[ExI] This would almost qualify as hilarious ... if only it weren't true

[Olga Bourlin]

From: "Damien Broderick" <thespike at satx.rr.com>
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 11:34 PM


> At 11:09 PM 6/11/2007 -0700, Olga wrote:
>
>>besides - with the bigotry gays have had to endure in the military -
>>wasn't this idea one of, oh, I don't know ... unmitigated hypocrisy?
>
> No, surely it was one of unmitigated *consistency*. ... > If homosexual 
> contact is socially constructed as the most loathsome and ignoble 
> experience a manly man can suffer, it follows that forcibly driving the 
> foe into such behavior will yield the most
 effective kinds of confusion, self-hatred, mutual detestation and 
demoralizing fear. Actually, given the persisting bigotry against homosexual 
behavior, that expectation seems, alas, all too likely to be correct in the 
majority of servicemen.

Okay, yes, you're right. I understand your viewpoint.  The tactics of 
humiliation:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302380_pf.html

Gay or straight sexuality aside, to me the "face of war" is often either 
dead children, or blind and disfigured children like Hamoody Hussein:

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=iraqboy20m&date=20070520&query=boy+iraq+blind+surgery

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=iraqboy25m&date=20070525&query=boy+iraq+blind+surgery

You know, "collateral damage."

> But as J. Andrew hinted, there's reason to think that the
> pharmacology of [something along these lines of rabid, indiscriminate
> sexual arousal] is far from impossible. People don't take Ecstasy for
> fun, you know. No, wait, let me rephrase that.

So you're saying that some "collateral benefits" may come of this.  As is 
often the case during war, technology picks up its step in its marches 
onward ...

Olga