Pride in the Canadian Forces - Deleted Scenes

As with many articles and interviews, there is a lot that can't make it into the final piece. With this particular article, one of my original lines of inquiry--how does Canada's policy of allowing GLBT troops to serve openly affect our allies in places like Afghanistan--didn't yield an answer that fit into the piece in the end. However, this was answered, along with several other questions, in my phone interview with Dr. Anne Irwin (which nearly ran forty minutes). Here are some of the things that didn't make it to the final piece, but which are interesting nevertheless.

On serving alongside the Americans in Afghanistan:

“People have a misconception when militaries operate together. Individual soldiers are not working alongside Americans, and in fact they have very little to do with each other. The combined operations are at a much higher level, and for the most part is the battle group is completely Canadian and they may have a company of Americans attached, or whatever. The soldier on the ground would only run into American soldiers when they were relaxing in Kandahar Airfield, and they maybe once in a while they may have a few units that are intermingled, but that’s really quite unusual. Where it might affect them is at the level of the very senior commanders, but even then they wouldn’t have any contact with Canadian troops really. Having said that, even in Kandahar Airfield, there’s not much intermingling—every nation’s soldiers sits by themselves, not intentionally, but it’s very [cliquey].”

On the oft-cited line about how gays in the military are bad for morale:

“It’s nonsense. There’s a very good article in the Armed Forces and Society journal a couple of years ago analysing the results of the lifted restrictions on the gays and lesbians in the Israeli Defence forces, and their findings were the same as Canada—‘so what?’ All these dire predictions about how it will destroy morale just never happened. People who have an entrenched position as the people who’ve instituted that policy in the US, aren’t going to be convinced by the facts. It wouldn’t make any difference if there were no problems in the Canadian military, and even the research that shows that gays and lesbians serving openly has no effect on morale, cohesion, all that stuff, they find ways to still justify their positions. I’m not sure that even being exposed to an environment that there’s no effect on morale, or that Canadian soldiers are every bit as good as any other nation’s soldiers, they’d find some way of justifying their position anyway. It takes generations of change.”

On whether Canada is setting an example in the world:

“I’m not sure to tell you the truth, but there are other nations that have similar policies or no policies.” [The UK for example]. “That was a hard go. I can remember when I was in England doing my PhD in 1994, and one of my very best friends was a gay guy serving in the Royal Navy Reserve—not openly. Well, he was open in his civilian life, but couldn’t be in the military, but he was always dancing this line where if they found out they could get rid of him. But at that point, it was still very heated subject, but then again they changed the rules and it was like ‘big deal.’ I’m not sure if anyone has done any ‘after’ studies to find out what the results have been.”

On cultural differences in Afghanistan:

“A lot of comments about the Afghan National Army, there were rumours that they were all gay, which of course isn’t true any more than rumours that all the guys in the infantry were straight, and some of that is a misunderstanding about cultural norms about physical affection and what’s sexual and what isn’t.”

On women serving on the front lines:

“It’s very much the same thing [ie--only caring that you do your job]. People used to worry about privacy, but nobody cares. I was there with them, peeing beside them, nobody cares about that. Basically if you do your job, you’re accepted. I get quite upset about some scholars who write about how you have to give up your femininity or be a pseudo-male to be in order to be accepted by the military, but I’m thinking that just because somebody is physically tough or stoic, or wear short hair or no make-up does that make her pseudo-male? It reproduces many of the stereotypes that feminists claim to be challenging, that you have to be ‘like a man.’ Well, what’s a man?”

An anecdote which exemplifies this:

“There’s only one woman [in the company], and these guys are mostly big, tough, stoic, physically very fit and tough guys. And we were sitting around with them, I had only been there a few weeks at that point, and this woman came over and was joking with the guys and we were just about to head out and she said ‘Well, I was brought here to bring some femininity to this organisation’ and the one guy looked at her and said ‘I have more femininity in my little finger than you have in your whole body.’”

Thanks again to Dr. Irwin for the great interview.

Pride in the Canadian Forces - The Complete Article

Given that my original article on the state of gays and lesbians in today's Canadian Forces was edited to lose pretty much all of the context, and have its focus shifted to a more salacious one, I've decided to post the original text. Part of this is to restore the focus of the article, which was to show how homophobia is becoming a thing of the past for the CF, but also to show how a little editing can change the context of a piece in a very different way. Enjoy.

Pride in the Canadian Forces
By Dale Smith

This year marked the first time that the Canadian Forces troops marched openly and in uniform in the Toronto Pride Parade. This just days after Hamilton Pride decided to bar the Canadian Forces from their own festival over what it said were human rights violations in countries where the Forces were serving—notably Haiti and Afghanistan. Canadian Forces recruiters participated in the Hamilton Pride Parade the year previous.

But with the Forces marching in Toronto of their own volition, one has to wonder how the queer community’s relationship stands with the Forces today. After all, in 1992, then-Justice Minister and Attorney General Kim Campbell (who later became Canada’s first female Defence Minister and Prime Minister) lifted the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, as well as allowing them to live on-base with their partners. There are also more than three dozen openly trans people serving in the military today.

“The Canadian Forces has policies which prohibit discrimination, personal or sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, and abuse of authority,” says Department of National Defence (DND) Public Affairs Officer Marie-Hélène Rouillard. “This includes improper behaviour by a Canadian Forces member that is directed towards another individual based on personal characteristics including race, colour, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, physical characteristics or mannerisms.”

“The Canadian Forces is committed to the principle of equality of all people, and the dignity and worth of every human being without discrimination.”

But marching in the largest Pride Parade in the country does make a statement—especially when you consider that our neighbours to the south, with whom we are allied in our mission to Afghanistan—has policies in place which prohibit gays and lesbians from serving openly.

Having uniformed soldiers marching in the parades, as well as manning recruiting booths at Pride festivals, speaks to a willingness of the Forces to see more queer Canadians join the ranks, though they don’t have any specific recruitment scheme for the queer community.

“The only groups for which we have specific recruiting campaigns are women, Aboriginals and visible minorities, as mandated by the Canadian Employment Equity Act,” Rouillard says.

“The CF is proud of, and fully supports, its soldiers, sailors, airmen and airwomen who belong to the [GLBT] community. The CF seeks to be a first choice employer for Canadians, regardless of their gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.”

And while recruitment and support on paper looks inviting, what are things like in the field?

Dr. Anne Irwin, is a professor of anthropology, and is the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute Chair in Civil-Military Relations at the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. As part of her fieldwork, she spent time in Afghanistan with the First Battalion, The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.

“There’s a difference between the rules and how those are interpreted and played out on the ground,” she says. “My sense of it is that although the rules are full equality, fraternisation of any sort is not permitted.”

This can include married couples—same or opposite sex—even during decompression phases in Cypress when they might otherwise be allowed to co-habit.

“While they’re deployed, there’s quite a variety of attitudes towards gays and lesbians, and it’s a very complicated thing that I’d like to do more research on, or see someone do more research on.”

Her time with the infantry has given Dr. Irwin some insight not only into the way that queer soldiers are becoming more accepted, but also women in the infantry, as Canada is one of the few countries that allows women to serve in front-line positions. In fact, the only woman in the company she travelled with was openly lesbian who was “completely accepted.”

“The infantry is still probably the most macho of all the trades,” she says. “There’s still a—I wouldn’t call it homophobia. I wouldn’t go that far—some people are, but just like the general population, there’s going to be a whole range of attitudes. Certainly people have absorbed or followed the rules and know that they’re not allowed to make openly harassing comments, but there’s also a lot of joking that if you didn’t understand the context, may come across as homophobic joking, but I don’t think it is.”

Dr. Irwin sees the kind of teasing and joking that happens in the military as part of managing the “homo-erotica” of such a charged environment, where tensions around their own sexuality and the forced intimacy of each other’s company takes a toll.

“Here’s an example of the joking,” Dr. Irwin shares. “We were outside the wire—I spent three months there, and I slept with the guys on the ground next to the LAVs in the dirt, same as they did. And then we came into a forward operating base where we had hard accommodations. The French had been there before us and they had built these kinds of shelters. So the Sergeant Major at that time decided that in the interests of privacy, I wouldn’t live with the male soldiers that I had been living with side-by-side in the field, but that I would be moving in with the women. So the big joke among the guys was that okay, I was with men before, now I’m with a lesbian woman in the interests of privacy.”

“The whole notion of ‘privacy’ was up in the air,” Dr. Irwin continues. “She told me that none of the guys were openly gay, but she knew medics who were gay who had slept with guys in the infantry, including guys in her company, but they wouldn’t tell her who they were.”

Another example of the teasing was when “we getting out of the LAV, and one of the guys asked ‘Do I have [sweaty ass]?’ because you’re drenched in sweat, it’s sixty degrees Celsius, and one of the guys says ‘No, you’re okay Master Corporal.’ ‘Oh, what are you looking at my ass for?’ That kind of joking, which some people might call homophobic, but I don’t think it is.”

The largely all-male environment, the risk of death, the highly eroticised environment helps to account for the sexual joking, but it also leads to other coping mechanisms among he troops.

“They have a notion called ‘field gay,’” Dr. Irwin says. “The guys used to say how when you’ve been in the field for long enough, that some guys go ‘field gay,’ meaning that they’ve been away from women long enough, the guy next to you starts looking pretty good.”

This apparently extends to their lesbian member as well, who likened it to ‘field straight’ in her case.

“She didn’t tell me this but told one of the guys that when she’s in the field long enough, that sometimes guy start looking pretty good to her, and they said ‘we’re in the field long enough, they start looking pretty good to us too.’”

“I think that’s fascinating that they have a label for it, calling it ‘field gay.’ To me, this just shows what social scientists have said about how malleable sexuality is, and how it’s situational, but they kind of have a handle on that. It’s a very complex issue.”

“The bottom line for them is if you do your job, you’re accepted,” Dr. Irwin says. “That’s all they really care about. There are all sorts of other issues, when they’re not engaged in their actual work that may crop up, but for the most part, they don’t care. In terms of acceptance and how people are incorporated in the unit and group cohesion they don’t care. What they care about is someone going to stand behind me, is someone going to do his share of the work? That’s what they care about.”

“The other side of it too is that the joking and teasing is very much a part of the military anyway,” she adds. “You get teased and joked about anything about you that is evident. I got teased about having hot flashes.”

Any distinguishing characteristic becomes a handle for a nickname. “A lot of the joking or teasing is a sign of inclusion—you know you’ve been included when they’ve started taking shots at you. In fact, if you weren’t being teased, that would be a sign that you hadn’t been accepted, and that’s part of the cultural norm.”

Probably the biggest factor in the acceptance of queer soldiers has been the age of the troops themselves. “These are people who are in their early twenties, that whole generation is quite different from the generals who are making the rules,” Dr. Irwin says. “I think there is quite a different attitude toward sexuality and sexual orientation among that generation, and I think that’s part of the change that people forget, that there are generation gaps in the military too. The people who are joining up, they share in the culture of their generation and they’re not the same as these guys. They’re more accepting in that generation of ethnicity too. It’s all part of diversity generally.”

The Original Sidebar:

Capital Pride Welcomes Canadian Forces Participation

With Toronto and Hamilton having been seen participation by the Canadian Forces, will Ottawa be next? After all, we are the nation’s capital, and home to National Defence Headquarters.

“We consider all invitations to Pride events,” says DND Public Affairs Officer Marie-Hélène Rouillard. “Our acceptance of an invitation is dependant on the availability of resources and whether we have any prior commitments to other events.”

Capital Pride says that they would be glad to have them, and plan on extending an invitation.

“I’d love to see them there,” says Chair of Sponsorship and Marketing, Marion Steele. “We’d like to see the new Chief [of Defence Staff, Walter Natynczyk] there. It would be nice to have him leading the troops there.”

Steele also says that while she cannot judge Hamilton Pride’s decision, she would keep the politics out of the parade.

“Having a queer military group has nothing to do with the political decisions of where we fight wars,” Steele says. “We’re not making those decisions, we’re running a festival. We can celebrate that, we support our queer troops in being queer, but that doesn’t necessarily that we’re supporting the war. I think we need to keep it really separate, and that’s war, and that’s our government’s decision, and our focus is our GLBT soldiers.”

(Photo: Robin Rowland/CBC)

Canadian Forces and Pride - The Article That Wasn't

In the course of writing the article on the state of gays and lesbians in today's Canadian Forces, several lines of enquiry went out, being as I wasn't sure just what information would turn up where. Given that the decision by Hamilton Pride to ban the CF from their Pride parade was the flashpoint for everything that followed, I tried to follow up on that, to little avail. In the end, the interview with Dr. Irwin became the dominant focus, though lines of enquiry in that interview also didn't make it into the final piece (some of which I'll post here later), but I had a wealth of other material that hasn't yet seen print. I've taken all the information I had, and put up this rough piece in case anyone is interested in what might have been.

While the Canadian Forces lifted the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly and allowing their partners to live on-base since 1992, Hamilton decided this year to ban them from their Pride festivities.

Emily Groom, Hamilton Pride’s co-chair, told the Canadian Press that the organisation had the right not to affiliate itself with institutions that “perhaps may raise human rights concerns,” speaking specifically to countries where the Canadian Forces are posted, like Haiti and Afghanistan.

Hamilton Pride also raised the First Nations standoff in Caledonia, and were apparently taken back when the Hamilton Spectator pointed out that it was the OPP and not the CF that were at Caledonia, but reiterated their point about the perceived violations in Haiti and Afghanistan.

Hamilton Pride, who did not respond to interview requests by both phone and email, previously told media that the decision was made at a private board meeting in April, and that it was a temporary decision.

The basis of the ban, however, came from a complaint raised by a new Canadian who claimed that she feared the military because of persecution by Canadian soldiers in her homeland. The CF denied any allegations of wrongdoing.

The CF did have a contingent of recruiters in the Toronto Pride Parade weeks later, without any of the same fanfare raised by Hamilton.

According to Toronto Pride Executive Director, Fatima Amarshi, the Forces participation was of their own accord, not upon the invitation of Toronto Pride.

“We have a process where it’s an online application, and I don’t believe they actually talked to us or contacted anyone directly,” Amarshi says. “They would have filled out that form, and from that point the Parade Committee would have been liaising with them, but they didn’t formally come to organisation in any particular way—I didn’t get a letter from them or anything.”

She also notes that they filed their application by May 23^rd—long before the Hamilton Pride decision was made public.

Amarshi also says that Toronto Pride does not make any particular statements, which contrasts the position that Hamilton Pride took in their refusal.

“Our position is that anybody who wishes to enter the parade who wishes making a positive and supportive statement of our community can go ahead and do so,” Amarshi says. “Our job is not to have an opinion on the military, for or against it—it’s the community’s right to voice whatever their opinions are, and certainly our community has a lot of different opinions on them, and I’m sure that they made their opinions heard very loudly, but we don’t take a particular view one way or the other.”

The role of the parade is not so much to make a single statement, but to allow others to do so.

“We are the platform by which all of the other groups are able to present their views,” Amarshi notes. “The fact that you have the military entering into a Pride parade, wanting to acknowledge its gay and lesbian soldiers and wanting to have a different relationship with the queer community is a fairly significant change. We’re happy that they’re doing that, and those in our community who have negative opinions of the military are just as free to be in the military to voice those opinions.”

But a Pride parade can still be a political statement, according to Joanne Law, Chair of Ottawa’s Capital Pride.

“I think the way our parade goes down Wellington Street is very prominent, with the Supreme Court of Canada and Parliament Hill, where we have had our rights,” Law says. “Is it a political statement? Yes and no. Is it a march? No. Is it a parade of diversity? Yes. It can be very overlapping with each other, but we are still a political action group.”

In terms of a complaint process, both Toronto and Ottawa have a similar philosophy when it comes to complaints that would banish one group from their respective parades.

“To my knowledge—we have twenty-one different committees and then there’s the staff and the board, so to my knowledge, I certainly haven’t heard any complaints, or nothing’s been brought forward to me,” says Toronto’s Amarshi. “It would really depend on the nature of the complaint, and then our board would make a decision. It would have to be a very significant complaint, unless it’s a matter of hate speech or it’s a matter of basically homophobic or hateful stance towards our community, we’d be very reluctant to tell them that they could not be in the parade.”

The sentiment is echoed by Ottawa’s committee.

“The policy for us, if I got a phone call in, it would right away go to the coordinator who deals with that particular issue,” says Marion Steele, Capital Pride’s chair of sponsorship and marketing. “In this instance it would go to the parade coordinator, and the parade coordinator would speak to it at his or her committee, then it would come to the Operations Committee, whose decision, whatever that may be, would come to the board. The board does have the power to overturn an Operations decision—it’s never happened because if that many people are saying this is what we think is the best way to go, then that’s what we would do. But we’ve never had a complaint of anybody being afraid—we’ve had lots of complaints, but most complaints we would deal at the board level, but for something like this it would go to the Operations Committee.”

In terms of barring any groups from the parade, Steele has had one of note. “We’ve only declined politely one group, and that was the Pit Bull Association,” she says. “We just felt that maybe it would be an issue, with a lot of children, and we could see things happening that we didn’t want to happen, so we thanked them, but we didn’t think this was the best venue for them.

Sneak Peak - September's Outlooks

Today I interviewed two MPs--one by phone, the other in person, as he was at his Ottawa office, entirely by coincidence.  Tomorrow I interview a Senator (by phone).  All of this is for a new feature in the September issue of Outlooks, which I am very excited about.

(That's my visitor's pass from the Confederation Building, where I did this afternoon's interview).

Want to bag a straight guy? Sign up, go to Afghanistan

The edited piece I wrote on the state of gays and lesbians in today's Canadian Forces for Capital Xtra is now online. Note that I said "edited"--this is not exactly the piece that I set out to write. The context has been largely carved out and sewn onto the sidebar piece that I wrote, and thanks to a "torqued" headline and a new introductory paragraph that my editor helpfully inserted, a feature that was about how homophobia is beginning to vanish in the Forces has become one focused on soldiers having sex with one another.

My editor and I had words about this, as the changes came as a complete surprise to me. His justification largely boils down to the fact that they torque their headlines, and given their competition in the free paper market, they need to be bolder and "flirtier" to draw in readers. Suffice to say, I'm not exactly happy about the changes.

I plan on posting the original piece here later in the week, to show how editing and torqued headlines can change the context of an article entirely.

I also wanted to send out thanks to Philippe Lagassé, assistant professor of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa for putting me in touch with Dr. Anne Irwin. His assistance was invaluable, and I doubt I would have been able to write this piece at all without it.

EBA 101

In this week's edition of Ottawa Xpress, I preview the upcoming show at Gallery 101, titled "Verticality." "Verticality" is a group show and a collaboration with local artist collective Enriched Bread Artists (EBA). One of the particular challenges in writing this piece was not having seen the show in place, as it hadn't been hung before my deadline. So, working with a group of images provided by EBA, and being familiar with many of the artists there from past articles on their shows, I was able to come up with a pretty decent preview if I say so myself.

The article can be read online here.

Canadian Forces and Pride - Online

For the current issue of Capital Xtra, I wrote a feature-length piece on the state of gays and lesbians in today's Canadian Forces. I was prompted by the fact that last month, Hamilton Pride barred the Canadian Forces (CF) from their Pride parade over what they said were alleged human rights abuses in countries where the CF are stationed, like Haiti and Afghanistan. A couple of weeks later, CF troops marched in uniform in the Toronto Pride parade for the first time ever.

Initially, the piece had been a large feature plus a sidebar which looked at where Capital Pride--Ottawa's Pride festival--stood on the issue of CF participation. Once everything was turned over to the editor, things changed. The feature piece wound up in the print edition as a shortened piece, while parts were added to the sidebar and are in the online edition under the title "Canadian Forces invited to Capital Pride, but not Hamilton." The other piece will be a feature piece on xtra.ca later in the week, and I will link to it once it is online.

Good Ratings

I got an email from one of my editors this morning, which was a bit of heartening news:

"Brent [Creelman, web editor] sent me the June xtra.ca stats about pageviews, and the most viewed story in June was your barebacking column. So thanks! And congratulations!"

Apparently, sex does sell--err, would sell, if this wasn't a free paper. Interestingly enough, in the current edition of Capital Xtra, some of the letters to the editor are devoted to this op-ed, despite the fact that it didn't wind up in the print edition. (Said letters were also derived from the "Comments" on the web version, but such is the age of mulitmedia). I'm glad that the piece got such a good response because I think it is an important issue that deserves attention.

Creating A Village + Reviews

In the July issue of Outlooks, which just hit the stands and went online, I have two pieces. The first is a look at the new initiative taking place to turn a section of Bank Street here in Ottawa to a designated queer village. This is an issue I have written about in the past (in fact, it was my first published piece for the Citizen), so it's something I've kept an eye on and will continue to. This particular piece, thanks to Outlooks formatting, looks absolutely fantastic, in large part due to the graphics that the main interview subject provided, which are copies of the materials he's created for the Village initiative.

My other piece is a series of reviews, most of which I did many months ago (the book review was actually completed last year), but for various reasons, most of them kept getting bumped back in the publishing schedule. Still, I'm glad that it finally saw print--and I would definitely recommend the film Breakfast with Scot.

Both pieces can be seen online at the Outlooks website here, or you can download the full issue in .pdf format here. (The Village piece is on page 19, while the reviews are on pages 22 and 23).