'I was outed by two people': Brad Poulter on being in the military as a gay man

When Brad Poulter left Ōamaru to join the navy 20 years’ ago as a young gay man it was initially easy to fit in, he says.

“If you're pretending to fit in, it's pretty easy. You're just one of the lads. And I actually liked that for a while.”

The mask he wore fitted perfectly, he told RNZ’s Nine to Noon.

Veteran Brad Poulter's powerful memoir on serving while gay

Nine To Noon

“And it wasn't until that mask broke that things got really hard.”

It was a mask he’d been learning wear since high school, Poulter says, and joining the navy offered him a route out of small-town life.

“It was a one-way ticket to Auckland. And I think I just needed a big city fast.”

He took to the masculine culture of the navy easily, says Poulter.

“I just got good at it, and it became quite performative, but it got to the point where there were untruths behind that… you’re talking about weekends you never had, that never happened, and that's really hard.”

When Poulter, who writes about his experiences in Built for This : A memoir of masculinity, military service and pride came out it wasn’t “glitter bombs and confetti cannons”, he says.

“I was outed by two people, everything sort of just collapses and you think your life's done, to be honest.

“You think your family's going to disown you, work's going to look at you differently. Your career's going to be stumped. So, I thought for me, that was it. And that was a really, really low point in my life, to be honest.”

Although good did eventually come of his outing, he says.

“So even though I was outed, I could be my authentic self at the end of it all, that's the best gift that could have happened to me, to be honest.”

The book, both a military memoir and his story of navigating military life as a gay man, is unflinching. Poulter relates a traumatic experience of gang rape in it.

It happened in the Pacific when he was serving on The Endeavour. He was in a bar on a Pacific island he has chose not to name in the book when he misread a look.

“This was at a point where I was still figuring out who I was. I hadn't explored who I was as a gay man. And back in the early 2000s, there wasn't apps where you could verify who people were.

“It was this body language and sort of unwritten codes of eye contact that I didn't understand at all.”

He thought he was getting a look returned to him, he says.

“So I followed. And what happened after that was effectively me being gang-raped on a beach by more than one person, which for someone who was exploring who they were messes with your mind in ways that I still really can't comprehend.”

He didn’t tell anyone about it until a friend noticed he was struggling, he says.

“We were sitting in a car park with three of my closest friends and one of them said, 'are you okay?' And I just said, ‘No, no, I'm not’. And I just lost it.”

The incident was eventually reported, and NZDF gave him full support, he says.

“I had full on medical care. I had psychiatric care. I was very well looked after and supported. So I can't credit the defence force enough”.

It took him a long time to come to terms with what happened, he says.

“I think in the last two years writing this, I have almost healed myself, which I didn't think was possible.

“I've been highly medicated most of my life. So, to be in a place where I've reconnected with my family, where, I have really amazing, incredible, solid friendships.

“I've still got a lot of work to do… the emergency kit's still under the seat if I need it, things can go a bit pear-shaped at times, and that's the joy of trauma, it comes back to visit sometimes.”

Poulter, 44, now leads Operation Respect, the NZDF's programme to prevent harmful sexual behaviour, and foster culture, inclusion, and professional conduct.

His career has come full circle, he says.

“It's a dream job for me. It's that whole full circle. I think where someone who was harmed within an organisation now being able to reduce people being harmed, I think that's a real gift."

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