Personal Stories from the Military

I was having trouble coming up with a topic for this first blog entry. But since it was explained that it could be about anything, then I would like to expand on what we were talking about in class today with male homophobia and homoeroticism. Also I am sorry if I am using these terms liberally but I am just using them as we would within this culture. I had a story that I wanted to tell but it was lengthy and we were at the end of class so I figured I would just use the blog to contribute to the conversation. My story comes from the viewpoint of the military and the culture that I was a part of as a sailor in the Coast Guard. I know that the viewpoint from people outside of the military tend to believe that it is a very homophobic culture. At times and from some people there was a good amount of homophobia; I am not even going to pretend there wasn’t. But from my experience there was just as much if not more homoeroticism as well. The perfect example of this would be the 20 plus group showers we had to take every night for eight weeks during boot camp. Through out the eight weeks you could see the homophobic actions and tendencies morph into homoerotic behaviors and speech.

The first week of boot camp everyone was of course nervous to do anything out of fear of messing up and getting ripped apart by the drill instructors. But one of the biggest hurdles emotionally was the dreaded group shower. Every one was trying not to look down, keep their towels on as long as possible, no one talked to each other, and everyone rushed through their shower. No one wanted to do anything that might jeopardize their perceived manliness and were very uncomfortable around other naked men. But as the days trudged on you saw a slow transformation. We realized that the showers were on of the small refuges from the stern and brutal Company Commanders (drill instructors). People started not caring about throwing a towel on before going into the shower and we would all talk about what was pissing us off the most that day and avoiding people were no longer trying their hardest to not see the others genitalia out of homophobic fears. Singing conversation and even people shoving and messing with each other in the showers became a regular occurrence.  I remember even during the second to last week we were taking a shower and all of a sudden I hear someone singing (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life at the top of his lungs and an outburst of laughter. I turned around to see what the fuss was about and one of the guys was singing into his shampoo bottle and dancing around with his genitals pushed between his legs with no care in the world. Eventually everyone joined in the singing with no regard to whether our Company Commanders heard or not. It was nice comedic relief after a long stressful day. If that had happened at the beginning of boot camp people would have thought that way “gay” or “something’s off” with him or would have tried their hardest not to look at him out of the fear of our own homophobia brought on by our perceived societal norms. But weeks of being with each other and going through this routine, it normalized nudity and everyone became comfortable. Nudity was no longer sexualized and even the way we talked to each other changed as well. You would start hearing people saying “nice ass man” to someone walking around the bathrooms or changing along with a large assortment of other homoerotic comments that we used to pull our selves out of the reality that we were in at the time. This stuck with me, and many of us, through the entirety of our time in the Coast Guard and the way everyone interacted with each other. Even today nudity really isn’t anything to me or bothers me like it seems to bother other people, because we learned that it doesn’t have to be sexualized, and in our situation, we found a sort of freedom in it. I know that this story doesn’t really lead up for the opportunities for a whole lot of conversation, although feel free to do so, and it might seem weird or out of left field. But since we have been segwaying in class towards an era of homophobia and homoeroticism, I figured that I would offer up a story about sexuality within a part of our society that is largely looked at as homophobic and that it might give you all some interesting insight into that world. Of course I could add to that story to possibly make it read better or add other stories for further examples, but I'm pretty sure I'm well past the 500 word parameters, so I'll just leave it here.