Lois Shawver, "Nakedness and the Etiquette of Disregard," And the Flag Was Still There: Straight People, Gay People and Sexuality in the U.S. Military. Ch. 3 (Harrington Park Press, 1995) 27-45.

Legend has it that Lady Godiva, a beautiful English countess in the eleventh century, was distraught because her husband had levied heavy taxes on the common folk of Coventry. And so she pleaded with him to lower taxes until he finally agreed, but only if she would ride through the town naked. The lady consented, but when her ride was announced to the townfolk they were also told they would be required to stay inside behind shut doors and windows. And everyone did: Everyone, that is, but the errant subject, Peeping Tom, who peered through the crack of the window just as Lady Godiva was supposed to approach. He got what he deserved, though, because at the instant she was to come into view, Peeping Tom was struck blind, and so no one saw Lady Godiva naked.

Perhaps, most people are not physically blinded when someone nude comes into view, but something like that often happens. There is a desire to avert one's eyes, to look the other way, or if one is required to look, to look minimally and to not really see, to be casual about it, to disregard the shock of nudity. For nudity, for most people, in most contexts, is psychologically blinding.

And it is not just nudity that is blinding. We are blinded by anything that is potentially embarrassing. It is because we have all been trained in the etiquette of disregard, which requires us not to stare when the person we would stare at might be embarrassed. We are hesitant to look or comment even when the amount of physical exposure is trivial., even when it is more symbolic than real; once it becomes registered in our minds as something one should disregard we have a hard time treating it any other way.

For example, sometime in 1992, a talk show host stood giving his comic monologue that had started his famous show for the previous 30 years. Only this time there was something different. This time, it was plainly visible that Johnny had forgotten to zip up his pants. It was not that people could see anything through the zipper. But it was easy to see his pants were unzipped. Three or four minutes later the cameramen seemed to recognize the problem and the camera zoomed on Johnny's face.

Later, after a commercial, sitting behind his table, he laughed, red-faced, and joked about it. Why didn't someone tell him? "Hey, Johnny, your pants are unzipped!" It was just a comedy show. And Johnny would not have been above dropping his pants to get a laugh in the right kind of routine. Why didn't people call out and embarrass him? Make a joke of it?

People did not comment on it because having unzipped pants is symbolic of an embarrassing exposure. Dropping one's pants is comical, but there was no doubt this was an unintended event. People did not tell Johnny because they wanted to treat him with an etiquette of disregard, with a preprogrammed social politeness that requires everyone to act as though nothing of interest is happening,

The etiquette of disregard protects us in all sorts of situations. We use it whenever we feel it would be impolite to stare, to protect people with a deformity, or a disability, from curious looks. It would likely protect a naked lady running from a burning building, but certainly a woman having a baby in a cab, and perhaps even a nursing mother in the back of the bus. This etiquette protects people routinely from curious stares in public rest rooms, locker rooms, department store dressing rooms, saunas, and a variety of other private situations that are shared by people of the same or opposite gender.

It also protects heterosexuals from leering stares from the typical gay. Just as there is an unwritten rule that men do not address a woman with their eyes glued to her breasts, so the rule is that in bathrooms and showers everyone, straight and gay alike, should not stare.

And if they should not stare, they certainly should not leer with erotic interest. And erotic interest can fade in the mood of this etiquette. It is hard to carry off the pretense of disregard while indulging in private erotic excitement.

One gay soldier describes it this way: "Taking a shower with all the other guys [in boot camp] was just like in high school and I do not remember ever being attracted to anyone in the showers or being aware of anyone looking at me." And another gay soldier says, "I don't remember ever getting sexually aroused when in a shower or latrine situation unless I wanted to. In other words, just taking a shower or using the bathroom in and of itself was never sexually stimulating."

Nevertheless, many in the military anticipate such staring and leering from homosexuals. For example, a straight Lieutenant Colonel argues against gays in the military on the grounds that they would ogle heterosexuals, and he says:

. . . the Army must . . . consider the privacy rights of the heterosexual soldier forced to share a room and latrine with an acknowledged homosexual. The thought of someone becoming sexually aroused watching you dress or shower is disconcerting. Sexual advances and the fear of such advances under these circumstances will damage morale.¹

Is this a realistic concern? After all, even if homosexuals do not stare at straights in public rest rooms, they do sometimes make homosexual contacts with other gays in these settings. The etiquette of disregard is powerful, but homosexuals do not always conform to this etiquette with each other. Why would they conform to it with heterosexuals?

The straight soldier who has never really known a homosexual, other than, perhaps, someone rumored to be gay, can only imagine what showering with a gay would be like on the basis of the rumors and jokes told about faggots daily, jokes that portray gays as eager to violate him sexually. And if gays are like that, such a soldier might reason, the military showers and latrines would provide all the setting that was needed, on one lonely afternoon when nobody else was around, for forced copulation to happen. And why wouldn't gays be like that? After all, this soldier thinks to himself, he would, himself, find it exciting to shower with women. His own sexual drive would make him completely dangerous to women. So it would seem natural, to such a soldier, that gays would crudely and eagerly want to violate him. To accept gays in the military, in that way of thinking, is to accept being violated by gays. Reasoning this way, the gay becomes the straight soldier's bogeyman.

But are these realistic concerns? Or would we, as the head of a gay veterans group recently said, ". . . not hear the explosion of Mardi Gras celebration but a sigh of relief from thousands of men and women."²

The answer to that question depends on whether gays would conform to the etiquette of disregard. We know that some gay people do cruise public rest rooms and locker rooms and make contacts with other gays. Can they, or would they, try to make contact with straights and draw them into that way of life? Would they even impose their behavior on those who would prefer not to see it? Or would they continue, as they seem to be doing, to hide that behavior from heterosexuals with the etiquette of disregard?

First, we need to ask if people who can find each other sexually attractive sometimes look at each other's nakedness with disregard. Can men and women disregard each other's nakedness, for example? We are inclined to think that there are no settings in which men can stare at undressed women, but this is not so. And we need to look, too, at the disregard that is presently practiced by everyone in single sex privacy settings, like public rest rooms.

Part of the answer, too, will come from asking when and why people violate this etiquette, as background for deciding if homosexuals are like the rest of us.

Our conclusion will be more informed than that of the soldier who has never known a gay and has only heard about gays from his commander who calls them faggots. Of course, our study of these issues will not leave us so informed that we will know, in every case, how a particular gay person will be. Our purposes, however, do not require that. If we have reason to think gays will be largely conforming to the etiquette of disregard, then we have no more reason to exclude them than we have to avoid walking across the street just because some psychotic motorist might decide to run us down. We can never create policy to protect us all from everything, with certainty.

What we want from our analysis is a more informed understanding of how things are likely to be. And that kind of analysis needs to begin, as always, with a careful review of the most relevant facts we can find.

When and where do Americans practice the etiquette of disregard? For the most part, people in our society dress and toilet behind closed doors. But there are several situations in which people undress and toilet together, sometimes with those of the opposite sex, and sometimes with the self-sex, and in all of these situations, modesty is protected by a routine disregard of the sexuality of exposed people.

Conforming to the etiquette of disregard, we minimize observation to what is required by the task at hand. We make no mention of any sexual connotation of the exposure, and to behave toward the subject as though the subject were not in any way an object of sexual interest.

There are four routine situations in our society in which this etiquette protects people from embarrassment: medical situations, nudist camps, art classes, and public rest rooms, In the first three situations, the gender of the observed and observer is not controlled. In the last the gender is controlled, but there is strong evidence that in all these cases the same etiquette is in effect.

Even in the doctor's office, people take off their tops or expose a buttock for an injection by a nurse or a doctor, often of the opposite sex, and for the medical person to show anything but disregard for the sexuality of the patient's body would be scandalous.

Hospitals are even more of a strain on people's customary attempts to keep themselves covered. Short gowns that tie in the back with the backside exposed are legendary. And people unaccustomed to hospital levels of modesty can be surprised to learn that they are expected to submit to having their clothing pulled down often by young people of the opposite sex, for such procedures as having their genital areas shaved or having catheters inserted in their urethras. What is surprising is that this treatment can be received, not without embarrassment completely, perhaps, but with much less embarrassment than is anticipated. People submit to procedures they anticipate will mortify them only to learn how little embarrassment they actually feel. This is because the medical personnel have learned to treat them with an etiquette of disregard.

Perhaps nowhere in medicine, however, is modesty more routinely tested than it is in the gynecologist's office. Here young women who have been trained to be modest before older men, are required to submit to an examination in which, often, an older man inspects their genitals with his eyes and hands. The first examination generally takes place in early adolescence and often prior to a young woman's having been examined even cursorily by a lover. Yet we find that women adapt quickly to this experience and typically decide that it makes no difference whether the doctor is a male or female.

How do young women endure this embarrassment? They endure it because the doctors practice an etiquette of disregard, chatting casually with patients during the examination, even joking about irrelevant topics while they probe their patient's vaginas. They might even discuss the procedure, but if so, they do so with a detached and professional style.³

And if gynecological exams are not embarrassing enough, there are the exams of proctologists. These would be unbearable for the typically prudish American were the medical people untrained, or unwilling, to conform to an etiquette of disregard.

Today, most of us learn to expect the physician to minimize our embarrassment by a kind of disregard, and so we are willing to endure routine exams. In the more prudish Victorian times, many people, especially women, were not willing. Our great-grandmothers often preferred to die rather than to tolerate such a procedure,⁴ but if they chose death, it is likely because they underestimated how much modesty comfort they could have felt if embarrassment had been minimized with the etiquette of disregard.

Since we sometimes have the illusion that clothes are the primary protector of modesty, it comes as a surprise that most people find it much easier to join a nudist beach than they imagined. What they soon discover is that they are treated with the etiquette of disregard. They find that people are focused on their activities, not their bodies, that they do not stare at each other with erotic interest or curiosity.⁵ And not being stared at, people begin to feel more confident and natural.

Americans are often surprised by the casual and nonsexual approach the nudist has to nudity.⁶ In a world in which undress with the opposite sex is thought of in terms of topless bars, stripteases and wet T-shirt competitions, it is hard to fathom beaches full of naked people, adults and children, comfortably involved in nonerotic activities. But when nudity is everywhere, people are less preoccupied with erotic fantasies about it, and sex, unexaggerated by our forbidden sexual curiosities, is free to grow and evolve around intimacy and affection.

Because we Americans have learned to think of nudity as sexual, we are surprised to learn that most of the participants in nudist camps are not sexually promiscuous. In fact, they are less sexually experienced, usually, than nonnudists and are less likely to engage in sex that would be considered a transgression in nonnudist society than are nonnudists.⁸

Although art students are typically made anxious by the idea that they will draw nude models, they too seem to adapt quickly and find the process much less embarrassing than they anticipate. They simply go to class and discover that someone is willing to stand before a whole class of people who will look at the model with no apparent awareness of the possibility of sexually enjoying the view.

And artists must, of course, observe the model in some detail. They are studying the way the parts of the body fit together, the way the muscles drape over the bone, the way the skin reflects the light. But they manage any initial embarrassment by disregarding the model as a sexual person, someone with whom one could interact, (until, at least, the model puts on a robe during a break) and they do this whether the model is of the same or the opposite sex.⁹

This shows us one of the primary features of this etiquette of disregard. Those who conform to it observe the exposed person only to the degree necessary for the task at hand. It is understood that the artist's model will want to put on a robe when the artists are not working.

And notice that the disregard etiquette allows the artist to look at the subject in some detail, while disregarding the sexual potential of the situation. Disregard is accomplished by simply staying in a frame of mind which minimizes the erotic.

Cultural myths tell us that if we segregate the sexes for toileting there is no embarrassment, but the evidence suggests otherwise, for people regularly guard against embarrassment in these settings by conforming to an etiquette of disregard. For example, the data suggests that men and women feel some embarrassment using public urinals, and they show this embarrassment by a delay in the time it takes them to begin urinating.¹⁰

Men manage their embarrassment at open urinals by selecting one, if at all possible, so that they have at least one vacant urinal between themselves and others.¹¹ And, although women's rest rooms are typically less open, more likely to have stalls which more completely enclose them, when they are open, they, too, use an etiquette of disregard to ease modesty embarrassment.¹²

Sometimes people are embarrassed to undress or toilet before others and some people are more easily embarrassed than others. Why is this? Isn't it possible that some people's modesty is so deeply a part of who they are that they will always find bodily exposure embarrassing?

It is true that some aspects of a personality are much less flexible than others. A person's intelligence, for example, is much less flexible than a person's mood. Among the less changeable dimensions of a personality, too, are a person's deeply rooted values, or attitudes. Values and attitudes can be woven into an enduring philosophy of life. And so, to evaluate the flexibility of modesty, we need to ask the nature of this dimension of personalities. Is it rooted in people's moral value system? That is, is modesty an attitude? Or is it merely a habit? Or even the casual expression of a fashion? For whereas habits are hard to change, they are not nearly so enduring as values, and, on the other hand, fashions are more changeable than habits. Fashions change, effortlessly, with the season, however brief or long.

Let us look, then, to see if modesty is an attitude (which, by definition, reflects a value and is important to us), a habit (which we often want to change but which has some resistance to change), or a fashion (which is dictated by popular opinion and is important only so long as those whose opinion we value say it is).¹³

Is modesty an attitude? If so it is rooted in concepts and persuasive arguments about what is good or bad. A modest woman who felt it would be wrong to go to a gynecologist, would be avoiding doing so because of her values or attitudes. It might even be the case that she would not be embarrassed by the experience, but that she would feel it would be wrong and that if she did so she would feel self-critical.¹⁴ By definition, we like our attitudes and we endorse our behaviors which reflect our attitudes.¹⁵

If modesty is a habit, on the other hand, then it is devoid of reason, for we are often unhappy with our habits. They do not reflect our values. People who have developed a habit, say, of clearing their throat, or tapping their fingers, are not prepared to tell you why it is good to do these things. Such things may be difficult to change, but they can be changed, generally, with self-practice and when we change them we do so without violation of our inner values.

Like habits, fashions are devoid of reason. But fashions change with the season and the context according to what authorities, or other people, define as good or appropriate for a particular place or time. It is the fashion to wear much more abbreviated clothes on the beach than in the business office. It is not that it is immoral to wear a bathing suit to a business meeting. (Why would it be more immoral in a business office than on the beach?) It is just inappropriate or highly unfashionable to do so.

Because our modesty is different in different contexts (the beach, business office, hospital room, art class) it is probably best thought of as a fashion sensitivity. That means, we would expect most people to adapt to less private toileting and undress without embarrassment, if other people seemed to feel it was appropriate and to engage in it without signs of curiosity, interest, or self-consciousness. And that is what studies suggest people do.¹⁶ Nevertheless there are probably some habit elements in modesty. People habitually put on the clothes they have hanging in the closet and have to think about where they put their swim clothes when the occasion arises, and may, when they first put them on, feel a little exposed.

To say that modesty is probably best thought of as a fashion, does not mean to say there are no poignant feelings associated with it. People can be very self-conscious and embarrassed about violating fashions. But if we can all imagine being embarrassed by being naked, or wearing revealing clothes, we can all, also, imagine being self-conscious and embarrassed by wearing extremely silly clothes that are highly unfashionable. Both of these experiences might make us, in the right context, highly self-conscious and uncomfortable.

But the fact that the amount of covering we need to feel comfortable is highly dependent on the context tells us that modesty today is largely a fashion and, as such, our feelings about it are highly flexible and can change with the change of fashion.

On the other hand, aren't there some people who are more modest than most? Whose childhood traditions have so accustomed them to hiding their bodies that they do not adapt to the fashion?

Even people with a high degree of bodily modesty are generally able to adapt and modify this trait if they conform to the custom of the context. Even when modesty reaches neurotic proportions, it is cured more easily than most other kinds of neurotic problems.

For example, paruresis, the difficulty in urinating in the presence of another person, is a modesty problem. Most people who suffer from it, experience it in a mild degree,¹⁷ but it can reach neurotic proportions as when the victim of this disorder is unable to frequent public places because of the inability to urinate in public rest rooms. It is often one symptom among many in people with pronounced sexual problems¹⁸ or for people with a history of having been sexually abused.¹⁹

Yet this inconvenient form of bodily modesty is one of the most treatable of psychological problems. There is almost a 100 percent success rate in from five to 20 brief treatment sessions even for unusually severe cases.²⁰ The usual treatment of choice is a desensitization procedure in which the patient might be asked to visualize urinating in a public setting, then really to urinate while people are in the next room, and then while they are at some distance in the same room and, finally, while they are in close proximity.

Paruresis is more frequently studied than other forms of bathroom modesty because paruresis can be so disabling. However, the more standard form of bathroom modesty (simple psychological discomfort with no loss of ability to urinate) also seems to adapt quickly with experience.²¹ And, as we have noted, women adapt quickly to gynecological exams and almost everyone who tries it adapts quickly to nude beaches.²²

Like other fashions, modesty embarrassment is contagious. When observers disregard the sexuality of a situation, embarrassment is lessened, but also, when the person with the undressed body behaves with little evidence of embarrassment, with disregard, the observer is likely to treat it with disregard as well.

Consider the case of the straight soldier who explained how he feels about a gay soldier seeing him in the shower. He said, "I have had a few incidents with gay soldiers in the showers and latrines staring at me, nothing compromising. It never bothers me since I just don't care who sees me. I figure we are all adults and can behave like adults. . . . I am not worried about a person being gay or straight. I think I can look at it as if a gay person came up to me and made a comment about the way I looked, I would have to take it as a compliment. All I have to do is say no and thanks anyway . . . ."

This works in other contexts as well. Not only does the doctor put the patient at ease with an etiquette of disregard, but the patient, by participating in the irrelevant small talk, helps to create the context which makes the situation less embarrassing to experience.

Sex, as we know it, would not be possible if everyone always conformed to the etiquette of disregard. People with sexual inhibitions, in fact, may need special help in moving from a disregard of the erotic into an erotic mindset that makes sexual functioning possible. But in most contexts in which people are undressed or toileting, the rule is that they treat each other's sexuality with disregard.

Whether it is satisfying to slip into an erotic regard of another person's body, however, depends typically on whether the observer feels permission to do so. The relevant permission is generally communicated by the sexual object, but the felt permission can also be a culture of other observers, as, for example, in the case of male adolescents feeling permission from their friends to stare with erotic eyes at women without concern for the woman's permission. When this behavior is transported into the adult world it is a form of harassment.

It is a different matter when the observer does not have the support of other observers who approve. People who allow themselves to be aroused by other people's bodies, dressed or undressed, without any support or approval are likely to find themselves diagnosed as voyeurs by psychologists, at least if this observation is extensive and uncontrolled. When, and if, such observers are noticed by the observed, they are likely to cause anxiety.

The degree of offense, however, depends on how seriously the voyeuristic observation is indulged, and, if the observer shows some signs of conforming to the etiquette of disregard, of being embarrassed at having been noticed to be erotically regarding the other, it might be taken as a compliment. Thus, a man who was embarrassed to be noticed peeking down a woman's blouse would cause less anxiety than a man following a woman and observing her, erotically, at length.

These rules, which require us to treat each other with an etiquette of disregard, apply to homosexuals as well as heterosexuals. The question is not whether homosexuals will find heterosexuals sexually alluring. It is whether they will violate this etiquette, and turn privacy situations with heterosexuals into erotic settings. And the question is not whether an unusual homosexual will occasionally violate these rules.²³ Perhaps many heterosexuals violate these rules occasionally, but they behave as though they believe in the rules, and only voyeurs will flagrantly violate the rules without the permission of either the person observed or a support group.

The question heterosexuals need to have answered is how likely it is that homosexuals will cause them discomfort by flagrant violation of the etiquette of disregard, by allowing their minds to slip, in more than the most trivial way, into an erotic state, and, especially, by thinking of this erotic regard of the exposed heterosexuals as acceptable.

Do homosexuals violate the etiquette of disregard with heterosexuals? Most homosexuals do not, at least in any flagrant way. Most homosexuals are not easy to identify,²⁴ but if they leered at heterosexuals in private places, they would be more noticed by heterosexuals.

If they were allowed to reveal that they are homosexual, would they stop conforming to the etiquette of disregard? The answer has to do with the gay person's ability to make contact with other homosexuals. One closet homosexual man declined an invitation by an attractive man to have a drink after class at a straight bar. Asked if he was interested in pursuing the straight man, the homosexual responded:

If he had told me he was gay I would have been interested, but I've never seen much point in chasing straight men who aren't interested, when there are so many equally good-looking gay men at the bars who are interested. I've always considered myself a fairly logical and practical person, so why waste my time and efforts on someone who is not interested?

The evidence tells us that homosexuals will conform to the etiquette of disregard even if they are allowed to reveal their identity. After all, homosexuals have much fewer sanctions against revealing their identity in civilian life than they do in the military.²⁵ Yet in civilian life, too, they conform to the etiquette of disregard. And the evidence suggests that they do so because they want acceptance from heterosexuals.²⁶ Furthermore, the research available indicates that gay people are just as embarrassed by eroticism in public situations with heterosexuals as heterosexuals are.²⁷

Perhaps the most telling evidence for the homosexual's sense of importance attached to being acceptable to heterosexuals in the shower is told by a gay soldier describing the only time he can remember developing an erection in the presence of someone he presumed to be a heterosexual.

There was an instance where I wasn't able to be nonchalant in the shower with another guy and I did get an erection. It was particularly embarrassing and I worried about his reaction for several days.

I was a member of a. . . task force . . . and we were called out to go . . . play war. I had been awake for over 36 hours reading tech manuals and working on electronic equipment, and I was so punchy I was slightly giddy. The unit I was with was given special permission to use the officers' showers because they had hot and cold water, as opposed to the grunts which only had cold water. Ooooo-rahhhhh.

The showers were inside this big green tent and the floor was gravel, covered with wooden pallets. You walked into the tent and around a partition and there were benches to sit and undress—no privacy—and then around another partition were the showers. Just two opposing rows of nozzles, probably four to a side.

I walked around the second partition and my eyes met a very attractive and very well-built guy. He and I were the only ones there, I was mesmerized by him—I just froze in the doorway and watched him. I don't know how long I stood there, but all of a sudden I realized I had an erection and that he was rinsing off and looking right at me. My towel was over my shoulder and my hands were at my side, so he would've had to have been blind not to notice my "condition." I walked to the farthest side of the shower and glanced at him as I started to get wet. He was glaring at me very hard like he was going to say something and then he looked away. I avoided looking at him until he left. I spent a lot of time waiting to be sure he was gone, at least it seemed that way, but when I rounded the partition, there he sat, nude, drying his toes. I avoided looking at him again, and as we dressed he started a plain ol' conversation with me about the military exercise we were on and asking me questions about Hawaii and the base where I was stationed. I was nervous and felt that my voice was shaking as I answered. He left before I did and he told me that he'd catch me later.

I was s-c-a-r-e-d t-o d-e-a-t-h. His initial passive-aggressive reaction and his subsequent chatty friendliness was contradictory. I was afraid he was going to say something to someone and he was just being nice to be deceptive. I saw him the next day and he looked right at me but didn't say a word as we passed, and that further increased my anxiety. Nothing came of it that I know of, but it was a frightening experience.

With the social sanctions we have against homosexuality, it would be a foolish homosexual who would not be apprehensive about being seen as flirtatious by a condemning heterosexual.

That social sanctions, not laws, are the powerful deterrents against gay people making advances is also indicated by the finding that when laws against homosexuality (e.g., solicitation) are removed, there is no apparent increase in that behavior.²⁸

Nevertheless, many male homosexuals do make sexual contact with other homosexuals in public settings. How do they do this without violating the etiquette of disregard with heterosexuals?

Most often the contact is made in a setting in which homosexuals are known to congregate. When that is not so, they must be able to discern whether someone is, or is not, a homosexual. Since the appearance and typical behavior of most homosexuals is indistinguishable from that of heterosexuals, this is done by a graduated series of interactions that allows identification to be made. Notice how careful this soldier is. This kind of care is required if a homosexual is to identify another homosexual in a context that is not clearly meant for gays.

A gay soldier explains how this is done. He says,

As I said before, gays learn to recognize one another; it's the hungry look in the eyes. One of us would start up a conversation, and then talk for a while. Then, when the heat in the sauna started to become unbearable, it was out to the shower. If my new friend followed me, then that was a good sign. If he went to a shower close by, then the game of peek-a-boo would usually begin. Standing there under a cold shower, rubbing down any sore muscles, letting the water run down over my body, and watching the other man do the same thing. Gradually, the peeking turned into more obvious looks. Then back into the sauna for round two.

Still, the process is not complete. The soldier continues his account, showing how increasing evidence is gathered with infinite patience, always making certain that, although this was a public setting, no one observed this interaction.

If they followed me back, then that was a good indication that we were going to find something even more interesting to talk about. But never never never would any flirtation occur in the presence of others. This was really taking a risk at this point. So caution was the name of the game.

Then the interaction would be moved discreetly, and still ambiguously, into a more private exchange only to become more guarded, again, if others came into earshot.

Only when we were alone could we begin to ask each other questions that would verify what we were both thinking. Usually, the conversation started with a compliment on "What good shape you're in, how often do you come in here?" "How many situps do you do to get such a flat stomach?" "Your legs are really strong, do you run?" or something similar. The reply was something equally complimentary, and now we could look each other over more slowly and deliberately, while we continued talking. If someone came in, then the conversation would turn to something safe, like sports or what was going on at the clubs, or how good a beer would taste. Then out to the showers, same routine.

It would still, however, be possible to abandon this process, to recognize that the other person was merely being friendly, so the identification process continues still:

Depending on what intuition said, it was back to the sauna, or ask him out for a beer or if he wanted to go do something. If he wanted to spend more time together, then we would do that, and it could turn into a sexual encounter. I generally checked them out pretty carefully, and was quite confident that they were interested in me before I would risk going any further with them. I've had several friends investigated by . . . [military's force for investigating homosexuals]. It was no picnic, and those . . . don't stop until they succeed in destroying your life. So discretion was very important,

Even when making homosexual contacts in public settings, gay men are careful to honor the heterosexual's etiquette of disregard. They work around it cautiously, making sure each move is reciprocated, before assuming the other person is homosexual.

When heterosexuals predict that homosexuals will invade their privacy, they are likely to be making these predictions on the basis of little information. Most people who are apprehensive about homosexuals have never met one, and most have never showered with a person whom they knew to be homosexual. The prevalence of stories about faggots take on the quality of a bogeyman story with no basis in reality, only a basis in our modesty myths.

The evidence, when we actually look at it, tells us that homosexuals are likely to conform with considerable care to the heterosexual etiquette of disregard. Homosexuals in our society live, for the most part, a very closeted existence, and they shower and toilet with heterosexuals without revealing their presence. This implies that they are capable of showering and toileting with undressed heterosexuals without their control being overwhelmed, and, if they can do this without telling us that they are gay, they can do it while disclosing that they are gay as well.

Although it is true that gay men sometimes recognize other gay men and have furtive encounters in public rest rooms, when straight people are around these settings gay men practice the etiquette of disregard and this makes their sexuality invisible to non-gays. This is not difficult for them to do.

One gay soldier tells of trying to explain this to a straight roommate who could not understand how gay men could shower and undress all the time with men and not feel driven to distraction by the sexuality of the experience. The gay soldier told this story:

I had a straight roommate . . . who was OK with me being gay . . . . Anyway, he could never understand how we (gay guys) could shower with other men and not get all excited. When we would play racquetball and shower afterwards at the gym, he'd turn the shower on and run through it on his way by (not much of an exaggeration). I finally had to drag him along to the nude beach on the North Shore to help make my point. The point being that whenever you're all nude, there's no mystery and no spark for the fire, as it were, and that "intent" is also important on the part of all parties involved. He told me he was able to appreciate the body of a nude female without getting sexually excited, but he couldn't understand that from a gay standpoint. I still don't understand his viewpoint. . . . We argued many evenings about what was the real turn-on, if it was conjured in the mind or just the mere visual stimulation. Anyway, I had made my point and he finally understood what I was getting at.²⁹

The belief that homosexuals will be driven to distraction and violate heterosexuals in the shower is just a consequence of our heterosexual modesty myths, which lead us wrongly to think that people who can be sexually attracted to each other cannot manage situations of nakedness together.

The fact that homosexuals do manage situations of nakedness without evidencing their homosexuality, is wrongly taken by heterosexuals to mean that no one present is homosexual. Homosexuals are among us everywhere, and their invisibility is testimony to the ease with which they, too, can and do conform to the pervasive etiquette of disregard.