Sailor Men 

In 1997 lurid Navy initiations caught on video and broadcast on national television riveted public attention. Newspaper editorials criticized them as abusive. “Kissing the Royal Belly” or “Royal Baby,” which is associated with crossing the equator, drew special notice. The ritual calls for initiates to kneel before a senior member of the crew, who wears a mock diaper. This “Baby” usually has a huge stomach covered with greasy materials ranging from cooking oil to mustard, shaving cream, eggs, and oysters. Junior sailors must lick the Baby’s navel area, while the Baby grabs and shakes their head to better smear the goo onto their faces.

Many viewers were shocked at what appeared to be an imitation of homosexual fellatio, while Navy veterans winked knowingly at a custom passed down through many generations of ships at sea. In the wake of the Tailhook Association scandal in 1991, after which Navy officers were implicated for engaging in misogynist sexual play or abuse at a convention, the Navy was once again under public scrutiny for its sexual behavior. With public pressure mounting, U.S. Secretary of the Navy John Dalton felt compelled to issue Instruction 1610.2 on October 1, 1997. In his carefully worded statement, he balanced on the one hand the view of those who defended the “playful” and “time-honored” practices as providing beneficial social functions, and on the other, public concern that such events fostered misogyny, homophobia, violence, and abuse:

“. . . Although in the past some hazing has occurred in conjunction with ceremonies, initiations or rites of passage, these activities, if properly supervised, can be effective leadership tools to instill esprit de corps, unit cohesion and respect for an accomplishment of another Sailor or Marine. . . .  Hazing behavior that is degrading, embarrassing or injurious is unprofessional and illegal.”

Dalton’s message was that the tradition as ceremony was useful; ritual as hazing was not. He offered a list of illegal activities constituting hazing: “playing abusive or ridiculous tricks; threatening or offering violence or bodily harm to another; . . . requiring excessive physical exercise beyond what is required to meet standards; . . . or forcing or requiring the consumption of food, alcohol, drugs, or any other substance.” Further, he insisted that hazing need not involve physical contact, but could also be “verbal or psychological in nature.” Although not specifically mentioning Kissing the Royal Belly, his instruction had the result of eliminating the ritual from most equator crossing traditions, or at least tempering the activities.

The instruction begged the question of how homoeroticism functioned within the ceremony if it indeed ran counter, according to Dalton, to core Naval values. Many seamen felt that he left out, and indeed undermined, the ceremony’s prime purpose of building grit and even manliness, especially since the Navy prided itself on being the toughest of the military branches. As one sailor wrote in the Navy Times to complain about the new regulations, the military was turning its slogan of “A few good men” to mean “A few sissy cream puffs.” Whereas this suggests a primary function of the ritual is to instill values of military toughness, some critics have interpreted the ceremony as celebrating homophobia and misogyny.

Which is it? Can it be both? At the heart of the question is the conflicted image of the American sailor. He is macho, foul mouthed, and profane, while also being variously viewed in humor and visual culture as the most feminized military man because of his “womanly” chores of sewing and washing on an isolated, male dominated ship. Navy sailors have also been suspected of homosexual activity because of the close bonds developed on remote ships at sea. So the question naturally arises whether Kissing the Royal Belly indicates sailor attraction to, or ridicule of, homosexual activity.

In the YouTube generation of home video and photography, other examples of homoerotic customs well known in Navy circles have come to public light, showing that Kissing the Royal Belly was hardly an isolated event. As the equator crossing ceremony began, for instance, it was common for initiates to pile upon each other and then be ordered to simulate sodomy. Featured in “Bitch Beauty Contests,” dressing in drag was expected in the ceremony, often overseen by Neptune’s Court, including a Queen who gives mocking hugs and kisses to the King. Initiates were also told to simulate an “elephant walk” in which a line of men moved while holding the genitals of the person in front of them or having a finger in his anus. To “disinfect” or “sanitize” selected individuals, senior sailors sometimes forced an initiate to strip and put tubes and other objects in the initiate’s rear end.

Appearances before Neptune’s Court could also take on homoerotic symbolism. In mock trials initiates were forced to come forward one by one, prostrated in front of the Court, as their offenses were read by a Royal Scribe or Clerk. Neptune would order the Royal Barber to give the wog a haircut and shave, and to castrate him, feigningly of course. The Barber cut the wog’s hair unevenly with huge scissors and forced lather into the sailor’s mouth while brandishing a large wooden razor. While prostrated, the initiate’s buttocks were usually beaten with fire hoses or paddles.

The pollywog judged by Neptune was not eliminated but was defined as an ever-present and ever-fought scourge, especially by the newly created shellbacks, or sailors who had previously crossed the equator. By the shellback inflicting violence on others with whom he worked in a kind of exorcism, he projected and repressed, in a ritual re-enactment, his own perceived weaknesses (a part, therefore, of his “self”).

New Symbols Far, Far Away

It might be argued that in having a ceremony for crossing the equator, the line crossed is from reality to fantasy. In this view, the tropical heat of the equator encourages norms to be reversed and sexuality to be enacted as the temptation to strip down is realized. The lines of socially appropriate behavior are intentionally disrupted as sailors become pirates. Homosexual poses are considered symbolic of extreme submission for men. Sailors report in oral testimonies that the ritual is rough as a reminder of the severity of Naval life and the need for dominative discipline to subordinates by a master.

Etymology reveals the association of corporal punishment to Naval discipline, with several dictionaries tracing “hazing” to nautical usage of ritual punishment, harassment, or beating applied by officers to sailors. Juvenilizing sailors as “boys” and making them the objects of corporal punishment, ridicule, and teasing by officers and workmates, are, according to maritime ethnologist Knut Weibust, the most “frequently used methods of social control” on ships. While punishment, or negative reinforcement, is dished out by associates, rewards—simulating a form of patriarchal approval—of feasts, liquor, and food are provided by the captain, frequently referred to in folk speech as the Old Man.

Former sailors who have experienced crossing the line recall pain and humiliation in accounts I have collected. They temper resentment, though, by stating that it is, after all, an old tradition that marks them as sailors in a special community or family, implying this is a special, superior, even extra-human status that warrants a ritual transformation analogous to coming of age and membership in a select circle.

The narrative structure of “crossing the line” emphasizes a severing of ties to the familiar idea of home symbolized by the land and heterosexual family. Regeneration in this male-dominated watery isolation is effected through violence, especially in European-American societies where common public rites of passage for becoming a man are lacking, and coming-of-age celebrations such as weddings typically are said to be for the woman. Psychological studies of sailors show that seafaring men who place a high value on obedience and discipline come from families with strong disciplinarian mother figures, and tend to behave in aggressive or hypermasculine ways. Conflicts are created—symbolized in the ceremony—between an occupation that permits a man to engage in certain work considered feminine (such as cleaning one’s quarters, washing, cooking, and sewing) and a setting that emphasizes male discipline and order on the one hand, and adventure, danger, and daring on the other.

Here, the world appears upside down. The equator line is significant as a setting because of its division of the North Seas connected to home and reality, and the South Seas associated with being far away—in an exotic, even erotic, location supposedly breaking from repressive mores of dress, sexuality, and conduct. In crossing the line, the drama acts to displace the culture from which participants originally considered nurturing. The ceremony represents a social corrective, by modifying the social structure, and becomes extended and complicated, signifying the idea of departure without return.

To effect manliness at sea—especially given the view that maternally dominated, landed civilization is feminized and soft, and the military’s insecurity about homosexuality in an all-male environment—female figures, or men in feminized positions, are sexually dominated and ridiculed. Because of the sailors’ often subconscious and internalized insecurity about their feminine roles on board, the female (and the sodomized male) characters they create are externalized, ejected from the self; they are performed in Wog Queen contests, dog auctions, and homosexual enactments.

Like other male forms of play and ritual, crossing the line emphasizes penetration and the ability to withstand pain (especially from ganging behavior) by getting away from the “pack.” The social and intellectual pack—often perceived to be connected to home, land, mother, and family—is seen to hold the coming-of-age boy back; culturally constructed manly processes of “crossing the finish line,” “scoring a touchdown,” “running the gauntlet,” and “going over to the other side” symbolically provide opportunities for a new start, a rebirth, released from the umbilical cord of maternal constraint.

Finally New Traditions

Are Naval equator crossing traditions anachronistic? Naval equator ceremonies persisted even as many comparable initiatory traditions with roots in medieval initiations and festivals for guilds, merchants, and villages faded, because modern Naval identity built on a premodern hierarchy of master-subordinate relationships in all-male groups. Hazing behavior was believed to build manliness and at the same time obedience necessary for the job. Isolation at sea kept many crude activities hidden from public view. As home societies allegedly became increasingly individualistic, feminized, pacifist, and egalitarian into the late twentieth century, Naval leaders tolerated and even encouraged the homoerotic aspects of the ceremony as a way to build a separate world based on collectivism, discipline, and aggressiveness.

Although a history of protesting the ceremony as sacrilegious, sexually profane, or abusive can be traced back to the seventeenth century, public outcry has been notably vocal since the 1990s, particularly in the United States. Four factors, two involving social movements, one about technological change, and one a historical incident, undoubtedly triggered special critical attention to Naval traditions.

The related social movements that occurred in both Europe and the United States were the entrance of women into formerly all-male domains of combat units and military academies. In the landmark Supreme Court case of United States v. Virginia (1996), the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) argued against the admission of women on the grounds that it would destroy the hazing “rituals and traditions” designed specifically for an all-male institution. VMI lawyers insisted that traditions were instrumental in building strength of character in isolation; the rituals depended on the creation of a separate world (implying that the former world of cadets was feminized), and since they were developed for a man’s world of combat and leadership, it was inconceivable to VMI leaders that traditions could be adjusted to a co-educational environment. VMI lost, and the case was seen as a milestone for equal rights for women in society generally. Despite the skepticism of VMI leaders, the system of intense hazing of first-year “knobs” was maintained; women in fact became initiated as men, “bonded in a brotherhood of survival with roots that ran deep,” according to a female spokesperson. At least some of those traditions that would be threatened by women, according to cadets, were rituals that played with homosexuality. In an all-male group, they functioned to build trust and enact the conflicts in a military identity; with women present they could appear embarrassing because they associated the military man with the “sissy” label.

The technological change is the wider availability of photographic equipment that activists used to document instances of brutality in what was conceived as a post-modern “war on hazing.” Activists strategized that if the public could view objectionable practices in various secretive organizations such as fraternities and Naval ships, wider, privately practiced social habits of misogyny, homophobia, domestic abuse, and prejudice could be curbed. Calls were made not only to stop the hazing, but also to restructure the military persona with the egalitarian ethic of balancing males and females. The debate over “reform” became heated because of the prevalent military belief that in response to society’s increased individualism and pacifism (which many construed as feminine or “sissy”), military rituals needed to be reformed to be even harsher (which many viewed as necessarily more masculine) to effect replacement of politically correct civilian values. Meanwhile, critics thought the military needed to be more like the home society (with implications of feminist and egalitarian values) to represent a national commitment to protection of human rights.

The historical incident that singled out the Navy for derision as a sexist, homophobic culture was the sensational scandal resulting from the convention of the Tailhook Association (a private organization composed of active duty, Reserve and retired Navy and Marine Corps aviators, defense contractors, and others associated with Naval aviation) in Las Vegas in 1991. The news revealed a number of sexually charged rituals that appeared to have sources in Naval homoerotic hazing. In an adaptation of a gauntlet, which was often part of the equator crossing initiation, when women approached a group of men, men would line up on either side of the hallway and start grabbing their breasts, buttocks, and crotch area as they tried to make their way down the hallway. Another, related to the crawling phase of the line crossing narrative, was called “butt biting,” in which men bit the buttocks of another. After a female lieutenant complained, one hundred forty officers were cited for disciplinary action, including twenty-three charged with indecent assault.

Although defenders noted that Tailhook was an event with its own legacy unrelated to dignified Naval traditions, others singled out the Navy among the branches for creating a hypermasculine culture dependent on the degradation of women and ridicule of homosexuals. While some witnesses submitted that the ceremony was for building men rather than attacking women, critics pointed out that “there is an undeniable malice, and much of the sexual content is abusive and derogatory to the person in the ‘female’ role” (Carrie Little Hersh, “Crossing the Line: Sex, Power, Justice, and the U.S. Navy at the Equator”).

In a changing Navy with more female roles, can male homoeroticism continue in Navy rituals? One female ex-sailor described her experience in 1999 and 2000 on the formerly all-male USS Boxer as life changing. The ship was refitted with separate berthing areas and trainings on sexual harassment policy became required. But the atmosphere was still male dominated. Her ship had one hundred fifty women out of a thousand sailors, and she talked about feeling “outnumbered” and pressure to be “one of the guys.” The label of “whiny bitch” was especially to be avoided or else, “your life is going to be hell,” she said. Women as work mates were respected, she insisted, but in what she called the “older ratings” (in other words, traditional sailors’ jobs). She observed that negative attitudes toward women as “military” personae prevailed.

She looked forward to the line crossing ceremony on board but she knew in advance that changes had occurred to accommodate women. On her ship, crawling on non-skid surfaces was eliminated as were the eating of cherries out of the Royal Belly and cross-dressing in the Wog Contest. She recalled, however, the warnings of mates who told her, “We don’t give a rat’s ass if the Navy is getting soft, we’re still going to kick your ass, and you’re going to like it.” It was common knowledge that some hazing had gone underground, conducted outside the view of officers. “They keep secrets,” she said, remembering “one time a sailor had been taken to the engine room by some workmates and ritually worked him over in sexually charged antics because he was lazy and wimpy.”

How did she feel then, having gone through this traditionally male and apparently homophobic/misogynist rite? “I’m definitely more aggressive, not afraid to stand up for my convictions and I’m not easily offended by things,” she said. She emphasized that through the ritual she gained a Naval identity and she could not leave that identity behind in civilian life. She made a symbolic equivalence of Navy/ceremony with tough/male. She felt transformed because of the bond created through the ceremony to “your own little world.”

For many veterans recalling ceremonies before Instruction 1610.2, however, the purpose of the ceremony had been subverted. And most significantly, there was more of an atmosphere of paranoia about public disapproval. The secret world of the military, represented by membership in an exclusive “order of the deep” had been punctured; broadcast on the media, it began to look “ridiculous” rather than mythological or “dignified.”

Sailors in interviews denied the homoerotic or homophobic content of the ceremony and felt embarrassed by the accusations of lewd homosexual behavior on board ships. Once sheltered, and self-consciously apart in the military world, ship crews were now more aware of ethical concerns back home about Naval behavior. One veteran expressed a common view contrasting the master-subordinate relationship of yore with the new “open” Navy: “Now it’s just a party rather than a ritual. Maybe it still has some meaning on smaller ships but when the ship is a big city where you don’t know who you’re working with, then it loses something. Besides, in the old days, teamwork and brotherhood was more important. Now it’s about individualism and doing your job. The fact that people volunteer to be in it is strange; before you were told that if this is your life, you had to be committed, immersed. It wasn’t a choice. It was as an ordeal you had to endure if you were going to change, if you were going to be a sailor. The Navy is supposed to be about obligation, duty, obedience. The hazing, kissing the baby, is gone, and that’s the whole point of the thing.”

As images of Navy rituals become ingrained in our visual culture, groups in and out of the Navy increasingly argue whether the time honored traditions are about male bonding, homoeroticism, or homophobism. An objective view reveals a different perspective: It's all of those things.

Simon J. Bronner is Distinguished University Professor of American Studies and Folklore at the Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg. He is the author or editor of more than twenty-five books on American cultural history, gender studies, and folklore, including most recently Crossing the Line: Violence, Play, and Drama in Naval Equator Traditions (2006), Manly Traditions: The Folk Roots of American Masculinities (2005), and Encyclopedia of American Folklife (2006). He serves as editor of the Material Worlds book series for the University Press of Kentucky.