The End of Gay Couture
Gay Republican Andrew Sullivan has written an interesting article for The New Republic magazine and posted it on his blog. Entitled The End of Gay Culture & The Future of Gay Life, it celebrates the increasing openness of society to gays and lesbians and the waning of monolithic gay culture as a result.
I have a lot of time for Andrew Sullivan. Back in Dublin I always read his columns on US politics in the News Review section of the Sunday Times. He was an open gay republican way back when to be such was to expose yourself to despisement both from fellow gays and fellow republicans. The fact that this is no longer the case is indeed proof for the case he makes in this article. However, I am not as optimistic as him in drawing my conclusions.
I agree with a lot of what the article says as it simply chronicles developments that are plain to the eye: "gayness" has been assimilated into western culture at a remarkable pace over the last 15 to 20 years. This is the age of the ubermedia. Their power to influence us and set agenda is unquestionable. If earlier generations grew up having "gay" represented to them by John Inman`s camp character in Are You Being Served, today`s young gay people are spoiled for choice when it comes to gay representation on TV. Shows are now built around 1 or more than 1 gay character or person;. Hollywood`s frequent high-school movies have at least one stock gay adolescent, and reality shows have shown how openly gay people can win the hearts of a viewing nation - a stark contrast to times when closeted gay people in the public eye won the people`s affirmation only to have it coldly rescinded when their sexuality was salaciously leaked by capricious media. Back then the public would righteously nurse its sense of disgust and betrayal while at the same time feeling vindicated in its belief that all homosexuals were devious.
The new fondness of the media for us gays, I think, has its origins in another happy development: the modern family`s ability to embrace (or at least to come to some sorts of terms with) a son or daughter`s homosexuality. Coming out to parents these days, thankfully, is more likely to produce sadness about not having grandchildren, anxious wondering about what one as a parent did wrong, or, more happily, simple acceptance. Even the most religious of parents manage to produce the words "you`re still our son/daughter and we love you". Banishment and disinheritance are very much untypical reactions these days, although of course they still do happen.
As Sullivan points out, society seems very much to have come to terms with homosexuality and now we homos must be brave and be prepared for the consequences and responsibilites that come with this acceptance.
What I take exception to in Sullivan`s article is its failure to take stock of the extent to which we are indebted and beholden to "heterosexual" society for the freedoms we now enjoy. Sullivan doesn`t seem to consider as serious the still fraught coming out process that gay people still go through. In an update he cites as support for his argument a mail from a 20 year old American undergrad who tells him how much support he`s gotten from his straight friends, how little prejudice and rejection he`s experienced, and how irrelevant to his life are those older generations of gay men that went before him. Yet both the author of the letter and its recipient are blithely unaware of the pained psychological process this kid would seem to profess to have gone through in coming out to himself. Sullivan talks up the great number of gay role models that exist for young people coming of age today and the increasingly faceted lifestyles that a young gay person can adopt. Yet this 20 year old tells Sullivan that in becoming aware of his gay feelings he could not accept he was gay because effectively he couldn`t identify with any of the notions of "gayness" that he had. For many people the coming out process is still a deeply psychologically wounding one, regardless of whether you do it at 15, 20 or 25 years of age. What`s more, I would argue that most gay people are not aware of this psychological damage. If there is more space for us in modern society, we still have to traverse a long emotional bridge alone and there`s very little if anything that modern society does for us there.
I agree with Sullivan in so far as assimilation is concerned. Back in university(about 7 years ago now), I was motivated to coordinate a campus-wide Anti-Homophobia campaign to take the place of the traditional Gay Pride week. I came out in my first year of university to all my friends. I didn`t know anybody gay and I could not identify with the luminous pink posters of the LGBT society advertising wine and chocolate evenings and safe-sex classes. My campus,I felt, was a very socially conservative space which could only tolerate a stereotypical representation of gay people. 3 years later, still very much lost in my own personal difficulties in making progress with myself from a developmental and emotional point of view, I approached the LGBT society to ask them if they would be interested in running an anti-homophobia campaign during their traditional Pride week. With them on board, I went to the Students Union. It was obvious to me that the initiative would have to be seen to come from them. This was a student welfare issue. The SU was happy to go along once I looked after the organisation. It would be an anti-homophobia campaign run by the SU in conjunction with the LGBT society. My idea was to run a serious of events during the week in conjunction with other clubs and societies. Thus there would be a literary event with the Lit Soc, debates held in conjunction with the debating societies, a talk on homophobia hosted by the Sociology Society etc. We published a supplement in the university newspaper to announce the campaign and we wrote to all the clubs and societies asking them for permission to include their names on a page wishing the campaign success. Most societies responded favourably. We blanketed the campus with big posters that read "Homophobia Sucks" and distributed thousands of lollipops with the fliers listing the events for the week. Also in the supplement, we asked people to sign up as members of the LGBT society during the week to show their support. In comparison with previous Pride events run in isolation by the LGBT it was a huge success.
My thinking was that people should be able to come out in the social groups that they feel most comfortable in - where their interests lie. A rugby player should be comfortable being an out gay man in the rugby club and a law student likewise in the Law Soc. For me, promoting Pride in your homosexuality amongst people only at an age where they were first becoming aware of it or taking their first steps in exploring it was asking too much. To me an LGBT society didn`t make sense in the way that a debating society or a rugby club did because of course we are so much more than our sexuality.
If in the past coming out of the closet meant simply stepping into a big communal one, these days it`s synonymous with no such separatist action. I think that for many gay people future happiness is index-linked to one`s ability to reconcile one`s pre-coming out life with one`s post-coming out life. In the past, many gays benefited from the strong monolithic gay culture as it helped them either to sever all ties with their past lives or to live two lives simultaneously. These days young people coming out don`t have to sever links or live two lives. Yet I believe they still have problems reconciling the life they lived before coming out with the one they live after coming out. I think the fact that alcohol/drug abuse and addiction stats are higher among gays than straights as well as HIV infection rates is evidence of that failure to reconcile and to take stock of the psychological damage inflicted by coming to terms with being gay.
Sullivan cites the large gay vote received by Bush in 2004 in spite of his gay marriage amendment as proof of a more varied political discourse amongst gays today in comparison with the leftist stance of the monolithic gay culture. I would argue that in many cases - not his own, but in many - it is evidence of low self-esteem and internalised homophobia.
Those of us who`ve had dealings with gay activist organisations will have met those people who have chosen to fight for a cause in order to avoid dealing with their own problems - I would include myself in that group too. These days there are plenty of gay people who want absolutely nothng to do with gay politics and are quite happy living their gay lives in a manner not unlike your average straight person. Nevertheless, I believe that most of these people bear the scars of having come out and even if they haven`t gotten involved in activism to avoid confronting their pain, they have found some other way of not confronting it.
Sullivan is absolutely right in saying things have changed. But the waning of a monolithic gay culture and its giving way to more diverse representations may simply reflect the adaptions made by heterosexual culture and not any key progress made by a gay culture, which in its day failed to capitalise on its strength. To me Sullivan`s narrative is way too linear. It fails to acknowledge any sort of gay sentimental education different to that lived by heterosexuals growing up. Sullivan seems to welcome the change but I wonder if with the waning of the monolith, we didn`t miss some sort of golden opportunity.
I have a lot of time for Andrew Sullivan. Back in Dublin I always read his columns on US politics in the News Review section of the Sunday Times. He was an open gay republican way back when to be such was to expose yourself to despisement both from fellow gays and fellow republicans. The fact that this is no longer the case is indeed proof for the case he makes in this article. However, I am not as optimistic as him in drawing my conclusions.
I agree with a lot of what the article says as it simply chronicles developments that are plain to the eye: "gayness" has been assimilated into western culture at a remarkable pace over the last 15 to 20 years. This is the age of the ubermedia. Their power to influence us and set agenda is unquestionable. If earlier generations grew up having "gay" represented to them by John Inman`s camp character in Are You Being Served, today`s young gay people are spoiled for choice when it comes to gay representation on TV. Shows are now built around 1 or more than 1 gay character or person;. Hollywood`s frequent high-school movies have at least one stock gay adolescent, and reality shows have shown how openly gay people can win the hearts of a viewing nation - a stark contrast to times when closeted gay people in the public eye won the people`s affirmation only to have it coldly rescinded when their sexuality was salaciously leaked by capricious media. Back then the public would righteously nurse its sense of disgust and betrayal while at the same time feeling vindicated in its belief that all homosexuals were devious.
The new fondness of the media for us gays, I think, has its origins in another happy development: the modern family`s ability to embrace (or at least to come to some sorts of terms with) a son or daughter`s homosexuality. Coming out to parents these days, thankfully, is more likely to produce sadness about not having grandchildren, anxious wondering about what one as a parent did wrong, or, more happily, simple acceptance. Even the most religious of parents manage to produce the words "you`re still our son/daughter and we love you". Banishment and disinheritance are very much untypical reactions these days, although of course they still do happen.
As Sullivan points out, society seems very much to have come to terms with homosexuality and now we homos must be brave and be prepared for the consequences and responsibilites that come with this acceptance.
What I take exception to in Sullivan`s article is its failure to take stock of the extent to which we are indebted and beholden to "heterosexual" society for the freedoms we now enjoy. Sullivan doesn`t seem to consider as serious the still fraught coming out process that gay people still go through. In an update he cites as support for his argument a mail from a 20 year old American undergrad who tells him how much support he`s gotten from his straight friends, how little prejudice and rejection he`s experienced, and how irrelevant to his life are those older generations of gay men that went before him. Yet both the author of the letter and its recipient are blithely unaware of the pained psychological process this kid would seem to profess to have gone through in coming out to himself. Sullivan talks up the great number of gay role models that exist for young people coming of age today and the increasingly faceted lifestyles that a young gay person can adopt. Yet this 20 year old tells Sullivan that in becoming aware of his gay feelings he could not accept he was gay because effectively he couldn`t identify with any of the notions of "gayness" that he had. For many people the coming out process is still a deeply psychologically wounding one, regardless of whether you do it at 15, 20 or 25 years of age. What`s more, I would argue that most gay people are not aware of this psychological damage. If there is more space for us in modern society, we still have to traverse a long emotional bridge alone and there`s very little if anything that modern society does for us there.
I agree with Sullivan in so far as assimilation is concerned. Back in university(about 7 years ago now), I was motivated to coordinate a campus-wide Anti-Homophobia campaign to take the place of the traditional Gay Pride week. I came out in my first year of university to all my friends. I didn`t know anybody gay and I could not identify with the luminous pink posters of the LGBT society advertising wine and chocolate evenings and safe-sex classes. My campus,I felt, was a very socially conservative space which could only tolerate a stereotypical representation of gay people. 3 years later, still very much lost in my own personal difficulties in making progress with myself from a developmental and emotional point of view, I approached the LGBT society to ask them if they would be interested in running an anti-homophobia campaign during their traditional Pride week. With them on board, I went to the Students Union. It was obvious to me that the initiative would have to be seen to come from them. This was a student welfare issue. The SU was happy to go along once I looked after the organisation. It would be an anti-homophobia campaign run by the SU in conjunction with the LGBT society. My idea was to run a serious of events during the week in conjunction with other clubs and societies. Thus there would be a literary event with the Lit Soc, debates held in conjunction with the debating societies, a talk on homophobia hosted by the Sociology Society etc. We published a supplement in the university newspaper to announce the campaign and we wrote to all the clubs and societies asking them for permission to include their names on a page wishing the campaign success. Most societies responded favourably. We blanketed the campus with big posters that read "Homophobia Sucks" and distributed thousands of lollipops with the fliers listing the events for the week. Also in the supplement, we asked people to sign up as members of the LGBT society during the week to show their support. In comparison with previous Pride events run in isolation by the LGBT it was a huge success.
My thinking was that people should be able to come out in the social groups that they feel most comfortable in - where their interests lie. A rugby player should be comfortable being an out gay man in the rugby club and a law student likewise in the Law Soc. For me, promoting Pride in your homosexuality amongst people only at an age where they were first becoming aware of it or taking their first steps in exploring it was asking too much. To me an LGBT society didn`t make sense in the way that a debating society or a rugby club did because of course we are so much more than our sexuality.
If in the past coming out of the closet meant simply stepping into a big communal one, these days it`s synonymous with no such separatist action. I think that for many gay people future happiness is index-linked to one`s ability to reconcile one`s pre-coming out life with one`s post-coming out life. In the past, many gays benefited from the strong monolithic gay culture as it helped them either to sever all ties with their past lives or to live two lives simultaneously. These days young people coming out don`t have to sever links or live two lives. Yet I believe they still have problems reconciling the life they lived before coming out with the one they live after coming out. I think the fact that alcohol/drug abuse and addiction stats are higher among gays than straights as well as HIV infection rates is evidence of that failure to reconcile and to take stock of the psychological damage inflicted by coming to terms with being gay.
Sullivan cites the large gay vote received by Bush in 2004 in spite of his gay marriage amendment as proof of a more varied political discourse amongst gays today in comparison with the leftist stance of the monolithic gay culture. I would argue that in many cases - not his own, but in many - it is evidence of low self-esteem and internalised homophobia.
Those of us who`ve had dealings with gay activist organisations will have met those people who have chosen to fight for a cause in order to avoid dealing with their own problems - I would include myself in that group too. These days there are plenty of gay people who want absolutely nothng to do with gay politics and are quite happy living their gay lives in a manner not unlike your average straight person. Nevertheless, I believe that most of these people bear the scars of having come out and even if they haven`t gotten involved in activism to avoid confronting their pain, they have found some other way of not confronting it.
Sullivan is absolutely right in saying things have changed. But the waning of a monolithic gay culture and its giving way to more diverse representations may simply reflect the adaptions made by heterosexual culture and not any key progress made by a gay culture, which in its day failed to capitalise on its strength. To me Sullivan`s narrative is way too linear. It fails to acknowledge any sort of gay sentimental education different to that lived by heterosexuals growing up. Sullivan seems to welcome the change but I wonder if with the waning of the monolith, we didn`t miss some sort of golden opportunity.
posted by purefunction at 4:04 AM
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