IGF CultureWatch

Recent developments in the transgender movement suggest an internal conflict between methods proven successful and misdirected anger that only gets in the way.

On the winning side of the ledger are accomplishments at the state and local level. For example, in the past few weeks, both houses of the New Jersey state legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill to add gender identity and expression to the state's hate crime law and strengthen school anti-bullying policies. This victory is thanks to the efforts of Garden State Equality and Gender Rights Advocacy Association of New Jersey. This illustrates the fact that, as with the fight for marriage equality, the main action currently is in the states, and that is where the bulk of resources need to be directed even as we continue our education efforts nationally.

On the self-defeating side of the ledger is a December letter from Meredith Bacon, board chair of the National Center for Transgender Equality. Speaking for herself, she offered an over-the-top denunciation of the Human Rights Campaign: "NCTE will not work with HRC in the foreseeable future, until the current HRC leadership is completely purged ..." She elaborated, "Not only is Joe Solmonese not to be trusted but neither are the second rank of HRC staff or its Board of Directors or Board of Governors. All of them would have to resign or be fired before we could even contemplate anything like cooperation. In short, NCTE is neither forgiving nor forgetting what HRC and Barney Frank have done to all of us."

To underscore her complete divorce from reality, Bacon also stated, "As long as HRC is controlled by and is dependent upon white, rich, professional gay men, such collaboration may never occur. Getting stabbed in the back is a useful experience only once in a very great while." This combines a tired and gratuitous leftist attack against leading funders of the gay rights movement with a repetition of the lie that disagreement over strategy is a betrayal.

Bacon made an interesting claim: "NCTE and the trans community do not need HRC because the United ENDA coalition has cemented our collaborative relationship with the Task Force, PFLAG, Lambda Legal and 300 other LGBT organizations." This ignores the failure of the United ENDA coalition to sway more than a handful of votes in Congress, as well as the evidence that the gay rank and file strongly disagrees with its all-or-nothing stance. In the left's ideological echo chamber, it is considered self-evident that Barney Frank's successful legislative strategy is somehow the failed one. Earth to United ENDA: Think again. Sen. Ted Kennedy has announced that he will proceed in the Senate with the version of ENDA passed by the House. If that is a sign of failure, let's have more of it.

Unfortunately, Bacon has plenty of company, as shown by the withdrawal of the Massachusetts chapter of the Transgender American Veterans Association from the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition on Jan. 11 after MTPC announced a pledge of $25,000 from HRC. The anti-HRC zealots scornfully reject the civil rights tradition of passing the best achievable bill while continuing to work for further advances.

Disparaging incrementalism and "white, rich, professional gay men" are non-starters. Transgender activists in many states have shown what works: Organizing, educating and focusing on the reality of people's lives. Stories touch people in a way that theory does not. Most Americans believe, at least in the abstract, that all citizens deserve equality under the law. The challenge is to get more Americans to recognize transgenders as their neighbors instead of as an abstracted and demonized "other." This crucial task is undermined by those transgenders (by no means all) who walk around with chips on their shoulders. If you want to insist that your anger is more than justified, I cannot quarrel with you. But unless that anger is channeled productively, it is no more liberating than that of rioters burning down their own neighborhood.

The potential power of a positive approach is suggested by the headway that Sen. Barack Obama has made as a presidential candidate with his embrace of an inspiring message that transcends the politics of racial guilt-mongering. Is that approach guaranteed to yield quick success? Of course not. Transgenders have a long, hard slog ahead. But centering your message on the arc of history bending toward justice is a damn sight more appealing than insulting your allies both in the LGBT community and in Congress.

Meredith Bacon wrote one thing I agree with, concerning the mixture of insider and outsider strategies: "Both of these strategies are valid and may be complementary as long as we all accept that we are working toward the same goals. Our needs are too important for mutually destructive animosity." She might consider taking her own advice.

When an article about "fruit flies" popped up on a gay website, at first I thought it was about straight women who gravitate toward gay men. (The other, uglier term for such women is "fag hag.")

Alas, the article was referring to actual insects, the annoying little ones that remind you to throw away overripe bananas. Apparently, some researchers at Penn State University have discovered that by getting groups of male flies "drunk" with alcohol fumes, they can induce homosexual behavior. (Just like frat boys.) They observed this behavior in a small transparent chamber, which they called-I am not making this up-a "Flypub."

According to newscientist.com,

"The first time they were exposed to alcohol, groups of male flies became noticeably intoxicated but kept themselves to themselves. But with repeated doses of alcohol on successive days, homosexual courtship became common. From the third day onwards, the flies were forming 'courtship chains' of amorous males."

Yes. And by the fourth day, they were redecorating the Flypub in sleek mid-century modern furniture. By the fifth day, they were serving Cosmopolitans and debating the relative fabulousness of Martha Stewart's new Wedgwood line at Macy's. And so on.

The article continues,

"[Lead researcher Kyung-An Han] argues that the drunken flies provide a good model to explore how alcohol affects human sexual behaviour. While the ability of alcohol to loosen human inhibitions is well known, it is difficult for scientists to study."

Of course it is. Imagine the grant application:

"Describe the proposed methodology."

"Um, well, I'm going to get a bunch of college students drunk and naked, then record their behavior."

Sounds like a shoo-in for funding, no?

It's not that I doubt the merits of such research. Granted, I'm far more interested in figuring out how to keep fruit flies out of my kitchen than how to make them horny. Still, I appreciate the value of scientific inquiry-all else being equal, the more we know about the world, the better.

My problem arises when people start using these studies to draw conclusions about human romantic behavior. While Han has warned against being too quick with such inferences, other researchers and commentators have not been so cautious.

For example, when Austrian researchers in 2005 genetically manipulated a female fruit fly to induce homosexual behavior, Dr. Michael Weiss, chairman of the department of biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University, told the International Herald Tribune, "Hopefully this will take the discussion about [human] sexual preferences out of the realm of morality and put it in the realm of science."

I hope it does no such thing. For two reasons: first, because human sexuality is far richer and more complex than fruit-fly mounting behavior. (Fruit flies don't pout if you don't call the next day-or so I'm told.)

Second, and more generally, because science and morality tell us different things. Science tells us something about why we behave as we do. It does not tell us how we SHOULD behave, which is the domain of morality. Science cannot replace morality or vice-versa.

To put the point another way: while scientific study can reveal the biological origin of our feelings and behaviors, it can't tell us what we should do with them. Should we embrace them? Tolerate them? Change them? Those are moral questions, and simply observing fruit flies-or humans, for that matter-is insufficient to answering them.

But can't these studies prove that homosexual attraction is "natural"? Not in any useful sense. Specifically, not in any sense that would distinguish good feelings and behaviors from bad ones. Discovering the biological origin of a trait is different from discovering its value.

Beyond conflating morality with science, popular commentators on these studies have an unfortunate tendency toward oversimplification.

Consider last year's fruit-fly study at the University of Illinois, which the gay newsmagazine The Advocate announced with the headline, "Study finds gay gene in fruit flies."

Except that it didn't. What the study found was a genetic mutation in fruit flies that rendered them essentially bisexual. Scientists could then switch the flies' behavior between heterosexuality and homosexuality through the use of synapse-altering drugs.

In other words, the study neither found a "gay gene" in fruit flies nor answered any questions about how hardwired or malleable human sexual orientation might be.

Meanwhile, one fruit fly who participated in the Penn State study released the following statement: "Dude, I was so drunk that day-I don't know what happened!"

There seem to be a number of fears-maybe it would be better to call them concerns-out there at the margins of the gay community over research on the origin(s) of homosexuality and the possibility of changing people's sexual orientation. The concern is mainly that the results of such research could be used to prevent or extirpate homosexuality.

I suspect there isn't much anyone can do about such research. Like all research, it is going to continue because people-including most of us who are gay-want to know more about ourselves and about how the world works. But I also feel sure that any concerns are greatly exaggerated.

Take the issue of research into the origins of (causes of, reasons for) male homosexuality. That would be interesting to know, just as it would be interesting to know the equally mysterious cause(s) of heterosexuality. But scientists aren't quite researching the right thing. Most researchers seem very confused about what homosexuality/homosexual desire actually is. And most seem overly impressed with the fact that most women are also attracted to men and so draw the logically invalid conclusion that male homosexuality must be caused by something female in gay men-as if desire for men can have only one cause.

Clever studies that manage to change an insect's or animal's overall behavior from male typical to female typical are not about homosexuality at all. Male homosexual behavior has no particular connection to acting like a female. It is not thinking or feeling or acting like a woman. It is about a man (whether top or bottom) being attracted as a man to other men. (In some Third World countries some gay men do imitate women as a signaling device, but that practice is being abandoned with the worldwide spread of gay liberation.)

Scientists should be doing research into the origins of homosexual desire. Homosexual desire is largely a cognitive or conceptual matter, so the origin(s) have to be sought in the cognitive (even esthetic) values of the gay individual.

What reasons are there, we might want to know, that result in our being attracted not just to men generically but attracted to (and having a physical response to) a particular man across a crowded room, and not have any response to other men (or women) in the room? What meaning does this person's appearance-and, later, other qualities-hold for us such that we feel desire?

Researchers who try to study twins to find genetic causes forget that twins raised together share a common upbringing, often look alike and have similar personalities, leading parents and others to treat them similarly, generating a similar value system and a similar response to the world in both twins. Even twins reared apart often look alike and/or share common physical capacities, leading people to treat them similarly. Twin studies are also plagued by recruitment biases-using twins who know of their twin's sexuality, which introduces a bias right away.

Studies of the human brain-including some of the most widely publicized-have not been replicated and have been vigorously criticized for methodological flaws and for ignoring the large number of exceptions and counter-examples. The same is true of "gene studies" which also depend on assuming an implausibly low percentage of gay men, to say nothing of not facing the problem of people who feel both homosexual and heterosexual desire.

So I don't mind research on homosexuality. It is just that most of it is pointless, misdirected and based on false assumptions. If researchers ever find the reasons why some men are gay (and others heterosexual), that will be interesting to know. But there is no reason to think that will enable anyone to expunge homosexual desire. The vast number of elements that go into producing anyone's personality and cognitive value system are too varied and too little understood for anyone to be able to control or change.

In fact, most of the studies of people ("ex-gays") who claim to have changed their sexuality have serious methodological problems, from recruitment bias to insufficient follow-up, to a failure to rigorously cross-examine interviewees (such as Kinsey did), to a failure to define what changing "sexual orientation" actually means. It doesn't mean just a change in behavior. It has to mean a change in desire.

Perhaps the best recent book on the topic is Ex-Gay Research, edited by Jack Drescher and Kenneth Zucker (Haworth Press, 2006). It consists of a large number of commentaries, most skeptical, on the controversial study by Robert Spitzer of men and women who claimed they had (more or less) changed their sexual orientation. It is an excellent introduction to the basic issues involved.

My grandmother, then a 16-year-old Polish Jew, came to America in 1910 and never looked back. Neither did her son, despite vestigial anti-Semitism early in what became a flourishing legal career. Nor did I, her grandson-not, at least, on account of being Jewish. The experience of anti-Semitism has been as unknown to me in the United States as it was ubiquitous to my European forebears.

To be an American homosexual, however, is more complicated. Few of us feel or want to feel anything but American; but many of us, perhaps most, have at one time or another looked envyingly at Europe.

Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain allow gay marriage (as do Canada and South Africa). Seven European countries offer nationally recognized civil unions, which are almost the same as marriage, and five offer domestic-partner status. The United States, by contrast, allows same-sex couples to marry in a single, relatively small state: Massachusetts. A few other states offer civil unions or domestic-partner programs. Most states, however, ban same-sex marriage and, often, civil unions.

The federal government in Washington affords no recognition of same-sex couples at all. Heterosexual Americans can obtain residency for their foreign partners for the price of a $25 marriage license; countless gay Americans cannot get residency for their partners at any price. To stay together, more than a few same-sex couples live in exile abroad-often in Europe.

The litany goes on. Nineteen European countries-plus Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand and South Africa-allow homosexuals to serve openly in their armed forces; America joins Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia (among others) in banning gay military service. No less important, millions of Americans, particularly but by no means only on the religious right, continue to anathematize homosexuality and campaign for public policies that do the same. In much of Europe, by contrast, homosexuality is just not very controversial. In America, gay people have achieved a large measure of toleration and respect, but being noncontroversial-well, that seems far beyond our reach.

Yet, despite all that, America has some cause for pride, straight as well as gay. To say America is "behind" Europe on gay equality is to overlook that America's coming to terms with homosexuality is a very different kind of project than Europe's, because America is a very different kind of place. In Europe, acceptance of homosexuality is by and large an afterthought in the larger movement toward modernization and secularism. Europe, though more religious than the common U.S. stereotype allows, is decidedly less pious than America-and homosexuality, though condemned by the Abrahamic faiths, poses no conflict at all with secular modernity. If gay people are stable, productive, law-abiding citizens, what could anyone have against them?

Much of Europe has also embraced what American observers sometimes call a deinstitutionalized view of the family, in which all kinds of family structures enjoy equal claim on public recognition and social resources. Marriage, in such settings, is increasingly a mere formality. Children in Denmark and Sweden, for example, are less likely than American kids to be raised by married couples. Yet Danish and Swedish children are more likely to be raised by both their parents. Something other than marriage is the glue holding these Northern European families together. In a post-marital culture, same-sex marriage looks like a lifestyle choice, not a threat.

In short, Europe is dissolving many of the traditions that make homosexuality seem morally and socially problematic. America is not. America has embarked on a harder, perhaps more ambitious, project, which is to reconcile homosexuality with traditional moral scruples and social structures.

The United States is a country of immigrants, of transients, of ethnic diversity. Identity comes less from language, ancestry and birthplace than from creed, community and culture. Americans tend to understand who they are in terms of what they believe and who they believe it with. Millions ground themselves in the Bible, in faith communities or in generations-old unwritten norms, which is why so-called "social issues" like homosexuality and abortion are so central to U.S. politics (mystifyingly so, from a European point of view). This may be good, it may be not so good, but it is a fact, probably a necessary fact in so fluid and diverse a society.

And therefore it is also a fact that America cannot just "outgrow" or "move beyond" its conflicts over homosexuality. America will have to reach a new understanding with homosexuality, one that squares it with the claims of both civic equality and social tradition.

For gay Americans, the bad news is that this reconciliation is a difficult and slow process, the work of generations. The good news is that the work is proceeding apace, faster than I once believed possible.

I was born in 1960, a time when homosexuals were America's vampires: pale, sinister creatures with warped souls and insatiable appetites who lurked in a nighttime underworld and sucked society's lifeblood. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s and early 90s, terrible though it was, helped transform us to mortals. The country saw us bleed and die; it watched as we cared for each other when too often even our own relatives would not. Now, as same-sex love and commitment-to each other and to children-comes front and center, the country is starting to see us as families.

Just a decade ago, same-sex marriage was a nutty joke, a contradiction in terms. Today (according to recent polling by the Pew Research Center) more than a third of Americans support it, and a majority support civil unions. Millions of Americans have come to accept the dignity and morality of homosexual love and commitment, even if they have trouble with gay sex per se. No less important, most gay and straight Americans who support same-sex marriage do so because they believe in marriage, not because they want to dethrone it.

Those who dismiss America as "behind" Europe on social issues often fail to appreciate where America is coming from, and how far it has traveled. Where gay equality is concerned, you can call the United States the most laggard of major secular societies; or you can call it the most progressive of great traditionalist cultures. Or, most accurately, you can say it continues to go its own way by working out how to be both at once. Whatever you call it, I would not trade it.

I just finished reading an engrossing book titled "The Age of the Bachelor" by Howard Chudacoff. It details the development of a specifically bachelor-oriented culture in major U. S. cities between 1880 and 1930, suggesting why it developed, how extensive it was, and what institutions grew up to service its needs.

Some of the reasons for its development include the rise in the average age of marriage, the rapid increase in immigration, and the difficulty many men working low wage jobs would have had supporting a family. But more important was the development of institutions to meet the needs of single men for meals, housing, companionship and entertainment--thus making it possible for increasing numbers of men to lead a comfortable and satisfying life without any need for marriage.

The extensive array of primarily male institutions that developed or expanded to meet bachelors' living and socializing needs included rooming houses, cafes, saloons, barbershops (given the lack of hot water for shaving in most rooming houses), pool halls, tailor shops, bathhouses (no hot water for bathing either), all-male social clubs and fraternal organizations (Elks, Odd Fellows), vaudeville theaters and music halls, participant and spectator sports, and "red-light districts."

The newly developed YMCAs might offer any or all of the following amenities: rooms for rent, cafeteria and lunch counter, barbershop, gym, swimming pool, shoeshine stand, telephones, employment service, laundry room, game room, newsstand, and even entertainment in the evenings.

There are only a few incidental mentions of gay men in the book, but it seems obvious that some of those bachelors (15 to 20 percent?) were gay and that bachelor culture enabled gay men to meet one another and explore their lives with a new freedom. In some ways the book can serve as a prologue to George Chauncey's "Gay New York"--and gay Boston, gay Chicago, and other major cities where bachelor culture created the conditions for the first wave of gay community.

For instance, not only did primarily bachelor social institutions enable gay men to find one another more easily, but some rooming houses and YMCAs allowed residents to take guests to their rooms. Some bathhouses turned a blind eye to patrons who engaged in sex and some bathhouse employees must have been available for "massages." And there must have been young gay or bisexual men in any of these environments who were willing to engage in sex for a small fee. For much of this we have to make educated guesses but Chudacoff's book gives us the material to do that.

Although modern technology and a developed economy have enabled today's bachelors to have at home conveniences (telephones, hot water, spectator sports) that were once available only publicly, it is still fascinating to see how many of the social and entertainment institutions of modern singles culture and our gay culture have preserved or replicated in one form or another institutions developed around the turn of the century.

"The Age of the Bachelor" is not a new book. It was published in 1999, so you won't see it listed in any of those best books of 2007 or whenever. But not every good book gets the attention it deserves when it is published. This is particularly true of academic books, which tend to survive--if at all--as footnotes in other books. Yet when you seek them out they can turn out to be highly informative in ways you did not expect.

I've run across several other books in the past year, whether gay-specific or not, that I found worthwhile reading. Among them:

Rictor Norton, "The Myth of the Modern Homosexual" (1997). The title refers to the modern "social constructionist" myth that no men or women had a homosexual consciousness until the late 19th century when the word "homosexual" was coined. Drawing on copious historical research tracing self-understood homosexuals back through the centuries, Norton destroys that myth and restores gay history to its full legitimacy. He also shows how flimsy were the arguments advanced to support the myth.

David M. Friedman, "A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis" (2001). Friedman wittily traces the various ways the male member has been viewed in different times and cultures, including religious, anthropological, psychoanalytic, scientific and feminist approaches, and illustrates how the penis has been symbolized (battering ram, measuring stick, cigar, gear shift) over the years.

Michael Sherry, "Gay Artists in Modern American Culture: An Imagined Conspiracy" (2007). Sherry details the increasing number of gay creative artists in the fields of music, theater, and literature in the 1950s and the growth of a homophobic reaction against them. Critics charged them with shallowness, insincerity, inauthenticity and a distorted view of the world. A fascinating recovery of a dismal episode in recent American history.