Re: Worms, Can (1)
Irradiated by LabRat
Since the debate raging in the comments seems to be taking on some common threads and arguments, it’ll be more productive (and less exhausting) for me to address them up here and clarify my own argument and position more. I am paraphrasing; if you think a fundamental point was missed then feel free to quibble, but if you’re just upset I stated the logic being used in an unflattering fashion, feel less free.
1. “We can’t have openly gay soldiers/female soldiers because of the possibility of sexual misconduct and damaged unit cohesion.”
Hello? We already have tons of sexual misconduct that damages unit cohesion, readiness, and morale among the heterosexual male soldiers. Soldiers sleep with the locals and have dramas about whose girlfriend is whose. Soldiers sleep with somebody else’s wife. It used to be that STDs from soldiers screwing prostitutes was a major source of attrition in wartime before effective treatments and preventions were invented, sometimes a bigger one than actual casualties from enemy action. Now that’s what I call damaged readiness and morale. But we don’t boot out heterosexual male soldiers for this unless it’s really egregious, because it’s assumed that shit happens and people will get stupid over sex. If a policy punishes heterosexual sexual misconduct that causes the exact same kinds of damage proportionately, but bars gay people entirely or throws them out over it, it is blatantly discriminatory and for no good reason at all. Hell, given the grotesque ratio of female soldiers that report being raped by their fellow soldiers versus the actual prosecution of rapes, I would be waving fucking pom-poms over punishing sexual misconduct more often and more harshly regardless of the genital arrangements in question*.
2. “We shouldn’t have gay soldiers because the straight soldiers will be forced to share showers and bathrooms with them”.
Look, I get the argument about how we shouldn’t be forced to be naked with people who might ogle us and how this is why there are separate facilities for the women and the men. But the thing is, we are not actually arguing about whether we should have gay people in the military at all. I hate to break it to y’all, but that particular culture war was lost before you were even aware it existed. Thanks to the fundamentally dishonest nature of that closet some people think was such a marvelous social institution, there have been gay people in the military since Alexander the Great sashayed across a battlefield and probably before him, too. ASM’s post puts this more clearly than I could ever hope to, but the fact that the policy is named “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” should be more than enough all on its own. There have always been gay people showering with the straight people, quite a lot of them. The only way to even begin to effectively keep them out would be to screen a showing of “Big Hot Studs Having Naughty Fun” for recruits and check for stiffies, and even then some with the good self-control they need to get through public life would slip in. (And it wouldn’t even work on the lesbians, who by now should be sought out by the military specifically in order to further stealth technology research.)
Because of this little factoid, especially since DADT was made policy, the people who are fighting DADT’s repeal aren’t actually fighting for protecting soldiers from prurient gazes in the showers. They’re fighting for the privilege of punishing people for ruining their comfortable illusions. Not for sexual harassment or assault. Not for *actually* leering in the shower. For, intentionally or by complete accident, making it impossible for someone to continue assuming everyone in the shower is as completely uninterested in penis as he is. For that, under the current arrangement, Private Peckerhead can destroy the career of Private Peterpetter if said Peckerhead manages to catch the latter giving a good-night kiss to his boyfriend on his own time away from the rest of the unit no matter his attempts to keep his sexuality irrelevant from his duty. This is also why I will not apologize for the tone of my previous post: the argument is that our soldiers need illusions, and the capacity to aggressively punish people that disillusion them, in order to function.
This is, by the way, why I have no respect for the argument that DADT is just fine because people don’t “have” to declare their sexual identity and it’s inappropriate for them to do so. Gay soldiers don’t just have to not shove being gay in other people’s faces, they are OBLIGATED to lie, omit, and sneak in order to make sure that no one realizes it by accident, either. I like to keep what I do in my bedroom private, and prefer that other people do too in most contexts, but I am also never forced to pretend I’m not married to my husband and would find it intolerable if I were.
The fact of the matter is, the degree of gender separation in our society and the existence of homosexuality and bisexuality means that just about everyone reading this has, at some time or another, been in a public space where nudity is accepted with someone who was attracted to their gender. Been in the showers at the gym? Yep. In school? Yep. Sauna? Yep. None of those places have “no gays” policies and couldn’t enforce them if they did, and asserting that you have the right to never be found attractive nude is absurd. Gay and bisexual men and women learn not to stare and make people uncomfortable, and if they choose to ignore that training, that falls under harassment again, which is already not okay.
Lastly, I keep hearing that the fallout from “gays in the military” will cause all sorts of chaos, but all the realities I have just laid out should make it clear that the experiment has already been running for decades and all this lost readiness and destroyed morale simply hasn’t come to pass. Reading people sincerely arguing this is, to me, like reading impassioned editorials in the local newsrag about how allowing open carry will cause blood in the streets and wild west scenarios, with a concealed gun on my belt and a concealed carry permit in my pocket. Somehow, because it’s “open”, people will completely lose their minds and all their social training and just start eyefucking people in the shower shooting everyone that looks funny at them.
3. “We shouldn’t allow equal rights and opportunities to minorities because then minorities might try for special rights.”
Thank you for reminding me that many minorities are reflexively suspicious of conservative motivations because they have excellent fucking reason to be. Sometimes I forget this for whole hours at a stretch.
tl;dr: Nobody has the right to significantly damage someone else’s life because you’d prefer not to have to ever think about them.
*And because I KNOW somebody is going to trot this out on me as though it diminished my argument, yes, I think female soldiers who get pregnant from consensual dalliances during their tour of duty should be punished in some fashion. Do something stupid and preventable, take the consequences, not a Get Out Of Service Free card.
February 3rd, 2010 at 4:48 pm
The military’s solution to pregnancy is similar to the one they used for STDs.
The first few are free, provided you do what ever it takes to get back into service ASAP. If you use it as a get out of the Army card, or are too stupid to avoid having this as an issue continuously, then its bad conduct discharge time … or at least, it used to be.
I’m sure it’s being abused now.
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:26 pm
I only have one concern for someone who is openly gay serving in the military and that is some fucking assholes who go around bitching “I don’t want to serve with no fucking fag!” deciding one night to ‘remove’ their problem.
It’s bullshit, but there are some real SOB’s out there that, when I was in, would try and do something like that if they could get away with it.
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:47 pm
Instinct: Same thing needs to happen to Private Peckerhead there as if he had said “I don’t want to serve with no fucking nigger!”, and that is, to be told that he’s in the fucking Army, and who he serves with is no longer under his discretion.
And if he tries to “remove his problem”, I’m sure Leavenworth isn’t full yet.
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Another excellent post LabRat, and again I couldn’t agree with you more.
perlhaqr, glad I finished reading the comments before responding to Instinct. No need for duplicates.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:01 pm
Excellent post.
I’m glad you brought up the open-carry issue: a lot of what I’ve been hearing on DADT reminds me of the victim-disarmament camp’s reflexive hysteria.
“We can’t let people carry concealed handguns; there will be BLOOD IN THE STREETS!” But Floridians can carry concealed, and a whole lot of nothing happens.
“We can’t let people openly carry handguns; there will be BLOOD IN THE STREETS!” But Arizonans can open carry, and a whole lot of nothing happens.
“We can’t let people carry a handgun without a permit; there will be BLOOD IN THE STREETS!” But Vermonters can carry without permits, and a whole lot of nothing happens.
“We can’t let non-heterosexuals serve openly in the military; there will be chaos and discord and unit discohesion and hate crimes and… and… BLOOD IN THE BARRACKS!” But all orientations can serve openly in Britain, and Israel, and Canada (and others), and a whole lot of nothing happens.
Circumstances vary, of course, but just as I’d like to be told why Wisconsin is so different from Florida that Packer-backers just can’t handle CCW, I’d like to be told why the United States is so different from (most of) the rest of NATO that Americans just can’t handle openly-gay servicemen.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:16 pm
The problem is the homosexual who tries to have his way on a sleeping comrade in the barracks. Does the hetro have to accept it or can he just beat the shit out of the offending party? It happened in my platoon, and the sword swallower got beaten, uh, I mean fell down the stairs and was discharged “for the good of the service”. It may not have been right, but, what do you suggest for the current times? Keeping the offensive person in the same squad/platoon/section would NOT be beneficial to morale.
SFC (Ret)
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Dolan,
“The problem is the homosexual who tries to have his way on a sleeping comrade in the barracks.”
We’re discussing the repeal of DADT, not the UCMJ proscriptions on attempted rape.
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Blunt Object posted:
“Circumstances vary, of course, but just as I’d like to be told why Wisconsin is so different from Florida that Packer-backers just can’t handle CCW…”
If you saw my husband on Packer football day, you’d understand. The normally mild-mannered finance dweeb morphs into a crazed, leaping, screaming monster.
There’s a reason why I own all the guns here…
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:32 pm
What then of the standard of sexual privacy? It is not illusory. DADT relies on troops maintaining their own illusions, so the government can technically wash its hands of responsibility. This, too, is bad policy. DADT should be repealed in the opposite direction.
The standard is independent of feelings. It is independent of acceptance. It is independent of popular opinion. It is independent even of functional analysis. It is, in fact, the very definition of an absolute objective truth because liberty is an inalienable right. Sexuality cannot be forced on anyone. DADT flirts with the line. Allowing homosexuals to serve openly without making accomodation crosses it wholesale.
“But the thing is, we are not actually arguing about whether we should have gay people in the military at all.” That’s a bait and switch. This is precisely what we’re arguing; and the fact that it does occur, has occurred, and likely will continue to occur doesn’t render the issue moot. You argue that because folks break the rules, there ought not to be any discussion about the validity of the rules. That’s a tautology.
You are getting closer to understanding why the standard exists by questioning how it could be enforced. Without the problem of sexual confusion, it is a simple matter to enforce segregation of the sexes. Introducing (and yes, it’s an artificial addition) open homosexuality changes the equation, because objective determination becomes impossible (your crude example demonstrates this to satisfaction). This is why the only solution is to separate everyone, which is exceedingly resource intensive. From a strictly economic perspective, the costs far outweigh any possible benefits (I contend there are none). The social costs are potentially substantial (too much speculation required), too, but they are completely immaterial to the discussion.
It’s not the homosexuals in the ranks that create the problem of a double standard, though they tread the line with it under DADT. Instead, it’s the military’s acknowledgement of alternative lifestyles that forces the need for accommodation. DADT transgresses this already, but the military has gotten away with it by relying on A) the UCMJ provision and B) individual soldiers maintaining their own illusions, or failing to consider it in the first place. By removing the technical prohibition on homosexuals in the uniformed services, the DoD loses its cover for forcing soldiers into immoral arrangments, whether they are offended or not. Yes, in practical terms this will not alter the composition of the force. That, too, is irrelevant.
The best I can summarize your defense then is this: if people don’t care then the standard doesn’t matter–with a corollary that if it doesn’t hurt anyone then it’s okay. Both of these are situationally determined, and are therefore irrational. The standard exists objectively because it upholds the unalienable natural right (and social value) of sexual sovereignty. In other words, men and women are segregated for certain functions because it honors each person’s individual freedom of self determination. “I and I alone control my sexuality, in passive and active roles.” Refusing to apply standards that preserve this sovereignty throughout the iterations of officially recognized lifestyles inevitably makes someone a subject to another person’s conception of sexual sovereignty, and that state of affairs is immoral. Ignoring the standard infringes on sexual sovereignty whether or not any interaction actually takes place and without respect for the attitudes of the involved parties. Bringing in those interpersonal considerations only mitigates the degree of offense, not the inherent wrongness of the state of affairs.
February 4th, 2010 at 8:04 am
perlhaqr, agreed. I was not mentioning it to say that DADT shouldn’t be repealed, just that I know what bastards people can be.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:43 am
Y’know, I was just polishing a post on this, and you said it far, far better.
It’s struck me since the beginning of this debate that given the facts that gay people serve in the military at present; and that the overwhelming majority of servicemembers I know or have read opining on the subject knew who the gay soldiers were and regarded it as common knowledge; those arguing against DADT are essentially saying “this will piss off the most oblivious soldiers”.
Dr. Feelgood,
“I and I alone control my sexuality, in passive and active roles.” [Allowing gay people in the military] inevitably makes someone a subject to another person’s conception of sexual sovereignty, and that state of affairs is immoral…Ignoring the standard infringes on sexual sovereignty whether or not any interaction actually takes place and without respect for the attitudes of the involved parties.
Y’know, until this moment I’d never heard anybody outside the radical feminist community suggest that the very act of being attracted to–or even fantasizing about–a person without his or her consent is by itself a violation of the subject’s fundamental human rights.
As abortion is to liberals (bringing out all kinds of arguments that are otherwise antithetical to their core values), I guess, so is gaiety to conservatives.
February 4th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
I’m going to address the Shower Issue later today as it’s actually turned into a more interesting question than I had first thought, but sorry, the second your line of argument became that in order to have full control over your sexual sovereignty, you also had to have full control over everyone else’s sexual sovereignty in terms of who they were attracted to or fantasized about, you departed entirely from the bounds of what can be logically discussed. If you want to believe it’s a violation to so much as have sexual feelings for someone without their consent, you have one hell of an ocean of teenagers to start that crusade on before getting around to the minority case of gay people in the military.
That was part of my entire point in my initial post; no one gets that control, and no one has the right to it. It’s just that women typically have far more pressure far earlier to learn to gracefully handle unwanted sexual interest than men do. Or become a radical feminist. Which is an intriguing prospect for a fundamentalist Christian man who seems to have in every other respect a loving embrace of the “patriarchy”…
February 4th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Back when I was in the service. Before DADT, I recall an incident where two of my (male) sailors were caught in the act. They were both gone that very day, I never saw them again. I asked the Chief; do I need to do anything, paperwork, what? he said it was all taken care of; I have never seen anything move that fast. The other thing I remember him telling me was that it was mainly for their protection (shades of what Instinct mentioned). As far as I know they were both discharged form the service, I didn’t ask, I didn’t care. I would imagine that if that had occurred after DADT was implemented the same scenario would have played out. So, my conjecture is that there was no difference between the past and now. Tomorrow however, is hard to call. I can imagine two scenarios, in one, the couple is going on as if DADT is still in effect, in that scenario, it plays as it always has up to the point they get caught. Then, well, based on what my Chief told me back then, they will have to be transferred, for their own well being, but there would be no grounds for discharge (situational). The other scenario is uglier, we know that some percentage of that population likes to rub it in and we also know that some percentage of the general population can’t handle it, and the UCMJ doesn’t do pvt peterpetter any good after the fact.
February 4th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
It really doesn’t matter how everyone else feels about gay soldiers. The people that really matter have guns and the cloak of a war zone. It’s not right, but it’s the truth.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:54 pm
LabRat, I’m definitely not saying my sexual sovereignty trumps anyone else’s. I’m saying that admitting open homosexuals obligates the military to provide privacy for everyone who wants it. Doing so provides reasonable accomodation so that informed consent is more than mere lip service. This is the fair standard that allows anyone (gay, straight, male, female) to preserve his or her sexual sovereignty in an environment wherein lines of sexual attraction are not objectively identifiable. Even though it never actually reflected the reality at all times, the prohibition on homosexuals (and DADT, to a lesser extent) allowed the military to maintain a reasonable claim to upholding the standard. It’s about accountability.
Put another way, I have the right to determine who sees my naked body and under what circumstances. I cannot, however, control that person’s reaction. Exercising that right doesn’t deprive anyone else of their natural rights. Forcing me to shower with other men, when its publicly acknowledged that gay men might be present does infringe on that right.
I guess I just don’t understand your objection. Whose sexual sovereignty am I threatening and in what way? Nobody has the right to view another’s nakedness. I’m not saying people can’t be homosexuals (though I think they shouldn’t). Military service is not a fundamental right.
February 4th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Nobody has ever had a right to privacy to that degree in the military, regardless of assumptions made about the sexuality of the participants involved; if you don’t want to be naked in front of strangers who are minding their own business so far as you can tell, you are perfectly free not to join. It is not like the civil service departments and never has been.
Violation of sexual sovereignty only covers actions, not thoughts or fantasies, which was my point- whether naked or clothed, nobody has the right not to be found attractive or even arousing, only the right to not be sexually assaulted or harassed.
February 4th, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Put another way, I have the right to determine who sees my naked body and under what circumstances. I cannot, however, control that person’s reaction.
But you’re advocating from exactly the opposite position: You accept a military service in which you’re required to let other men see your naked body, but insisting over and over that it’s unacceptable if some of those men have a reaction you don’t like.
February 4th, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Privacy is not a right in and of itself; it is one means of enforcing a standard that upholds the right of self-determination. And the military has always enforced that standard, even under DADT.
“…if you don’t want to be naked in front of strangers who are minding their own business so far as you can tell, you are perfectly free not to join.” That’s perfectly true. The first problem is that openly allowing homosexuals to serve entirely negates the “so far as you can tell” qualifier. Just as I’m not allowed to compel anyone to not think of me in a sexual context so are you prohibited from prescribing what my thoughts should be in the same circumstance. The assumption that someone is privately experiencing my nakedness in a sexual context is perfectly reasonable when “openness” is official policy. It is less so under DADT. With the outright ban in place, that same assumption is unreasonable because the military is upholding the standard of sexual sovereignty by actively identifying and excluding homosexuals. That doesn’t mean someone is “safe” because I’m not arguing that anyone is in “danger,” or that people need “protection.” It means that the military is fulfilling its responsibility to uphold individual sovereignty. Failure rate is not a relevant metric, so far as accountability is concerned.
The second problem is that the military already makes reasonable accommodation to segregate men and women, so refusing to apply the same standard (thereby imposing a double standard) throughout the officially-recognized iterations of sexuality, for the same reason, is inherently immoral. I think your recent post “Naked” attempts to distinguish between male-female and same-sex attractions. That’s a legitimate approach. I’ll need to digest it further. Hopefully my daughter will stop vomiting long enough for me to finish this comment and read that post.
And the third problem is that Selective Service is still federal law. The force is all-volunteer for now, but not by definition.
I agree that violations of sexual sovereignty are actions. Military showering mandates are actions of that nature. It’s not the homosexual in the shower next to me who violates my rights; it’s the official policy that forces me into that arrangement. This is not because it goes against my will or because it makes me uncomfortable. It is because it disregards my sexual sovereignty.
Informed consent–not implied consent–is one way around the problem. Making reasonable accommodation is another. Either approach holds substantial costs, in manpower or resources, respectively; while providing little or no benefit to mission capability.
February 4th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
No, elmo, I’m saying it’s unacceptable for the military to put anyone in that position.
This is why I keep hammering on the double standard and “reasonable accomodation.”
February 5th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
The problem is that we are talking about the military. This is not some civil service branch of the government, this is the entity that exists for combat; it has a lot of other contexts thanks to the amount of tail required to support the tooth, but if combat requires something be dispensed with, it is dispensed with. This is even true with regard to female soldiers; under combat conditions and varying other awkward ones that mean full amenities cannot be provided, they ARE obligated to share shower facilities with the men, sometimes at the same time.
You make the point about selective service, but I think you’ve got it backward; the military is the organization that not only can legitimately put your life in immediate danger, they can put you there completely against your will. Up to and including gay people, though not women right now. (Frankly I think women SHOULD be included in selective service, and yes, I’d be willing to suck it up and go if drafted. Equal rights mean equal responsibilities.) In light of that saying they don’t have the right to make you shower with people that might theoretically like the sight of you naked seems kinda out of place.
The supposed gay-people-less showers were always an illusion, and now they’re an illusion that it’s illegal to break even inadvertently. I find it absurd to uphold that in favor of maintaining a “standard” that’s completely impossible to actually meet in civilian life, let alone military life.
As for seeing you naked being automatically a sexual experience for anyone… it’s just not. Trust me on this. I am attracted to men and I find the sight of most men naked, just because they’re naked, not remotely a turn-on, and in my admittedly limited experience gay and bi guys are pretty much the same. Just because the relevant bits are there doesn’t mean it’s an arousing experience. Given that even an openly gay guy could be thinking a thousand different things in said shower, up to and including “what an ugly motherfucker”, as long as he is keeping his thoughts to himself I don’t see how that counts as a sexually violating experience for the straight guy.
February 5th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Suspension of the standard during combat contingencies is the exception that proves the rule. In all other circumstances we strive to honor personal liberty, as current attitudes toward the draft demonstrate. It occurs to me that I’ve never explicitly stated my sincere belief that service members (of all stripes) are, in general, a more honorable class of people than your average American. I would have done my duty under those circumstances (I’ve been in theater, but never in actual combat) but that would have been a voluntary abdication of my rights for the sake of a more expedient need. And if I felt strongly enough about it, I could always refuse to acquiesce and accept the consequences. That, too, is my right. I doubt that the DoD is willing to take that chance on a force-wide scale.
That standard, again, is not the exclusion of homosexuals. The standard is sexual privacy, which is current maintained in compulsory situations by the method of excluding homosexuals (in name only under DADT and with acceptable failure rates under the active ban; I’ve never disagreed with that). And civilian life is inapplicable in countless ways, but two prominent ways come to mind: first, it has no compulsory situations–every instance you’ve mentioned is entirely voluntary; second is the latent DADT that allows civilians to maintain their illusions. You do not see (but for statistical outliers) heterosexual civilians seeking out facilities where it is explicitly known that homosexuals are also present. And I don’t agree that the practical ramifications are indifferent. How people behave is directly influenced by what they know (or, more commonly, by how they feel about what they think they know, irrational though it may be).
“As for seeing you naked being automatically a sexual experience for anyone… it’s just not.” I know that. I also never made such a ridiculous claim. Openly allowing homosexuals officially introduces a sexual context to every compulsory group shower, prima facie. That context, for the purpose of making policy, does not exist under the outright ban, and it is a murky grey area under DADT. Once the ban is lifted, and before any such showers have taken place, the right of every service member (gay, straight, male, female) will have been violated by the explicit infringement of his or her sexual sovereignty. The military is then obligated to terminate that violation, and as I’ve said, informed consent and/or reasonable accommodation would be sufficient (and costly) provisions. Obviously, in the real world, any good policy will include its mitigating provision(s) in order to preclude any violation.
I don’t know how much clearer I can be that the violation is not committed by any person in the shower with me. It is perpetrated by the military policy that forces me in to that arrangement without providing reasonable accommodation or obtaining my informed consent. Implied consent doesn’t cut it because it requires personnel to endure the violation until consent is established.
February 7th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Suspension of the standard during combat contingencies is the exception that proves the rule.
Nothing personal, but I hate this phrase. Exceptions don’t prove rules by being exceptions; either something about the nature of the exception highlights the reason for the rule’s necessity, or the exception proves that the rule isn’t really a rule.
In this case, it’s the latter. Combat, and the preparation for it, is the entire reason for the military’s existence. If a standard cannot be maintained under combat conditions due to the nature of combat, then that standard is completely useless for the purpose of making military policy. If reality and your theory conflict, it is not reality that must yield- and that’s what making policies that demand the denial of reality effectively try to do.
The standard is sexual privacy
You keep reiterating this as though it were written in stone somewhere. I have always argued as though the standard is sexual integrity, because that is the standard it is actually POSSIBLE to uphold without elaborate pretend games whose function isn’t so much to actually preserve “sexual privacy” as it is to be able to automatically lay the onus of blame on the gay person for being in the “wrong place” (even though he is legally able to serve) if he is ever found out, through any fault or misdeed of his own or not.
As I said before: privacy, sexual or otherwise, has never been the right of anyone in the military- because it’s impossible to maintain.
You do not see (but for statistical outliers) heterosexual civilians seeking out facilities where it is explicitly known that homosexuals are also present.
Any heterosexual living in Reality as opposed to Fantasyland should know that in the case of ANY public facility where gay people aren’t explicitly prohibited, and be realistic enough to know that any such ban is completely unenforcable.
Openly allowing homosexuals officially introduces a sexual context to every compulsory group shower, prima facie.
The existence of sexuality does not automatically create sexual context. As the discussion above re cultures with contexts in which mixed-gender nudity IS nonsexual indicates- and the fact that combat means female soldiers sometimes must share shower facilities with men- nudity does not mean anything sexual is going on, except possibly in someone’s own head- which is the only privacy we really ARE completely entitled to in that situation.
And, this was the point of my original post: if you’re signing up to go get shot at and maintain discipline under those conditions, you should be capable of handling the possibility, so long as no one’s sexual integrity is violated. Again, with or without our clothes, all women go through a much more intense version of this from puberty onwards- if only because it is socially acceptable for men to press all kinds of unwanted interest on women, but any gay guy can expect to get his lights punched out for something much lesser. Your “it counts because there are no clothes” line is pretty freaking arbitrary when we’re comparing a Schrodinger’s-cat like possibility that a guy might have looked at your dick versus a guy telling you in explicit detail what he’d like to leave on your breasts and assuming this counts as edgy flirting.
I don’t know how much clearer I can be that the violation is not committed by any person in the shower with me. It is perpetrated by the military policy
And I don’t know how much clearer I can be that so far as I’m concerned it’s not a violation, because the “standard” you insist on is completely impossible to maintain in military life or civilian life.
I repeat: nobody has the right to signifcantly damage someone else’s life in order to maintain a lie, like “there are no gay people here”- whether it’s the gym showers or the military.