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139 DOI: 10.7330/9780874219043.c07 7 Taser to the ’Nads Brutal Embrace of Queerness in Military Practice Mickey Weems Queers and the military have made strange bedfellows in American history. The relationship resembles that of two lovers in a forbidden, secret affair in which one partner is abusive, and neither of them can say good-bye. The following is an account of the uneasy dynamics of homophobia in military men’s individual and team identities. It includes analysis of fucker and pansy antiheroes, historical factors leading to the imposition of official silence by military bureaucracy, unofficial folk speech with transgressive homoerotic humor, and outrageous folk performance-as-resistance videos in the face of perceived institutional oppression, including humorous resistance to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by Straight men as they stood up for their Gay brothers. It concludes by examining the videos that, since the second invasion of Iraq, have lampooned both Queers and official military paranoia concerning all things Queer, and thus tacitly show support for Gay personnel while simultaneously making fun of them. It’s Complicated Until 2011, homosexuality was officially deemed incompatible with military service. Nevertheless, the US military quietly bunked with closeted homosexuals right from the start. Sometimes the illicit relationship was unspoken but accommodating, especially when fighting men were in short supply. The first national drillmaster, Baron von Steuben, for example, was renowned for his military bearing, intelligence, discipline, humor, love for his 140 Mickey Weems troops, and love of men. He was never prosecuted for sodomy due to his crucial role in winning the War of Independence. At other times, though, homosexual personnel were ferreted out, humiliated, and dishonorably discharged. Tensions were aggravated in the 1970s when servicemen accused of doing wrong with their brothers-in-arms publicly rejected stigma attached to homoerotic-romantic love. Acceptance of LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transperson, Queer) people in the late twentieth century inspired the military to play a convoluted game of erotic hide-and-don’t-seek by implementing the linguistic fiction known as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) in 1993. DADT did not officially forbid or condemn homosexuality just as long as homosexual behavior and Gay identity remained unspoken and unseen. But the military bureaucracy could not resist playing the voyeur. Gay service personnel were “asked” and discharged when they “told,” even if the telling was inadvertent, such as an overheard conversation, a chance observance of an off-duty and off-base encounter, or covert surveillance of mail and e-mail by their superiors. DADT was little comfort to Gay service personnel because it was not created for their benefit. Rather, DADT’s true purpose was to allow the military to distance itself from its ongoing affair with queerness, a sordid fetish that not only punished homosexual men but brought scandal after scandal against the military because of significant blind spots in the rhetoric of homophobic masculinity. These scandals include a YMCA sex sting gone wrong (1919), a recruiting video featuring the Village People (1979), congressional debate on a Gay men’s dance party as antimilitary (1996), publication of the Fag Bomb photo just after 9/11 (2001), and revelation of a secret Gay Bomb program (2004). Officially, the military wanted nothing to do with homosexuality before the end of DADT. But unofficially, homosexuality has been a hot topic for military men since at least the mid-1800s as they insulted each other and bonded together through transgressive humor. The term bugger (homosexual ) was used by soldiers in the Civil War, often as a derogatory term for an officer by enlisted men (Wright 2001, 45). Homophobic-erotic terms such as grab-ass (referring to homosexual play, and signifying disorderly conduct and silliness) can be traced at least to World War II (Rottman 2007). Hollywood brought such language out of the barracks and into movie theaters across the nation. Since the 1980s, homophobic-erotic language and behavior have been hailed by script writers and directors as a hallmark of the real, uncensored military in several war films: a male Army soldier Taser to the ’Nads 141 engages in quasi-fellatio by sucking hashish smoke from a rifle barrel blown into his mouth by another soldier (Platoon, 1986), a Marine drill instructor makes constant references to homosexual acts when berating recruits in boot camp (Full Metal Jacket, 1987), male Marines mimic sex with each other to scandalize embedded reporters (Jarhead, 2005), and a female SEAL trainee, rising to the challenge of the all-male...

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