The sexual undercurrent at Abu Ghraib and in these initiation rituals — where does that come from?
The military is a kind of brotherhood. I would call aspects of these initiation rituals “cultic.” Within that brotherhood, there’s male love. It’s not surprising that an erotic element is involved. But in this enactment of eroticism, there is also punishment. I did quite a bit of work in Australia at the defense force academy. There, pranks went like this: A freshman would be charged with something bogus. It might be something as simple as, “The person you went out with this weekend was a dog. She didn’t meet standards of acceptable beauty.” There would be a fake trial. The end of the trial was always conviction. All of this existed for ritual punishment and it took various homoerotic forms. For example, they sprayed whip cream on a freshman’s genitals and another freshman would have to lick the cream off him. In Colorado Springs, at the Air Force Academy — and this did reach the light of day and it was discontinued — one guy would tightly hold an apple in his rear end and another gu
