Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Don't ask, don't tell... Can gays fight?


    Don't ask, don't tell just got repealed in the Senate!

   The whole issue got me thinking about gayness in world military history.

   Most of the 'don't ask, don't tell' argument stems from some right wing existential fear that your ability to pull the trigger gets compromised by what you like to do with other people when you're naked. That's the crux of the issue right there. In the US, conservatives run with the idea that gays in the military weaken it based on two assumptions:

    A) Gays can't fight.

    B) Gays weaken a unit by spreading their gayness amongst otherwise non gay troops (the communicable disease theory of gayness).

   I always find argument B particularly funny.  You'd have to be borderline bent already to think that too much exposure to the gay might tip you over the edge into fully fledged homo. That's not exactly something that's going to happen to the average soldier who loves female tits and ass. Sorry, but seeing penis in 'Sexy Harlots 15' didn't ever make me want to fuck the guy in that movie. The stunt dick was only ever there so I could pretend it was mine as I watched it going into the girl.

    Anyway, both arguments are run of the mill homophobia but they got me thinking about gayness in armies of the past. And when I say gayness, I'm not talking about a platoon of  flaming Elton Johns waving pink AKs. That kind of effeminate gayness is not the kind of gay that wants to be a soldier. To want to be a soldier in any age and seek out combat you've got to be hard as fuck and I'm not talking in your dick. I'm talking in your head. What you do for fun naked has got nothing to do with it.



   Any history of warrior gayness must start with the Greeks I suppose.

   Most especially the Thebans and their 'Sacred Band of Thebes'. They were an elite force of 300 warriors who just happened to like boning each other. These guys were as queer as anything you'd see in a San Franciscan assless leather pants bar today and yet were total badass fighters. They fought in pairs, side by side with their lovers on the idea that if one of them died in battle, the other guy is going to be seriously pissed off and rage more on the enemy. It worked and the sacred band played a crucial role in winning at Leuctra. (Not the most famous Greek city state battle I admit, but their skeletons were found in 1890 and some stone monument to them does exist today). Funnily enough, the sacred band were finally defeated by Alexander, perhaps the greatest gay warrior in history.

   The Spartans too had a culture of militarized homosexuality. You know those badass few that stayed behind to die at Thermopylae? All of them would have set your gaydar meter blaring. But they conveniently left that bit out of the Greek history movies and standard history books, omitting the scene in the second act where the warriors all go back to a tent after a hard days fighting for a sausage party. Fucking Hollywood and their historical details right? The Spartans were so gay that Herodotus mentions a Spartan wedding night, where the new bride has to dress up like a man so as to make the transition to pussy easier for her husband.

   That's pretty fucking gay.

   Good fighters though!

   The Spartan's whole culture was a military industrial complex much like the US today. And they proved that there's nothing about what you do with your dick that limits your ability to kill people.

   The Romans didn't have a problem with gayness either. But they did believe in a type of manliness where pleasure seeking began to be seen as weakness. That's where the whole idea of gayness being bad in armies probably originates. The idea that sexual pleasure and killing should be kept separate. They are, after all, two diametrically opposed poles on a single magnet. The idea that they repel seems reasonable. But it's hard to reconcile with ancient historical fact.  Caesar himself may have banged his adopted son Octavian who was later to become Rome's first emperor, Augustus. Historians will argue but the point is, two of the greatest military leaders of the ancient world, Alexander and Caesar, were both benders.

   That alone should wipe out the "don't ask, don't tell' argument, right?

   Conservatives will most likely argue that 'the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there', that ancient history has no bearing on today. So I'll be forced to come up with more recent examples of warrior gayness to prove my point. Okay, no problem. There's plenty of gay to go around.

   Let's break out the Revolutionary War.

   One of my favourite people from that period was Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben who was totally queer. And  also a damn fine military leader and tactician. Without him, Washington's army would have been a useless band of peasants taking pot shots at the British from barn roofs. He was a Prussian, probably my favourite militarized society in post Renaissance Europe. Those guys were the solid, spit and polish, shine your musket, help me up after the cannon ball blew my leg off badass military of the 18th century. Any country that can produce a Clauswitz is serious business. But Von Steuben got kicked out of the Prussian army because he liked the cock. So he went to America in search of freedom. Don't you miss that, when America and freedom went together in the same sentence without any cognitive dissonance?

   Perhaps my favourite gay military leader is T E Lawrence who led the Arab revolt against the Turks in 1916.  Of course, Lawrence kept his sexual preference on the down low, him being an officer in the post Victorian British Army tasked with holding together a disintegrating empire (any parallel with today's US is purely coincidental) and even the movie they made about Lawrence only passingly alludes to his gayness. And that's just fine by me. Nothing about a man is truly revealed by how he has sex. Especially a soldier. Anyone with the balls enough to risk their life in a combat zone has already gained my respect and what they do with their genitals is surely nobody's business but their own.

    It's just a pity there are no honest to goodness wars for them to fight in anymore.


Friday, December 10, 2010

The London Student Riots were a masterclass in ancient warfare!



   I was watching the London Student riots yesterday, absently at first, the TV flickering in the background while I surfed naked chicks when something about the mayhem caught my attention. It was an aerial shot where the front line of the demonstration battle was distinct because the cops were wearing bright lime green jackets as opposed to the motley blue grey mass of students. Something triggered. Holy shit, that looks like the front line of a battle like Pharsalus or better yet (given the closed terrain) Thermopylae. I unmuted the TV and ran to the kitchen for popcorn.

   There was, after all, a war on.

   Soon after I found myself glued to the TV, witnessing simulated ancient warfare complete with motherfucking cavalry. I shall repeat that... motherfucking cavalry! Obviously they were nerfed but still, it's a battle in 2010 that includes charging horses! It was like paintball for people like me who never go outside. You get to see ancient battle play out like it would have, kind of, (I know it's a stretch but stay with me here for a sec) and nobody gets seriously hurt. Just like paintball.

   The cop troops were well equipped, well disciplined, like the Macedonian phalanx or one of Caesars legions, using the Roman formation of tight adjoining shields and slashing with batons, which were like nerfed versions of the Roman Gladius short sword. You'll notice in the clip coming up how a disciplined line of shields combined with stabbing actions can cause mass casualties to the enemy, especially when they're unruly and undisciplined (I'm thinking Gauls) and pressing forward from the rear.

   The cop force were outfitted with helmets with transparent face guards (a modern innovation I bet the Romans would have sold their sisters into slavery for) and had some pitched defensive fences which were soon converted to artillery by the beserking student force.

   The student army was composed almost entirely of light infantry which had the advantage of high mobility but offered little in the way of armor protection. I did notice a few veteran troops students who'd been at the previous riot and had brought along some homemade shields which they put to good use in some of the YouTube skirmishes we'll see in a few moments. The Student Force reminded me of Gauls or maybe one of the Germanic Tribes  of the first century AD, fighting with enthusiasm but little cohesion. They did deploy to good effect a lot of missile skirmishers equipped with paint bombs, bottles, and bits of smashed up fence.

   Okay, I'll pull out the hand lotion. It's time for the fun stuff.

   In this first vid notice the cop line and the steady efforts of the lightly armed student forces trying to poke holes in the cop line. You can see here how effective a row of massed shields is against a bunch of angry people with no command structure. Other things to notice, paint bomb skirmishers, the weakness of cavalry when not charging forward en masse but surrounded by hostile infantry and under missile fire. Notice too the panicking horse that chucked his cop. Ouch, I felt that.




   Fun no? Next up is the clip that makes me jizz. The cop infantry line splits open to allow the cavalry to charge through the middle. Not a tactic the ancients would have employed since cavalry is most useful when it flanks the main enemy body and pincers around from the rear. Obviously not possible in this terrain. Instead, the cop cavalry decides to go all Crécy on those bitches, charging pell mell through the middle and right into the student archers  stick and bottle throwers. Watch also how the students (accidently) pull that old trick the Macedonians used against Darius' chariots at Issus, allowing the cavalry to bubble into the main line and then pinching off the salient from the main body of cop infantry in a pincer movement. They then proceed to engulf it in missile fire, totally routing it. So much battlefield tactics on display here they should add it to the curriculum at West Point. 

   Another fun thing about this clip are the voices of the establishment commentators as they describe the battle as if the police are winning, their voices dying a little inside as the student army closes the cauldron and hammers the fuck out of the cop cavalry. Priceless.






   Awesome stuff.

   They say in ancient warfare if you could capture the enemy king the main body of enemy troops  rout on seeing their leader vanquished. Alexander pulled this move at Issus and made Darius flee the battlefield. Well, fuck me sideways, I nearly keeled over when the student army nearly pulled off the same ballsy move and captured Prince Charles.


   I love the guy screaming 'roll the window up' at the end. Top comment on YouTube is, "Window up? Pull it down and let the shit fly in their faces. Up the Student Revolution!" Makes me giggle. Because if the real revolution were ever to come, the weapons won't be nerfed and just like in all of history, the kings will have all the big guns.