The Engineer also Muses

I somehow managed to get two (count ‘em, two!) items into the USU publication, The Bull, this week, which was very exciting.

The first was an article I’d written about homophobia in Engineering. It’s hardly Walkly-award winning stuff. And then it was published under “Bullshit of the week”, which I think is meant to be their column like The Heckler in The Herald, but does seem to carry the “You’re crapping on about something we all know is wrong” connotation.

Are All Engineers Homophobic?

Everyone has a variety of identities. I’m three things: I’m a postgraduate, meaning that I love university so much that I never want to grow up and leave; I’m an engineer, with a love for nerdy science things and an obscure degree of pedantism; and I’m queer.

As an engineering student for the past four-and-a-half years, I’ve experienced the Faculty in all its glory; but my friends across the university often state that engineers are all sexist, homophobic conservatives. Is this popular perception of engineers legitimate?

Latent homophobia does exist. I was discussing a forum that I attended during WYD with a Catholic Engineering friend; after I mentioned that it was about the place of homosexuals in the Church, he flinched and avoided looking at me for the remainder of the conversation.

I’ve heard of a more severe case of homophobia, and indeed harassment, of a gay engineer at another university. However, I have not been witness to blatant homophobia from any of my friends or colleagues. On the whole, the faculty has been very progressive with its views towards womyn and queers.

I can name a dozen queer engineers without batting an eyelid. Even among the postgraduates, we are not alone. Queers in engineering are beginning to fi nd their place, and as many of my gay friends in the faculty will attest, their private lives do not need to be suppressed at university.

As a tutor, my students have always known I’m queer. I’ve never told them, but several are my “friends” on Facebook, and can see my relationship status and preference. None have ever expressed a problem with it. And why should they? I’ve helped them through enough projects and sticky spots.

So, why do people perceive engineering as homophobic? In industry, life is quite different to the days of the old university yard. Engineering is traditionally seen as the domain of the manly man: blue boiler suits, yellow hard hats, spanners in hand. However, the times, as they say, are a-changin’. A close female friend works frequently on offshore oil rigs and is amazed at
the respect she receives. Working for a mining company last year, I noticed that homophobia was never blatantly evident in my colleagues, as may have been expected in the past.

This is not true across the board. The Gay Engineer, an article in the American Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ publication, Spectrum, (February 2005), highlights that engineers often don’t feel comfortable discussing their private lives at work. In America, you can still be fired for being gay in more than 30 states which lack anti-discrimination laws for queers.

Back on Darlington Campus, what is the perception of queers in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies? From my experience, the philosophy is pretty much “live and
let live”. Whilst I don’t agree with many elements of that, it does mean that we all just get on with it and try to digest all the information about the tops and bottoms of distillation, dykes
and their impact on structures, male and female couplings, and how to brew a perfect beer.

The second was a review of Maurice (1971) by E.M. Forster, which I had only read the introduction for, but managed to nut out 400 words about. I didn’t have time to read the whole book, ok?

For the majority of the queer world, homosexuality had its birth on June 27, 1969. The Stonewall Riots marked the turning point from where queers lived in the underground labyrinth to rightfully fight to claim their place; a battle which still continues. Many are unaware, however, that homosexuality is as old as mankind: with Biblical references such as David and Jonathon; frequent mentions throughout the Greek and Roman Empires; and historical figures including Oscar Wilde, Alexander the Great, Lord Byron, and Leonardo Da Vinci.

E.M. Forster is best known for his work A Passage to India (1924), but Maurice (1971) is a tale he felt he couldn’t tell in his lifetime. First written in 1914, and edited several times until his death in 1970, it tells of the life and loves of Maurice, especially for a friend at University, Clive, and later, for Clive’s gamekeeper, Alec. Coming from a post-Stonewall age, the audiences will still be able to identify with the fact that this is a book about ‘war’, ‘battles’, ‘power’, warriors’, and ‘defiance’ as Maurice struggles to be gay in a world opposing dissenters. Maurice attempts initially to defy his desires and “go straight”, before resigning himself to his fate. Foster focuses upon these relationships.

There are two elements which need to be considered when reading Maurice. The first is that while modern audiences consider the city to be a refuge, Forster portrays London to be more like a prison, where Maurice is expected to act in a manner befitting his class. Second, Maurice is predominantly about class. A Pre-World War I world saw distinct divisions between the classes. Class was as much a part of a person as their physical features and, indeed, their sexual identity. David Leavitt’s introduction in the Penguin Classics edition is highly recommended.

In this reviewer’s opinion, this book is suggested to any fan of gay literature. It provides such a different outlook to the modern tales, and, whilst occasionally heavy going, is fascinating to read about life for gay men nearly 100 years ago.

Ffeel free to grab a copy around Sydney Uni or have a look at the link up there.