SIMULATED SODOMY AND OTHER FORMS OF HETEROSEXUAL

Abstract

From August to November 1991, Joseph Oncale, a married, heterosexual father of two, worked on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. He quit his job, however, after two of his co-workers restrained him in the shower and forced a bar of soap into his anus while threatening to rape him.' An automotive mechanic named Mark McWilliams reported to work each day to face not only constant teasing about his sex life and inability to "get" a woman, but also physical harassment. His co-workers exposed their genitals to him, placed a condom in his food, flicked their tongues at him while saying, "I love you, I love you," tied his hands behind his back, blindfolded him, forced him to his knees, and simulated sexual acts by inserting a finger in his mouth and a broomstick between his buttocks. Over the course of two years, Phil Quick, a welder and machine operator at a plant in Iowa, was subjected to a practice of "bagging," common in his workplace, in which men would grab and squeeze other men's testicles. Quick, a heterosexual, endured repeated homophobic epithets and over one hundred bagging incidents, including one in which a coworker restrained Quick's arms while another grabbed and squeezed Quick's testicles hard enough to produce bruising and swelling. During the summer of 1992, the city of Belleville, Illinois, hired J. Doe and H. Doe, two heterosexual, sixteen-year-old twin brothers, for summer maintenance jobs. When they arrived, Jeff Dawe, a heterosexual "former Marine of imposing stature," began picking on H. Doe, who wore an earring. He called him "queer," "fag," and "bitch;" questioned whether he was "a boy or a girl;" threatened to take H. "out to the woods" and "get him in the ass;" and on one occasion grabbed H.'s testicles.