Sans Fig Leaf
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"Be you"
29 June, 2006
Many people make the mistake of thinking of the closet is nothing but a choice--a disguise constructed by each individual person who is hiding inside it. It's far more than that.
In millions of ways--seldom as clearly spelled out as the "don't ask, don't tell" policy--society tells gay people to hide who they are, or else. In a more general sense, society tells any children who do not conform to the societal expectations to hide those differences. Hiding is a perfectly reasonable response to a confrontation with an overwhelming powerful and hostile force. When looked at in a certain way, the closet is simply a coping mechanism. There's nothing wrong with a coping mechanism that works. But for the long term other solutions, such as removal of the threat entirely, should be an option.
The closet is also a conspiracy. "Hide yourself or else" becomes a contract. If you keep quiet, don't draw attention to yourself, allow everyone else to pretend you're not "different" you will be left alone. Mostly--other than those times when someone is chosen almost at random to be made an example.
In addition to being a conspiracy between each person hiding inside it and all the forces outside, there are mutual conspiracies between the individuals inside all those closets. On one level it's a simple desire for companionship--to have someone to share the "real you." Places where you can relax and not worry overmuch about being noticed by the outsiders.
That ability to relax is so welcome after a lifetime of hiding in constant fear of being discovered, that it feels like an escape. It becomes comfortable. Small communities form of people who have the same secret. These communities create spaces where people sharing the secret can meet. In certain neighborhoods it becomes safe to be more open. Businesses that cater to these communities come into being. Certain members of the communities become known outside the community as unofficial spokespeople.
But it isn't an escape. It's not freedom. It's just a bigger closet. Some people are perfectly happy with that larger closet. It seems like a good compromise between the "bad old days" of open beatings, murders that weren't investigated, or being jailed when someone happens to catch you despite your best efforts to remain hidden.
As fewer people are willing to settle for that larger closet, the societal forces look for another way to contain the "problem." And they find a possible solution there within the community. You don't have to constantly hide who you are, and you don't have to restrict yourself to certain places and activities, but you do have to blend in: act just like everyone else, and affirm that you are just like everyone else other than this one, tiny, not terribly important detail.
Lebian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people come from all walks of life. The community includes people of every race, every religion, every political leaning. This is all true. That does not mean that we are "just like everyone else."
The big lie that the forces of repression have to fall back on when their other rationalizations are picked apart is that it's just sex or lust. The difference between queer people and straight people, according to the lie, is merely with whom the queer people choose to satisfy their lust. But it is not about sex. It's about love.
The lie can be made to seem plausible. You can point to statistics about how fewer queer couples stay together than straight couples. You can talk about individuals cruising for casual sex. A superficial analysis can be constructed that gay people are seeking gratification, rather than commitment. But turn the same critical eyes on the "heterosexual norm" and it's harder to say that straight folks are significantly more oriented toward commitment. For one thing, the few studies I've seen quoted compare all queer couples who set up housekeeping to only those straight couples that marry. That's not an accurate comparison. If you also count all the straight couples who move in together and then break up without getting married, the statistical gap tightens up quite a bit.
That remaining gap can be explained away when you recognize that society places great pressure to stay together--including legal and financial penalties--on straight couples. It also throws many obstacles in the path of queer couples.
And that doesn't even factor in the conclusions the Center for Desease Control reached in the mid-90s that more than 40% of ostensibly straight men secretly seek out sex with other men, of which fewer than 1 in 20 will admit to even on anonymous surveys. Add those numbers to the infidelities they admit to, and they don't appear to be any more "faithful" than their openly gay counterparts.
The bottom line is that gay men fall in love with other men. The exact mechanisms of attraction and love are not fully understood, and probably never will be, but we know that part of the process relates to certain responses in certain structures the brain. Those structures function differently in gay men than in straight, and a similar collection of brain structures function differently in lesbians than in straight women. Those same brain structures are involved in all the rest of our lives. Every experience, every memory, every decision we make is processed thorugh our brains. I can't say how that difference effects everything else, I simply know that it must have some effect.
Which isn't to say that there aren't choices involved. Love isn't an involuntary reaction, but the choices are about which person to pursue, which person to try to build a relationship with, and which relationship to commit to for the long haul--not who we feel the initial attraction for. Even the people who run those organizations that claim to cure homosexuality admit that the attraction part is inherent. What they call a cure is simply applying enough conditioning, coercion, and fear on the person so that they stop acting on their continuing same-sex attractions.
Which is just another form of the closet. A straightjacket is always a straightjacket, no matter how you accessorize it or what you call it. It doesn't change the person inside it, it simply limits and contains them.
I much prefer the freedom to be who I am.
You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it.
-- Johnny Cash (from an interview, not a song)
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