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(More customer reviews)After producing three very insightful books on their quarry, Zeeland provides his readers with an equally intriguing, ocassionally disturbing, and often very funny look at the hunters - the "chasers' of military men. Zeeland examines what motivates these men (and, at last, one woman), but unlike his previous books, in which many of his interviews were fascinatingly intimate portraits of friends, lovers, and acquaintances, Zeeland for the most part steps back and lets these chasers tell their own tales without deeply challenging their motivations and assumptions about the military and military men.
For example, most of the chasers profess to being drawn to the military ideal of loyalty, fidelity, and patriotism, despite the fact that their actual experiences with military men as they tell them often prove otherwise, and few show any insight into the very real working class limitations that lead much of their quarry to join in the first place. This is particularly interesting when one considers the fact that for the most part these chasers are drawn to enlisted men, yet they frequently differ from them significantly in politics, education, and class background, and often show little genuine understanding of them. Then there are those chasers beset by a sort of sexual "Stockholm Syndrome," who find their own lifestyles and political beliefs changed by their exposures to the subjects of their desire. All of these are issues worthy of exploration, but for the most part Zeeland lets these accounts raise more questions than they answer. This reader would love to see more in-depth study by Zeeland of all these issues. Perhaps in a second study of such chasers?
As a woman who was herself a mild military chaser who ended up married to one of her USMC quarry, if there is a second study I would enjoy reading about more women like myself. Indeed, "Military Trade" would have benefited not only from interviews with more women military chasers but also with perhaps an examination of the very gender-bending in which we women indulge in much of our chasing.
At the heart of all of Steven Zeeland's books is a challenge to our assumptions about sexual identity, and this reader, who has done much of just that, would love to see an even more extensive exploration of how both men and women cross the boundaries, as it were, whether chasing military or not.
However, for all the book does offer us, and all the questions it raises, "Military Trade" is a valuable addition to Zeeland's growing canon of studies of the fluidity of sexuality and the cult of the military. Well done!
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A same-sex attraction for soldiers and sailors spans the globe and predates the term "homosexual" by several thousand years. But these days "military chasers" are likely to be seen as doubly incorrect. Most are gay men who pursue straight men. And, many of them do it in public. What continues to motivate so many men to brave arrest, violence, and the scorn of gay leaders who condemn any non-gay homosexual desire as "internalized homophobia"?In Military Trade (now updated to include an expanded photo insert!), Steven Zeeland, author of Sailors and Sexual Identity, The Masculine Marine, and Barrack Buddies and Soldier Lovers, brings together an edgy, enlightening, and richly entertaining collection of voices with a passion for servicemen, including:
a TV talk-show host who pimped Marines to Hollywood stars
a heavy metal superstar who dreams of being reincarnated as a Marine boot
a women "trapped in a gay man's body" who seduces Marines online then dominates them in person with strap-on dildos
a former Force Recon Marine who complains of being chased by civilians but is now a Marine-chaser himself
By turns steamy, hilarious, appalling, and deeply moving, Military Trade challenges assumptions about both chaser and chased and poses pointed questions about the wisdom of those who seek to divide the world into "straight" and "gay." The interviews and essays collected in this book suggest that, paradoxically, for many men the advances of the gay rights movement have actually made it more difficult to form affectional bonds with other men. Gay sex has never been more openly advertised. But the military love of comrades is something that gay life can't offer. Military Trade offers groundbreaking insight into:
the difference between "military chasers" and uniform fetishists
why gay men prefer sailors and Marines over soldiers and airmen
the surprising range of sexual, "buddy," and even love relationships "chasers" form with servicemen
the nuances of "trade" and civil-military male prostitution
what has been overlooked in the "sex panic" debate about men who have sex in public places
For anyone interested in queer theory, the construction of masculinity, or sex between men outside of gay urban culture--and for anyone who has ever thrilled at the sight of a man in uniform--Military Trade is must reading.
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