Originally Posted by
Rex G
Thanks.
Sensitivity training is a fact of life. I have, however, seen the other side of things. While I was attending the academy, there was a persistent rumor that there was a gay male cadet. Some decided that gay male cadet was me. There was minor teasing, which I thought to be just minor hazing. The serious stuff started when I was going through Field Training. To make a long story short, during the Evaluation Phases, my fair Evaluators outnumbered the hostile one.
How does one disprove a negative? One tactic was to carry a .44 Magnum, S&W Model 629 duty revolver. Because an N-frame is just a bit too big for my hand, especially when reaching the face of the standard wide trigger, for a properly stable DA pull, I used what trainers now call an “h” grip, which concentrates the recoil into the base joint of the thumb. After one year of sworn service, I was eligible to carry an auto, so briefly switched to 9mm HK P7, to allow my hand and wrist to heal. HK being a prestigious brand, it seemed manly enough. Within a year, I reverted to a revolver, though a .41 Magnum, with a thin trigger, the trigger face dressed-down for a shorter reach, and skimpy grips. This allowed a proper grip on the weapon, but nothing to cushion the recoil. All of this acting tough had the long-term effect of tenderizing my right hand and wrist. By 2011, .40 S&W was painful to shoot. By this year, 9mm, fired from a G19, is painful to shoot, and not just painful, but producing noticeable swelling.
Well, back to sensitivity training. By some time the late Eighties, I was helping teach what we now call sensitivity training to the academy cadets. No gay/lesbian officers were willing to be “out,” at the time, so a sergeant, who probably knew about my experience with discrimination, asked me to help with this training. (Notably, this was before the gay/lesbian community had accepted the true transgender community. Gay males had been dressing in drag at parades and festivals for a long time, already, but that was largely a form of irreverance, not because they identified as transgender.)