glbt

This year’s November elections in the United States included two high profile “gay marriage” cases, one in Maine, one in Washington State. Both states typically vote Democratic, are predominately White, and are on the Northernmost borders of the US, brushing up against Canada (where gay marriage has been legal since 2005). Accurate data on religiousity is hard to come by, but Maine and Washington are both considered to be far more secular than their counterparts in the South and Southeast. Now a week after the elections with most of the votes counted, activists and analysts are attempting to understand what happened: Why did Maine vote against gay marriage, and Washington vote for civil unions (AKA “everything but marriage”?)

In Maine, gay marriage was voted down by voters at 53% to 47%. (But just two weeks before the vote, polls indicated a dead heat at 48% to 48%, with 5 percent undecided).

In Washington, civil unions (AKA “everything but marriage”) between same sex partners and opposite sex partners older than 62 was approved by almost the same percentage as disproved in Maine: Approximately 53% to 47%.

The Huffington Post (via AP newswire) reports that Maine is just the latest in failures for gay marriage to pass by popular vote:

Gay marriage has now lost in every single state — 31 in all — in which it has been put to a popular vote. Gay-rights activists had hoped to buck that trend in Maine — known for its moderate, independent-minded electorate — and mounted an energetic, well-financed campaign.

Yesterday’s issue of The National Review Online, a conservative online publication, featured a triumphant story on the Maine defeat:

Robert P. George, a professor of politics at Princeton and founder of the American Principles Project, observes: “Maine is a northeastern liberal state with a significant student population. There are few blacks and very few Mormons. There is not a large Evangelical Christian population. The forces working in the state for the abolition of the conjugal conception of marriage as the union of husband and wife had the strong support not only of the media, but also of the state’s governor and other leading political figures. They had a significant funding advantage. On Election Day, they got the large turnout that they believed would assure them of victory. Yet, when the votes were counted, the people of Maine came down solidly in favor of restoring the conjugal conception of marriage that the state’s legislature and governor attempted to abolish.” (Lopez, “Winning with Marriage: Another year, another electoral victory.”) (emphasis mine).

Prof. George clearly marks some of the usual suspects opposing gay marriage: Mormons, non-intellectuals, evangelical Christians, and African-Americans. George and editor Kathy Lopez from NRO argues that that since none of these demographics are dominant in Maine, the reason must be that Maine voters simply know the difference between right and wrong: (“Why has gay marriage consistently lost when put in the hands of voters? Because what’s true is true. Most people know in their own heart that marriage is between a man and a woman”).

Assuming that the answer to this question is a bit more complicated than “right” or “wrong,” I first turned to the U.S. Census Bureau for quick facts on Maine and Washington. Here we see that:

• Washington state is BIGGER: approx. 6.5 million in Washington vs. 1.3 million in Maine.
• Washington state is GROWING FASTER: 11% growth in Washington, 3.3% in Maine; (US average 8%).
• Washington state has YOUNGER population demographics: 12% age 62+  in Washington, 15.1% age 62+ in Maine; (US average: 12.8% 62+)
• Washington residents make more MONEY: $55,628 median household income in Washington; $45,832 in Maine; (US median household income: $50,740)
• Washington is MORE RACIALLY DIVERSE: Washington is 84.3% White; Maine is 96.4% White (US average: 79.8%).
• Washington voters are MORE EDUCATED: 27.7% B.A or higher in Washington, 22.9% B.A. or higher in Maine (US average: 24.4%)

The demographics for King County (including Seattle) are even more striking. With a population of over 1.8 million (bigger than the entire state of Maine), 44.4% over the age of 25 hold at least a Bachelor’s degree. King County voters also voted in favor of Referendum 71 (“everything but marriage”) by a landslide: 68% to 32%.

We know from numerous social surveys that higher education and younger age are often correlated with tolerance toward gays. These factors may help to explain some of the difference between Washington and Maine election results. For example, Lax and Phillips (2009) show that across the U.S.:

• only 10-35% of people age 65+ support gay marriage
• but 35-75% of people between age 18-29 support  gay marriage.
• Incredibly, this means that on the aggregate level, age matters more than location: i.e. young people in gay-hostile states are more likely to support gay marriage than older people in gay-friendly states! (See graph here).

Since Washington State is younger while Maine is older than the national average, the age-factor (in addition to the education factor) seems quite relevant in these elections. (Another twist here is that in Washington State, older heterosexual voters actually had an incentive to vote for civil unions).

For gay marriage rights activists, simply waiting for old people to die off (or for more people to go to college) is unsatisfying; this strategy also doesn’t work for conservative defenders of exclusive heterosexual marriage rights. Thus, debates around gay marriage continue to boomerang back to the sacred associations of marriage: Can the meaning of marriage change? Should they? What are the consequences of changing the meaning of marriage?

My hunch is that for those 5% of Maine fence-sitters, it was the fear around changing the meaning of “marriage” that tipped them toward the status quo. In Washington state, marriage wasn’t on the line so voters got to skip past those fears, bringing them toward a post-modern future.

Stay tuned for: “When does the meaning of marriage change?”

Morehouse College is a small all-male college in Atlanta Georgia with 2,700 students. It has recently instituted a ban on women’s clothing, high heels, and carrying purses within its student body. Dr. William Bynum, vice president for Student Services reported that “We are talking about five students who are living a gay lifestyle that is leading them to dress a way we do not expect in Morehouse men.” CNN reports that the college has stated that those who are found breaking the policy will not be allowed to go to class unless they change. The school also reports that “chronic dress-code offenders could be suspended from the college.”

The policy details 11 expectations of students, including:

• 1. No caps, do-rags and/or hoods in classrooms, the cafeteria, or other indoor venues. This policy item does not apply to headgear considered as a part of religious or cultural dress.
• 2. Sun glasses or “shades” are not to be worn in class or at formal programs, unless medical documentation is provided to support use.
• 3. Decorative orthodontic appliances (e.g. “grillz”) be they permanent or removable, shall not be worn on the campus or at College-sponsored events.
• 4. Jeans at major programs such as, Opening Convocation, Commencement, Founder’s Day or other programs dictating professional, business casual attire, semi-formal or formal attire.
• 5. Clothing with derogatory, offensive and/or lewd messages either in words or pictures.
• 6. Top and bottom coverings should be work at all times. No bare feet in public venues.
• 7. No sagging–the wearing of one’s pants or shorts low enough to reveal undergarments or secondary layers of clothing.
• 8. Pajamas, shall not be worn while in public or in common areas of the College.
• 9. No wearing of clothing associated with women’s garb (dresses, tops, tunics, purses, pumps, etc.) on the Morehouse campus or at College-sponsored events.
• 10. Additional dress regulations may be imposed upon students participating in certain extracurricular activities that are sponsored or organized by the College (e.g. athletic teams, the band, Glee Club, etc).
• 11. The college reserves the right to modify this policy as deemed appropriate.

Cameron Thomas-Shah,  the student government co-chief of staff, has said that “The image of a strong black man needs to be upheld,” on the campus. And Bynum declares with certainty that the policy is needed by reporting that:

“We know the challenges that young African-American men face. We know that how a student dresses has nothing to do with what is in their head, but first impressions mean everything.”

Oh, gosh, where to begin with this one…

Stuart Hall, in his seminal work on social inequality and culture (titled Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices), defines how a sense of “othering” develops among more powerless groups when marked as “different” from (and often inferior to) dominant groups. “Othering” as you can see is a verb and refers to how powerless groups are marked and viewed as different and then frequently treated differentially by dominant groups on the basis of such markings. Marginalized groups, in turn, frequently come to see themselves as “different from” dominant groups and, at times, take on the qualities of dominant groups so as to assure that the possibilities for acceptance and upward mobility are not squelched within “mainstream society.” For African-American men in particular, as a response to having a lack of access to traditional means of masculinity (e.g. the occupational structure and mobility within it), scholars have further suggested that many African-American men adopt a “cool pose” that exaggerates attributes of masculine prowess (physicality and sexuality) to compensate for the lack of empowerment in other areas of their lives (Staples, 2006; Majors & Bilson, 1993; Messner, 1997). This process is said to be due to institutional and personal racism and discrimination which deny many African-American men traditional opportunities for masculine affirmation (e.g., education, employment, etc.). Behaviors to constitute hegemonic masculinity (the most dominant form of masculinity in a given period–often middle class and heterosexual), often include those that conform to gender role expectations that signify masculinity not only in the African-American community but broader society more generally.

This response may not be surprising given that historically, African-American manhood has been portrayed in racist ways as “problematic,” characterized by deviance, having a lack of social and familial responsibility, poverty, and sexual promiscuity. Concurrently, African-American sexuality has often been conceptualized as hypermasculine, hyperheterosexual, and aggressive (Ford et al., 2007) even when studies show that men frequently act in the opposite manner.

In the case of this particular news story, the response of the school represents precisely what the above scholars delineate. First, the school is “othering” classed signifiers of urban youth and the urban underclass (no “sagging pants” no “do rags,” no “shades”). It is also “othering” men who are (supposedly) not masculine, men who are not heterosexual, and men who dress casually (e.g. “unprofessionally”) at college events or common areas. In this way, dominant forms of masculinity are being embraced while “subordinated masculinities” (urban underclass, gay men) are being rejected and surveilled. The school is likely responding in this way because they want to ensure that African-American men, who have often been denied access to traditional structures can work within the current system and succeed (e.g.  this is clear from the quotes from the administration such as “we know the challenges that African-American men face,” “first impressions mean everything,” and “the image of a strong black man needs to be upheld”). Simultaneously, however, the school is rejecting signifiers of “other” men so as to ensure that the privileges associated with dominant norms of masculinity are not lost on African-American men as a group. To accomplish this, the school is attempting to use clothing policies to erase signifiers of marginalized masculinities as a way to shore up access to the privileges that arise from “good impressions.”

While it is important for African-American men at this university or any university to succeed, these policies are discriminatory against feminine men, gay men, and men who signify non-dominant aspects of class relations. Other African-American scholars have shown how racist and classist ideologies are used to surveil the dress and actions of Black male basketball players in the NBA (Todd Boyd’s book Am I Black Enough For you?), the hair of African-American newscasters, and how homophobia is alive and well both inside of and outside of the African-American community.

Recently, David Love posted a follow-up article to the policies enacted at Morehouse College online titled “Morehouse dress code is more about homophobia than decorum,” and underscored that “the ban on women’s dress is, however, little more than a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gay students. At best, it is a misplaced policy. At worst, it’s pure homophobia cloaked in official college stationery.”

Love goes on to report that “At a time when President Obama has announced his intention to repeal the military’s ban on openly gay servicemen and women, the school’s timing couldn’t have been more awkward. And in light of Congress recently passing a Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill to protect gay victims of violence, the Morehouse dress code is insensitive and anachronistic.”

It appears that Morehouse College can and should reconsider its othering and policing practices (despite its long list of classed signifiers that are on the prohibited dress code list, the school seems to then hone in on the fact that “we are talking about five students that are living a gay lifestyle”). Supporting dominant forms of gendered, racialized, and sexualized masculinities (heterosexual masculinities, middle class masculinities) and erasing subordinated masculinities (gay, working class, or urban underclass) whether this is through dress codes, hair styles, speech, or other social practices simply does not recognize that there are many acceptable ways to be a man–and many acceptable ways to be an African-American man in the United States. If stigma and discrimination are what Morehouse College wanted to teach its students about manhood through its public statements and its dress code policies, then they succeeded without question.

References

• Ford, C.R., Whetten, K.D., Hall, S.A., Kaufman, J.S., & Thrasher, A.D. (2007). Black sexuality, social construction, and research targeting “the down low” (the “DL”). Annuals of Epidemiology, 17, 209-216.
• Hall, S.(1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. New York: Sage Press.
• Majors, R., & Bilson, J.M. (1993). Cool Pose: The Dilemmas Of Black Manhood in America. NewYork: Touchstone Press.
• Messner, M.A. (1997). Masculinities: Men in Movements. Lanham, Maryland: Altamira Press.
• Staples R. (2006). Exploring Black Sexuality. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

I’ve been reading Dan Savage since the day of his first publication of the now nearly iconic Seattle alternative newspaper, The Stranger, in the early 1990s — this was before the Savage’s advice column, “Savage Love” became syndicated and before his appearances with Anderson Cooper on CNN.  I would pick up The Stranger on the steps of Savery Hall and read it before and after my graduate classes in classical and feminist theory. Though not an “academic,” Savage introduced a sort of Pop-Queer Theory to University of Washington’s students prior to any formal classes in this area. For this, I credit to Savage as being one of several key cultural workers who indirectly supported the development of cutting edge (third wave feminist, postmodern, queer) sexuality and gender scholarship. In that spirit, I’m going to share with Sexuality & Society readers some quintessential Dan Savage analysis — on Halloween as a Heterosexual Pride parade. Just a head’s up: the language here is bawdier than our typical format at Sexuality & Society (I’ve cut out some sections but you can read the entire story from the link above). Savage unfortunately employs the same repression/release analysis long ago refuted by Foucault and other critical sexuality scholars. He also often tends to glide over issues of sexism, and doesn’t mention the use of race or class stereotypes in the production of some halloween performances. However, other points I think are worth considering. There is certainly much here for analysis as a cultural text. Let us know what you think and Happy Heteroween!

(thanks to David Ryder for this story!)

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I’m often asked—confronted—about gay pride parades when I speak at colleges and universities. Usually it’s a conservative student, typically someone who isn’t happy about my being invited to campus in the first place. We gay people like to pretend that we’re all about love and marriage, the conservative student will insist, but look at your pride parades! Look at those guys in assless chaps and all those bare-chested lesbians dancing! Just look! The exchange almost always ends with this:

Conservative student: “Straight people don’t flaunt our sexuality like that. We don’t have straight ‘pride’ parades.”

Me: “You should.”

And it seems clearer with every passing Halloween that straight people do.

Back in the bad old days—pre-Stonewall, pre-pride-parades, pre-presidential-gay-history- month-proclamations—Halloween was the gay holiday. It was the one night of the year when you could leave the house in leather or feathers without attracting the attentions of the police. Halloween resonated for pre-Stonewall homosexuals because the closeted life—out to a select few friends, closeted at work and home—was a stressful masquerade that never ended. We were good at masks, at pretense, at dressing up, because we had to be in order to survive. Halloween took our skill set—pretending to be what we are not—and allowed us to find joy in it one night a year.

While Halloween is still celebrated by gays and lesbians, it’s no longer the most important date on the gay calendar. Oh, we keep it, but we don’t keep holy. It’s just another excuse for a party—and we’re always on the lookout for an excuse—but Halloween has been downgraded, displaced by other and better excuses for parties, by pride parades and Folsoms and the weekend. There are still parties in gay bars on Halloween, of course, and you’ll see plenty of homos in costume on Capitol Hill this weekend. But Halloween belongs to heterosexuals now.

And you need it more than we do. Straight people in Brazil have Carnival, straight Northern Europeans have Fasching, straight people in New Orleans have Mardi Gras—all big public parties where straight people show their tits, shake their asses, and flaunt their sexualities. Booze companies attempted to make a national holiday out of Mardi Gras, without much success. But straight people seem to have made a collective unconscious decision to adopt Halloween instead.

You made a good choice, straight people, a better one than the booze companies were trying to make for you. Whereas the pride parade is now the big public celebration of queer sexuality with all its squalor and glamour, Halloween is now the big public celebration of straight sexuality, of heterosexual desire, every bit—tit?—as squalid and glamorous.

We don’t resent you for taking Halloween as your own. We know what it’s like to keep your sexuality under wraps, to keep it concealed, to be on your guard and under control at all times. While you don’t suffer anywhere near the kind of repression we did (and in many times and places still do), straight people are sexually repressed, too. You move through life thinking about sex, constantly but keenly aware that social convention requires you to act as if sex were the last thing on your mind. Exhausting, isn’t it? It makes you long for moments when you can let it all hang out, when you can violate the social taboos you honor most of the rest of time, when you can be the piece of meat you are and treat other people like the pieces of meat they are.

It’s that kind of pressure—pressure to conform and maintain—that makes you want to pull on a pair of assless chaps and march down the street, the kind of pressure that cries out for some form of organized mass release. It’s the kind of pressure that a pride parade—straight or gay, Mardi Gras or Halloween—can release.

Right now things are a little unfair—a little—on the gender front. Straight girls are expected to show flesh on Halloween; straight boys aren’t. Sadly, I don’t foresee that changing anytime soon. People who want to f… men—straight and bi girls, gay and bi guys—show flesh because it works, it will attract positive male attention. (Well, that depends on how you feel about male attention, I guess.) … Straight guys don’t have the same incentive to bare their flesh on Halloween.

It’s a shame, of course, because there are a lot of straight guys out there who have amazing bodies, and they should be encouraged to show off on Halloween, to celebrate their erotic power and do like the gay boys do: objectify and be objectified at the same time. That would make the straight pride parades, aka Halloween, feel as egalitarian as the gay pride parades on which they were unconsciously modeled.

Every year around Halloween, I see some columnist or blogger or other talk about how ‘Halloween is just an excuse for girls and women to whore it up all night,'” writes nicolechat on a post at Feministing.com. “But every time I read that, I think to myself, so what? What’s wrong with having a night where we can say ‘This is my body, and I’m not ashamed of it, or of using it to express my sexuality.'”

Nothing at all, nicolechat. Heterosexuals in North America have needed a holiday like this for a long, long time. And now you’ve got one in Halloween. It’s yours now, straight people. Be good to it. And remember: Wrap those bandages loosely, and by midnight your boyfriend’s “mummy” costume will be just as revealing as that off-the-rack “sexy witch” costume you bought at Champion.

Happy Heteroween. 

On August 24th, 2009, CDC representatives at the National HIV Conference in Atlanta, Georgia reported that gay men and other MSM (men who have sex with men) are 50 times more likely to have HIV than heterosexual women or straight men. The report is not yet available at the CDC website and interestingly, only the “gay” newspapers have picked it up as a worthy news story (thus far).

This statistic is reported as confirming, in emphatic terms, the disproportionate impact of HIV/AIDS on gay and bisexual men of all races and ethnicities. It also recognizes that the highest impact is on African-American men. This announcement is crucial in a few key ways:

First, while there is no cure for HIV or AIDS (and a partially effective vaccine–soon to be another post), many in the US have had access to anti retroviral medications (ARVs) for decades. Many people therefore assume that HIV prevalence has leveled off and that there are very few NEW HIV cases in the US. This is simply not the case. We have a truly problematic epidemic here in the US, and the numbers clearly show us that certain populations are even more at risk than we knew.

This leads me to my second point: Our resources should be aligned to reflect where the risk is. It is not clear that this is happening, particularly in communities of color.

This new announcement tells us, in a convincing and unrelenting way that there is a disproportionate impact on MSM.

So, it’s clear that there’s a huge problem here. Still, I have some critical questions about this report.

1)  First, is there a differential risk between gay men, bi men, and MSM who may not identify as “gay” or “bi” ? Why not report the difference in risk between gay men, bi men, and MSM?

2)  Second, what is the difference between:

a) the risk among gay men, bi men, and MSM (as a category and separately, since they lumped them all together) compared to risk among heterosexual women and b) the risk among gay men, bi men, and MSM (as a category and separately) compared to risk among heterosexual men?

If there is a difference there, shouldn’t we also report that? If we don’t separate out analyses (a) and (b), don’t we unnecessarily set up a “heterosexual” and “minority sexuality” binary?

3)  Further, given that (a) and (b) were not analyzed and presented and given that heterosexual women are experiencing rapid increases in risk in some populations, how can we assure that resources aren’t needlessly pulled from them due to the way the data is being presented?

I have more thoughts, but I’ll stop there for now. There are many interesting framings of data that we can offer that rely on categories of gender or sexuality. We should do both at once. I am proud of my Centers for Disease Control for coming out, so to speak, with these newest figures, and as usual, I look forward to even more figures if these are also bravely revealed. Nuance, not simplicity helps—just as we find in media sound bites.