Twenty years after the publication of A Place at the Table, our friend Bruce Bawer ruminates on the meaning of “gay culture”:
When gays, socially speaking, are in the process of being integrated into the mainstream, and when the cultural works created by and/or about gay people are no longer consumed exclusively or even mostly by gay people, what does this say about what gay culture has become? In what ways, moreover, has the mainstreaming of openly gay culture (as opposed to the covertly gay culture of the Noel Cowards and W.H. Audens that was always a part of the mainstream) changed the mainstream? These are big—and fascinating—questions, and the answers are elaborate and complicated.
The IGF blog (and the “Culture Watch” column that preceded it, syndicated in a few brave gay papers), had its origins in the gay culture struggles that Bruce has analyzed so well.
15 Comments for “Gay Culture, Then and Now”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I suspect that there have always been many gay cultures in our country.
I’ve been reading about regional gay cultures on and off over the last few years — Will Fellows’ “Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest“, which describes the “gay culture” in which my friends and I came up, is an example. As I’ve been reading about different regional gay cultures during different periods, I’m struck by both the commonality and diversity of our experience.
I acknowledge that there is a single “gay culture” in one sense — the national gay media, the literati, and so on, that influences how straight folk think about us and how we think about ourselves — but I wonder if the attempt to identity “gay culture” (as opposed to “gay cultures”) is a productive intellectual exercise.
posted by Houndentenor on
Even the “gay culture” you mention is fragmented. There are about as many ways to be gay as there are gay people. That is true of pretty much every minority group. Yes, there is often a period for a year or two after coming out when people often go super-gay, that doesn’t usually last all that long. Yes, we continue to read about gay issues, subscribe to a periodical or news group, watch some gay themed movies, etc. but hardly any of us live in a gayborhood.
What is true is that our lazy media likes to have one or two spokespeople and organizations to talk to (because going out and talking to real Americans is too much work and frankly icky…that’s not just for gays but any group) and then pretend that those views are representative. Occasionally someone does a good job and even acknowledges the diversity in lifestyles and opinions within the gay community, but since our lazy media prefers soundbites over in-depth discussions, Americans are almost always left with distorted ideas of what is really going on. I routinely hear the most ridiculous comments about gay rights or gay marriage made by people who have no idea what the law is or what is going on with various lawsuits. I still have to explain to people on a weekly basis (at least) that in most states it’s perfectly legal to fire someone for being gay. People don’t know and the news media is more interested in the latest tragedy to exploit than covering what is going on in our country.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I routinely hear the most ridiculous comments about gay rights or gay marriage made by people who have no idea what the law is or what is going on with various lawsuits.
Michael and I hear reasonably frequently: “I just assumed you guys were married. You mean you can’t get married? Why not?”
It is ridiculous, and I mean that in both contexts.
I will say this, though.
Almost everyone in our community, a rural Wisconsin town of about 2,500, treats us and the other gay couples who live here just the same as if we were married. And when local young men, both from farm families, became a couple and combined the farms, people talked about what a good couple they were.
That’s one of the advantages of living in a small town. People come to terms. The culture is way ahead of the law.
posted by Jorge on
Yes, there is often a period for a year or two after coming out when people often go super-gay, that doesn’t usually last all that long.
(Thank God, my “super-gay” phase is over and done with, and thank God it was so underwhelming, just like everything else about me.)
posted by Houndentenor on
From the film “Broken Hearts League”, John Mahoney’s character says: “Everyone can’t be beautiful. Everyone can’t be the same, Patrick. Some people are just gay and average. We’re the strongest I think.”
posted by Jorge on
It’s enough to say that when I read that book about 3-5 years ago, I had such a natural agreement with it that I found it unbelievably boring. Someday, gay will be boring.
This is such an uplifting read for me. I was starting to worry that with all this talk about “equal rights” compared to other people, that “the gay community” is losing sight of what is important in each life. I see that is not possible in a culture that equates homosexuality with the mundane. Not possible if people imagine getting married from their teens. These steps away from faithlessness are invisible to politics–Mr. Bawer noted that these trends happened despite the fact that his book was attacked by mainstream gay publications. It will be a social, rather than political revolution.
I should be able to understand how that happened but I find that I am drawing a blank.
posted by Houndentenor on
What happened is that many gay people aspired to get married, settle down and raise a family. Not all, of course. Plenty of straight people don’t want that either. But a great many did and it came up in conversations even way back when I was first coming out. What people wanted had to change because they were gay and they felt some loss. Some stayed in the closet to have those things. Some came out later in life and some are still there. But many decided to find a partner and raise children. That’s what they did and the law is just now catching up with what people have been doing for several decades. I have a friend who is grown with two kids who was raised by his mom and her lesbian partner. Perhaps these folks preferred staying under the radar because it was dangerous to be too public with their family arrangement but they were right there in the burbs raising kids just like their neighbors. It’s the biggest ugly secret of the gay community: we are just as boring as everyone else. We always were. Yes a few go-go boys like to dance in speedos on a parade float once a year. but the vast majority of gay people work and socialize and have families and are pretty much like straight people except for what they do with their junk.
posted by Jorge on
I should frame that.
Loss… mitigated. Hmm! Yes, I like that idea.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The IGF blog (and the “Culture Watch” column that preceded it, syndicated in a few brave gay papers), had its origins in the gay culture struggles that Bruce has analyzed so well.
I took the time a year or so ago to read the seminal posts on IGF, many of which were “reprints” of columns and articles from Culture Watch and other similar commentaries.
The “gay culture struggle” most discussed in those articles was the struggle between sexual promiscuity and sexual fidelity, and the between gays and lesbians who believed in traditional values, as embodied in marriage at the time, and gays and lesbians who rejected the marriage model and wanted to develop other norms. We see echoes of that discussion in IGF even now, long after the marriage model has become the standard, if not exclusive, expectation for gay and lesbian relationships.
Along those lines, the New York Times has an interesting article this morning about the young stalwarts of traditional marriage. Among the things said is:
What fascinates me is that none of these youngsters realize that excluding gays and lesbians from the marriage contract sends exactly the opposite message, as Jon Rauch pointed out in his brilliant 2004 book.
When you fail to encourage values of “monogamy, sexual exclusivity and permanency” in marriage for gays and lesbians, you are telling young straights between the lines that those values are not important enough to set as the gold standard. When you link marriage to childbearing rather than child-rearing, and insist that gays and lesbians raise children outside of marriage, you are telling young straight people between the lines that it is okay to raise children outside of marriage.
The culture of the social conservatives is so focused on excluding gays and lesbians from marriage that they don’t see where their arguments take them. Some day, some of them will wake up and see that it is they, not us, that are working to destroy what used to be a cultural norm: “If you want to have sex and live together, get married. If you are raising children, stay married.“
posted by Jorge on
……..
Hmmm…..
It’s poorly-disguised religion.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
What’s “poorly-disguised religion”? Our cultural values, whatever they may be from time to time?
Probably, but you can turn the telescope around, Jorge, and as easily make the argument that religion is poorly-disguised cultural norms as you can make the argument that cultural values are poorly-disguised religion. Both are likely accurate. Religion grows out of culture; culture grows out of religion. It works together, a cycle that goes round and round.
That’s why I think our founding fathers looked toward reason, rather than religion, as the foundation of our republic, and why the “common good” is a better standard for law than so-called “moral values” of this or that religion.
posted by Clayton on
“In redefining marriage to include same-sex couples, what you’re doing is you’re excluding the norm of sexual complementarity,” said Mr. Anderson, the Heritage Foundation fellow. “Once you exclude that norm, the three other norms — which are monogamy, sexual exclusivity and permanency — become optional as well.”
I’ve got a newsflash for Mr. Anderson: heterosexual couples have regarded monogamy, sexual exclusivity and permanency as optional for quite some time. Witness conservative standard bearers such as David Vitter, Newt Gingrich, and Rush Limbaugh. Witness the divorce rate, which was already hovering around 50%, even before same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts.
posted by Houndentenor on
LOL. Let’s think about this. If adultery were ever truly rare, why would there be such a loud prohibition against it? Obviously it’s something people have always done. Divorce also existed in the ancient world, otherwise why would Jesus mention it in the gospels? It was already a thing even back then.
What strikes me as bizarre is this notion that people only had missionary position heterosexual between-spouses sex up until the “sexual revolution”. It’s nonsense. But that’s what we get in a country as ignorant of history as it is of science, literature and just about every other subject. None of this is new. Other than gays coming out of the closet and divorce becoming easier to obtain, the only real innovations in human sexuality in the last tens of thousands of years are personal ads and hook-up apps.
posted by TomJeffersonIII on
I just read ‘A Place At The Table’ (got it off a friend of mine who had bought it back in 1995). Actually, I would have to say that its got many very valid/good points.
Yes, their is not some “monolithic” gay or straight “life-style” and, yes, society does subject people to silly (if not stupid) stereotypes and peer pressure to prove that you are a “real man”, a “real woman”, a “real gay man” or a “real gay woman’.
The problem, I suppose, is that I read this book after I had read this earlier (frankly, lame-ass) comments about immigrants and Muslim people.
In “Place” he comes off as a pragmatic, reasonable, pro-HRC/New Democrats type of man. Frankly, he comes off as a much different person when it starts talking about immigration and Islam.
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