Recently, I was invited to contribute my research about how Naval Officers who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender talk about their leadership performance through “sea-stories.” The book, which centers on Queer Linguistics as an approach, really forced me to re-examine my analysis through a Queer Theory and Queer Linguistics lens.
The chapter will draw on data from my master’s thesis which takes a social constructionist stance towards how identity is constructed. For my thesis, I interviewed 14 Naval Officers. Six identified as cis gender men, five identified as cis gender women, one identified as a trans man, and one identified as a transwoman. Of the seven total men, three identified as straight, two as bi, and two as gay. Of the five total woman, two identified as straight and three identified as lesbians.
In each of their interviews, each participant had a “sea-story” to tell. A sea-story is a common term in the Navy used to describe some interesting story that occurred while at sea. These sea-stories in particular were elicited, meaning I asked for a specific story. And in each story, the participants talk about standing watch as Officer of the Deck (OOD). While standing OOD, the Naval Officer is pretty much in charge of all operations occurring on the ship. They’re also in charge of navigating where the ship goes. In these sea-stories, the participants shared a story where they talked about a challenging experience while standing OOD. One participant talked about transiting the Straits of Malacca and experiencing a near collision, another participant described conflict between her and another officer while launching and landing helicopters on the flight deck, and one officer described a man-overboard. So what I was interested in examining here is how each participant talked themselves into “being” a leader in these stories.
While writing my master’s thesis I thought it was a first step towards examining how people who identify as queer do leadership. To my knowledge, it is and was the first of its kind.
As so as I mentioned above, I am excited to re-examine my data from a Queer Linguistics perspective and question “what is masculinity” in the context of the military. And I think more exciting – “what is heterosexuality” in the military? What’s fascinating to me about Queer Theory and Queer Linguistics is that even though I’ve always thought that individuals can express sexuality in different ways, I never actually thought about heterosexuality in this way.
So from this perspective, even individuals who identify as heterosexual (and cis gender) are performing a specific type of heterosexuality and masculinity. So quite literally, in the words or Ru Paul, we’re all born naked and the rest is drag.
