Navy Raunch and Post-DADT Crackdown: Relieving Sexual Tension For Real

It’s interesting how military culture works, as evidenced by today’s crackdown by the NAVY on the heels of the DADT repeal.

Prior to the new regulation, clearly the NAVY felt its ship was already in order in spite of how the then-second-in-command of the USS Enterprise, Owen Honor created and broadcast gay-bashing videos as a perverse form of entertainment and stress relief to the 6,000 member crew during the Iraq war in ’06-07.

Looking at the screen shots of now Enterprise commanding officer Honor, we see the worst exploitation of power, the honorable officer barging into the shower to witness two males soldiers lathering each other or interjecting himself into another scene of two women in the suds. (Based on at least one other clip in the CBS story — a little cheerleader tableau — it appears Honor took ample opportunity to appeal to male purience and frustration by allusions to girl-on-girl action.)

Perhaps more telling was this shot, though, of a sea man (not sure if it’s the producer himself) working up a little cowgirl number in this drag scene. In an ironic twist on “Don’t Ask,” it’s actually easy to see this as Honor acting out his own supressed homo-erotic tendencies. And if that’s the case, then the new policy can’t help but go far in relieving some really serious tension — the kind that comes from all that cultural denial and identity repression.