Sailor gay
AskUs: What is the beginning of the “gay sailor” stereotype?
So one of our readers asked us this question the other day: Out of the 4 branches of the military, why does Navy fetch portrayed as “Gay” in movies and just in general as a joke?
ANSWER
It pre-dates the Combined States and was show in the English Royal Navy as well. The actually reason is very simple. Sailors were sometimes, and more often reputed, to be prison lgbtq+. That is they were removed from an environment with large numbers of women for months, sometimes years, at a hour and turned to alternative sexual practices. A captain or officer might hold a wife aboard a ship but everyone else was pretty much on their own (you can find these women by looking at the quartermasters records and seeing who was drawing double rations).
Sodomy if found out was generally punishable with flogging or death.
I don’t understand too many books/articles on this topic exclusively but it is touched on in a number of books on the larger topic of sailors lives. Rediker touches on it in Between the Devil and the Deep Azure Sea. Joe Flatman definitely addresses it in Cultural biographies, cognitive landscapes and dirty ol
The male-presenting sailor occupies a unique place in the queer visual art canon. Instantly recognisable in mass media, the romance or homoerotism of the mariner sits with us in pop culture today. We repeatedly see the figure of the male sailor, in all its idealised glamour in art history, linked to queer self. How has art contributed to the gay male mythology of the sailor? Is queering the male sailor empowering and thrilling, or increasingly a redundant stereotype?
Where does the lgbtq+ link come from? Henry Marvell Carr at the National Maritime Museum models the archetype of the idealised male sailor for us. An Ordinary Telegraphist, painted in around 1944, taps into the essence of the sailor as iconic. The figure of the sitter Maurice Alan Easton radiates male glamour. Idealised, vigorous, masculine, noble, brave, disciplined, able, virtuous, protective, handsome, strong – Maurice embodies a litany of symbolic or fantasy qualities we project onto his physicality.
The combination of what the uniform represents and the male beauty here is palpable. Contrived to be as appealing as possible, Maurice is transformed from the civilian life he formerly occupied as a rai
Sweden: 'Gay sailor' sign to ward off foreign submarines
A Swedish peace group has come up with an unusual way of trying to repel Russian submarines.
The Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (SPAS) says it has installed an underwater "defence system" known as the Singing Sailor, external in the waters off Stockholm. Described as a subsurface sonar system, the installation features the words "Welcome to Sweden" in Russian, and emits the phrase "this way if you are gay" in Morse code. The animated neon sign features a man clad in pale underpants and a sailor hat, gyrating his hips as pink hearts flash behind him. It seems the group is playing on the rise in homophobia in Russia since the adoption of a law banning "gay propaganda" in 2013.
But the culture, which was formed in 1883, says the write is also a way to try to persuade the Swedish authorities to rethink using military means for national security. In October, Sweden launched a huge military operation to search its waters for a suspected Russian submarine, and the government recently announced a massive multiply in military spending, external. "If military actions
Hello, Sailor!
"You come up on the poop deck often?"
It's a lonely being in the Navy. Outside prison or single-gender schools, probably the most well-known version of Situational Sexuality is in the naval service. For centuries, men would be left alone together on ships for weeks on endnote women weren't allowed to serve in the Navy until the late 20th century, and at least in the US, weren't allowed to serve in every position as the men (like in submarines) until the 2010s. Sexual needs and desires were still submit, and that meant a lot of men turned to one another for comfort. This has led to sailors (or seamen of any stripe) becoming sex symbols among same-sex attracted men. Definitely Truth in Television on occasion, and in fiction, a frequent subtrope of the Manly Gay and Straight Same-sex attracted types. Pretty much Older Than Steam.
Since homosexuality was stigmatized (and even illegal) until
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