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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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I have spent the last couple of days on training courses. The first one gave me reasons to think. It was an Elementary First Aid course: STCW95 Elementary First Aid - basic, immediate, and emergency response to the most common emergencies on board, including CPR. I need it to get a commercial skipper's endorsement so I can take paying passengers on boat charter trips. The course is a highly commercial course attended by many people who go on to get jobs as paid deckhands on superyachts. The attendees were pretty much ex military looking for decent roles in civvy street. There were 8 blokes of which I was the oldest by a good 10 years, and a girl, decent looking (important) and mid twenties, perhaps younger. The instructor was an old grizzled seadog.
That sets the scene, and there was an obvious dynamic of all the blokes bar one chasing the girl, who was well able to take care of herself. The old seadog instructor was my concern. He had stereotypes through and through. Oddly, we have to be very careful in First Aid about touching people, even if we're trying to help them with life threatening injuries. To illustrate this he asked the girl to lie on the floor. "It's easier to show you this on a lady than a gentleman!"
It is probably reasonable not to fondle a girl's breasts or anyone's pudenda, and it is sensible to tell the course about this. Indeed the way I have just done so is the way to do it. But this is how he described it (broadly). "Gentleman, don't touch the ladies' breasts, bad luck there. And also not in this are (indicating crotch), so there's no reason to rip her clothes of. And girls, no need to rip the boys' clothes off either!"
I suppose it was an attempt at a joke, but it got me thinking about sexual stereotypes. Academically she had a good figure, at least in jeans (I saw it in swimwear today and it needed toning, but mine needs more toning), but that doesn't make her a sex object, nor an excuse for borderline smut. Equally I don't imagine I was the only gay person on the course, and I felt that the stereotyping was socially excluding me (and him, or her).
A few years ago I;d have chatted to the principal of the training establishment about it. Today I choose not to be angry and simply see it as the old seadog's problem. He will not change. But he won't be teaching these course much longer either.
My thinking on all of this is half formed. I was wondering what your thoughts on it are.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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