Gays life's beginnings and creating our Gay lives.
Avoiding straight imprinting, defining who we are and what lives we can lead, helping future Gays coming out, getting started, and not being victimized.
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Chapter 3 Gay Emergence - Links to earlier chapters and the video at the end.
What is very unique about the lives of Gay people is that we come into existence from straight parents in straight families with straight siblings and straight relatives.
The institutions of school, public libraries, media can be deficient or lacking information for a Gay person to learn about Gay life. What religious organizations the family belongs to can be indifferent to hostile or tolerating regarding being Gay.
Further the family might be anti-Gay and starting out the Gay person might start out as an anti-Gay person or a person who growing up has acquired anti-Gay attitudes.
Where a family is usually supportive and has parents that give advice, a Gay person’s family with the best of intentions has little or no knowledge of Gay life to provide help, advice or guidance. With good intentions they might even give inappropriate or bad advice because they think what applies to heterosexual life always applies to Gay life.
Often the parents and siblings are hostile to Gay persons and so the family isn’t a source of support or love, but an immediate danger to the Gay person and being Gay must be kept a carefully guarded secret with the Gay person living in fear of exposure.
Even the family which imagines itself tolerant of Gays is problematic. They maybe fine with other people’s children being Gay, but they really didn’t imagine that there might a Gay person in their family. Their issues with their child being Gay might involve little subtle verbal cuts that don’t contradict their self-image of being tolerant or liberal. They wanted to have grand children and now they realize that is not likely to happen and the acceptance can be grudging.
Even with a supportive family, the environment at school might not be safe.
Other Gays in his age group will be in a similar situation and living in secrecy or struggling in isolation as to their identity, but for whatever reason not visible to others as a Gay person. Even when there is a Gay relative, they might both be closeted and not known to each other.
Thus, Gays start out in isolation struggling with having a Gay identity that is widely hated and despised and likely with some homophobic attitudes they themselves have acquired with little or no sources of information and with no other Gays to talk to and having to face this in secrecy. They will have to face this situation as a teenager, with little life experience and education, entirely or mostly by themselves, surrounded by a hostile environment full of negative stereotypes.
What is one of the most significant effects of growing up as an isolated Gay person is that we are imprinted by straight people. We conceptualize being Gay within a reference framework of that of straight people and adopt heteronormativity.
Commentators mention heteronormativity as something oppressing the Gay community, but its origins are commonly attributed to the general effects of society and the dominating position of straights in society. It needs to be understood that it is already within Gay people and having been there as the result of imprinting of Gays by a straight society and this starts prior to coming out.
The common experience of Gay people is a struggle to come into existence and self-acceptance. To connect to other Gays and learn how to be a Gay person. This takes a lot of effort and can be exhausting and can be fraught with dangers including physical violence.
It isn’t surprising that many Gays don’t come out until their twenties and some later or never, that many Gays never let go of negative views of being Gay. Even among Gays who come out and on-the-surface don’t have obvious negative attitudes still worry what straight people will think, beg for acceptance and don’t demand respect. The anti-Gay cousin is to be indulged with discussion and attempted persuasion endlessly until either the cousin or the Gay person passes away rather than the cousin to go jump in the lake. For some Gays the grudging acceptance by some individual or group is prized.
Great emphasis is placed on the idea that sexual orientation can’t be changed, not as an understanding of the facts of being Gay, but to argue that “we can’t help it” so we are not to be blamed. People will point out that they didn’t “choose to be Gay,” as if no one would.
Many Gays just acquiesce to being Gay as unavoidable.
How many Gays express that that in being Gay they won the lottery? After all the chances of being Gay is somewhere around 3 percent, a little less than one in thirty. How many Gays feel they were lucky to be Gay and to life a Gay life?
The struggle to emerge as a Gay person is exhausting and many Gays don’t make it or emerge exhausted having done little more than avoid drowning in homophobia.
Even emerged Gays can face discrimination and violence and that be a struggle to be faced and preoccupy much of the individual’s thinking. In most places if not all places in the world Gays do face discrimination and often violence though it varies a lot depending on location.
As a consequence, Gays emerge exhausted, confronted with serious ongoing prejudice, and imprinted on by straight people.
Efforts to throw younger Gays a lifeline with Gay-Straight clubs in the high schools, with things like the “It’s Gets Better” videos to let younger Gays know that they just need to hold on, are immensely important. School libraries with Gay stories that are age appropriate are helpful.
The news media with its coverage of the Gay movement lets younger Gays know that there is a world of Gays out there and that there are Gay people living happy lives. It also lets them know that the homophobia they might face is just the prejudice of a certain set of individuals, not everyone.
The internet has allowed young Gay people to bypass anti-Gay obstacles and get the information they need.
Again, this is vitally important. If Gay people can get information early, they are less likely to adopt anti-Gay attitudes, have less of a struggle for self-acceptance, emerge earlier as Gay people, be more informed when they do come out, and less exhausted by the stress of coming out.
However, the one issue that isn’t addressed at the present is the straight imprinting on Gay people since they grow up isolated with straight people.
Gay people who emerge now tend to be assimilationists seeking to live like straight people and see the goals being to eliminate the discriminatory barriers to full assimilation. They imagine themselves as only having a private bedroom difference from straight people. Being Gay is something they carry around in a bag. They can even find it alarming that some Gays argue that Gay people might be considered different since they are fearful that thus they might be treated differently in a negative way.
As discriminatory barriers start to disappear, there are people who actually state that the Gay movement has accomplished its goals and isn’t needed anymore.
There is no recognition that Gay people have unique opportunities, challenges, and choices because they are different and because they don’t exist within the social formations of heterosexuality. There is a denial that Gays are different instead.
Since there is no recognition that Gays have different life choices and opportunities there is no individual or collective discussions in the Gay community about how a Gay life might be lived, how a Gay identity might be cultivated, and what the real needs of the Gay community are.
One of the most obvious opportunities that Gays have is that they have the time and resources to devote to projects and activities. The author had a full career in semiconductor processing making microelectronic devices as well as getting two university press books published which helped bring down the neo-Confederate movement and their statues.
Gays have been in earlier decades prominent in renovating old houses and built neighborhoods out of aged and decayed real estate.
Not all Gay efforts have to be so utilitarian or goal oriented. It might be the development of a music culture like the circuit parties.
The failure of even imagining that there is a different path for Gay people results in serious failures to meet Gay needs. For example, it is thought that the housing needs of Gay people are largely the same as straight people, even though a modest amount of thinking would show that it isn’t.
For nearly all Gay people who now live in a house, they live as a single couple in a house just as they were a nuclear family. Homes are constructed for nuclear families and Gays select from that housing stock. Given how housing prices have risen, this means the great majority of Gays will never live in a house they own. A great many won’t be able to afford a condominium. Gay people who will be able to live in a house will be upper middle class. Likely over at least 80% if not 90% of Gays will always be renters facing the prospect of ever higher rents. The LGBTQXYZ Democrats or leftists don’t even have a concept of Gay housing needs as being different then straights, let alone some plan to address it.
What is needed is home construction for multiple unrelated adults, modifications of current nuclear family housing to accommodate multiple unrelated adults, and plans on how nuclear family housing might be repurposed for Gays. There needs to be a development of law and policy to facilitate this.
However, the current situation now is that zoning for many homes limits the number of unrelated people that might live in a home. Much of the housing stock of the United States is bound in nuclear family land policies making it heterosexual housing available only for Gay couples owning the house as if they were a nuclear family. This heterosexual apartheid is vast, but isn’t even acknowledge by LGBTQXYZ leaders.
Employment is another area of concern. Most of the agenda is to have policies to end discrimination at which case the issue of Gay employment is considered being addressed. There is nothing wrong with this, and it is a good thing to do, but by itself, just a goal for the absence of discrimination fails to meet Gay needs and limits Gay opportunities.
There are multiple issues here.
First, even with the best of efforts, there is likely always going to be prejudice against Gays and also liberal attitudes of “tolerance.” Gays need to think carefully about what training and education are they going to seek so they have a strategic position in the economy and have good job prospects and leverage with future employers.
Gays have been concentrated in certain professions to be positioned so they aren’t subject to discrimination, most notably in the profession of hair dressing. This idea of locating yourself strategically to avoid negative consequences of discrimination is hardly new.
Even if a Gay person decides to go into a profession or a type of employment where they aren’t in a strategic position, they need to do so knowingly, that is with an understanding of strategic employment for Gays.
Second, Gays need to think that without the burden of a family they have certain opportunities precluded to those with families. They might choose a risky employment opportunity or join a start up or be part of a venture that has high risks of unemployment. At the most they just risk their own personal situation; they aren’t having to worry about a homeless family or moving a family in with relatives.
Third, Gays, when single, and even when a couple, can consider just moving to another location to pursue better opportunities without having to move a family. Gays can consider taking the risk of locating to a job and place provisionally since it won’t be that difficult to move again. The formation of the Gay neighborhoods in major cities was the result of Gay people leaving where they were and moving to major cities and settling in Gay neighborhoods.
Fourth, Gays can also, if necessary, put in a lot of hours into employment without concern of neglecting families. Or lots of hours getting a business going or being part of a start-up.
Fifth, without the need to support a family, with less need for an income, some opportunities they can pursue. It might be a lower income in restarting a career going into a different field. Perhaps some entry level opportunity can be pursued. The author restarted his career when the employment in his industry collapsed by taking a low paying contract job so he could then move from that base pay rather than his previous pay which scared away employers.
Sixth, the money that might be diverted to supporting a family can be used to be debt free or to pay down a mortgage and to have savings. Thus, some economic shock resulting in unemployment isn’t going to cause the loss of a house or being thrown out of an apartment.
These are probably only some of the unique elements of the employment situation for Gay people. Yet, in doing research online about Gays and employment, there wasn’t specifically any Gay information, instead it was for LGBTQ+ in general and it was about the elimination of discrimination.
Employment and housing are really important issues for Gay people, but they as distinct Gay issues they aren’t even imagined as such much less discussed as issues. They aren’t products and services to be provided by the LGBTQXYZ social workers nor are they important for vote harvesting by the LGBTQXYZ neoliberal Democrats. In fact, the issue regarding zoning would likely be a difficult issue for the Democratic establishment.
Generational transmission of Gay culture is weak since our parents and relatives are straight. How many younger Gay persons know of Mutsuo Takahashi or Constantine Cavafy?
As long as the imagining of being Gay is limited by straight imprinting, most Gays are going to be choosing assimilation, much less developing and thinking about the issues that Gay people have and what might be our choices and solutions to our issues and what unique directions our life paths might take.
The straight imprinting of Gays given our origins in straight families is one of the critical issues Gays need to address and solve.
In all areas of life, we need to consider what is the Gay path and what our needs our without assuming that we a just a variant from straight people. This will also lead to Gays expecting something from life more than just being tolerated and worrying about what the straight people will think. With Gay identities and Gay lives to live, we aren’t going to be subsumed in some LGBTQXYZ queer Alphabet Soup as another assimilated sexual minority.
As for throwing a lifeline to the younger generation, some good efforts are being made and what has been done is good. What is needed is to develop a global conceptualization of how to provide an easier and better path for future Gays to emerge safely from all situations and also how to provide for generational transmission of information and culture and from that conceptualization start projects to achieve those goals. With an easier path for Gays to emerge in the future, they will be less exhausted and not fearful of being different and be able to engage in defining what Gay life can be and have greater expectations of being respected and strength as Gay people to demand it.
In summary:
1. We need to have a systematic plan to help coming generations of Gays to arrive with a positive self-image and not exhausted so they can move on to the challenges of the next stages of their Gay life and not settling for tolerance.
2. We need to overcome straight imprinting and move on to defining and living a Gay life rather than choosing assimilation as a default and worrying what the straight people think.
3. We need to realize that Gay life is different and that it has special opportunities and challenges and have individual and community discussions about what living Gay life might be or could be. The Gay community goals need to be more than achieving the negative absence of discrimination, but a positive goal of constructing Gay lives and communities.
4. We need to provide for multi-generational transmission of culture and knowledge.
If we don’t, we will remain merely a sexual minority to be managed by social workers and opportunistic political elements who will define us. They will even have the temerity to decide to define Gay as homogender rather than homosexual. We will seek merely to be tolerated and have low expectations of respect. We won’t pass on to future Gay generations the learnings of the past. We won’t actualize our potentials to live Gay lives but instead exist as assimilationist shadows of straight people.
“ Gay people who emerge now tend to be assimilationists seeking to live like straight people” - I assume you feel this is a negative.
There is a tension between being gay (homosexual) and having a gay identity via a sharing of gay culture. I see the latter as being optional, and homosexuality as the only unifier.
I personally think the lack of gay community is a result of a lack of discrimination. Should we need to rally with each other we know we can, but for most of us, we now get to live our lives, and our concerns are parochial.
I don’t see this as an issue, but more as an end point. Unless we need to band together for safety or politics, we can be comfortable mixed in with rest of society.
I have heard it suggested that being gay is an identity/cultural, and that not all homosexuals are gay - that you have be an out and proud homosexual without any connection to the identity or culture. I would fall into that group for example.
I was wondering if you have thoughts on this ? You seem to use the term “assimilation gay” to describe homosexuals with do not conform to gay culture, and indicate this is not desirable, but why is it a problem ?