"The family is a psychological shelter besieged by the invasive forces of the expanding capitalist marketplace in our anonymous, tension-plagued, and emotionally empty society", or so argues Christopher Lasch in his book whose title I have appropriated (albeit in a rearranged fashion). The "public" world of advanced industrial civilisation - work, education, and impersonal society - and its discontents is meant to be external to the "private" world of the home and family, but Lasch argues this safe "haven" is being increasingly fractured by the conflicting demands and rapid growth of capitalism.
| ...lesbians and gay men quite simply have no place in the programme of the nuclear family |
I would suggest that this rendering of "traditional" family life no longer remains viable for many people (if it ever really was). Women are dominated by and have been economically dependent on men. They now often carry the additional burden of housework/childcare: Men have had to endure the stress of working to support a family in our increasingly consumption oriented society. This responsibility of "manhood" is not easily met by men from oppressed groups (who face discrimination at all levels of education and employment); children are constrained by economic and legal structures; and, finally, lesbians and gay men quite simply have no place in the programme of the nuclear family.
Although I would suggest the dichotomy between public and private realms as a schema for understanding "social" and "familial" relations is not particularly accurate, I want to maintain this conceptually faulty split because it does allow us to understand the mode of behaviour and familial arrangements that are thought to be private and are rigorously protected as such. Yet these enormous protections and reinforcements are precisely those elements which make the "traditional" nuclear family one of our most public of institutions. Support systems running the gamut from tax and insurance benefits through religious and educational teachings to the arts, media, and advertising serve to perpetuate the hegemony of "the family".
In contrast to this "private" domain, I want to argue that lesbians and gay men have no possibility for a "private" space; our lives are "public" in the most complete manner conceivable.
From the utter lack of economic, legal, and symbolic support for private lives of lesbians and gay men to the cultural, historical, and epistemological changes that made it possible for homosexual acts themselves to come to define a people, a minority (see for instance D 'Emilio), we are continuously dependent on the "public" for our existence. Further, this public-private dichotomy was rendered even less relevant for lesbians and gay men when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that homosexual sodomy was not protected by the Constitution under the (spurious) interpretation of a right to privacy; state scrutiny of our lives, even of acts occurring in the most hidden if not exactly private of places, continues to be maintained as legitimate. (This idea might very well play a central role in mandatory testing of gay men for exposure to HIV, not for imminent public health reasons but rather because quite simply our lives - and bodies - are never truly private.)
Yet in spite of all this, lesbians and gay men in the U.S.A. have managed to create vast and diverse networks of relationships that at once reinforce our right to exist and profoundly challenge the constraints imposed by our society. Against all odds (not to mention in the face of hostility and violence), we have successfully built not only long-lasting lover and friend relationships but also a community of support institutions ranging from bars, newspapers, and other businesses to counselling centers, drug/alcohol use clinics, and model AIDS-related service facilities.
Although it is true that we initially had to develop new ways of interacting, of communicating, as a result of oppressive circumstances, I would argue that what was once necessary behaviour is now "optional", at least in part. No longer do we break the norms of behaviour because we have no alternatives (although clearly this is still very often the case); rather we recognize the large array of options open to us for creating meaningful (and pleasurable) forms of interaction.
As Dennis Altman explained in the early 1980s, "Gay men are developing new forms of sexual relationships that make it possible to reconcile our needs for commitment and stability with the desire for sexual adventure and experimentation". Nor are lesbians exempt from this sexual/emotional/relational experimentation. (Altman, p.77) I would argue, however, that this changing pattern of interaction is more than just sexual. Particularly since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic lesbians and gay men have forged new alliances across gender, built new community institutions for emotional support, health care, and social interaction, as well as continued to experiment with new forms of sexual play. What is important to recognize in all of these changes is that they have taken place very much in "public".
| ...there are a lot of people... who believe if you legally recognize non-traditional relationships that no one will go out and get married to anyone of the opposite sex |
The alternatives were invisibility, inaction, and a continued denial of civil rights - all in a time of a serious health and political crisis. But these new arrangements - the absence of which would amount to our political nonexistence - while so necessarily "public", are at the same time quite personally motivated. Lesbians and gay men do not have the "private" institution of the state- and culture-sanctioned "traditional" nuclear family into which we can escape; lacking such a haven, we must respond publicly to develop, enjoy, and protect our lives and culture.
Yet even as we respond to and try to correct profound injustices, So too do those who feel their own lifestyles being threatened move to shore up their collapsing institutions. Over the past few years, there has been much intellectual and popular debate on the future of the family and marriage.
Lest we lose the political message in all of this, I should like to quote from a San Francisco Chronicle editorial: "that some 80 percent of American married people quite enjoy their status and apparently have no intention of changing it is good news for all of us .... The family is the institution on which all of society is built. It has no substitute nor even any serious competitor no matter how much life-style alternatives are praised or proselytized". That there is such a great fear of alternatives to "traditional" family and lifestyle arrangements continues to surprise me.
One possible reason for this fear has been suggested by Matthew Coles, author of San Francisco's proposed (1982) domestic partners legislation vetoed by Mayor Dianne Feinstein: "I think that Dianne believes that marriage only persists because it has certain kinds of goodies attached to it, and if those didn't exist, people wouldn't go out and get married. I think there are a lot of people around like that who believe if you legally recognize non-traditional relationships that no one will go out and get married to anyone of the opposite sex". (quoted in Kingston, p.5) And Supervisor Harry Britt's argument recognizes these same implications: "Domestic partnership legislation doesn't just say be nice to gay people, it says change your definition of family relationships, learn about the nature of economic relationships between people". (quoted in Kingston, p.4) That there continue to be enormous and fundamental structural inequalities in our society is hardly reason to hark back to the "good old days" of - when? the 1950's, perhaps, when individual choice was constrained even more rigorously than now. As women begin to explore alternatives to marriage, they discover the financial difficulties they face in our sexist economy; yet to point to for instance, the feminization of poverty as a supporting argument for reinforcing family structures is at once oppressive and ineffectual. This reactionary blaming the victim mentality has also been used historically to scapegoat blacks as a justification for continued slavery (see for instance Fitzhugh).
| ...lesbians and gay men in the USA have managed to create vast and diverse networks of relationships... |
In an interview given about seven years ago, Michel Foucault argued that there were not yet real possibilities for "a whole series of other values and choices" which homosexuality can involve. (Foucault, p. 36) The ambivalence and fear expressed by many people becomes more intelligible when one recognizes the radical restructuring of ways of being that potentially inhere in homosexual relationships. "It's not only a matter of integrating this strange little practice of making love with someone of the same sex into pre-existing cultures; it's a matter of constructing cultural forms." (Foucault, p. 36) Yet allowing and even advocating new relational possibilities does not have to negate the validity of the existing ones. "It's a question of imagining how the relation of two individuals can be validated by society and benefit from the same advantages as the relations - perfectly honourable - which are the only ones recognized: marriage and the family." (Foucault, p.41)
Of course, we are confronted with the most serious manifestation of this fear when we observe the development of AIDS education programs, especially those aimed at school-aged people, which seek to enforce a code of so-called traditional moral teachings about sexuality. The dangers in this attitude are readily apparent (both because of the time wasted in creating "appropriate" programs and the psychological damage inflicted when there is a moral message attached), but the overwhelming urgency of the epidemic has failed to speed up the process by side-stepping this reactionary political agenda.
Having indicated some of the ways in which lesbian and gay existence is continuously public in nature, I will conclude by defending the personal as well as strategic significance of this mode of being. At the outset of this paper I mentioned Christopher Lasch's argument that the public world of the marketplace is relentlessly assaulting the protected and protecting private haven of the family, and I suggested that this interpretation presented us with a false and misleading dichotomy. Then I proposed that (using Lasch's framework) lesbians and gay men essentially have no private sphere. Without now rejecting that claim, I should like to suggest a framework in which to situate our shared experiences so we can make better sense out of this lack of private space.
Hardly distinct realms, the "public" and the "private" the political and the personal - interact through a complex dialectic, pulling together thought and action to create the individual's unique relationship to the world. To force these two ideas apart as if they did not each inform the other is wilfully naive. Lasch's presentation of the home as haven fails to work precisely because the context of the home itself is publicly defined; Lacking these same (or similar) supportive institutions, lesbians and gay men are creating ways of relating that are very much "open to the public" even as they are intimate. The daily living of our lives causes -forces - us more directly to address the nature of our public and private selves, more accurately to apprehend the meaning of our actions.
Participation in a world that does not even know we exist unless we tell them, remains silent about us unless we speak up, renders us invisible unless we show our faces - and then avoids us, taunts us, and denies us once we present ourselves - is never easy; often it approaches impossible. But we have demonstrated to ourselves and the world that, even as a community fraught with differences, disagreements, and inequalities, we can take hold of the world as we experience it and convert this knowledge into powerful emotional, cultural, and political activity. If we abandon the search for a non-existent private world, we will be able to act not in spite of but rather because of our perpetual public existence. While a difficult challenge for many of us and a constant challenge for all of us, the vast possibilities for lesbian and gay existence bring us heart in a havenless world.
Dennis Altman, "Sex: The New Front Line for Gay Politics", Socialist Review 65.
John D'Emilio, "Capitalism and Gay Identity", in Snitow, Stansell and Thompson, eds., The Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, (Monthly Review Press, 1983)
George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All' or Slaves Without Masters, edited by C. Vern Woodward (Bellknap/Harvard, 1962)
Michel Foucault, "The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will: A Conversation", Interviewed by Gilles Barbadette (Translated by Brendan Lemon), Christopher Street, 64.
Tim Kingston, "Domestic Partners", Coming Up! (January 1987)
Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged, (Basic Books, 1977,1979)
Cindy Patton, Sex and Germs: The Politics of AIDS, (Southend Press, 1985)
San Francisco Chronicle, "Marriage, U.S. Style", editorial column (June 30, 1987).
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
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