapter summarizes arguments concerning the shifting and negotiated nature of military fencelines in Okinawa. It explains that due to the ongoing antibase movement, intimate everyday effects of the U.S. military presence, including military international sex, marriage, and family, attract popular scrutiny and become subject to military and community surveillance and regulation. The adeptness with which military couples circumvent official definitions and control by crossing military fencelines reveals the limits of state institutional power and U.S. military empire. The chapter also traces the historical emergence and transformation of popular imagery and stereotypes of U.S. military men, Okinawan women, and military international sex and marriage from the early years of the U.S. occupation through the postreversion era. It analyzes how racialized and sexualized stereotypes of U.S. military men exist in connection with family opposition to military marriages in the present time.

“Honey, I Want to Be a Surrogate”: How Military Spouses Negotiate and Navigate Surrogacy With Their Service Member Husbands

This article examines how military spouses negotiate the decision to become a surrogate with their service member husband and how the two navigate surrogacy together. It is speculated that military spouses are ideal candidates for surrogacy due to their particular status as a military spouse; however, military spouses face structural constraints in their everyday lives which in turn would prove challenging to their desire to become a surrogate. Based on in-depth interviews with 33 military spouses who had been surrogates, this article examines how military spouses discuss, negotiate, and experience surrogacy with their spouses all the while navigating the structural demands of the military and the contractual demands of surrogacy. Findings highlight egalitarian decision making between the spouses, and a mostly collaborative approach to the surrogacy process. Ultimately, this work illuminates how surrogacy is experienced by the women who participate in the practice and provides insight as to how military marriages function.