Calico Rudasil is a feature columnist for Sssh.com, the award-winning porn site for women & couples. With over 18 years’ experience under her belt, writing about and for the adult entertainment industry, Calico qualifies as something of a Web Porn Dinosaur; similar to a tyrannosaurus, only with far more attractive arms and a less pronounced overbite.
By the time I’d reached age ten, I’d already worked something out about military culture, based on my interactions with the men in my family who had served in the armed forces: The military is not a good environment for easily offended or hypersensitive people to work within.
Part of this realization came after listening to my cousin, who had served in the Army during peacetime, trade comic barbs with his father, a Korea-era veteran of the Marine Corps. I won’t repeat the jokes here (mostly because I don’t remember anything about them except that they weren’t particularly funny), but suffice to say they involved a lot of questioning each other’s masculinity, courage, intelligence and personal hygiene.
There was one thing on which they completely agreed, though: It’s those sailors in the Navy who are the real bunch of pussies out of all the military branches.
Granted, their reasoning was rooted in unfair generalizations, untrue assertions and uninformed opinions, but trust me when I say they’re not alone among land-based grunts in carrying a bit of machismo-fueled disdain for their maritime brethren.
I also think it’s safe to say among men like my cousin and his dad, the anti-porn policy recently embraced by the Royal Navy (and to an even greater extent, the rationale behind the new policy) will not improve their assessment – or blunt the venom in their jokes about sailors.
These People May Need To Kill, So It’s Important We Not Offend Them
In explaining the Royal Navy’s (RN) new policy, one source told the British media it was “part of the service coming into the 21st Century, being more inclusive and not offending women.”
Well, it’s a damn good thing there’s nothing offensive about killing people, or else I’d be inclined to ask for a closer look at the things women in the RN hear and see in the process of being trained to do so!
Obviously, it’s one thing to dehumanize the enemy to the point where your fighting men and women are willing to shoot them betwixt the eyes without hesitation, but quite another to casually sexualize the female body.
Clearly, the latter is deeply, terribly wrong, while the former is healthy, necessary and trés modern in its inherit, fundamental feminism.
Naturally, some of the men in the RN fail to see how important it is to keep porn out of the military workplace, where it might sap morale by reminding everybody how much they enjoy the sex they aren’t currently having with anyone.
“A lot of the lads are moaning about this because porn has been rife across the fleet for generations, and this is the result of a few people complaining,” the source said. “They stopped the rum tot and reduced our alcohol allowance and have now banned porn. People are wondering what is next, as well as how it will be enforced, especially if stuff is stored on smartphones.”
How thick are these ‘lads’ to which this Royal Navy source refers? Of course the RN banned rum! They can’t very well run the risk of all their sailors gradually turning into pirates, donning eyepatches and boisterously singing sea shanties all night when they’re supposed to be enforcing an embargo, or making sure Middle Eastern refugees don’t somehow manage to escape by watercraft the hell our warplanes are thoughtfully, politely and considerately helping turn their homelands into.
Never Let It Be Said The RN’s Goals Aren’t Clear
In the old days, people had an irrational tendency to rate militaries on their battlefield efficacy, their degree of discipline, their ability to maneuver adroitly in combat and other similar considerations. These days, we’ve abandoned such irrelevancies in favor of a system which rewards far more appropriate and relevant goals. Heck, apparently nowadays we even give out civilian awards in recognition of the military achieving its most important objectives.
“The Royal Navy makes sure that the work environment, whether ashore or at sea, is inclusive and appropriate,” said an RN spokesman, adding “we’re proud to be recognized as a top-100 employer in Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index 2017.”
Look, I’m not about to argue that making the Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index isn’t a fine thing for an employer to be proud of, but I’m not sure I see a particularly strong connection between banning porn and being gay-and-women-friendly.
After all, I don’t think I’m out on much of a limb when I suggest a lot of gay men watch gay porn (a fair number of straight guys watch gay porn, too, for that matter), nor do I think many of these porn-watching gay men would blanche at the sight of a naked female in the possession of a straight colleague. The image might not do much for them on the arousal front, but I’m also reasonably certain the failure to arouse gay sailors isn’t part of why porn has been banned by the RN.
Captain, Can I Still Imagine Naked People, Or Is That Banned Too?
All kidding aside, the only real problem I have with the RN banning porn from its ships and bases is the scope of the policy’s definition of “porn,” which implicates everything from hardcore videos to excessively sexy pictures of one’s own spouse.
“The appropriate test is the ‘family beach’ analogy (i.e. not topless/bottomless women or bottomless men),” the policy states. “The test also applies to the public display of spouses regardless of the fact that the picture may be of an individual’s spouse or partner or that the subject is happy for the picture to be displayed.”
In other words, the RN doesn’t care if your wife sent you the topless picture with the express idea of you taping it to the inside of your locker to look at for inspiration; this too is banned under the RN policy.
Don’t worry, UK sailors: As of when this post was written, it’s still OK to think about nudity…. At least until we’ve completed safety testing all those soon to be standard issue Psycho-Chastity Belts currently in development, that is.
Calico Rudasil is a Sssh.com (@ssshforwomen) columnist and Sssh will be on Peeperz for fun times again in the near future, meanwhile why not check us out:
