Month: April 2023

The fucking irony of ironies

Hold on to you fucking hats boys and girls………

Guess who might not see a single red fucking cent from his class action brought against the Canadian Armed Forces.

I kid you not.

Even if the DOJ goes ahead and settles this matter out of court, I might not see a single nickel from the action.

See, even though the babysitter had been groomed by Canadian Armed Forces officer Captain Father Angus McRae. And even though the babysitter had been recommended to families such as mine by Captain Father Angus McRae in his role as padre for the base. And even though Captain McRae was using the babysitter to bring us young children over to the rectory attached to the chapel. And even though the chain of command made decisions to not bring the RCMP to deal with the babysitter and the horrific crimes he committed against the children living on the base, the Government is arguing that the babysitter was not a member of the Canadian Forces and that Captain McRae had no real authority over the babysitter and therefore the Government of Canada is not responsible to compensate those who were only abused by the babysitter.

But Bobbie, didn’t you say that the babysitter had taken you over to the chapel on five different occasions and that at Captain McRae’s request he gave you a “sickly sweet grape juice” which was later determined to be wine?

Well, because the CFNIS never undertook that investigative path in 2011 after I told the CFNIS about the visits to the chapel, there was never any investigation into this.

And the CFSIU investigation paperwork from 1980 doesn’t help much as the military police and the CFSIU conceded during their investigations that they had only touched the tip of the iceberg, that not all of the parents on Canadian Forces Base Name wanted their children associated with the obvious taint that would have come from being a male victim of male-on-male sexual abuse and so they wouldn’t let their children be interviewed by the investigators.

And then there’s that fact the some of Captain McRae’s abuse victims along with the victims of the babysitter had moved off the base during the summer of 1979 posting season and weren’t around to be interviewed by the military police and the CFSIU in May of 1980 when the babysitter’s activities along with Captain McRae’s activities became know to the military police, the CFSIU, and the base chain of command.

Am I angry?

nope.

Am I upset?

nope.

Am I surprised?

nope.

I’ve spent the last 12 years learning about the military justice system.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Canadian Armed Forces are literally fucked seven ways from Sunday.

It’s an organization, that while not brimming full of child molesters and pedophiles, will do anything it can to not own up to the fact that its twisted and broken “justice system” as well as its self-interested parochial chain of command knew that there were pedophiles and child molesters praying on military dependents but was happy to look the other way so as not to create a public relations nightmare.

I can’t ever see the Department of National Defence or the Canadian Armed Forces owning up to and fixing this mess. They don’t have to. They’re so fucking untouchable that they never have to worry.

They’re not legally obligated to look after military dependents.

Ethically, sure. Legally, no.

Again, look at how the Canadian Armed Forces fucked over the 12 to 18 year old Army Cadets from Canadian Forces Base Valcartier in 1974 from the “grenade incident”. The only people in the room who received any type of help when a grenade detonated were the regular force members who were negligent in their duties and allowed the grenade in to the barracks and allowed the cadets to handle and play with it.

From 1974 until 2011 the Canadian Armed Forces told the victims and the families of the victims who died to basically fuck off and go pound sand due to the civilian nature of the cadets. The DND and the CAF weren’t legally responsible, the kids were on the base at their own risk.

Finally in 2011 the Ombudsman released a scathing report that chastised the Canadian Forces for compensating the negligent members of the Canadian Forces who allowed the bloodshed to occur while at the same time ignoring the death, pain, and suffering that the cadets aged 12 to 18 endured.

And that’s where I am at along with all of the other victims of the babysitter.

So far as General W.D. EYRE and the rest of the chain of command at National Defence Head Quarters are concerned, the child victims of Captain Father Angus McRae and his teenaged accomplice can go fuck themselves in the politest of terms.

To men such as General W.D. EYRE and even women such as Minister of National Defence Anita Anand are concerned the children from Canadian Forces Base Name and the other bases that Captain McRae served at are just collateral damage that must be endured in order to keep the image of the Canadian Armed Forces unblemished.

I thought that everyone knew.

When did Bobbie start wearing dresses?

I didn’t realize until December of 2013 when I tracked my mother down and went to see her in Calgary that I had slipped into my friend’s dresses once or twice on CFB Shearwater.

My father wasn’t around, so he never found out. Which was probably a very good thing.

The next time I wore dresses was actually on Canadian Forces Base Griesbach. I had a female friend. Her parents were very traditional in the sense that girls had to wear dresses. So she and I would slip off base, swap clothes, and hang around for a while. This of course was during the time I was in the care of military social worker Captain Terry Totzke for my “homosexuality”. So this would have been in the period of 1981 to 1983. Again, I don’t think my father ever knew.

There was an incident on CFB Griesbach that caused me a lot of conflict though. I knew it would have been after I was placed into the Westfield program by Alberta Social Services. Sue, my stepmother, was going to take my younger brother to Dairy Queen for ice cream. I asked Sue if I could come. Sue, who was only about 12 years older than me, looked at me and said “Retards don’t get ice cream”. She was obviously referring to my involvement with Westfield and the problems that my untreated depression, anxiety, and other issues were causing for my father and her. Anyways I started crying. She came over and grabbed me and looked me straight in the face and said that if I didn’t stop crying like a little girl that she was going to take me to Sears and buy me a dress and that I could cry like a little girl all I wanted too. 

This caused me great conflict for three reasons. 1) I hated being called a retard. I was getting teased and taunted enough on base having to take the short yellow bus to school, but now my own stepmother was calling me a retard. 2) I despised [brother] for how he could cause all sorts of shit in the house but it was always my fault for not looking after him. 3) I really wanted a dress. I was kinda hooked on Alice’s dress from Alice in Wonderland.

As things had become way out of control at home with Richard and Sue and as Richard was blaming me for “fucking with his military career” and dishing out the physical abuse to go along with that, my desires for dresses took a back seat.

The only type of glimmer that I had in my teenage years of the fascination I had with dresses as a kid was when I went to see Ridley Scott’s Legend in the theatres. I wanted Lilli’s “Black Evil Dress”.

It wouldn’t be until I had my first apartment in New Westminster around 1995 that I started to buy dresses on the sly and wear them in my apartment.

Because of my time with Captain Totzke and my father’s attitude I knew that this was probably due to my “homosexual perversion”.

It wouldn’t be until I got my union job at St. Paul’s in 2005 that I really got into dresses. First it was skirts. Skirts that could conceivably pass as “kilts”.

But by 2008 I was mainly wearing dresses.

My wardrobe at this point is mainly dresses and skirts. I do own a couple “utilikilts” and one pair of jeans.

Why do I wear dresses?

I think that on CFB Shearwater it was just childhood curiosity. When you’re under 5 I don’t think that you have a clear understanding of societal gender roles. Don’t forget, it was very common up until the early 1900s for boys under the age of 7 or 8 to wear dresses. When a boy turned 7 or 8 they were “breeched” and given their first pair of trousers / pants as well as their first haircut. Toilet training and the lack of mass produced clothing would account for this.

This is Franklin Delano Roosevelt wearing a dress.

Historians have had to go back and reevaluate paintings from the Medieval and Early Modern Eras as a lot of the paintings depicting girls in dresses may have actually been both boys and girls in dresses. To tell the two apart boys tended to wear plain dresses while girl’s dresses tended to have small amounts of finery attached to the dress.

But I think that from CFB Griesbach and onwards my desire for wearing dresses had more to do with my gender identity having been destroyed by my sexual abuse on CFB Namao along with the “conversion therapy” that I was receiving from Captain Terry Totzke on CFB Griesbach.

At the time my IQ was evaluated using a professional psychiatric test. I was evaluated to have an IQ of 136 +/- 6.

Maybe this figured into my desire to wear dresses. Dresses don’t have genders. They’re clothing.

As Richard would often say, maybe I was too fucking smart for my own fucking good.

You don’t become a woman by wearing a dress anymore than a woman becomes a man by wearing pants.

Don’t forget, but society heavily frowned upon women wearing pants right up until WWII when women were then required to work on the assembly lines to build weapons and aircraft.

Dresses are comfortable and easy to wear.

And the less things I have touching my body, the happier I am.

I think the destruction of my gender identity also figures into my desire to wear dresses.

I don’t identify as male or female.

I have no desire to be a woman.

But I also don’t fit into society’s definition of a man.

Therefore I’ve never felt locked into society’s demands that I wear specific clothing.

I have no attraction to women, but I also have no attraction to men.

I have had sex with both earlier on in my life.

During the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s I was mainly with men, but it always felt mechanical.

But don’t let this sound like I was involved with 1,000s or partners.

Maybe about 10 guys total.

Maybe about 2 or 3 women.

And I haven’t been with anyone since the early 2000’s

My attraction to men is stymied by the fact that I’ve lived all my life with the knowledge that homosexuality is a mental illness and that it is inherently evil. Having sex with men always brings back memories of my father, of Terry, and of [baby sitter / accomplice]. This cannot be escaped.

My attraction to women is stymied by the fact that I’m not really attracted to women.

What am I?

I identify as “queer”. Not gay. Not bi. Not straight. Not trans. 

Just queer.

Maybe I am gay, but unfortunately that was taken away from me back in ’78 through ’83.

When I legally changed my name in 2008 I chose Bobbie specifically because this is the unisex spelling of this name.

Bobby = male

Bobbi = female

Bobbie = unisex.

I hated the name Robert as this is a boy’s / man’s name.

Anyways……………..

The fact is I wear dresses ‘cause I like dresses and I don’t identify with either gender.