On our memory of gay Sullivan: a hidden trajectory

This article examines psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan's approach to the issue of homosexuality. Sullivan (1892-1949), well-known for his interpersonal theory of mental illness, is believed to have accomplished a high recovery rate in his treatment of schizophrenia during the 1920s. Most of his patients, as well as Sullivan himself, were concerned about their "homosexual" orientations. He encouraged physical affection between male patients and male attendants, believing that it would free patients from their guilt for their "unconventional" sexuality. But he kept his compelling practice hidden, not bringing it into open discussion to confront the definition of homosexuality as "sickness." This article traces the process in which the omission of the important aspect of Sullivan's practice began during his lifetime and continued in the scholarship since. In so doing, the article suggests a nuanced understanding of this important figure in the U.S. intellectual and cultural history of homosexuality.     

Straight Eye for the Gay Guy: Composing Queerness

Drawing on the work of Didier Eribon and his theorization of the construction of gay male subjectivity, this article examines different “texts,” broadly defined, that grapple specifically with straight men attempting to represent male homosexuality: Norman Mailer's essay, “The Homosexual Villain”; the Bravo reality television series Boy Meets Boy, and Michael Griffith's short story, “Hooper Gets a Perm.” These texts represent attempts by straight authors to grapple with queer experience in ways that move the imagination of queers beyond simple stereotypes or uncritical explorations of the sexual “other.” In the process of examining these texts, the following questions are addressed: What happens when a straight man attempts to represent a gay man? Does he “get it right,” and is such a question even useful? More specifically, what is the value in having straights imagine queerness? Is such an imagining possible? Is such desirable? And, if so, what are the contours of such an imagining—as well as its possibilities and limitations, pedagogically, personally, and politically? Ultimately, I contend that the straight imagining of queerness offers rich potential for mutual understanding; furthermore, attempting to understand what goes into the making of those representations tells us much about how queerness circulates in our culture as a subject, a figure of discussion, contention, and representation.     

Walt Whitman,Our Great Gay Poet?

ABSTRACT

This article surveys the critical debates around Walt Whitman's “Calamus” cluster, arguing that a “queer” reading of Whitman—one that does not see him as, for example, a closeted homosexual who censored his work for fear of being “outed”—is both historically accurate and politically efficacious. While previous efforts to reclaim Whitman as “our great gay poet” are understandable—particularly given critical readings of Whitman that denied the homoeroticism of his poems—today, a reading of Whitman as homosexual threatens to simplify our understanding of the history of homosexuality and to blunt the power of Whitman's poetry to continue to “queer” normative understandings of sex and gender identity categories and their relationship to politics.     

“It Is What It Is”: Masculinity,Homosexuality, and Inclusive Discourse in Mixed Martial Arts

In this article we make use of inclusive masculinity theory to explore online media representations of male homosexuality and masculinity within the increasingly popular combat sport of mixed martial arts (MMA). Adopting a case-study approach, we discuss narratives constructed around one aspirational male MMA fighter, Dakota Cochrane, whose history of having participated in gay pornography became a major talking point on a number of MMA discussion/community Web sites during early 2012. While these narratives attempted to discursively rescue Cochrane’s supposedly threatened masculinity, highlighting both his “true” heterosexuality and his prodigious fighting abilities, they also simultaneously celebrated the acceptance of homosexual men within the sport that Cochrane’s case implied. Thus, we suggest that these media representations of homosexuality and masculinity within MMA are indicative of declining cultural homophobia and homohysteria and an inclusive vision of masculinity, as previously described by proponents of inclusive masculinity theory.     

The Charisma and Deception of Reparative Therapies: When Medical Science Beds Religion

ABSTRACT

In this article, I examine the history and resurgence of interest in sexual reorientation or reparative therapies. I begin with a critique of the contemporary “ex-gay” movement, interrogating Exodus as the prototype of a politico-religious transformational ministry that works to “cure” homosexuals, and examine how Exodus utilizes ex-gay testimony to deceive harried homosexuals looking for escape from the effects of internalized and cultural homophobia. Next, I investigate how reparative therapies function as orthodox treatments that charismatically meld conservative religious perspectives with medical science to produce a pseudoscience promising to treat homosexuality effectively. In this regard, I assess the ongoing debate regarding gay-affirming versus reparative therapies by first looking at the history of medicalizing homosexuality and then surveying the debate spurred by Robert L. Spitzer's research. I conclude with a consideration of research needed to measure whether efficacious change in sexual orientation is possible.     

Patriarchy,Power, and Female Masculinity

ABSTRACT

This article examines the place of “butch” within the women's movement. The political potentials of butch in both her refusal of patriarchal constructs of femininity and her transmutation of masculinity will be explored. It will be argued that the butch lesbian threatens male power by severing the naturalized connection between masculinity and male bodies, by causing masculinity to appear “queer,” and by usurping men's roles. However, for “butch” to truly have feminist potential, it also needs to be accompanied by a feminist awareness and a rejection of aspects of masculinity that are oppressive to women. Hence, “butch feminist” need not be an oxymoron, but a strategy for challenging male domination and power.     

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs: First Theorist of Erotic Age Orientation

The nomination of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–1895) as the first theorist of homosexuality may be placed in the oblique light of his eligibility for the nomination as the first theorist of erotic age orientation. In Ulrichs’s pamphlets, “man-manly” homosexuality emerged as a particular age orientation, with a subsequent typological breakdown that, importantly, blended gender orientation and age orientation. Into the early 20th century, erotic age orientation remained bound up with the classification and emancipation of what here was demarcated as Urningsliebe. Ulrichs’s pioneering and shifting comments on age eventually fed into his legal model of consenting adults in private. They also provide a starting point for the historical understanding of the trope of “grooming pedophile” as it, arguably, crossfaded with that of the “seducing homosexual” after the latter’s depsychiatricization across the Western world.     

“Requestioning” AIDS: An Ethical Reflection From 1993 to Today

ABSTRACT

This article serves as one of the supplementary pieces of this special issue on “Mapping Queer Bioethics,” in which we take a solipsistic turn to “map” the Journal of Homosexuality itself. Here, the author examines the first feature-length article to address the relationship between HIV status and homosexuality. Lingering on both the temporal gap between the dawn of AIDS in American discourse and its inclusion in this journal, the author asks us to consider (in hindsight) such a delay bearing in mind queer theoretical projects of the present such as gay shame, stigma, and queer biopolitics.     

Psychometric and Faciometric Support for Observable Facial Feminization in Gay Men

ABSTRACT

Though male homosexuality appears to be evolutionarily paradoxical, phenotypic feminization has been offered as a route for three current models positing a genetic basis for male homosexuality. We tested whether facial feminization is observable in gay men in two studies. In Study 1, using two composite images of gay and of heterosexual men, naive participants (N = 308) rated the “gay” face more highly on stereotypically feminine traits and actual femininity and the “heterosexual” face more highly on stereotypically masculine traits and actual masculinity. In Study 2, faciometrics of 428 Internet images of gay (N = 219) and heterosexual men were analyzed along six sexually dimorphic ratios. The faciometrics of gay men were more feminine, both in gestalt terms and for five of the six individual traits. The studies offer objective support for a more feminized facial phenotype in gay males that is difficult to explain through cultural or behavioral cues.     

Homosexual Experience,Desire and Identity Among Young Adults

ABSTRACT

Is young people's sexuality becoming more fluid and less tied to steady, stable identity patterns? Are we developing into a society where sexual relationships between individuals of the same sex are no longer reserved for the small minority of gay men and lesbian women? Adherents of so-called queer theory have promulgated such views. Using a population-based sample of young adults (aged 19 to 26, N 2753), we investigated homosexual experiences, desire and identity. We found that levels of prevalence of homosexuality were primarily a function of the criteria we used. Using the most restricted (“narrow”) definitions, we found that about one percent of both genders reported “exclusive” homosexual interest and identity. Using the most inclusive criteria, we found that one of ten young men and one of four young women reported having some homosexual experience, interest or identity. Still, the most striking finding involved the substantial gender-specific differences: homoerotic activity and interest are far more interwoven with heterosexual activity for women. There are strong indications that homosexuality is a lot more threatening and potentially in conflict with traditional male gender roles than we find to be the case for women. In other words, while there may be signs of more fluid sexual identity categories, this phenomenon primarily applies to women.     

The Erotic Lesbian in the Spanish Sexploitation Films of the 1970s

This article studies the representation of female homosexuality in the newly born erotic Spanish cinema of the 1970s, questioning the political and social implications of these first representations of lesbianism which contributed to shaping the first democratic discourses around women's sexuality. In order to do so, it looks at some of the most relevant films of the genre (most of which have never been studied before) and examines their portrayal of lesbian sex, focusing later on the figure of Ignacio F. Iquino and his film The Mask as the main representative of this genre in order to prove how the narrative construction of the eroticizing lesbian was largely based upon fascist conceptions of homosexuality.     

Saying the Unsaid: Probing Homosexuality in The Hairdresser of Harare

ABSTRACT

Homosexuality in Zimbabwe often evokes strong reactions. Due to a tradition of silence, the topic largely continues to be taboo. However, it has been used by some politicians and church leaders to strengthen arguments and to denounce opponents. It is against this background that The Hairdresser of Harare (Huchu, 2010) ought to be understood. The novel gives helpful clues into discourses on homosexuality in contemporary Zimbabwe. This article analyzes the author’s approach to the subject and critiques it. It maintains that the author’s view on homosexuality has been limited by attaching the theme to postcolonial politics and violence. However, the article appreciates his courage in exploring the theme.     

Charles Henry Pearson on the Decline of the Family

A common observation and frequent lament about family change in contemporary societies is of the shift of childraising responsibilities from parents to the state. This shift (and what might be done to reverse it) was a theme, for example, of James S. Coleman's 1992 presidential address to the American Sociological Association. In the new circumstances, said Coleman, “carrying the family's honor into the future is less important”; in many families adolescent children “are abandoned psychologically and socially.” The state, however, still has “strong interests in maximizing a child's value to society, or minimizing its cost.” A century before Coleman, Charles Henry Pearson, in the passage reproduced below from his book National Life and Character: A Forecast (1893), wrote of the decline of the family in quite similar terms. He argued that state intervention was undertaken only reluctantly, a byproduct of changes in conjugal relations from arranged marriages to “marriages of inclination,” along with easier divorce, and consequent lessening of parental interest in the family line. The state, almost by default, needed to assert the public interest in the raising of children, even though its measures, notably compulsory education, further eroded parents' rights over their children and children's sense of duty and obligation to their parents. While Pearson mostly welcomed the gender equity and individualism he saw emerging, he regretted their effect on the family—on what he termed (metaphorically) “the religion of household life.” His prescient forecast was of “a state of things in which marriages will be contracted without reflection, and broken up without scruple, in which children will be cared for when they are young with, it may be, even more tenderness than of old, but with incomparably less anxiety to fit them for the moral obligations of life, and in which the claim of parents to be obeyed will cease with the children's need of support.” His conclusion: “Family life will be a gracious and decorative incident in the system of such a society; but the family, as a constituent part of the State, as the matrix in which character is moulded, will lose its importance as the clan and the city have done.” Charles Henry Pearson (1830–94) was a British historian who had a second career as an educationist and politician in the colony of Victoria in pre‐Federation Australia. Educated in London and Oxford, he was appointed professor of modern history at King's College, London. His early work included travel writings and a well‐received History of England during the Early and Middle Ages (1867). When his academic career stalled (partly because of very poor eyesight) he emigrated to Australia, where he became closely involved with educational issues. He was elected to the Victorian legislature and was for a time minister of education, able to put into practice his firm views favoring secular education. (See his remark below that Church‐run schools “have generally been strong enough to exclude competition, [but] not rich or enlightened enough to use their monopoly well.”) In 1892 he returned to England, and the following year published National Life and Character. This work, widely read and praised at the time, went through several editions over the next two decades. It essayed forecasts in various domains of society and politics, including a prediction (couched in elitist language) of the passing of the ascendancy of European peoples as other nations grew in numbers and strength (“We shall awake to find ourselves elbowed and hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside,…”). The excerpt is from pages 261–270 of Chapter 5, “The Decline of the Family,” in National Life and Character: A Forecast (London: Macmillan and Co., 1893).     

The paradoxes of communication and collaboration in maternity care: A video-reflexivity study with professionals and parents

BackgroundResearch on maternity care often focuses on factors that prevent good communication and collaboration and rarely includes important stakeholders – parents – as co-researchers. To understand how professionals and parents in Dutch maternity care accomplish constructive communication and collaboration, we examined their interactions in the clinic, looking for “good practice”.MethodsWe used the video-reflexive ethnographic method in 9 midwifery practices and 2 obstetric units.FindingsWe conducted 16 meetings where participants reflected on video recordings of their clinical interactions. We found that informal strategies facilitate communication and collaboration: “talk work” – small talk and humour – and “work beyond words” – familiarity, use of sight, touch, sound, and non-verbal gestures. When using these strategies, participants noted that it is important to be sensitive to context, to the values and feelings of others, and to the timing of care. Our analysis of their ways of being sensitive shows that good communication and collaboration involves “paradoxical care”, e.g., concurrent acts of “regulated spontaneity” and “informal formalities”.DiscussionAcknowledging and reinforcing paradoxical care skills will help caregivers develop the competencies needed to address the changing demands of health care. The video-reflexive ethnographic method offers an innovative approach to studying everyday work, focusing on informal and implicit aspects of practice and providing a bottom up approach, integrating researchers, professionals and parents.ConclusionGood communication and collaboration in maternity care involves “paradoxical care” requiring social sensitivity and self-reflection, skills that should be included as part of professional training.     

Getting Out in the “Real World”: Young Men,Queer and Theories of Gay Community

ABSTRACT

A recent opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald expresses a widely held perception that, among young same-sex attracted men in Australia, “queer” has well and truly supplanted “gay” as the language and lens through which self and practice is generated. In this article, I discuss findings from a qualitative research project that studied notions of community among young gay men, and argue that this assumption should not be taken for granted. The article explores participants' understandings of the concept of “gay community,” arguing that the young men studied share a common definition of community: one based on a conventional liberal model which prioritizes sameness and the cooperation of individuals to achieve common goals. This is of particular importance in that problems around “fitting in” with these understandings are also raised. In examining the potential place for queer alternatives to these formulations, however, the article finds that queer attracts little support among participants, raising questions about the bind young men may find themselves in if they prioritize sameness as fundamental to community, yet feel themselves to be excluded from community by their own or others' perceived difference.     

“Fruits,” “Fags,” and “Dykes”: The Portrayal of Gay/Lesbian Identity in “Nance” Jokes of the ’50s and ’60s

ABSTRACT

What is humorous and how it is interpreted very much depends on the norms and values of a culture at a particular point in time, the characteristics of who is telling jokes, and the makeup of the audience. This article presents archival material and an analysis of an outsider's jokes about gays and lesbians. These were told to primarily heterosexual audiences by a heterosexual comic. They reveal the assumptions Americans held about gays and lesbians throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and a few years into the mid-1970s, when most of these jokes were compiled. Although generalizations about gay/lesbian humor in that period cannot be made from one person's private collection of nearly 1,000 jokes, they do reveal several clear patterns: Much of the humor about male homosexuality is used to debase men and their masculinity, by making them passive, feminine, or weak, except for their hypersexuality. The women are also depicted in the jokes as sexually eager, especially to give oral sex to possibly straight women or acting in the male insertor role. Rarely were the gay/lesbian jokes focused on political issues of discrimination, oppression, or romantic relationships.