The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Sportfan5000's sources seem convincing, and have convinced participants here that this article should be kept. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 06:51, 10 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fag bomb (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

(Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL)

I don't think this controversy has any WP:LASTING significance. As I searched for relevant sources, I found almost all of them to be from late 2001, with little to no coverage beyond to indicate how this was any different than any other culture war dust-up (n.b., this story about the bomb exploding in 2012 is from a satire site). --BDD (talk) 21:27, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Afghanistan-related deletion discussions. --BDD (talk) 21:28, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. --BDD (talk) 21:28, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Sexuality and gender-related deletion discussions. --BDD (talk) 21:28, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. --BDD (talk) 21:28, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete A trivial incident from over 12 years ago of no lasting significance. Coverage was brief and fleeting. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 23:48, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 01:21, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - Would be worthy of mention in some military scandal article, but do not seem to find anything other than a category.--☾Loriendrew☽ ☏(talk) 02:30, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, or possibly merge. A notable incident that was magnified by the ongoing controversy of gays in the military that was only resolved a few years ago. Sportfan5000 (talk) 16:01, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Where would you merge it? --BDD (talk) 17:12, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It should be kept but if there are very similar cases to this then potentially being part of a larger narrative would make sense. Sportfan5000 (talk) 23:16, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. I searched on the message written on the bomb, and did find sources beyond 2001, which I feel is an arbitrary date. Google Scholar hits including: Pascoe, C. J. "Notes on a Sociology of Bullying: Young Men's Homophobia as Gender Socialization." QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking 1 (2013): 87-103. And: Mann, Bonnie. Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessons from the War on Terror. Oxford University Press, 2014. I think it's worth considering changing the name of the article, as recent sources do exist but "fag bomb" has come more as meaning calling someone a faggot - dropping the "fag bomb" - like F-bomb is saying "fuck." Sportfan5000 (talk) 23:16, 27 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • As i look at more of the sources available i think a rename is not needed, but maybe some redirects here will do. Sportfan5000 (talk) 10:02, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

2001 isn't an arbitrary date; it's when this happened. --BDD (talk) 17:12, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. Excellent research by Sportfan5000, above. Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 07:47, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Question Which if any of those sources do you think rises above a passing mention to the level of significant coverage, Sportfan5000? Good find, by the way.If the significant coverage is actually there, I will happily change my recommendation. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 08:04, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Several would seem to be adequate. I suggest following the links at the top of this page under the "find sources" for both scholar, and books. Replace "fag bomb" with "High jack this fags" and judge for yourself. There is also other possible sources:
• Hijack This
• Navy Apologizes for 'High jack this fags
• DADT
• Don't ask, don't tell" is the military's real anti-gay bomb
• A few archived news stories
• Unexploded ‘Fag Bomb’ Finally Detonates in Afghanistan, Killing Two
• Apology for 'gay slur' on bomb
  • More are out there. Sportfan5000 (talk) 10:02, 28 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I specifically mentioned the penultimate source as a satirical one. And I believe the time stamps on the others confirm my initial argument that this controversy didn't have lasting impact. --BDD (talk) 17:12, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think the subject meets GNG. Clearly the incident is notable, and a good article is possible. Adding the context of the then huge issue of gays in the military, which was a political wedge issue for many campaigns, including presidential ones, its unsurprising that the incident garnered coverage. It might not be an overwhelming chapter, but it is surely a notable one. Sportfan5000 (talk) 20:41, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've read those sources. Snopes confirms it happened. There are the original news stories. An opinion piece mentions it in passing, which doesn't establish notability. And the satirical piece, which is mildly interesting but worthless as a source. So far, no reliable source connects it in any meaningful way with broader issues, and I see no truly significant coverage. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 00:14, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree obviously, i have included a few more sources below which demonstrates, hopefully to everyone's satisfaction, that a good article is easily attainable, and sources exist meeting at least the GNG.

• Delete  Fails WP:NOTNEWSPAPER.  Unscintillating (talk) 22:01, 3 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment, it seems like I need to list the scholarly sources so it's more apparent that this is not just a fleeting incident, etc., and that GNG has been met if nothing else.: Sportfan5000 (talk) 21:01, 4 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Freccero, Carla. "They are all sodomites!." Gender and September 11: A Roundtable: “They are all sodomites!” Signs 28.1 (2002): 453-455. This piece from the Chicago Journal, discusses, "Two images: a cartoon of Osama bin Laden being sodomized by a US bomb with a picture of the penetrated twin towers in the background, and a news shot of a bomb headed for Afghanistan with the words “High Jack this Fags” scrawled on it."
  • Endsj⊘, D. Ø. "The queer periphery: Sexual deviancy and the cultural understanding of space." Journal of homosexuality 54.1-2 (2008): 9-20. The fag bomb is included as part of "The association of normative sexuality with the geographical center and sexual deviancy with the geographical periphery represents a pattern of thinking that has stayed with us in different guises throughout history. The article traces this pattern and some of its complex ramifications from the ancient Greeks to the present."
  • Pascoe, C. J. "Notes on a Sociology of Bullying: Young Men's Homophobia as Gender Socialization." QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking 1 (2013): 87-103. Discusses the image as part of homophobia being a feature of adult masculinity.
  • Francis, John. "Hegemonic Sexuality: Theorizing Sexualities in the Discourses of Dennis Altman, Joseph Massad, and Jasbir Puar: Gender Theory and the Study of Asia, Africa and the Middle East." discusses the image in light of homo-nationalism, and possibly recasting those being bombed as inferior, as a gay person. "While writing “High Jack This Fags” on a missile could have suggested homophobia before 9/11, the use of “fag” in this case is less invoking a homophobia and more suggesting the shift of Arabs into the space of subordination formerly occupied by gay identities. Queer then becomes not an expression of identity against the hetero/homo axis, but the Muslim terrorist who is “feminized, stateless, dark, perverse, pedophilic, disowned by family.” He cites Puar, J. K., 2006. Mapping US Homonormativities. Gender, Place & Culture, 13(1), pp. 67-88. who makes similar comparisons.
  • Journal for Crime, Conflict and the Media 1 (1) 23-36 ISSN 1741 1580, The Media War on Terrorism1 Philip Hammond.Discusses the incident as part of exploring how militaries, especially the US, manipulate media messages, and what part the media plays in being complicit.
  • Harrington, Carol. "Sexual Violence as a Political Technology." discusses the massage as part of the "sharp" military gender binary, "which Mitchell argues is essential to attracting men to the military creates cohesion across the centralised hierarchy necessary to military organisation. While accepting the individual subordination required by military units, soldiers are also constructed as powerful men: military culture underlines masculine power through emphasis on men’s superiority to and control over the feminine. The existence of this sharp gender binary is clear from reflections by and about soldiers from a variety of contexts, for example ‘Hans’ reflects on his time in the South African Defence Force: ‘the fit virile male is the archetype in the army, who can take punishment and keep going ... [w]omen are definitely considered one of the lowest forms of life in the army’. We can also see it in the way military actions and weapons are imagined in terms of phallic power, targets are feminised and penetrated,"
  • Owens, Patricia. "Torture, Sex and Military Orientalism." Third World Quarterly 31.7 (2010): 1041-1056. This articles discusses the message as part of the debate about "recent American torture practices, particularly the use of discredited anthropological texts to validate long-held Orientalist assumptions about the sexual vulnerability of Muslim males. Such practices are placed in an historical context of older imperial constructions of sexually deviant Muslims as well as of more general forms of gendered and sexual subordination required for war. American torturers intended to produce very particular objects of torture—ones willing and able to confess their ‘true’ orientation in terms of a binary hetero/homo sexual code established in 19th-century Europe."
  • Morris, Scott. "Literacy as resistance." (2009). Discusses the LGBT community response, and how it was limited to only certain aspects of the situation. "When tolerance is reduced to learning how to be polite so as not to be divisive and internalizing narrow codes of acceptance to minimize bigotry (both important goals that should not be minimized), institutions of power are too frequently left outside the investigation and the structural causes of the derogation and degradation of fellow humans are left intact."
  • Lipkin, Ed D. Beyond diversity day: A Q&A on gay and lesbian issues in schools. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003. Discusses this incident as part of its look at homophobic bigotry and heterosexist systems.
  • Puar, Jasbir K. Terrorist assemblages: Homonationalism in queer times. Duke University Press, 2007. (noted above in "Hegemonic Sexuality: Theorizing Sexualities in the Discourses of Dennis Altman, Joseph Massad, and Jasbir Puar: Gender Theory and the Study of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.")
  • Tulin, Edward L. "Where Everything Old Is New Again-Enduring Episodic Discrimination Against Homosexual Persons." Tex. L. Rev. 84 (2005): 1587. Discusses the incident in the national treatment of LGBT in recent years, especially in mass media culture.
  • Harris, Stanley E. "From shame to pride: History of recovering from Judaeo-Christian homophobia." Journal of Bisexuality 9.2 (2009): 141-186. Discusses the incident in light of the changing attitudes towards male rape in Judaeo-Christian culture's militaries. "As the culture has become more secure during the last 500 years, its homophobia has slowly subsided. By the late 20th century, the culture had become secure enough to tolerate the emergence of the gay identity movement. Still, Western culture remains homophobic enough to polarize most male bisexuality into straight and gay identities and lifestyles. As cultural recovery from homophobia progresses, bisexuality may gain more acceptance."
  • Jackson, Paul. One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the military during World War II. McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP, 2010. Discusses this incident as part of a look at how gays in the military have fared since World War II.
  • Lamonte, Jon. Attitudes in Britain towards its Armed Forces and war 1960-2000. Diss. University of Birmingham, 2011. Discusses the incident in context of comparing how British society and military looked at LGBT issues in the military, as compared to the U.S.
  • Mann, Bonnie. Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessons from the War on Terror. Oxford University Press, 2014. Explores this incident as part of the desire to cast American armed forces as superior in every way. Even at the expense of insetting LGBT people, and those being bombed.

• Keep While a couple of the sources above are more "mentions" than discussions (e.g., Harrington), some are not (e.g., Jackson), and are sufficient to demonstrate not only GNG but also to show a continuing return to this incident in works made years after the event (e.g., Mann), showing WP:PERSISTENCE, WP:GEOSCOPE and WP:DIVERSE, with moderate but not enormous WP:DEPTH. I don't see a lot of WP:LASTING, but on the whole, this is enough. --j⚛e decker^talk 20:31, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• I didn't see any mention of "fag bomb", did you?  Unscintillating (talk) 22:38, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • A better title might very well be apporpriate, yes. --j⚛e decker^talk 02:14, 10 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep I would have thought this trivial, but from the material presented it seems to be the sort of thing that is referred to enough that people would expect to find it here. DGG ( talk ) 23:49, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Understandably, reasonable people would be reticent to use the title "Fag Bomb" in their reporting and research. It may make sense to move the article or at least ensure redirects got readers here. Sportfan5000 (talk) 03:50, 10 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.