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)