What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
“Anthem For Doomed Youth” Wilfred Owen
Somewhere near Sambre-Oise Canal in Northern France, on November 4, 1918, Wilfred Owen was machine gunned dead. A month earlier during an attack, Owen distinguished himself for bravery and was awarded the Military Cross, a medal reserved for British officers for gallantry in action. Owen died in battle one week, almost to the hour, of the end of Great War. He was gay, and a poet.
Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory gives an account of Owen’s wartime service — and how literary arts reflected the horrors of industrial trench warfare — as part of a broader narrative of how the war turned the world upside down. Victorian idealized and romanticized notions of war and death were buried in the trenches of Flanders or Ypres along with a generation of young men. It’s one of the top five influential works in my life I have read.
Rooted in this 19th century idealized and romanticized notion of war and death are concepts of gender and masculinity and virtue. The Trump administration’s war on gays, trans, and women soldiers harkens back to these antiquated notions of who can or should or is able to defend our country and fight our wars. It is dangerous and misguided along with being bigoted and misogynistic.
During the second world war mathematician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist Alan Turing was key to decoding intercepted German messages. The war was shortened, and tens of thousands of allied lives were saved because of his efforts. Turing also was a co-inventor of digital computers and a founding thinker of Artificial Intelligence. He was gay, and died way to young, perhaps of a suicide. In Hegseth’s world he would have been banned from service. Hell, if Hegseth knew that today’s computers are based on Turing’s ideas, he would have all DOD computers destroyed. Wouldn’t want ‘gay’ computers turning American warriors, you know queer.
Well before Turin and Owen, there was the Sacred Band of Thebes, a 4th century BC, military unit composed of 300 men: 150 partners, lovers. They kicked the Spartan’s asses and were famed for their military fighting prowess, that is their warrior spirit. One can also point to the all-female warrior regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey in West Africa from the 17th to 19th century in West Africa, that was known for its fierceness.
The point is, as I think you already know, being gay or trans or a woman has nothing to do with military readiness or discipline or warrior spirit or virtue. It is crazy that today the Trump administration is rolling back inclusion and pluralism in our military and trying to impose 19th century concepts of manliness and virtue on a 21st century society. Just fucking stupid dereliction of duty if you ask me. To rename ships because they are named after a gay man, or a woman supreme court justice, or a freedom fighter against slavery is the nadir of half-witted imbecility. And the vast majority of today’s service members know this.
These policies are destructive and counterproductive and hurt readiness, and thereby our country’s ability to defend itself. It also irreparably harms decent, hardworking, talented, patriotic Americans.
