‘No Trans Women in Female Spaces’ Is On Par With ‘We Shouldn’t Have Gays In the Navy’
And we realized how unnecessary and discriminatory that was decades ago
My uncle John was a career Navy man. He joined in the 1950s right out of college and spent his entire professional life as a navigator. I can still remember a conversation we had once in the early 1990s when the Clinton administration’s “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy was being hotly debated.
“Gay people shouldn’t be allowed on Navy ships,” he told me. “It’s bad for morale and it can cause problems.”
“But don’t you already have conduct and fraternization rules?” I countered. “Isn’t it just a matter of enforcing those and leaving people’s personal sexuality out of it?”
All John could do was harrumph. He’d come of age at a time when homosexuality was seen as aberrant even as it was often a common aspect of the lives of seafaring men.
‘Homosexual’ is a relatively recent term. In the past, men had sex with each other but didn’t necessarily have a ‘gay identity’. Often shipboard same-sex relations were contingent. Crew, and officers too, became close. It was an extension of the comradeship that emerges when people’s lives depend on their co-workers. Homoerotic platonic love was not…
