Posted on 11/11/2001 6:21:10 PM PST by LarryLied
When things get bad, people want big, burly guys around who can take charge and keep everyone safe. Lately, however, I've been finding the adulation of male firefighters and cops troubling, since hypermasculinity and homophobia often go hand in hand.War and disaster have a way of making the need for traditional male heroes more intense. When things get bad, people want big, burly guys around who can take charge and keep everyone safe. Lately, however, I've been finding the adulation of male firefighters and cops troubling, since hypermasculinity and homophobia often go hand in hand. In fact, the very professions being idolized have long harbored some of the worst harassers of gay people and women.
Like many other Americans, I have been in awe of the firefighters and other emergency personnel who rushed to the collapsing twin towers with seemingly no regard for their own personal safety. The stories of rescue workers who valiantly lost their lives in the line of duty have been inspiring and heartbreaking, like the fireman who raced to the World Trade Center even though he was off duty, or the police officer who was about to retire but decided he had to don his uniform one last time and head to the disaster site.
Indeed, until Sept. 11, a lot of people may have never considered the enormous danger involved in these kinds of jobs. Now many of us have began pondering the inner strength it takes to run directly into danger instead of away from it - all in an effort to save other people's lives. This intense selflessness and bravery have caught the country's imagination, turning firefighters and cops into instant icons. It's understandable why on Halloween firefighters' costumes sold like crazy across the country.
Two months after the tragedy, however, the incessant hero-worship is starting to wear on me. Many lesbians and gay men may, in fact, be finding themselves with conflicting feelings about these "manly" professions, which, though esteemed for bravery, have traditionally been bastions of homophobia and sexism.
In recent years, reports of firefighters bullying their gay and female co-workers have been widespread and persistent. In 1999, an internal review by Britain's Fire Service found the levels of homophobia and sexism among firefighters in that country "difficult to believe." Although there's been no such national report in the United States, numerous local incidents of harassment of gay and female firefighters suggest that findings over here might be very similar.
Only weeks before the terrorist assault, for example, gay firefighters in Boston joined female colleagues and firefighters of color in filing complaints against the city's fire department. One straight black female firefighter told the Associated Press horror stories of finding broken glass inside her work boots and having her oxygen mask and gloves stolen by fellow firefighters. The perpetrators of such "jokes," she said, "are more than just a few bad apples." The president of the local firefighters' union dismissed the allegations as "a lot of hype," but the severity of the charges has attracted the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Many gay firefighters remain scared to come out on the job. In a new book, Gay Men, Straight Jobs, author Dan Woog had to interview a gay firefighter "in a large Northeastern city" pseudonymously to protect the man's identity. "I can't let these guys know me," the firefighter said, for fear of "verbal torture" and the end of his career. He told Woog that anti-gay jokes are an integral part of firehouse life and that no one in command does anything to change the intensely homophobic culture.
There have even been horrifying examples of emergency workers harassing the people they're supposed to help. It's hard to forget the story of Tyra Hunter, a transgendered hairdresser in Washington, D.C., who died a few years ago following a car crash. Hunter didn't get the treatment that might have saved her life because a fire department emergency worker on the scene got freaked out by her male genitalia.
Cops, too, have been notorious for their anti-gay actions. Just this past summer, the FBI began an investigation of an incident in San Antonio in which police beat and verbally abused three young Canadian tourists. "What are you fags doing in our city?" one cop allegedly demanded.
The world may have changed since Sept. 11, but some things definitely remain the same. A recent television interview featured two firefighters who had survived the towers' collapse, because one of them had bravely risked his life to pull his "brother" out of the rubble. To free the trapped man, he had to straddle his fellow firefighter in a sexually suggestive way. "I told him, you can beat the **** out of me later, after I get you outta here," the rescuer laughed.
It's doubtful that anti-gay sentiments like these will end unless those in charge of fire and police personnel take steps to institute change. And in a climate in which "manly men" are revered as near-gods, sensitivity training is likely to be low on the priority list.
Some ideas smell like flowers...
And some smell like farts...
Once in a blue moon some smell just like spoiled tuna.
The Lez-Bean perspective...
I'm not known for being quite this straightforward, but, heck - it's Veterans Day (something you wouldn't understand). Since I'm feeling quite direct tonight, let me just say......... eat s*** and die.
AGYG
None, of course, but I know your question was rhetorical in nature.
What KILLS me, and supports, somewhat, your noting their 'it's all about ME' and how I 'FEEL' pathology is the story about the library that is out there right now.
Isn't it breathtakingly sickening to know that a libraran in our nation does NOT permit the American flag to be flow in front of her building, tho TAX DOLLARS are what support the library and her salary, but DOES allow an art exhibit that has ceramic penis's hung from a clothes line with a noose at one end, to put in the faces of everyone who enters the building. From cow manure on a beloved image of the Virgin Mary to castrated male genitalia hung from a rope, simply astounding. What in the WORLD is WRONG with these people?
Only in their perverted minds..
How dare those firemen try to replace my signature ol' crusty with their uniforms! I thought of those yellow stripes first when I met Bill!
Could it be that gay men feel they are inadequate in comparison to their straight counterparts and are questioning their own masculinity? Thats no ones fault but their own.
Is their job being a firefighter, or being gay? Why bother to reveal intensely private information when it has nothing to do with the job?
Why is there this compulsion to tell everybody--straight or gay--what isn't their business? This is the equivalent of disemboweling oneself in public.
You got that right. From now on we need to treat all this whining and demanding of their rights as static - background noise. We don't have time for it and they are marginal in this society at best. Just because they have perfected the ability to whine at high decibel doesn't mean they should have special treatment ever again.
As someone said earlier, since when do normal functioning human beings define who they are by constantly obsessing about how they get sex? The bottom line is the rest of us - you know the 97-98% - DON'T CARE! You are so over as a "cause" - deal with it.
Yea, I mean how would they know, unless the person had a a major bloody groin wound. I mean I can't picture one medic saying to another "Looks like whiplash, quick check their genitalia."
hell, they've got janet reno! what the hell are they whining about?
To the author of this trash: Too bad .... life sucks, get a helmet.
They've had their turn....and now it is time for THEM TO GO! (The sensitivity trainers, that is.) WOOOHOOOO... it's ABOUT time we came to our senses. I want the men in my family to be MANLY MEN, yesseree
....more like brain damaged. When in God's earth will these ungrateful liberals (there are gay conservatives that are not pushing their adenda using 9/11 as a back drop) getting through their thick skulls that it's not about THEM. These people are sick.
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