Queers, Trades, and Fairies: A Critique of American Homosexuality
by Samuel Gable

I'm not skilled at interior decorating. I'm not what anyone could call flamboyant, or a particularly snappy dresser. I couldn't tell you much about fashion. I don't like watching Sex and the City-not to say it's a poorly made program, I'm sure it's great for its intended demographic. I'm not oversexed, I'm not juvenile, and I'm not into disco. And yet, I have a boyfriend.

In a better America , it wouldn't be unexpected that I could have none of the stereotypes listed above and still be gay, because, really, there's no reason to assume I am or am not gay by any visible attribute about me. But even I, less than a year ago, would have considered the above stereotypes and declared that I was mostly straight.

Seven months ago I began my journey into American homosexuality, and I've emerged wiser, still gay, and asking: Are we better now? Are gays at all better off in this modern gay-friendly America ? How has the media attention given to gays in recent years helped, or the emergence of gay culture and identity during the 20th century? And most importantly: Why did it take me so long?

The homosexual has been tossed around by mainstream culture throughout the 20th century while America struggled to find a proper box to put the gay people. Homosexuality has been a mental disorder, perverted, immoral, a source of laughter, hatred; by now I know who the gay man is, but the amount of time it took me to accept that I was one is embarrassing. I learned that those idealistic views change when the gay person is you. The negative assumptions about gay men are amplified for the man who is wondering if he's one of them.

It would feel great if my being sexually attracted to men was as profound to me as being an eighth Norwegian, but the reality is the reminders of my difference are inescapable, and the insecurities that stem from that are abounding. It happens all the time: I'm about to tell someone I have a boyfriend-or even more daring for me that I'm gay-and I stop myself. It isn't as though the person I'm talking to will have a negative reaction. At most they'll say, "Oh," followed by a short pause, and then the conversation will continue. There are several reasons for my apprehension, but mainly I'm afraid that the person will group me into a category that I'm not apart of. Yes I'm gay, but I don't feel I fit into the gay stereotype. After I say I'm gay I want to add, "But I'm not totally gay! I'm attracted to women too sometimes!" As if that matters, and anyway, the extent of my heterosexuality is too much of a mystery to me to bother mentioning.

What surprised me most about my anxiety in the last seven months was my parents. I wasn't afraid that they'd reject me for being in a gay relationship. What worried me is that their perception of me would change. To them I'd become that stereotypical gay man, and neither of us had expected that of me. I had always pictured myself becoming a father and husband at some far off date. Granted, it wouldn't be for a while, but it was meant to happen, we all knew it, even if no one said it.

My father is the earliest source I can remember for my knowledge of homosexuals. He would sometimes mention gay men while I grew up, eluding to some time long ago when he knew a few, and even if what he said wasn't outright degrading his comments always felt negative. "Being gay is a choice," he'd say, with a little more than average fervor. Like my father, I was homophobic, and like a lot of gay young men I wanted to chock it up to college-age experimentation. Honestly, who knows if it is partially that, but to assume that I would grow out of it and one day wake up completely heterosexual is ridiculous.

Television and movies must have shaped my view of gay men as much or more than my father, and they definitely didn't do a better job. It's true that gays have gotten more attention in the popular media during my lifetime, but often the coverage isn't as beneficial as one would hope. There seems to be three main representations of gay men that I've witnessed on television since my youth: One, the hilarious dandy whose sexuality is always paired down for humor and rarely depicted in depth so as not to be threatening to the straight audience. This character is really more like an endearing pet than a man (i.e. the character Jack on Will & Grace .) The second type is the tragic martyr who lives a tortured life at the whim of gay discrimination. This character almost always dies at the end of the program or movie; the examples of this type are in nearly every drama with one or more gay characters.

The last representation is most often found in popular news magazines, where the program goes out of its way to show that the gay people depicted are 'just like straight people'. In Suzanne Danuta's book All the Rage , she sums up the mentality perfectly with a quote from the 1993 NBC documentary The Gay 90's: Sex, Power, and Influence , when Maria Shriver says: "Gays and lesbians say they just want to be like the rest of us-health and happiness, a good job, a loving spouse, and more and more to be moms and dads, raising kids, going to the Little League games and the PTA" (76).

That description isn't necessarily wrong, because many gays do want that, but the entire documentary, and many others, strove to only depict that type of homosexual: the non-threatening, sexless, home-owning-dog-walking-gardener gay. Unsurprisingly, I didn't feel while growing up that any of the three gay archetypes described me.

It is surprising, though, that I had so much trouble reckoning with my sexuality considering all the liberalism that surrounding me at school and home, and considering Adam, my first and current boyfriend, who couldn't me a more ideal partner. Before I met Adam, I had been under the impression that I was awful enlightened about gay stereotyping, but however accepting I was of gay people, those assumptions about gay men that I had been exposed to prevented me from accepting who I was.

I've broken up with Adam twice, and during both times something made me decide that I didn't match up with my deeply ingrained image of gay men. And it's true, I'm not that man at all, but what I didn't fully realize yet is that the only thing that defines a gay man is that he is sexually attracted to other men. No matter how intelligent or leftist a person might be, they still have a stereotyped image of gay men in the back of their minds. It was put their by society, and society says that the gay man is another type of person. You can spot him by his behavior: an effeminate shifting of weight to the side while he stands, limps wrists, a weak handshake. Most obvious is the way he talks with a lisp; his lack of masculinity is laughable when parodied on TV.

At times I still say "my friend," instead of "my boyfriend," when talking about Adam to strangers and acquaintances. I wonder why I would be so cautious when pop culture says, 'Gays are in.' Perhaps because afterwards it whispers, 'just don't get carried away.' It feels good to be open-minded, it has become a noble virtue in this country, and many people feel that the virtue is one of theirs. My generation says that everything's ok, but still only under the condition that you're labeled and we know what you are, then, at last, society will be comfortable coexisting with your difference. It's improving, but some things take too long to change.

Although it's hard to imagine, there was time in this country before the straight and gay identities existed. In the earlier 20th century, gays didn't come out of the closet, as in out of isolation, but they came into the gay community, which at the time was thriving in major urban areas (Chauncey 7-8). Before the dawn of modern gay identity the homosexual label was based on demeanor far more than action. Effeminate men who had sex with other men were called queer, but the name didn't relate to the fact that they had same-sex intercourse so much as it had to do with their effeminacy (13). Until the 1930s to 40s, when the Great Depression and Prohibition caused a national tightening of the moral collar, a man who slept with another man might be immoral, but he wasn't queer provided he behaved inside society's range of acceptable masculinity.

That didn't mean that the general population didn't look down on homosexuality, and certainly everyone didn't engage in same-sex intercourse, but it was easier for a man-unfortunately much less possible for women-to engage in sexual activity with another man without the horror, stigma, and supposed new identity that comes with it today.

WWII was probably the end of that era of ambiguous homosexuality. In the illuminating documentary Before Stonewall, gay people tell their personal stories about gay life before the dawn of the Gay Liberation Movement in 1969. Several of them talk about the surprisingly common homosexual activity that occurred during WWII, including one man who recalls the 'Seduction Station' (instead of Induction Station) in Fort Snelling , where officers openly seduced new male recruits ( Before ). Gay activist Jim Kepler explains in the documentary: "On the nights out, groups of soldiers may go looking for women and end up finding one another" ( Before ).

In decades following, the nation lost its sexual innocence. In the 1950s sex became a major topic of interest throughout the country-not sexual freedom, but the unsexy topic of sex and sexuality. Homosexuality got branded; it became a type of person. Like the invention of races, in the heightened moral anxiety of 50s anti-communist hysteria, society invented a new race: gays (Cruikshank 34). Since then in most of the western world, being attracted to one's own gender is supposed to mean something other than the simple fact that one is attracted to their own gender. Straight and gay Americans pay for the meaningless tag forced on homosexuals by creating another isolated group, a type: the gay people. Homosexuals who don't feel they belong to that type have to struggle, like I did, to reckon with their sexuality.

Although modern gay culture's members don't exhibit all the traits they used to-bleached hair, red ties, and a secret handshake were all methods-some stereotypical gay traits still exist from that era today, including ways of talking and acting (Chauncey 3). Like any other American sub-culture, the attributes invented by gay culture, or instilled into it by mainstream culture, become normal until they seem to be innate and new acquisitions acquire them.

Gay culture is still a much needed refuge for gays. It formed out of necessity to help the lives of gays and lesbians living a prejudiced society, and allows them to build a community where other communities don't accept them. Modern gay culture and identity allows people to make their orientation an official, public part of their life where before gay people had to participate in homosexual activities in the subterranean networks of hidden gay society.

The evidence for American society's harmful categorization of gays, and the biggest critique of current America 's view of homosexuals, is the abounding segregation in this country. Why are there gay characters, gay movies, gay districts, or even gay culture? There doesn't need to be that segregation because there isn't anything unique about being gay except what society has tacked onto it. So much meaning has been added to homosexuality that doesn't belong or need to be there or help in any way.

After all this examination of gays in the last century, I'm not entirely sure that we are better off. Growing up I'd hear the occasional message: 'It's cool to be gay,' but even with such a fresh attitude, prejudice lingers. It's true that there's definitely more visibility, and yes, homosexuals seem to be more accepted by the straight population now than before, but that's only surface. Cut into the skin and it becomes obvious that the situation isn't so grand.

Last week the Washington Senate voted in favor of amending the state's anti-discrimination law to include "homosexuality, bisexuality, and gender expression and identity" (HB 1515). Wow! How wonderful! Except that it happened February 2006, and barely, by a 25-23 vote. Forgive me for not being too grateful, but how could it have taken so long for this to happen? Until this year it was legally acceptable to fire someone or deny them a home solely because they were gay, bisexual, or transgender, because "When you normalize deviant behavior, you open Pandora's Box," (HB 1515) according to the Senate's recent opposing argument against the bill. All the gay visibility in the media, all the great leaps in tolerance I believed had happened, they don't feel so impressive anymore.

Admittedly, the attitude towards gays has changed. There are better representations of gays in the media, and there seems to be a consensus among many Americans that gay discrimination is wrong, but not as much that being gay is right. For example, in books like Chad W. Thompson's Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would: A Fresh Christian Approach , Thompson compels his readers to not discriminate or abandon gay people in their lives, but instead support in their wishes to change their sexuality (Olson). At first this seems more progressive than my father's old mantra about the choice of homosexuality, but really it's only a different manifestation of it. Both parties are suggesting that, first, that there is an option, when really the only people who have an option are bisexuals, and second, the only right choice is a heterosexual one. I have to disagree.

My father and Thompson miss the point, which isn't whether or not homosexuality can be cured, or whether one can choose. The point, and it's such an obvious one, is that in a country like this every person has the right to decide for themselves if being gay is alright. A gay person can be just as happy, lead just as fulfilling a life, and have as healthy a relationship as a straight person, but only if they and their social environment permits. I've met plenty of gay men who came out in their forties or fifties, often after they've married and made a family, and after more than two decades of wasting their life pretending to be that idealized straight man . A lot of gay men are very homophobic; too many gay people's lives are filled with an often undetectable self-hatred . It doesn't help that blatant homophobia is still largely accepted in this society, because supposedly, it's a choice; an immoral lifestyle decision.

It seems like this country is overly optimistic about how we've improved: Feminism took care of women's oppression in the 70s; Martin Luther King Jr. got rid of racism. Everything bad happened a long time ago, according to my early schooling, and while growing up the educational system seemed to be content with making white children like me guilty about what our ancestors did, then acting like it's all ok now. I grew up, like many other middle-class white children, under the assumption that discrimination was a thing of the past. There doesn't seem to be enough focus on the discrimination that happens every day, that many of us receive and all of us participate in; that lesson is much more important than the history.

So no one's homophobic, and nobody's racist, or sexist, but the truth is that those assumptions we have, the stereotypes that no one in this country escapes, they stick to us. They seep deep into our awareness and I don't think they can ever be completely removed. However accepting I am about my sexuality, sometimes I still wonder what's wrong with me, why don't I have a sexuality that makes biological sense.

I used to refrain from mentioning I was gay partly out of fear of what people would assume of me and how their perception of me would change, and also because I didn't feel like "I'm that way." I knew that not all gay men were the stereotypes that had been presented to me, but the stereotypes were strong enough to prevent me from fully admitting my own homosexuality; perhaps we need a new word. Current and future generation need to work to deconstruct the blanket generalizations that come with any words referring to gay people. If I hesitate to say I'm gay now, this is why: I believe that American culture's projected image of gays inaccurately represents a very diverse group of people. There is no unifying behavior among gays besides same-sex attraction. That is the true shortcoming of American homosexuality, the flaw that holds gay people back who haven't accepted their sexuality: the illusory categorization of homosexuals.

Social progress crawls reluctantly through time, only really making distance with the passage of generations. The saddest part about being gay in the 20th century, and so far the 21st, is that all you can do is wait. Few things change overnight, and society never covers enough ground within a lifetime. Are we better off? Yes, but not nearly enough.

Annotated Bibliography

Before Stonewall. Dir. Greta Schiller. Videocassette. Mono, 1994.

This was a helpful documentary about the history of homosexuality leading up to the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, beginning in the 1920s. It introduced me to the Mattachine Movement, early gay and lesbian publications, and the most interesting topic the documentary covered to me was the homosexual activity that went on during World War II, and how it was apparently frequently accepted among American troops, and also the backlash that happened during the 1950s with Sen. McCarthy's attack on communism and other things that could be considered amoral in his conservative group, including homosexuality.

Chauncey, George. Gay New York. New York : Basic Books, 1994.

This book covered gay male culture from 1890 to 1940. The Before Stonewall documentary reiterated a lot of what I had read in this book, but Gay New York also dealt with the different way that homosexuality had been perceived before the 1940s, namely that homosexual and heterosexual identities hadn't been invented yet in this culture. Chauncey's book covered the gay male subculture mostly in New York City , and occasionally he mentioned it's workings in other large cities, but he didn't cover rural America , I'm assuming because there would be very few resources for that before the 1950s.

Rowell, Ross. Personal interview. 29 Jan. 2005.

Ross Rowell is the owner of Great Northern Books in Bellingham and is a very active elderly member of the gay community, and the entire Bellingham community as well. What I mostly gained from the interview is what it was like to be a gay male in the 1950s and 1960s in rural America , including legal and social repercussions.

HB 1515. 11 Feb. 2005.

http://www.leg.wa.gov/pub/billinfo/2005-06/Htm/Bill%20Reports/House/1515.HBR.htm

HB 1515 is the recent bill passed by the Washington State Senate amending the anti-discrimination law to include sexual orientation. I found this very useful to the paper because it happened two weeks ago, and that fact is very telling about the slow progress in this nation towards ending discrimination. Based on my personal observations, I feel it's very common for Americans to feel that the United States is a lot more progressive in areas of prejudice to the point of disillusionment, provided they don't experience that particular form of prejudice themselves (i.e. racism, gay discrimination, and sexism).

The testimony against the bill was also very useful for enraging me, and further inspiring me to write this paper.

Olson, Ray. Rev. of Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would: A Fresh Christian Approach, Chad W. Thomson. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1587431211/002-3763371-9808850?v=glance&n=283155>.

Chad W. Thomson's book was one of several examples I could have used to represent the phenomenon of some Christian groups that approach homosexuality slightly differently, where they don't shun gays, but they still feel it is immoral, and wish to help them change.

Walters, Suzanna Danuta. All the Rage: The Story of Gay Visibility in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

This book gave me useful information about the benefits and harmful effects of gay visibility in the media. Walters discusses gay characters such as Brandon from 90210, Ellen Degeneres, and characters on the show Roseanne, as well as others. The most important point I feel I've taken from Walters' book is about how gay men mostly either depicted as very flamboyant, and in that situation a reliable running joke, or they are shown to be tragic characters who always die in the end. Also, when gay people are depicted in sympathetic news magazine programs they are usually presented in a way to be 'just like straight people.'

Cruikshank, Margaret. The Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement . New York : Routledge, 1992.

Cruikshank's book provided a good summation of the emergence of gay culture. Although I hardly used this book, it helped to explain how the gay identity changed in the 1950s.

Samuel Gable is a student of writing from Fairhaven College, and is in the process of transferring to Evergreen in the fall of 2006. He is currently living in rural Mason County of Washington State, where he is pursuing many fiction and creative nonfiction endeavors, including a work he intends to complete by next year about the current state of America 's progressiveness about gay discrimination.

back to top