Ships as she: anthropomorphism, linguistics and girly vessels

‘Stark staring bonkers...  political correctness gone mad… an insult to a generation of sailors, the ships are seen almost as a mother to preserve us from the dangers of the sea and also from the violence of the enemy”.

If you think these words about officially referring to ships as gender neutral were roared by dinosaurs a century ago, you’re in for a surprise. The comments were made just last week by a fairly progressive retired Admiral, Lord Alan West; see https://tinyurl.com/West-ship-mother

The hoary ‘Is a ship a “she”, not an “it”?’ debate re-emerged when Glasgow Maritime Museum said it would now be referring to ships as gender neutral. Director David Mann said the museum ‘recognise[d] the changes in society’: https://tinyurl.com/glasgow-museum

Lloyds List made a similar decision in 2002: these floating bits of real estate are to be called ‘it’. That arbitrating decision brought a huge postbag too. Then thing settled down, although the Royal Navy carried on 'she-ing'.

Silly or?

The usual protesters are naval, not maritime, people – and mostly older males. They’re not anti-women. They just don’t understand that they’re perpetuating old and destructive attitudes that positioned women as - at worst - Jack Tar's totty, incompetent outsiders, sex-providers, objects of up-skirting, and protectees (see images).

And it’s rather silly, ostensibly. Or is it? BBC Radio 4 News Quiz comedian Andy Zaltzman joked that a ship’s determining genitals were usually hidden. So you could only tell and mummy and daddy ships apart when the lady had little baby ships - called ‘submarines’
 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0004f6r

Behind it

In the last week of April 2019  the matter became transformed into a fuzzy and sentiment-led debate. The words ‘cultural imperialism’ and ‘anthropomorphism’ were not used. But in essence they lay behind the argument: ‘Why shouldn’t we be allowed to call our inanimate things whatever we want?’

The answer is a complex one.  I write about it here now because for years I’ve been collecting stories, funny postcards and tea-towels on 'ships as she' as part of my work on gendered maritime history. 

I would like to highlight the following points. They build up, step by step, what I hope is a sage and fair-minded fresh view on the subject.

Rationality

Visitors to UK museums are rightly puzzled when they see, as in Glasgow Maritime Museum’s case, labels that refer to a ship as’ she’, and not as a gender neutral ‘it’.
English is not a gendered language, so it does not make sense for us in the UK to gender ships - or bicycles or nail extensions.
So it would be good to hear from experts on gendered languages explain this 'need' to assign gender to inanimate objects, taking a calm, systemic, approach based linguistics and neuroscience.

Mann and un-named colleague with the altered sign: image from Irvine Times 23.4.2019.

Protest and change

An unknown visitor scratched out the ‘she’ and the ‘her’ on Glasgow’s labels:  https://tinyurl.com/Irvine-Times-vandal. The change was called 'graffiti', and the protester called a ‘vandal’. But actually the visitor-observer had informally made a correction that the museum was anyway going to effect when it could afford to do so.

The useful debate that has ensued brings to our attention two things: widespread, under-informed, deeply-held bigotry; and the fact that museums are too cash-starved to update their displays and descriptions as they wish.

My book on the history of seafaring women (which had an appendix on 'ships as she') was launched on board the Glenlee, a ship moored at Glasgow Maritime Museum - and referred to as 'she' on Wikipedia. So I know the museum well enough to be clear that its ethos is to embrace diversity, which most museums now do.

Australia’s National Maritime Museum was ahead of the all this and switched in the late 1990s. Although the radical move brought controversy, the sky did not fall. Princess Anne and George W Bush still visited; the Sunday Times still put it on their list of ''the world's 10 coolest museums'' in 2010.

Anthropomorphism

Gendering a ship is part of the long-established general practice of attributing human qualities to inanimate objects, and to pets. Psychologists and anthropologists, for example, tend to see this as a creative problem-solving strategy: humanise a significant thing can give us an illusion of having some control over it, as well as bringing us closer to it.

'I love him, my necessary machine.'
Image courtesy of  The Atlantic, Dec 2017,
 by Christopher Delorenzo

Lonely and overwhelmed simple seafarers working on sailing ships, when navigation was less developed, must have especially needed strategies to help them cope with long bleak months of unpredictable and unknowable vicissitudes.
In that loneliness a ship was an intimate companion. Befriending it was a good tactic. And if the seafarer  didn't want to be accused of being homosexual or odd it was clearly politic to call that darling a she.   

Rights

But attributing (white) female gender to every inanimate object in a category - e.g. vessels - is troubling for our society. It's a sign of the habitual sexist thinking in the old navy.
Auto Trader’s website doesn’t refer to its vehicles as ‘the ladies’. No airport announces of a plane ‘she is boarding now’. 

Understandably, people on a ship come to ‘love’ their 24:7 residential workplace and to esteem its abilities to get them from A to B. Anyone can grasp that. Their collective lives depends on a good relationship with the machine, which some may see as a protective parent (female) – even a kind of god (dess) or simply their dearest pal and pet.

Feminising is not a consequence of the speakers being male. I, myself, a some-time boat-dweller, have called ships ‘she’. So do some seafaring women I know.  However, I’ve usually been fitting in politely rather than feeling convinced.

Individuals have the right to anthropomorphise their personal car, ship, fridge or cat if they want. It’s their private business. I stand back, too, when friends see their car as a naughty child or a treacherous tyrant.   It's their right be irrational – and it doesn’t do systemic harm to an already-oppressed group of humans: women.

Anthropomorphising can assuage loneliness. But is it alright?
Image by MJL,courtesy of www.chucklingdog.com

Humanising OK, but...

However, in the anthropomorphising process, people in a gendered society feel they have to decide whether their inanimate object is female or male.
Whatever the choice, it will bring entrenched and overwhelming stereotypes.

The controversy about gendering vessels comes up because some individuals are still basing their views on disrespectful and outdated ideas about women.
This behaviour is part of the climate that led to misogynists, especially under sail, superstitiously hating Woman’s presence on board and sabotaging real women's right to maritime work.  

Humanising should not not mean gendering, nor perpetuating negative stereotypes about one gender, race or class.

Spectrum

In my years of collecting such material, including teatowels like this one, (pictured below, right) no ship is ever seen as male. But women are seen as ships, such as fancy frigates who a swain  proudly parades in port. 

Published justifications for calling a ship ‘she’ range along a spectrum from filial devotion to the patronising.

• NOBLE: At the one end, the mighty container is something grand: a goddess to be worshipped and placated. Those aboard position themselves as merely devoted minions of the sainted Virgin Mary-like ship, sometimes created as a figurehead. (This may not encourage teamwork because it disables the worshippers’ sense of agency).
• GIRLY: At the spectrum’s other end, a ship is a demanding, vain flibbertigibbet who asks too much of men – as all women do. An example of this is the saying ‘the outfitting she wants costs more than her hull’.
• CONTESTED AUTHORITY: Somewhere in between is the view that ‘She won’t be controlled, you have to woo her to get her to bow to your will. Humour her and she’ll eat out of your hand’.

Beyond binarity

The nineteenth-century products of patriarchal societies, who’ve been away in all-male situation since their boyhood, are understandably under-informed about the realities of everyday women and equal, non-dominating comradeship.

They've known women only as idealised personifications of home or workers in the waterfront sex industry. For all sorts of reasons such exiles feel the need to reassure themselves that malestream is still mainstream.

Boys and men were away  for months or years; unrealistic ideas
about distant women developed.
  Illustrated London News. 10.2.1883.

Changed times

But education and the seafaring profession are today much less gender-segregated.
People are actively looking for new, more embracing personal pronouns such as ‘ze’ or ‘hir’, not just 'they'. 
In the West, women’s rights have been on the agenda for nearly 150 years. The past five decades have seen some advances. Women are less often positioned as second-class or treated as jokes - at least in public.

Unacceptably sexist behaviour has never been more discussed than in these #MeToo times. It’s now recognised that society should stop routinely denigrating anything seen as female and locking it in the Bad Corner until it conforms to men’s rules.

The time for placing 'ladies' on fanciful pedestals is long gone too.

We live in a new age. So it’s appropriate that twenty-first century museums, publishers, writers, navies and seafarers move on from routinely ascribing hackneyed gendered characteristics to rectangular vessels.

Respect helps

There is room for acceptance of diversity. This includes people’s personal right to call their cars Fifi or Henry and their right to call their ships ‘her bloody ladyship’ but also ‘his effin nibs’. If such anthropomorphising helps them work in harmony with their machines then it's fair enough.

But no one should impose systemic sexist irrationality across the board and thereby perpetuate negative stereotypes. Respect helps us all.

TV star (and ex-Wren) June Brown meet's Navy new women

Integrating women into the navy and sea service in 1990-93 was controversial. Veteran Wrens, as well as some die-hard chaps, thought it would never work. Some still do.
They regret that femininity 'doesn't seem to matter any more.'
June Brown (Dot Cotton in EastEnders) was one who thought that way, as today's BBC documentary, Women at war: 100 years of service, shows. Wartime Wren June is the star of this first episode, on women and the navy. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09fflk4/women-at-war-100-years-of-service-series-1-1-june-brown
June was a cine-op Wren from 1944-46, projecting instructional films on survival at sea to naval men. She was one of perhaps 100,000 lady-like but excited personnel who 'assisted' the war effort by 'freeing a man for the fleet'.
Those wartime women's histories were evidenced by some of the Wren artefacts June was shown at the National Museum of the Royal Navy. They included the naval shoulder bags for which Wrens had lobbied, needing a place for their lipstick and cigarettes. (There were canvas bags issued, or leather if you could afford to pay). The famous black knee-length 'passion-killers' could, June commented, be worn as cycling shorts today. She also referred to the standard-issue brassieres were 'had a deep band, like an old ladies'', which 'we never wore'.

DISCOVERING GENDER IS NO LONGER AN ISSUE
Now, for this programme, June actually drove a naval vessel, as no woman did until the 1990s. Taking the wheel, well, made her realise she would have been capable of doing that then, as she told the cameras.
She met her successors, today's business-like naval women, on ships and during their training in firefighting.
An early WRNS air mechanic, Dorothy Runnicles, and June too, felt that servicewomen such as themselves had been pioneers then. They saw WW2 Wrens as having paved the way for the 1990s trail-blazers, and then for the women today who take diversity and inclusion totally for granted.

June also interviewed Kate Welch, one of the Wrens to join the first ship that included women as proper sailors. HMS Brilliant sailed in 1990, and Kate said, the 20 women on board were very usefully trained in advance in sea operations.
Any grumpy male doubters were glared at - and handled well by the women who, Kate says, 'were there as sailors in our own right, doing our jobs.'
June's many experiences in making this brisk and well-researched 43-minute film resulted in her starting to see naval integration very differently, as something that worked for today's young women.
I would have pushed it, had I been her interviewer. I would have asked 'So, June, do you now think that treating women as members of a special species might have been a mistake? Do you think it might have been limiting to you all, personally, as well as a waste of potentially useful hands in a wartime crisis?'
I get the impression that, reluctantly, she would have said yes.


TV VERSION OF NAVAL WOMEN'S HISTORY
TV and film can say things more directly, and with more impact, than books. I wish I had the chance to make a documentary instead of writing a printed volume (although finding the many pictures for it was definitely my favorite part).
But as it is, I feel deeply impressed by this BBC version of women's naval history. The programme was made with the real depth of understanding, and done very succintly and tellingly.
It's a far better brief visual story than my book, Women and the Royal Navy, which is out this week (https://tinyurl.com/y7pclcld). A book has the advantage of being permanent. And my summary provides a longer fuller view of woman in all naval services, not only Wrens as in this programme.
But I really take my hat off to the programme makers. Do watch. It's available on i-player until 5 December.

Japan's first warship captain takes control: Miho Otani

Women captains of warships - anywhere in the world - are still very very rare. Senior officers, yes. But making it to the top boss is a real feat.
Here's Commander Miho Otani, Japan’s first female warship captain. She's 45, has a 12-year-old daughter and faced family opposition at first.

"EQUAL"
“I feel that male and females are very much equal in terms of careers. I get the same salary. […]There are some duties I can’t assume, such as going on submarines, but other than that, there are not many jobs that I cannot do. I feel it’s equal” she announced very diplomatically.

In fact, Japan's navy has been slow in letting in women. And most countries' navies have been - in principle - allowing women on submarines for at least six years.

Read more at https://humansatsea.com/2017/07/04/meet-commander-miho-otani-japans-first-female-warship-captain/

Nursing in the Navy: Nora Miller: passenger ship nurse and QARNNS pioneer.

Nora Miller, later Lewis, (born 1940) (pictured above in Malta when she was a QARNNS) is one of the rare women who nursed in both UK navies, Merchant and Royal. She is part of a remarkable cluster of women who did an archetypal feminine job but at officer-level, and in a workforce where men dominated. Such women numbered hundreds not thousands.
Her memoir, Nurse in the Navy, was published in 2016. It is all too brief: just 136 pages. But two of its key elements are her experience on the prestigious liner/cruiseship Queen Elizabeth from 1966-68, and in the Royal Navy from 1970- 1981.

Looking after cruisers and crew: 1966-68
In commercial shipping women had nursed on passenger ships since before 1900. For the first few decades of the twentieth century they were often employed as stewardesses but expected to nurse when needed, on top of their regular work. When Nora Miller, a former head-girl, joined the iconic Queen Elizabeth in 1966 she joined a world where the two or three Sisters were a respected full-time part of the medical team. (See picture of QE team above: Nora is far right)
‘I settled into a pleasant routine of crossing the Atlantic in winter followed by a cruise, either to the Caribbean from New York or to the Mediterranean from Southampton.’ In summer her ships simply crossed between New York and Southampton.
‘After two years this wonderful adventure came to an end for me.’ Cunard replaced the ship with the QEII in 1968. Jobs were lost. ‘It was last in, first out’ and she went ‘drearily back to life ashore. In the long term it was a good thing as for me it was not a life with any real substance.’ She left ‘far more worldly wise then when I joined.’
Many seafarers eventually become tired of living out of a suitcase, but still addicted to travel. For Nora "I loved the idea of a regular change of job and realise that if I joined the Royal Navy they would do it for me with regular postings, some abroad.’ She became a Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service Sister in 1970.

Navy and QARNNS: 1970-81
By contrast to nurses on passenger ships, women had nursed intermittently in Royal Navy hospital ships near combat situations since at least 1660. They became a separate professional force in 1884, which was in 1902 named Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service.
They worked on hospital ships in the First and Second World War and in Korea. However QARNNS’ usual place was in naval hospitals ashore.
Many QARNNS longed to be based with the Navy overseas. Nora too had looked ‘forward to foreign postings and was dismayed to see the Navy withdraw from Hong Kong, Singapore and Mauritius the very year I joined.’
In fact, she was lucky. In 1971 she was posted to Malta, one of the few remaining overseas naval bases in this Cold War. She afterwards went to the US on an exchange scheme. Then in 1979 Nora had ‘another ground-breaking posting abroad’ at RAF hospital Wegberg near Düsseldorf where she taught obstetrics to Royal Navy student nurses. (See picture above, Nora is on right).

Changing times: 1970-90
Naval nurses were not allowed to serve at sea in this period (male sick berth assistants did that work). But in 1971 when she was allowed on board HMS Glamorgan for a family day Nora told an officer she met that ‘"It won’t be long before we women are at sea with you"… To my astonishment he replied angrily, "You can stop talking like that! It's very unlucky to have women at sea!"
In fact, it took another two decades before women in naval service were allowed to routinely serve at sea, just like males. Exceptionally, ‘in the 1970s [naval] nurses were quickly put on board ship if it was sailing off to evacuate British families from some danger zone, as happened several times’, she explained.
When she returned to Portsmouth in 1973 ‘Sexist attitudes in hospital were being challenged at last… One of the Ear Nose and Throat doctors… told me to fetch him a cup of coffee. "Get your own coffee," I replied. He looked startled. "But nurses are the handmaids of the doctors!" he said and was only half joking. "Not on my ward, they’re not!" I told him firmly. "And don't you go asking any of my staff to do it either.’

The two key changes that affected naval nursing were:
~ 1977. The decision to include women under the Naval Discipline Act, just as men were. Nora Miller told me ‘It changed everything.’ QARNNS became properly affiliated to the Royal Navy, although remaining a separate service. They wore a more naval uniform with gold braid on their sleeves. Nora found that when the QARNNS came back from their post-NDA course some male medical assistants were quite hostile because the women now had a more naval status. They got used to it.’
~ 1990. NDA was followed by the 1990 decision that women could serve at sea on naval ships. By that time Nora had left the QARNNS to be with her husband.
In both Merchant and Royal Navies, a few women were also serving as doctors from the 1960s.

After 1983 males were allowed to be QARNNS. Today mixed health-care teams serve on all ships. Men still predominate in the higher medical jobs.

~ Nursing in the Navy can be bought via http://www.carolinebrannigan.com/memoirs-by-caroline-brannigan.php.
~ Naval nursing history is outlined in my forthcoming book Women and the Royal Navy (IB Tauris/NMRN).
~ Passenger ship nurses’ history is in my From Cabin “Boys” to Captain: 250 years of Women at Sea (History Press, 2016).

Naval women made music

The Royal Navy Ladies Orchestra, 1892-c1914 is one of the lost stories of women's history in music and and in service life. It's possible to piece fragments of it together but really it requires a collective effort, if anyone would like to co-operate.

The Navy and Royal Marines had their own full-time professional musicians. But in addition, there seems to have been a separate, less integral musical initiative by pre-WW1 women: The Royal Navy Ladies Orchestra. They were probably women who were raising money for naval charities.


'Delightfully cerulean'
Generally they were well-received. The orchestra was applauded by one reviewer as ‘agreeable and diversified.’ By 1909 they were advertised as ‘Acknowledged to be the Finest Ladies' Band now before the Public. ‘ They belonged to the stately end of musical entertainment, not the bawdy cross-dressing music hall end. They didn’t wear a snappy version of a naval trousers but were ‘ladies in blue, who look delightfully cerulean’.

At piers and kursaals
The orchestra mainly played in the north, at end-of-pier events and charitable occasions. But it also appeared at august venues such as the Royal Albert Hall and Crystal Palace. In Europe after 1870 ladies orchestras proliferated, and were very popular, especially at kursaals, a stately equivalent of medical spas at watering places.
The RN Ladies Orchestra must have been up with the best because it played in Hamburg, Leipzig, and Dresden.
At the start of WW1 they were playing in Portsmouth and Worthing, perhaps as a way to boost recruitment and morale. On Worthing Pier that August 1914 they played every weekday and also gave 8.30pm promenade concerts to strollers on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.

Members
It appears that there were usually at least eight members. Twelve are in this 1914 picture. Some were instrumentalists, such as cellist Winifred Parsons in October 1909. Vocalists included sopranos Miss Winnie Lincoln and Miss Elsie Raynor.

Their director was Miss Florence Sidney Jones (see pic), who later began calling herself Mme Flo Sidney. Reviewers praised her as ‘painstaking and capable’. She was the sister of James Sidney Jones, composer of musical comedies. Her address was Bellcare House in Leeds (Not findable). She sang a song in c1883 that James had composed. (see sheet music)

Timeline for Florence Jones' musical evolution

1860 & 70s: Flo must have grown up steeped in music. Her military father, James Sidney Jones senior (c1837–1914), was a military bandmaster and conductor. One of her other brothers Guy Sidney Jones (1875–1959) was a musical director and composer too. The family moved many times as their father was sent to new military stations such as Colchester, Aldershot, York, and Dublin before settling at Bellcare House in Leeds. There Flo’s father was conductor of the Leeds Rifles, musical director at the Grand Theatre and conductor of the Spa Orchestra at Harrogate.
1882: Flo’s brother James Sidney Jones junior travelled as a conductor of touring musical shows, which must have made it easier for Flo to later consider an itinerant musical career too. One of his stars was Lucy Carr-Shaw (1853-1920) (see picture), George Bernard Shaw’s sister, who may have encouraged Flo to become an independent thinker and New Woman.

1883: James seems to have briefly taken responsibility for the orchestra initially.
1893: After his tour to Australia and when his West End career took off in 1893 it was Flo’s name that appeared everywhere in relation to the RN Ladies Orchestra, particularly in newspaper announcements of events, called ‘Provincial Theatricals’ in The Era.
By 1896 James Sidney Jones created The Geisha, ‘by far the biggest hit of that decade, its popularity outstripping everything else, even The Mikado, throughout Europe.’ The Gilbert& Sullivan-like show features naval officers and ‘the amorous goings-on when Lieutenant Reggie Fairfax and his fellow officers from HMS Turtle descend on 'The Tea-House of Ten Thousand Joys' in Japan, longing for a cup of tea and female company.’
It’s likely that Flo stayed with her wealthy brother James when in London.

When will augmented breasts be normal in the Thai navy?

Sorrawee Nattee, Miss Ladyboy 2009. Too good for the navy? http://www.topnews.in/files/Sorawee-Nattee.jpg&imgrefurl

Thailand has been well known to Western seafarers and travellers as the country that has vast number of 'ladyboys' or kathoeys: maybe one in every 165 men. Their high profile, their beauty, and the tolerance with which they are often treated has been an education.

Many seafarers have told me that docking in Thailand opened their eyes to the fact that narrow western hostility to transsexual and transgender people is not the only way of handling such fellow members of the human race. Indeed, Thailand has been an inspiration to transgender visitors.

Now the country is going a step further (impelled by shortages of army recruits) and choosing more delicate language with which to refer to transsexuals. Trouble is, it's still exceptionalising them as abnormal and undesirable for the armed forces, rather than accepting the full breadth of the human spectrum.

Similarly, PC Air's decision last month to employ transsexual women as cabin crew brought the news that their name tags will be be gold-coloured, to demarcate them from genetic women and from men.

In an article called 'Army renames transgender conscripts', today's Bangkok Post carries the news that 'Instead of their sexuality being called a "psychological abnormality" or a "gender identity disorder", they will simply be referred to as "Type 2" or "Type 3". The army has coined the terms to avoid offending transgender people.

'Type 2 refers to men who have undergone breast augmentation. Type 3 comprises people who have had a full sex change.

'The army had proposed replacing the term "psychological abnormality" with "gender identity disorder." But it had a rethink after fierce criticisms from human rights groups, who were opposed to any term that suggests abnormality.

'The Defence Ministry is amending the Conscription Act of 1954, said Thaksin Chiamthong, director of the academic resources division of the Army Reserve Command.'

'He said the main purpose of the amendment is to correct the part of the law that states transgender people are exempt from conscription because they are considered psychologically abnormal.

'"Normally only Type 1 [men whose appearances are typical of men] are required to draw a conscription ballot," said Col Thaksin. But if the number of Type 1 is insufficient, Type 2 will be conscripted as well, despite their female-like breasts,"' which the forces have often termed 'malformed'.

The relevance of this to the Thai navy is that it needs 16,000 conscripts in April. In fact the entire armed forces and Defence Ministry need to conscript 97,280 men, an increase of 9,828 from last year.

But they don’t fancy it. Patrick Winn found earlier this winter that ‘of the half million young Thai men facing military conscription lottery each year fear it, most fear being drafted into grunthood. Best case scenario: Two years in a dull outpost. Worst case: Patrolling the southern Thai-Malay borderlands, where Islamic insurgents are notorious for beheading troops.’

And few fear it more than kathoeys. Conscript Prempreeda Pramoj told him that '"Buzzing off a kathoey’s long locks and forcing her to go soldiering in the sun is the cruellest of punishments.

‘“No transgender would ever want to be in the army,” Prempreeda said. “They’ll cut your hair off. They’ll destroy your femininity. You will do everything you can to avoid it.”’

In the past, some straight young Thai men have attended draft meetings dressed in frocks in order to avoid doing their three year's military service. It looks like it's going to take a lot more than a pretty dress if 21-year olds are to dodge the draft in these hard-pressed times.

The really interesting question to me is 'How will the transsexual people's shipboard presence affect relationships, given that sexual activity in the enclosed space that a ship is can be such an issue?'

Remember the fuss over British women being allowed to work at sea in the Royal Navy? Rivalrous punch-ups and adultery were inevitable, the tabloids screamed and the diehards warned.

Surely the Thai navy will choose to put transsexual people in shore jobs. In an attempt to manage desire it will probably position them far from the intensity of ships on prolonged deep-sea missions.

After all, it's hrdaly news that in the US and UK navies men cross-dress 'for fun' in shipboard entertainments, and that the absence of genetic women certainly can lead to men having sex with men.

Thailand's shortage could actually suggest the unthinkable might finally have to happen: drafting genetic women too. Come to that,isn't this fuss a good argument for finally getting over all these narrow definitions about gender-appropriate roles and 'normal' sexual identities?

On this latest news on languge see: http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/227594/army-renames-transgender-conscripts
On kathoeys' reluctance see: Patrick Winn’s Global Post article, ‘Thailand military: the lovely conscripts’, October 8, 2010 :
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/thailand/101007/military-conscription-transgender

Gorch Foch: women sea cadets harassed to death?

Harassment, humiliation - and now suicide, seemingly!

OK, ships have their bizarre initiation rituals. Though most of us wouldn't like to undergo them, some rituals may not be harmful.

But German navy sailing ship, the Gorch Fock, is undergoing a mutiny investigation because it's all gone too far. It's just emerged that after Nov 2010 some recruits refused to obey orders after a woman cadet fell to her death from the rigging.

Sarah Lena Seele (25) was bullied into climbing the 27 metre mast in a training exercise, say her colleagues. Insult was added to injury when the ship's crew held a raucous party just three days after the woman had died, reports Helen Pidd in a Guardian article: German Navy hit by sex, drink and bullying scandal. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/25/german-navy-sexual-harassment-claims.

Another women cadet, Jenny Böken (18) has also died in mysterious circumstances. She drowned in 2008 and her parents believe she was sexually harassed in the run-up to her death. They have demanded a full investigation.

“I think it is absolutely possible that Jenny was harassed and went overboard during a quarrel,” father Uwe Böken told Bild. “An accident simply doesn’t make sense. From the beginning I’ve thought that sexual coercion was the scenario.”

There have been many complaints about sexual harassment and bullying on this ship. Not only are women the targets, but also young men. Pidd writes: 'In the leaked report... [the parliamentary ombudsman for the armed forces, Hellmut Königshaus] and his team report tales of massive alcohol consumption on board. Drunken officers forced their underlings to scrub their vomit from the deck, it is claimed, and threatened to kill cadets while intoxicated.

'One male cadet complained of sexual harassment in the ship's showers. "It was like being in jail on the ship," he reportedly told investigators. "Every new recruit had to offer up his arse." The cadet said crew members were always throwing his shampoo bottle on the floor so that he had to bend down to pick it up.

'Over the weekend a female cadet told the tabloid Bild that she and other women were frequently propositioned by men on board.

'According to another report in Spiegel Online, one recruit told investigators that crew members told him they were members of the Aryan Brotherhood. [This is]the racist group which is responsible for murders, extortion and drug trafficking in US prisons.

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the German defence minister, has sacked Captain Norbert Schatz. Once the pride of the German navy and called the country's "floating ambassador" the Gorch Fock,is now being dubbed "Germany's biggest floating brothel."'

Königshaus wants to install an equal opportunities officer on board.

This entirely misses the point that harassment and bullying are cultural problems, to be tackled at the root. Any one who has been at sea will know this can't be just a one-off situation. The case of cadet Akhona Geveza (see my blog July 25 2010) makes that clear.

Respect has to be taught and learnt and learnt, not least in the isolated and pressurised spaces of a ship at sea where people are so vulnerable to bullying.

See more at the Safety4sea site: http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.safety4sea.com/admin/images/media/2010.11.09_GORCH_FOCK

Women on UK subs - finally. Maybe.

The UK navy is one of the last navies to allow women on submarines. But it looks like it could happen next year following a study by the Institute of Naval Medicine, it was announced on Dec 5.

See, for example, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/defence/8182239/Wrens-could-serve-on-submarines-for-first-time.html

About time too!See my blogs of Aug 6 and May 30 this year, and June 11 and Sept 15 in 2009.

The stated - and implausible - reason for women's exclusion was formerly that there was a risk to female or foetal health from the radiation on nuclear subs. The build-up of contaminants could exceed levels safe for a foetus, and women in the initial stage of pregnancy might not know they were expecting, the argument went.(Navy News, 29.4.99.)

A solution of course, was to only employ women who were not heterosexually active to work on submarines. This didn't happen. Which made many observers think that health was only an excuse, and that sexism was the real reason. Men couldn't cope with women on subs.

But now, perhaps it's been noticed that women submariners in other countries have been perfectly well for a long time.

The list of precedents is:
Sweden 1980s
Norway 1995
Australia 1999
Canada 2002
South Africa 2007
US 2010

Anyway the Institute has decided the risk does not exist. So the Ministry of Defence is now reviewing the decision and the green light might go on next year.

The other problem - fear of hotbeding causing immorality - is to be resolved by having separate beds for women and men. Wow, rocket science!

Could this concession be anything to do with difficulties in getting crews? As in both world wars, women were suddenly deemed fit for some jobs when there was a shortage of men to do that work.

Yes, I am suggesting there is hypocrisy in operation. And it's fascinating to see the fears of trouble, marriage break-up,etc that men are already posting on websites today.

Women's steep route onto "men's" ships

I've just found the best image yet that illustrates women's struggle to get into that bastion, naval ships. Maybe an artist's version will work as the cover for my new book on women on the wartime seas.

This is an Imperial War Museum b&w photo. I found it last week in their photo archive. This archive was such a rich source that I wished I'd used it before researching any of the word-based data for the book.

That's because photos - of course - are better than a thousand words. The images I saw tell so many important and hidden stories. They include
~ women cheerily cooped up cleaning out ships' boilers in WW1 (unions banned this in the next war)
~ a continuity 'girl' who was in a submarine for 8 weeks while filming in WW2 (despite all claims that women were never on submarines in wartime).

I've tinted this photocopy to draw out the symbolic significance of the woman and the steep rope ladder she's having to climb. And the chaps are deliberately greyed out.

The Wren is not only having to do a tricky feat in the ridiculously inappropriate clothes she was required to wear.

She's also rising to make her way though the denizens of that institution, the ship. Their exclusivity is conveyed through jeering and hostile faces far above her.

Yes, it's historic. The un-named Wren was a Boarding officer in WW2, and today's Navy has good equal opps policies.

But what a useful illustration of the gender hostility at sea that so many women have had to combat.

Women on sailing ships 1650-1850 / Black sailors

Through my Google Alerts system I've found an interesting web forum, with a subsection about women on sailing ships. Go to http://forum.sailingnavies.com, then go to 'Women at sea.' The site was mainly active 2003-2008, but it's still viable.

Some of the women discussed are cross-dressing sailors, some are wives of officers, two are mothers who gave birth at sea while their husbands were in Nelson's navy; Nelly Giles on HMS Bellerophon at the Battle of the Nile, 1798, and Louisa Phelan on HMS Swallow in June 1812.

They may have known the two women whom Thomas Maclise represented in his 1860s painting, The Death of Nelson. I was looking at it in Liverpool's Walker Art Gallery last week.

I noticed that of the three 'nurses', the central one is a man. But he's looking very tender. I wondered if the artist gave some thought as to how prominent a woman should be - and decided against it.

The Walker website has an interesting article about how Maclise based his painting on real details of the Victory's complement in 1805. "The inclusion of two black people in the scene - a seaman in the centre of the painting and a cook to the left - was in part a matter of historical accuracy. The Victory's master book of 1805 refers to a small number of foreigners amongst crew members and mentioned that "some must have been Negroes � Two give Africa as their birthplace".

The black seaman plays a key role in the painting not just because he is in the centre, but because he points to Lord Nelson's assassin as well. The black seaman is not a symbol of "otherness" or difference of identity and culture; rather his presence serves to strengthen British identity.

Like other historical paintings, "The Death of Nelson" not only commemorates an important event, but also fulfils a didactic purpose: the representation of black people and women together with Lord Nelson suggests that Victorian society was a harmonious whole, despite its class divisions and inequalities.

In reality 19th century black sailors in British fleets were poorly treated. Although they usually worked in the lower ranks of the ship's company as cooks, deck hands or stewards, they were not slaves but free sailors. The hardship of living at sea meant that the life of a sailor was less attractive and for this reason black people were easily accepted.

It is believed that towards the end of the 19th century a quarter of all seamen in the merchant navy were black. Black people at sea were not isolated by their white shipmates, but mixed both in work and in leisure time. Black seamen from West Africa, the West Indies and the United States were a particularly common sight in Liverpool."
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/picture-of-month/displaypicture.asp?venue=2&id=37

Cocaine-smuggling Navy woman in court today.

Scandal about 'Wrens' (yes, they were disbanded ten years ago; women are part of the Royal Navy now, but the term lingers on)is always welcomed by the tabloids.

All the better if there's an added bit of spice about crimes such as smuggling. All the better if (nasty) foreign boyfriends are involved. And perhaps better still if she's 'not one of us'- not a nice white gel - indeed a refugee.

So the red tops will be having a field day later today over Teresa Matos (36) the Angola-born steward, who is in court to be sentenced for smuggling £2m of cocaine on HMS Manchester. She has already pleaded guilty.

I have no time for drug dealers. But I do believe in justice. And this woman is not being treated as simply a naval worker.

Gender and race are playing far too big a part in how the case is being reported, and commented upon by bloggers. And it's appalling that this extraordinary one-off case is being used as yet another attack on refugees and their rights.

For background see today's Daily Mail story; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285028/Navy-wren-smuggled-2m-cocaine-warship-gang-boyfriend-leader.html?ITO=1490, and initial reports of the trial on August 18 2009.

Women in New Zealand Navy ship hit 20%

This is a really interesting new story about women in the NZ navy, contrasting them to the Australian and UK navies.As someone who for 30 years has been watching equal opps changes on ships, I find it fascinating, especially in the light of US women being finally trained for submarine duty (see my earlier post.)

'Navy says ships could not go to sea without women, NZPA May 11, 2010, 3:16 pm

The navy frigate HMNZS Te Kaha arrives in China next week with women comprising 20 percent of its crew.

The Anzac-class frigate left Auckland five weeks ago on a four-month deployment with the supply ship HMNZS Endeavour to Asia, Canada and North America and both ships were due to arrive in China on Thursday.

Women have been in the navy since the Women's Royal New Zealand Naval Service (WRNZNS) was established during the war in 1942.They served on shore posts and on harbour launches only, freeing up men for active service at sea.

The WRNZNS was disbanded in 1977 but in 1986 the navy allowed women to go to sea, initially in the non-combat ship, HMNZS Monowai. By 1994 all navy ships were open to sea service by women.The navy now says without women in the crews, many of its ships would not be able to go to sea.

The New Zealand navy has higher ratios of women than the navies of Australia or Britain, with 23.4 percent overall compared with 17.5 percent and 9.3 percent respectively.

The New Zealand army (14 percent women) and air force (17.5 percent) also has more women in the ranks than Australia (9.7 percent for the army and 16.6 percent for the air force) and Britain (8.2 percent army and 12.3 percent air force).

In the latest issue of the navy magazine Navy Today, warrant officer of the navy Warrant Officer Dean Bloor said before women were introduced, the navy had several concerns, including the mental and physical differences between men and women.

He said there was also the "traditional view of only men at sea. Fortunately over time these concerns have been overwhelmingly dispelled." Most people in the navy had joined since 1986 and had never served in a navy where women were not allowed to go to sea.

During the deployment the two ships would exercise with Singaporean, Malaysian and Australian forces in the South China Sea. Te Kaha would berth at Shanghai to support the New Zealand exhibition at the Shanghai Expo, and Endeavour would visit South Korea.

Both ships would sail to Canada to mark the centenary celebrations of the Canadian navy before heading down the west coast of America, across the Pacific to Hawaii and back to New Zealand.During the deployment the ships would visit ports at Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego and Honolulu but the navy said they would not be involved in exercises with American military forces.'

This acceptance is a good example of what is happening in the British navy too - that now there is a new generation who have never known single-sex ships. So it is easier for men to see women as simply shipmates, not exceptional creatures from Dumb Bimboland or China Dollsville.

But how telling that the HMNZS Te Kaha is still only 20 per cent, not 50 per cent - or even 70 per cent! - crewed by women.

I wonder what percentage of the Russian Navy, who were such pioneers in allowing women such as Valentino Orlikova (see pic) to work in the Soviet Merchant Navy, is now female? And what are the obstacles, still, to having a gender-balanced ship's complement? In the past women have been deterred by a hostile culture, sexual harassment, discriminatory promotion procedures and conditions that just don't fit with what modern women want of life - such as motherhood AND a career.

If you - like me - want to read Dean Bloor's full article you'll find The Navy Today June issue is not yet posted on the web. But when it is you can find it at http://www.navy.mil.nz/know-your-navy/official-documents/navy-today/2010.htm

First women on US submarines

On Friday (May 28 2010) the first eleven women who will serve on nuclear submarines had their commisioning ceremony at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis. Hooray! Imagine what the future's submarine movies are going to be like. Nothing like the above poster: 'He volunteered for the submarine service.' No more all-male enclaves

I'd rather not have war at all. But people who want to do a job and are suited to it should be able to do it, regardless of gender, orientation, race or whatever. Equal rights are simply and unarguably crucial.

When is every country, including Britain, going to follow suit?

At the moment UK naval women aren't allowed on subs for fear that nuclear radiation will damage any foetus who might be stowing away on board. It's a tired and implausible argument - other countries dodn't use it.

But I've heard a whisper that the newest UK subs have just been built with extra accommodation, to allow separate quarters for women. And one UK solution allegedly being discussed is that women may have IUD contraceptive devices inserted, to make really sure no one gets pregnant while aboard.

Associated Press's Brian Witte reports that the very supportive US Vice President Joe Biden said on Friday it was a milestone year for US Naval women in training. It's only a month since Congress agreed to end the ban on women in subs. They have been working on surface ships since 1994 (whereas in Britian they began in 1993), although they still aren't at sea in equal numbers. Of this year's 1,028 Annapolis graduates, women were just 21 per cent.

In October about twenty trainees will be going to the US Navy's Nuclear Power School in Charleston, South Carolina. It's a 15 month-programme, minimum.

After qualifying in 2011, this first batch - all officers - will work on two sorts of subs: guided-missile attack and ballistic-missile. These have more living space than the other subs. Later women will work on the smaller subs as they are refitted.

The plan for stage one is that three women will be in each submarine's rotating crew. They will share a cabin with other women, and a bathroom with 12 other officers. A sign on the door will show whether a women or a man is using it.I can't see the point, myself. I mean, what house do you know with a sign saying who is occupying the loo? The signs may soon 'get lost,' I imagine.

But at least we're getting there.

See: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iIMxaTQ7lpX-Ow6grVziJ7ZKeNpQD9FVUPKG3

Lesbians aboard in US navy. Secrecy is undermining, so repeal DADT

Former Lieutenant Junior Grade Jenny Kopfstein, a US Navy Surface Warfare Officer, has just written a public letter to President Obama as part of the current campaign to repeal the controversial law affecting LGBT people in the services. She was on the combatant cruiser USS SHILOH - and a lesbian.

She writes '“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) made it difficult to have normal conversations with my shipmates. If I said I had a dog, someone might ask, “Who takes care of him when you’re at sea?” Answering the simplest questions can get you kicked out.

The crew of my ship was my extended family. Keeping parts of my life secret and separate from them is an unnecessary burden, and no American sailor or soldier should be forced to bear it.

Feeling deeply conflicted between the requirements of DADT and the Navy’s Core Values, I wrote my Captain and told him I was a lesbian. I was being forced to lie on a daily basis by DADT. I did not want to get out of the Navy, and I said so in my letter. I wanted to stay and serve honorably, and to maintain my integrity by not lying about who I was.'

Jenny continued not only to work, but to work very effectively. And she continued not only to be accepted, but popular, and even represent the ship. Her commanding officers did not want her to go to.


'I qualified as Officer of the Deck, and was chosen to be the Officer of the Deck during General Quarters — a great honor.
I also earned my Surface Warfare Officer pin. During my pinning ceremony, the Captain removed his own pin — off the chest of his uniform — and pinned it on mine. That was one of my proudest moments.

Mr. President, help Congress repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” now. We cannot afford any delay.'

With respect, Former Lieutenant Junior Grade Jenny Kopfstein, US Navy.
http://gayrights.change.org/blog/view/dont_ask_dont_tell_violates_the_navys_core_values


Her point is so important. On a ship you're in a team. Witholding a key thing about yourself undermines your happiness, and it undermines the trust that's so crucial aboard. Of course LGBT people should be able to tell - and continue to do their job.

Nurses at sea in Falklands War

White Ship Red Crosses, by QARNNS nurse Nicci Pugh, has just been published. The memoir summarises the experiences of Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service personnel on the hospital ship Uganda during the 1982 Falklands conflict. It is published by Melrose Books, ISBN: 978-1907040498

Anna McNamee, for Women's Hour, recorded the book's launch party this week (20.4.2010). The lively programme included interviews with the some of the 'Fearless Forty' nurses. Hear it on BBC Radio Four's Listen Again facility: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rzt98#p007g4yz.

It's great that the book is out and that this story is at last told. I am happy I was one of the people who encouraged Nicci to do it.

And it's important to acknowledge that nurses were not the only women in that war. So too were pursers, stewardesses, laundresses and cleaners. These unsung heroines, some of whom I have interviewed, also deserve recognition.

Hetero sailor's kiss - that San Diego statue

In San Diego last month I saw J. Seward Johnson's famous 'Unconditional Surrender': sailor kisses nurse. It's supposed to be celebratory of V-J Day (Aug. 14, 1945) and is a 3-D replica of the iconic photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, taken New York's Times Square that day.

The image has interested me for years, because it's a representation of sailor's sexuality (my subject), and because On Our Backs, the lesbian erotic magazine, staged such an interestingly sexualised re-enactment of it on the cover (Oct 2001).


So I saw the real thing, out there in the sunshine by the sea. And it's huge - 25 foot high - and therefore bigger than one of the plastic bears some pubs have in the kiddies' play gardens. And it's just as Disneyfied. And it's significantly at Mole Park on the waterfront (where those oh-so-embarassing guys sleeping rough get tidied away by the police each morning before the cruise ship passengers walk by), just opposite the Pacific Fleet's base, and right by the maritime museum.

But... isn't it just another loud public insistence that heterosexuality is desirable? (No gay embrace would be similarly sanctioned). Isn't it just another formal affirmation that it's OK for men - especially 'our Boys' to master any woman, in the name of passion and victory?

Touring that bay, our skipper announced as we passed the statue by US Midway that actually 'the lady' (Edith Shain) grabbed by the unknown sailor that day was said to have been displeased by the assault. Ho ho. Tee hee. Tut tut. Oi vey!

But try turning that around. How would a male professional - say a doctor, say a skipper - feel about some boozed-up stranger coming up and invading their mouth without warning? Affronted, I think. It certainly wouldn't be celebrated at public expense.

And actually the statue is designed so that it's a formal invitation to look up a woman's skirt. Among the world's thousands of statues of famous men looking noble, upright and very inviolable, have you ever seen one that offer passers-by the chance to peer inside men's trousers?

If men are going to be respected, then why not women too? (and I would like it to be possible to stop repeating this simple point soon. A century-long protest is quite enough.)

Gay submariners

Up in Scotland last week I heard many story about (but none from, unfortunately) male submariners who formed sexual relationships in submarines. The classic phrase, apparently, is '140 men went down and 70 couples came back up.'

That was said with some homophobia - as in 'I wouldn't work on submarines because this happens.' But the point is that if men are submerged for three months at a time, then of course they are going to get together. And of course the captain is going to turn a blind eye. Indeed, some captains themselves had affairs.

Homosexuality at sea has had a hidden history. But even more hidden is the history of gay US submariners, particularly those working at Holy Loch on nuclear subs. From 1961 and 1992 Holy Loch was the home base of US Submarine Squadron 14, and used for refit and crew turnover. It would so useful if someone could retriev this 'other' history.

Incidentally, for all that subs were so slow to allow women crew, there was at least one in the early days: NASA astronout Dr Laurel Blair Salton Clark (1961-2003) worked at Holy Loch around 1989-92, dived with Navy divers and SEALs, and made many medical evacuations from US submarines. She was a Naval Submarine Medical Officer and Diving Medical Officer. See her wikipedia entry.

Sent ashore for keeping sexual score book

Sent ashore for keeping sexual score book.

It seems like the kind of behaviour that should have gone out with the dinosaurs. Certainly such offensive laddishness was supposed to have vanished in the 1970s but.... On July 5 it was confirmed that four male sailors from Royal Australian Navy Ship HMAS Success were sent back home to Oz from Singapore in May.

They had been having a competition to sleep with the most women on board. The men kept an account book recording the number of female crew they had had sex with. "The ledger" had dollar amounts written next to each woman's name Officers and lesbian women won a man an extra point.

The book was found after women aboard complained. Since then there's been much
lurid joking on the internet - and some creditable official assertions of women's rights. Women's Forum Australia spokesperson Melinda Tankard-Reist points out:"When you consider that women constitute 40 per cent of the Navy, they have a right to feel safe in their place of work and not to be treated as potential notches on a sailor's belt. Obviously things have gone backwards, I thought the defence forces had moved on from this sort of pack-animal behaviour.... I don't believe these men should be able to serve at sea anymore because they're not reliable, they can't be trusted, they don't respect women and these are not the kind of men that we need defending us."

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard (above, right) told Network Ten"We don't want to see anything that precludes women from having a good career in our armed forces if that is what they choose to do with their lives....we need our defence hierarchy to get on with the job of investigating these claims and taking appropriate action."

Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Russ Crane said the matter is being referred to the independent Australian Defence Force Investigative Service (ADFIS), which will decide on disciplinary or administrative action.

HMAS Success is not a warship but a replenishment oiler (a naval auxiliary ship with fuel tanks and dry cargo holds, which can replenish other ships while underway in the high seas)