11
Homophobia and beyond: Closets, Cloisters, and Other Corrective Measures
Richard Sullivan, University of British Columbia
The recent publicity about bullying to the point where young people were driven to their deaths got me thinking about how ‘anxious’ the perpetrators were. A phobia is an anxiety disorder and the term homophobia has now been bandied about for at least three decades, curiously without psychiatric validation as a diagnostic classification. I remember that the term ‘homophobia’ served a political purpose when it was first coined. It provided a counter-narrative to the prevailing paradigms within psychiatry and religion – the disciplines and traditions that had paid greatest attention to same sex relationships and within which prevailing constructions placed us within the folds of sin and mental illness.
A counter-narrative felt good but I also remember a vague annoyance at what seemed a rationalization for hateful behaviour. At the time I was a visible minority gay youth inasmuch as I had never been able to ‘pass’ and had early lost sight of much value in ascribing to the rules. I tread lightly around questions of ‘choice’ since my “No thank you” moment in observation of gender rules came early, though probably abetted by some awareness that I was not likely to be convincing in any effort to play by those rules. I don’t ever remember my tormenters looking anxious. They behaved with social impunity as if they were doing the work of correcting us – getting us back in line.
Some four decades on, I find myself an invisible minority, since all middle aged white men, and academics in particular, look pretty much the same. The corrective disciplines of propriety, age appropriateness and dignity have long since extinguished any distinctive style and as long as I don’t speak, gesture or dress suspiciously well, I can probably pass for straight.
But for those not yet faded into the woodwork of convention, I wonder if harassment is the price they pay in backlash against what has been gained. What do they have to say about the anxiety of their attackers? Is it time to consider other explanations for bad behaviour? And even accepting that there may be some instances of violence motivated by a clinical disorder in the realm of a phobia, do most instances of queer bashing need a rationalizing clinical construct when plain serviceable terms like ‘hateful’ and ‘stupid’ will do?
Corrective measures abound, some overtly hostile, some covertly persuasive. I suggest that it might be a more productive route to explore these corrective/coercive normative mechanisms in relation to the closet as an instrument of labour extraction, particularly caring labour or domestic labour. For those for whom conventionality was compromised by visibility or more subtle disinclination, closets were very literally cloisters of respectability. I suggest that cultural traditions with a strong emphasis on family duty and filial piety over individualism are most inclined to resist the impulses to freedom of their less conventional members.
These same families have respectable alternatives to marriage and reproduction in the prototypical roles of spinster aunt and bachelor uncle – roles in service to the conventional family. This is not to suggest that all such persons were sexual minorities but the latter may owe a historic debt to tradition in providing sanctuary, albeit at a cost. Those disinclined to conventional marriage and family life could find some sanctuary from normative pressures in the form of roles that still provided service within the normative conventions of family and community life.
The religious service orders and the professions of social work, nursing and education also owe an historic debt to the disinclined – the single men and women whose vocations took them into the service of community at sites often perceived as inhospitable to their married peers. Disproportionate numbers of single people have figured in the histories of these institutions and professions. For some, a respectable solitude was traded for any impulse to freedom and solidarity with the sexual peers from whom they were separated by enforced secrecy. Social convention is the beneficiary.
Bullying then and now serves to enforce rules by which the resources of sexual minorities are extracted. As with many groups, enduring labour ghettoes exist. Consider the number of stereotyped gay and lesbian ‘professions’ that are in the personal or public service fields, meeting the needs of the community including the needs for entertainment and aesthetic improvement.
Stereotypes themselves are exercised as corrective measures but they can also serve as a north star, a beacon to sanctuary. We are now in a period of exodus from labour ghettoes. We are coming out all over and families and communities can be expected to defend their interests as continuing beneficiaries of our labours.
Pseudo-clinical rationalization in terms like homophobia does not serve to interrogate the interests served by subordination in all of its brutal and refined forms. If “It Gets Better”114 is to be more than a bumper sticker, our young must be protected. They must be supported in the ferocity they will need to sustain the pride that is also their rightful heritage. As James Baldwin put it:
“Passion is not friendly, it is arrogant, superbly contemptuous of all that is not itself, and as the very definition of passion implies the impulse to freedom, it has a might intimidating power. It contains a challenge. It contains an unspeakable hope.”
By way of shifting our gaze to the unacknowledged beneficiaries of our labour, I would like to use traditional religious reasoning to argue against assimilation and the reproduction of the traditional nuclear family by sexual minorities. Perhaps God’s plan includes setting roughly 10 percent of the population aside and exempting them from reproduction, hunting and grunting so that they could get on with the task of building civilization.115 As well, it is possible to further develop the discussion of queer labour ghettos and the cultural appropriation of ‘fag shui’ and other inclinations more commonly attributed to 10 percent of the population.
And having dispensed with the concept of homophobia outside of acute clinical circumstances, I would like to explore a number of equally rational reasons for disliking sexual minorities and perhaps propose some others like jealousy, resentment over the consolidation of male privilege in the white gay community, using internal networks to access resources just as other minority communities have done, and an annoying tendency toward conservatism and assimilation once rights are gained.
I would also like to advise traditional families on the practicality of raising a queer child as a hedge against the collapse of social security. With declining family size, it is merely efficient to raise a ‘twofer’ – to get yourself a tomboy daughter who can fix your plumbing and decorate your cake.
114 It Gets Better. (2011). What is the It Gets Better Project. Retrieved from http://www.itgetsbetter.org/pages/about-it- gets-better-project/
115 Crimmins, C. (2005). How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization. New York: Tarcher.