I thought for a short while I
might just copout on this one and simply write a long string of single words to
complete the phrase. The first that came to mind was: Being Gay is fabulous. That of course is true but there is so much
more to be said on the topic that I thought this the lazy queer’s way out. I’ll
close out the piece with what I think is the best word to complete this phrase.
Before I get to that
conclusion though I want to wade briefly into the thicket that is ‘essentialism verses social construction’ as
the two most prominent theories for trying to explain what ‘Being Gay Is’. Very
basically and crudely put ‘essentialism’ is a theory that purports that gayness
is inborn, an unchangeable reality or essence if you will.
“Constructionist theory” implies
that we are a cultural creation that has come about in large part because we
have been so stigmatized. The constructionists believe that if it weren’t for
this stigmatization that everyone would have queer thoughts and feelings
perhaps actualized and that exclusive heterosexuality would fade away and I
assume exclusive homosexuality would too. There would therefore be no more
Kinsey 6’s or Kinsey 1’s and we would all drift to being 3’s or 4’s. This
sounds like a disturbing ‘homogenized’ version of human identity to me. I can’t
speak from a hetero perspective but from a queer one it would take a gun to my
head to even try to perform sexually with a woman these days.
I am, being a disciple of
Harry Hay, very clearly planted in the essentialist camp historically but if I
were to apply the rather rigorous intellectual examination of these two
theories that is required I would most likely today come out as some sort of
hybrid. Though I must say in my day-to-day life it all seems pretty simply
essential to me – I am queer through and through and always have been.
The best critique of these
two theories I have ever run across for me remains Will Roscoe’s Afterword in
his biography of Harry Hay: Radically Gay.
Let me quote briefly from that Afterword: “
The fact is, for most Lesbians and Gay men homosexuality is not a construction,
not something acquired, not an accident of childrearing, but an ongoing
profound motivation. Perhaps they were born that way; in any case, it is not
something that can be changed at will, as some constructionists and Queer
theorists imply”.
I suppose it is possible that
the phrase Being Gay Is…can be
completed in as many different ways as there are gay people on earth. The
responses would of course run the gamut from describing the worst possible fate
to befall one to the absolute best thing that ever happened. As promised my
word for completing the phrase would be “Being Gay Is an Opportunity”.
In my more grandiose moments
I like to think that we as a people have been given the opportunity to be in
the vanguard of great social change, perhaps revolutionary enough to save the
whole planet and the human race. This view I have is based in part again on teachings
I gleaned from the years I was hanging out with Harry Hay. Harry was fond of
talking about the “gay window”. Being gay allows us to look at the world from a
different perspective that our straight brothers and sisters. It is the same
world they are looking out at but a distinctly different view of it.
This different view
potentially provides the opportunity
to problem solve in unique and often very queer ways. I do not believe this
potential is best facilitated when we engage in the current major efforts of
assimilation and those would be marriage equality and equal participation in
the military. We need to spend much more time exploring and actualizing our
difference and not constantly harping on our similarities. Let’s face it the
current way of doing things has brought the human race to the brink of
catastrophe in the form of climate disaster and strong arguments can be made
that marriage and the military are pathetically failed human institutions.
Hay on many occasions talked
about subject-subject vs. subject-object consciousness. He believed that we
were as queers were given a leg up in viewing others, and I would expand that
to all of Gaia, as subjects on an equal footing and not as objects. We are
able, though we don’t always actualize it, to view one another of the same sex
as equals. We get a pass on the unequal power dynamic that seems to be the
intrinsically heterosexual paradigm of the sexes. We are given the opportunity
to view relating to other humans in a profoundly different way from the
existing imbalanced heterosexual dynamic.
This Story Telling Group is a
great example of the intrinsic opportunity we so often avail ourselves to as a
unique people to explore who the hell we really are. Here is to lots more
stories giving form, shape and completion to the phrase: Being Gay Is…
(A few words for this piece
were lifted from the following web site: www.queerbychoice.com/essentialism.html)
© 29 September
2014
About the Author
I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled
by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in
Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an
extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.
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