Some also think that nudity removes one’s social armor and makes one utterly vulnerable, psychologically and socially bonding lower-ranking servicemembers through a shared experience of physical exposure and light humiliation. The thinking here is that only experienced officers deserve the dignity of clothes and the higher-ups can literally dress down inferiors, ogle them or make them undergo other indignities if they so choose. Basically initiates are made to strip down and then socialize as a way of demonstrating their sub-ordinance and sexual inferiority. The tamest ritual we’ve heard of involves forced nudity and drunkenness. Jane Ward, author of Not Gay: Sex between Straight White Men, says that the thinking surrounding these rituals is, “If you endure together this kind of mortifying, humiliating and embarrassing homosexual act, then that not only toughens up your body, but it will also build and strengthen that bond around you.” That sounds like toxic heterocentrist masculine bullshit to us, but here’s five homoerotic military rituals we’ve heard of all the same: 1. Thus, homoerotic initiation rituals allow servicemembers to inflict the abuses they’ve endured and also test new members’ willingness to submit to tradition and group-think without succumbing to emotion or “destructive” homosexual desires. And yet, the military is also a rigidly masculine place that values strength and stoicism along with submission to the chain of command.