An unconventional documentary about the Dyke Uniform Corps

What’s behind the desire to make it into the Dyke Uniform Corps? Is it the masculinity? The control? The performance? The muscles and the shiny buttons? This documentary goes behind-the-scenes to show the surprising, endearing, uniquely revealing and sometimes troubling reasons why the women of the Corps want to wear the uniform and belong to this cult of masculinity.

By creating a militaristic, fraternity-like organization, members of the Dyke Uniform Corps (D.U.C.) create a “brotherhood” otherwise not available to women in our society. Members of the Corps express alternative gender identities that often go unexpressed in the gay and lesbian world, let alone mainstream society, and create a safe space to explore taboo desires and lifestyle choices that are not “politically correct.”

Being a part of the D.U.C. is not without its complications and profound troubles. This fetish and this longing to occupy male space emerges within a particular culture that equates power with masculinity, infuses women with unrealistic ideas about the perfect, beautiful body, and subtly but surely romanticizes the fascist nature of extreme belonging. Yet to pathologize these fantasies is both reductive and counter-productive. As this documentary illustrates, it can be an empowering act to indulge one’s desires. Participation in the Dyke Uniform Corps allows women to occupy a space otherwise not available to them: a space of “female masculinity” that is difficult if not impossible to express from within the bounds of a dualistic gender society.