Gay sailors in the navy

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 become portrayed as “Gay” in movies and just in general as a joke?

ANSWER

It pre-dates the Joined States and was display 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 period and turned to alternative sexual practices. A captain or officer might acquire 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 comprehend 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

Being Gay in Naval Aviation

Jstalz said:
Is it there still a lot of social stigma around gays within military culture?
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No not really, you may still hear people hurl around 'that's so gay', or employ gay in deragatory ways, but I've never seen it be directed at a person specifically. You definitely wouldn't stand out or be excluded because of it.

Jstalz said:
What's it fond of to date when you're naval aviator, not only if, but especially if, you're gay?
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In flight school it sucks because a lot of the places you may move don't have a big population, enable alone gay population. You dating pool is small inside and outside of naval aviation. Pensacola isn't too terrible, but Kingsville is terrible. Outside of flight school, Jacksonville, Norfolk, San Diego are all decent and have a more non navy population which makes it better, but there's still some places you could go to that aren't great.

Jstalz said:
If I'm going to spend 10 years in an organization that I hope to confirm myself worthy to belong to, I want to hold some foresight as to how I'll fit into

Some time ago I posted a piece [link not safe for work] on the wildly popular eighteenth century erotic novel Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. In that novel, the author John Cleland wrote an explicit scene were Fanny and a shared sailor do the deed. There is a brief moment of alarm on Fanny's part when he
was not going by the right door, and knocking desperately at the wrong one, I told him of it:—'Pooh!' says he, 'my dear, any port in a storm.'[1]
By referencing the nearly accidental act of 'sodomy,' Cleland taps into the popular impression that sailors engaged in homosexuality. This is one of the few primary sources that directly addresses this impression.

Rictor Norton, at his website Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England, has collected an impressive number of primary sources, though not many reference sailors. Something that becomes clear in Norton's work is that there was little or no legal distinction at the time between those who engaged in a single same-sex behave, those who were exclusively gay, and anyone who fell in between.

Indeed, as many historians hold pointed out, the sexual spectrum is difficult
Did the Sailor Suit look Same-sex attracted before the Village People?
Sage_Rat1
It seems that some Navy ship is currently parked in the Port of Seattle as there’s strapping young lads in sailor suits wandering about all over.
Looking at them, however, I can’t assist but feel that they look anything short of dippy and at worst flaming–though the men themselves aren’t pinging my gaydar.
Would you guys say that this is innate due to the cut and dye of the outfit? Or that it’s simply a matter of having seen too many references to sailor outfits as a sexualized symbol?
Cat_Fight2
They certainly looked that way when drawn by Tom of Finland (who likely influenced the Village People).
As for the sailors in your port, you have to evaluate that yours is not the only gaze and plenty of women likely find them quite attractive.
Mighty_Girl3
Men in sailor suits tickle my happy bones.
MG (Married to a merchant navigator and former navy officer).
Sage_Rat4
Cat_Fight:
As for the sailors in your port, you have to consider that yours is not the only gaze and plenty of women likely find them quite attractive.
But is that because of, or in spite of?
So far as I’m aw