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.
As long as there are people who want to broadcast who they are by what they do in bed, there will be problems. Sexuality is not ethnic. Sexuality is nothing more than 'sex'. Advertising how you 'get' that sex is a crazy way for anyone to identify herself or hisself. The quest for normality is hopeless. Normal people don't go around saying what their sexual preferances in the streets, workplace, etc.
I don't think those "big, burly guys " are at all afraid of lesbians or queers.
Not to say that gay men and women aren't or can't be selfless, honorable and loyal to country. It's just that those who represent them in the press don't champion those particular "values."
There is a war on the American Man and Woman. And these sad types are the people behind it.
People so insecure that they attack the very people who would give their lives for them, though they are no doubt "working class heros" who may earn much less than the average "gay activist." Why cant people like this realize that its their own bias and insecurity that is the root of the problem?
Not public servants who choose to put their lives on the line for them, day after day.
LOL LOL LOL....sorry I couldn't help myself
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I'm trying to picture Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Ethridge and Rosie O'Donnell raising the flag at Iwo Jima, or facing down Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, or storming the beach at Normandy with "sensitivity training". |
duh, that is the problem with the feminization of America, not enough disgust for destroying the values needed in times like these.
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