“Gay chicken”: the mobilisation of fear and intimacy in infantry training in Aotearoa New Zealand
Militaries are often seen as spaces where heterosexual men can express intimacy without fear of being perceived as ‘gay’ or ‘feminine.’
Dr Nina Harding - Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa, Massey University
It has often been argued that militaries are spaces in which heterosexual men living in homophobic societies can practice intimacy without fear of being seen as ‘gay’ or ‘feminine.’ During participant-observation with New Zealand infantry soldiers, I found that these men perform intimacy by regularly playacting as if they are in romantic and/or sexual relationships with one another. However, this was not a space without fear. Military training involves processes of emotional re-socialisation. In preparation for potential conflict situations, new soldiers learn to act despite feeling emotions previously experienced as hindering action. The soldiers’ performance of intimacy was a game of chicken, in which they evoked fear of being seen as gay in order to practice acting through fear more generally. In this way intimacy between men is appropriated for the ends of both heterosexual men and the state. Playing gay chicken provided heterosexual men some reprieve from gender binaries in which even those in privileged positions may be cut off from a full range of emotional experiences. However, it simultaneously re-inscribed intimacy between men as something to fear.
Nina Harding is a lecturer in social anthropology at Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa, Massey University. Her work, based on several research projects with Ngāti Tūmatauenga/The New Zealand Army, focuses on how the identity projects of individual soldiers intersect with the security projects of the nation state.
This seminar will be held ‘in person’.