Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

It goes without saying what I think of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, right? So instead I'll just tell you what LabRat thinks of it, since she phrased it rather well:


When I’ve seen people speaking out against repealing DADT- or advocating for a return flat-out to a total ban on gay soldiers- they are almost always men, and they very frequently cite some variant on a common theme. Apparently, it would be just horrible if they had to think about other men being attracted to them, and worry about being ogled, and maybe even worry about being raped, because there’s always the one creepy guy that’s willing to cross that line, and we just can’t do that to our soldiers. (Lesbians, as usual, are never mentioned, either because what the wimmens do is boring, or because that’s kind of hot and therefore okay.)

To these men, I have the following reply: welcome to what every single human female on the fucking planet deals with from puberty onward. You don’t like the idea that some man you’re not attracted to might be fantasizing about having sex with you, might be eyeing your fun bits, that there’s even a remote but existing chance he might rape you? Harden. The fuck. Up. Fifty percent of the population has to cope with this every day as a fact of life, and we’re called paranoid deranged feminazi man-haters if we even bring it up outside a feminist consciousness-raising session.


And I'll tell you a personal story: back when I worked 24-hour shifts, I shared a very small quarters with three people who were attracted to my gender. We slept together, shared a bathroom, and frequently changed clothes in front of each other. If I didn't want to sleep next to someone whose orientation made them potentially aroused by my gender, I'd have to sleep out in the truck.

But of course I didn't do that, and not just because I didn't want to freeze to death while being robbed and contracting MRSA. I was fine sharing a bunkroom with straight men, because they didn't give me any trouble. Maybe they were faithful to their wives and girlfriends; maybe they feared legal and career consequences; maybe they were attracted to some women but not to me specifically; and maybe they just had a smidge of maturity and human decency. I can't be sure no one ever looked at me in some unsavory way, but as no one ever spoke to or touched me in any inappropriate manner, I could care less about Schroedinger's Ogle.

Of course some female EMTs do face abuse. What if they had harassed me? Then the problem would be the harassment. "He was all heterosexual at me" isn't a complaint; it's "he was all disrespectful and abusive at me." It'd be nice to ban abusers from service but unfortunately we rarely ask and they never tell.

One of my political principles is that when you believe "X might lead to Y, and Y is bad," that gives you no justification to ban X. Just stringently enforce a ban on Y and deal with it at that level. Pot might lead to heroin? Ban heroin. Guns might lead to murder? Ban murder. Gays in the military might lead to harassment? Ban harassment!

(Or, following the logic often used to exclude women, ban heterosexuals. They're the ones with the problem, right? Some hetero gets his boxers in a twist and files a frivolous complaint and your whole career goes down the tubes, I tell ya.)

Anyway, none of this affects the actual presence of gays in the military, which has been going on for only about ten thousand years with no collapse of civilization so far. It's only whether people are allowed to admit they're gay. (And getting "caught" with a partner, even in an entirely appropriate and decorous relationship, is tantamount to an admission.) I'm having trouble picturing some sort of trouble that gay soldiers would cause that closeted gay soldiers wouldn't. I guess it might attract enemy attention if a Pride Parade breaks out in a combat zone.


(Side note: Have you ever noticed that the use of "homosexual" as a noun is almost entirely restricted to homophobes? It's gone from being a relatively objective term to a de facto slur. Then again, so is "don't ask, don't tell." I've heard a whole lot of Neanderthal types react to a guy's failure to conform to strict male roles with "I'm not asking, Rob, so don't you tell me, hurrr hurr hurrr.")