- Email: [email protected]
I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours
Gary W Dowsett Gay men occupy a strange position when masculinity is discussed or studied; neither truly inside nor entirely outside its domains. There is a growing gap between gay and non-gay men and women, which this paper describes with regard to relations with women, differences to feminist thinking, concerns of daily life, dealing with the HIV/AlDS epidemic and, most troubling and difficult to resolve, with regard to sex. An international gay commumIy has evolved and a gay life style and masculinity have been defined and developed within it, which from both outside and inside are seen as ‘other/and separate. To overcome this growing divide and its negative consequences, this paper challenges feminists and heterosexual men to take on board the issues ofhomosexuality and homophobia as an integral part of trying to understand masculine heterosexual sex, masculinity and sexual politics.
IGHT from the early days of men’s studies, books contained references on homosexuality, but they were often strangely coy, not mentioning homosexuality as an aspect of masculinity. Rather, homosexuality was situated as a nagging doubt in the minds of men who grappled with their own quite heterosexual masculinity, or as an aberrant moment in a confused search by heterosexual men for their ‘true’selves.*-3 Much of this early work was North American. Yet Kinsey et al4 found that 37 per cent of their sample of North American men had experienced sex to the point of orgasm with another man, which even if it was only the case in its own time, still implies a perplexing omission from many discussions of masculinity. Other studies of human sexuality configure homosexuality as deviance, yet this at least serves as the phenomenon from which analysing (heterolsexuahty beginss7 In this way, homosexuality performs a similar function to the part played by women in many analyses of gender. However, for both gay men and for women, it is heterosexual masculinity or masculine heterosexuality which remains the demanding core of the investigation of human sexuality. The primary technique of investigation into heterosexual masculinity is to constitute gay men as the ‘other’, sometimes as an antithesis and sometimes, more recently, as a shining example of non-sexist male progress.
R
Yet how different are gay men from other men? I work as an academic, swim for exercise, and watch football on TV - though in my own way. I work as an academic on issues concerned with homosexuality and the gay community; I swim at a pool with a large gay male clientele; and when I watch football on TV I turn off the sound and listen to opera on the stereo. Am I so different? Do these practices and preoccupations constitute the much-talked-of gay sensibility? Do they remove me from my sex? Certainly the last 20 years of gay activism in Australia and elsewhere have produced an exclusive subculture - a gay community - where only gay men are welcome. There is a very sizeable number of gay men who now live their lives largely outside ‘straight’ society and many others who prefer to live much of their private lives within gay communities. These gay communities have provided a political base from which to challenge the major discourses governing human sexual behaviour, notably legal sanctions and medical renditions. They have also provided the sexual/social relations, geographic spaces and commercial infrastructure for the development and consolidation of an emergent cultural form. This activity has been accompanied by a significant theoretical debate on sexuality in general and homosexuality specifically. This in turn has fostered new concepts of sexual identity, the role 19
Dowsett
of the body and its experiences, and of sexuality as socially produced.8-10 It is true that modern homosexual culture almost guarantees ‘otherness’, difference, separation.‘l Gay men are complicit in this ‘otherness’ and use it as part of a gay critique of heterosexism, gender and heterosexuality. Increasingly in these gay communities, the concerns of heterosexual masculinity have become irrelevant and, as a second consequence, the concerns of homosexual masculinity have become invisible outside gay communities. That growing distance and separation should be a source of concern for everyone interested in these issues. On the other hand, I am almost resigned to the growing gap between gay men and other men and, where it is occurring, between gay men and women. Maybe it is age; anything for a peaceful life. Maybe it is rage at the continuing heterosexual hegemony in the gender/sexism debate, and the heterosexism of many of its protagonists. But there are concerns common to all men, and these warrant our continuing attempts to bridge the gap between gay men and non-gay men. There are a number of issues that have been extremely important in widening this gap, yet ironically they call for even closer collaboration if progress is to be made.
RELATIONS WITH WOMEN There are many accounts of gay men offering an example of their successful dealings with emotional&y and with aspects of relating to women. The gay male example is often held up by both women and men for men to follow in ‘liberating’ themselves. The ease with which gay men socially engage women is envied. The closeness achieved without sex is often praised and validated by heterosexual women and men alike. There is a good deal of truth in this at one level, but learning how to establish good close personal and working relationships with women is not simply a product of not trying to seduce them. It actually takes a great deal of hard work. The point is, serious problems of gender relations occur between gay men and women all the time, in spite of the large common territory and the occasional political and theoretical convergence. 20
Every man, and this includes gay men, has been hurt by women and received pain at their hands, whether from mothers, sisters, teachers or lovers. Every man - as he is taught to be a ‘man’ by his father and mother - has also experienced the painful foreclosure of the feminine and the subsequent sense of exclusion and desertion. Thus, no less than other men, gay men must actively construct their relations with women; those relations are not an intrinsic quality of a sexual preference. In fact, gay men’s relations with heterosexual women are often quite problematic. There is a good deal of homophobia among heterosexual women. Effeminate gay men are often parodied and patronised by women. They may be okay for a giggle or a new hairdo, but are not to be seriously befriended. Gay men are often expected to witness verbal attacks on men’s penises in feminist discourse and join in the laughter; this is becoming an increasingly intolerable expectation. In particular, many gay men are on the receiving end of the emotional forays and sexual foraging of heterosexual women and have to weather attempts to prove that a good heterosexual fuck will fix them.
DIFFERENCES TO FEMINIST THINKING In some of the most vexed areas of sexual politics at present, the gay intelligentsia is also at loggerheads with sections of the women’s movement, eg. on the issue of pornography. There has also been some dispute between feminists and gay men in reference to the images and metaphors of gay sexuality employed to attract gay men to safe sex in order to prevent the transmission of HIV. One feminist analysis, for example, argues that gay male erotic images play into the hands of a distinctly male (read ‘heterosexual men’s’) conception of sexuality, one that oppresses women.12 This is particularly the case with reference to the positioning of penises and erections in gay promotional material for safe sex, in which the erect penis is seen inherently as a dominating threatI Gay male representations of gay men’s bodies and their imaging of gay men‘s desire are thus read with women’s eyes. The ‘passive’ anus is read as an analogue to the ‘dominated’ vagina. Yet the ability to interchange positions in homo-
Reproductive
sexual intercourse renders such a reading as extremely suspect, and this is ignored. Gay men may not read the anus as passive, or receptive anal intercourse as submissive, and they may not regard the erect penis as dominating in anal intercourse, yet this is also put aside. Gay men’s reading of these images is deemed secondary to a feminist reading, and the definitions of bodies and their meanings in relation to the problems of heterosexuality are privileged over those relating to gay men’s sexuality. This privileging of gender ln theories of sexuality leads in practice to the absurdities that often occur in HIV/AIDS work, where the categories of sexual risk are listed as ‘men who have sex with men’, ‘men who have sex with women’ and ‘men who have sex with both men and women’. In other words, choosing, a partner is about male entitlement to choose from the variety available. The underlying assumption is that male sexuality is a uniform manifestation, an essence of maleness. Not only does this ignore the clearly subordinate position of homosexuality in Western culture, it also fails to recognise the social construction of sexual expression. Recently, some feminists have begun to question the privileging of gender and to argue for a broader cluster of concepts that involve not only gender but also sex and sexuality.13,14 Without this, gay men’s issues in relation to sexuality are seriously disadvantaged and the central part played by homophobia in the construction of our cultures may fail to be recognised. Yet there has been an almost deathly silence from non-gay men on these issues of sexual politics, which should be of concern to all men and women whose goal is human liberation.
DAILY LIFE A second issue concerns the politics of daily life. If I can be allowed to caricature the issue for a moment, it is about each man’s relationship to his vacuum cleaner. I have no doubt that issues of domestic politics are serious for most men and women. I have witnessed some mighty battles among my colleagues and friends on this issue. Yet such struggles seem more to do with heterosexual relations than with masculinity, particularly those relations captured by the notion of ‘sex roles’. This has been challenged as a profoundly heterosexist concept and, as such, large-
Health Matters, No 7, May 1996
ly irrelevant to gay men’s social and political concerns.t5 Indeed, contemporary gay life at times looks remarkably different from the domestic concerns that preoccupy heterosexual social relations. Issues faced by many gay men at present are: discrimination in housing and insurance; pensions; financial support for those caring for ill partners; recognition of gay relationships for taxation, social welfare and immigration purposes; adoption and care of children; and significant issues of death and dying, wills, nextof-kin arrangements, and the development of appropriate rituals of grieving and renewal as a result of the HIV epidemic. The lack of social support for gay relationships has been a longstanding concern of the gay movement. I have yet to see the complex manifestation of these issues raised in any systematic way in progressive social movements, in feminism, or in men’s studies or research on masculinity. As a result of this neglect and as gay community life internationally increasingly provides more of the social, political and cultural space within which gay men can lead their lives, the relevance to gay men of the ‘men’s movement’ and of heterosexual concerns in general will steadily diminish. The emergence of gay communities has transformed the domestic relations of gay men from hidden households and friendship circles to the highly elaborate social networks and institutions of full community. In the West, the gay communities of Sydney, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, San Francisco and New York are linked by a common yet diverse culture, an international literature and reciprocity of image, language and purpose, and a recognisable and pursuable sexual life. There is an increasingly sophisticated sense of a long history of ‘gay persons‘ and a recapturing of a ‘gay past’ through the identification as homosexual of various writers, artists, intellectuals and philosophers. This linkage and convergence of purpose is most evident in the fight against HIV and AIDS in the last decade. Gay men have not simply developed a recognition of a common sexual orientation, but an internalised identity as gay, a citizenship, identifiable patterns of social relations and a body dressed as gay, desired as gay and redolent with the sensation and satisfaction obtained from the unique sexual pleasures available to men alone. 21
Dowsett
For those homosexually active men unattached to this emerging community, living with a foot in both camps, as it were, is difficult and painful.16 Gay communities are offering a solution to that difficulty, though not always successfully, but the ‘option’ is definitely available to most homosexually active men.
AIDS AND THE HIV EPIDEMIC AIDS and the HIV epidemic are perhaps the
most urgent problem. Ninety-seven per cent of Australian cases of AIDS occur in men. And if a thought slipped through your mind on reading this such as ‘Oh, but they’re mainly gay men’, then I rest my case. For it is exactly that separation and distancing from gay men‘s concerns that I refer to. Women are increasingly recognising their danger in the epidemic, and we hear much nowadays of the need to problematise heterosexual masculinity to fmd a way to overcome the staunch resistance of heterosexual men to using condoms to protect themselves and their partn8rs.l’ Gay men are back on the pedestal, showing the way toward successful adoption of safe sex and condom use. Successful sexual behaviour change among gay men in response to HIV and AIDS relies on a pro-gay, pro-sex approach.18 The answer to successful safe sex education campaigns among heterosexual men and women lies in finding a way to use pro-sex approaches quickly, which actually validate aspects of masculine heterosexuality. I say ‘quickly’ because there is little time, in the face of the epidemic, for indulging in angst about (hetero)sexual politics. However, masculine heterosexuality is already problematised negatively in analyses of rape and sexual and physical abuse of women, children and homosexuals. That is the problem. It is important not just to problematise male heterosexuality but to address heterosexuality itself. At the same time, homosexuality is central to understanding the structure of masculine heterosexuality and, indeed, patriarchy. Sedgwick rejects the notion that homophobia is a product of repressed homosexuality in heterosexual men. She believes that it is the non-sexual relations between men that keep them in power and which, she argues, are profoundly homophobic.7 This analysis throws light on the increased 22
levels of violence recently experienced by gay men and lesbians in Sydney and many other cities in affluent countries.1g,20 Gay men are being bashed, murdered, and often raped by packs of young, undoubtedly very troubled, often working class youths. Meanwhile, a roaring trade in male prostitution with a clientele of largely married men is being carried on in the same cities. These examples point to the existence of a crisis affecting hegemonic mas*I Again, these issues concern all men; CUlilli~. they are not the worries of gay men alone. They point to a certain dangerous waywardness in masculine heterosexuality that is having a grave impact on gay men as well as on women - all the more reason for a convergence of effort.
SEX However, these issues are the easy ones. It is not so difficult dealing with the challenges of daily life and relating to women, and only a little harder to challenge conservative feminism on vexed issues of sexual politics. It is difficult but
Reproductive Health Matters, No 7, May 1996
not insurmountable to work at stopping the HIV epidemic. Each of these gets harder to do, and there is less support for gay men from non-gay men in working in these areas. But a chasm really opens when it comes to doing it with another man, gay sex itself, sex for the sake of pleasure. Whether manifested in the increasingly disturbing habit of pro-feminist heterosexual men insisting on hugging gay friends and colleagues, or in the ever-present married men frequenting public sex sites to seek sex with men, or in those moments when a mate ‘comes across’ when drunk or drugged, there is an inherent precariousness in male heterosexuality that all gay men recognise. There has been a determined effort by gay men to resist the notion, given credence during the HIV epidemic, that there has been a return to relationships, to meaningful sex, to sex with emotion. Part of the difficulty gay men have had in responding to HIV and AIDS has been the constant requirement that they clean up their sexual act, give up the excesses, settle down, stop doing it in parks or behind rocks, or with more than one partner at a time.2z I am happy to report that the attempt to make gay men sexually respectable is being resisted to the last orgasm. The sexual challenge of gay liberation is not dead and continues to provoke hegemonic heterosexuality and the implicit heterosexism of those who demand sexual conformity. The interest in and capacity for recreational sex among gay men challenges the prevailing notion of ‘privatised’ and ‘meaningful sex. The preoccupation with the equalisation of relations between men and women in heterosexual sex (a vital task for ending the oppression of women) is not, however, a central concern for gay men even though the gay liberation movement has consistently supported women and pro-feminist men in their struggle on this issue. There has been little support in return for gay challenges to monogamy - surely the lynch-
pin of the ‘ownership’ of women by men challenges to ‘privatised’ sexual activity, to the arbitrariness of age-of-consent laws and to end the sanitising of sexuality that pervades sexual politics today. On these issues, I predict only more distance, a greater divide, further incomprehension. The challenge remains to tackle head-on the issue of sex, all sorts of sex; to resist the heterosexist imperative to sidetrack gay sex from the debate; and to move beyond the liberal kind of research on masculinity concerned with housework and role-swapping and head for the sweaty, smelly, gritty bits. Gay sex has been scrutinised until every nook and cranny and every proclivity has been documented and catalogued, now that the HIV epidemic is with us. As gay activist Joseph Bristow says of homosexual men: We are, to the heterosexual world, walking definitions of sex. We mean sex. Our lifestyle is defined as a sexual lifestyle, a lifestyle that says Tuck’. . . Gay men provide a convenient target for the displacement and projection of widespread social confusion about heterosexuality on to a small ‘perverse’gro~p.~~
It is time we really looked at masculine heterosexual sex, its erotics, its ambivalence. It is time to ask, again, why you won’t do it with us? After all, I’ve shown you mine, and have done so for a long time now. It’s about time you showed me yours.
Note This article fist appeared as ‘Gay men, masculinity research, men’s studies and sex’ in Theory and Society, 22:697-709, 1993, and is reprinted here with kind permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers. It was reprinted in On the Level 3(4), 1995, with the title “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours” from which this revised version was prepared.
References 1. Miller S, 1983. Men and Friendship. Gateway Books, London. 2. Nichols J, 1975. Men’s Liberation. Penguin, New York. 3. Fasteau M, 1975. The Male Machine. Delta, New York.
4. Kinsey AC et al, 1948. Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male. WB Saunders, Philadelphia and London. 5. Weeks J, 1985. Sexualityand its Discontents: Meanings, Myths
and Modern Sexualities. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. 6. Dollimore J, 1991. Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 23
Dowsett
Sedgwick E, 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press, Berkeley. Fuss D (ed), 1991. Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. Routledge, New York and London. Ahman D et al, 1989. Homosexuality, which homosexuality? In: Essays from the International Scientific Conference on Lesbian and Gay Studies. Uitgeverij An Dekker/Schorer, GMP Publications, Amsterdam and London. 10.Greenberg D, 1988. The Construction ofHomosexuality. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. 11. Plummer K Ied), 1988. The Making of the Modern Homosexual. Hutchinson, London. 12. Wihon T, 1991. Feminism and the erotics of health promotion. Paper presented at the Fiffh Social Aspects ofAIDS Conference, London, March. 13. Butler J, 1990. Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. 14. Pringle R, 1992. Absolute sex? Unpacking the sex/gender relationship. In: ConneII RW and Dowsett GW. Rethinking Sex: Social Theory and Sexuality Research. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. 15. Watney S, 1986. The banality of gender. Oxford Literary Review. 8:13-21. 16. Dowsett GW et al, 1992. Gay lifestyles of the not-so-rich and quite unfamous. In: A&itch and Wotherspoon (eds). Gay Perspectives: Essays in Australian Gay Culture. University of Sydney, Sydney. 17. WaIdby C, Kippax S and Crawford J, 1990. Theory in the bedroom: a report from the Macquarie University AIDS and Heterosexuality Project. Australian Journal of Social Issues. 25:177-85. 18. Dowsett GW, 1990. Reaching men who have sex with men in
RBSUMB Dans les discussions ou les etudes sur la masculinite, les hommes homosexuels occupent une position assez particuliere, car ils ne sont ni tout a fait dedans, ni tout a fait en dehors. Le fosse qui va s’elargissant entre les homosexuels, hommes et femmes, et les autres est precisement l’objet de cet article, qui traite des relations avec les femmes, des differences avec la pensee feministe, des preoccupations de la vie quotidienne, de l’epidemie de VIWSIDA, et - question plus troublante et difficile a resoudre - des rapports sexuels. Contre cette separation croissante et ses consequences negatives, I’article incite les feministes et les hommes heterosexuels a discuter de l’homosexualite et de l’homophobie pour tenter de comprendre les relations heterosexuelles masculines, la masculinite et les politiques touchant a la sexualite.
24
Australia. An overview of AIDS education: community intervention and community attachment strategies. Australian Journal of Social Issues. 25:186-98. 19. Comstock GD, 1991. Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men. Columbia University Press, New York. 20. The Streetwatch Report. Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, Sydney, 1989. 21. ConneII RW, 1983. Crisis tendencies in patriarchy and capitalism. In: ConneII RW (ed). which Wayis Up? AUen and Unwin, Sydney. 22. See Crimp D, 1988. How to have promiscuity in an epidemic. In: Crimp D (ed). AIDS, Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism. MIT Press, Cambridge MA. 23. Bristow J, 1989. Homophobia/ misogyny: sexual fears, sexual
definitions.In: ShepherdS and
WaIIis M (eds). Coming On Strong: Gay Politics and Culture. Unwin/Hyman, London.
RESUMEN Los homosexuales ocupan un extraiia position cuando se discute o estudia la masculinidad: no e&in realmente dentro ni totalmente fuera de la esfera de la n-&ma. Existe tma creciente brecha entre 10s hombres y mujeres homosexuales y 10s heterosexuales, dlscutida en este ensayo en lo referente a las relaciones con las mujeres, diferencias en cuanto al pensamiento feminista, preocupaciones de la vida diaria, forma de enfrentar la epidemia de1 VIII&IDA y, lo m&s preocupante y difmil de resolver, en relation al sexo. Para superar esta creciente divisi6n y sus negativas consecuencias, este ensayo reta a las feministas y a 10s hombres heterosexuales a tener en consideracidn 10s temas vinculados a la homosexualidad y a la homofobia, coma parte integral de1 proceso de intentar comprender el sexo heterosexual masculine, la masculinidad y la politica sexual.
IGHT from the early days of men’s studies, books contained references on homosexuality, but they were often strangely coy, not mentioning homosexuality as an aspect of masculinity. Rather, homosexuality was situated as a nagging doubt in the minds of men who grappled with their own quite heterosexual masculinity, or as an aberrant moment in a confused search by heterosexual men for their ‘true’selves.*-3 Much of this early work was North American. Yet Kinsey et al4 found that 37 per cent of their sample of North American men had experienced sex to the point of orgasm with another man, which even if it was only the case in its own time, still implies a perplexing omission from many discussions of masculinity. Other studies of human sexuality configure homosexuality as deviance, yet this at least serves as the phenomenon from which analysing (heterolsexuahty beginss7 In this way, homosexuality performs a similar function to the part played by women in many analyses of gender. However, for both gay men and for women, it is heterosexual masculinity or masculine heterosexuality which remains the demanding core of the investigation of human sexuality. The primary technique of investigation into heterosexual masculinity is to constitute gay men as the ‘other’, sometimes as an antithesis and sometimes, more recently, as a shining example of non-sexist male progress.
R
Yet how different are gay men from other men? I work as an academic, swim for exercise, and watch football on TV - though in my own way. I work as an academic on issues concerned with homosexuality and the gay community; I swim at a pool with a large gay male clientele; and when I watch football on TV I turn off the sound and listen to opera on the stereo. Am I so different? Do these practices and preoccupations constitute the much-talked-of gay sensibility? Do they remove me from my sex? Certainly the last 20 years of gay activism in Australia and elsewhere have produced an exclusive subculture - a gay community - where only gay men are welcome. There is a very sizeable number of gay men who now live their lives largely outside ‘straight’ society and many others who prefer to live much of their private lives within gay communities. These gay communities have provided a political base from which to challenge the major discourses governing human sexual behaviour, notably legal sanctions and medical renditions. They have also provided the sexual/social relations, geographic spaces and commercial infrastructure for the development and consolidation of an emergent cultural form. This activity has been accompanied by a significant theoretical debate on sexuality in general and homosexuality specifically. This in turn has fostered new concepts of sexual identity, the role 19
Dowsett
of the body and its experiences, and of sexuality as socially produced.8-10 It is true that modern homosexual culture almost guarantees ‘otherness’, difference, separation.‘l Gay men are complicit in this ‘otherness’ and use it as part of a gay critique of heterosexism, gender and heterosexuality. Increasingly in these gay communities, the concerns of heterosexual masculinity have become irrelevant and, as a second consequence, the concerns of homosexual masculinity have become invisible outside gay communities. That growing distance and separation should be a source of concern for everyone interested in these issues. On the other hand, I am almost resigned to the growing gap between gay men and other men and, where it is occurring, between gay men and women. Maybe it is age; anything for a peaceful life. Maybe it is rage at the continuing heterosexual hegemony in the gender/sexism debate, and the heterosexism of many of its protagonists. But there are concerns common to all men, and these warrant our continuing attempts to bridge the gap between gay men and non-gay men. There are a number of issues that have been extremely important in widening this gap, yet ironically they call for even closer collaboration if progress is to be made.
RELATIONS WITH WOMEN There are many accounts of gay men offering an example of their successful dealings with emotional&y and with aspects of relating to women. The gay male example is often held up by both women and men for men to follow in ‘liberating’ themselves. The ease with which gay men socially engage women is envied. The closeness achieved without sex is often praised and validated by heterosexual women and men alike. There is a good deal of truth in this at one level, but learning how to establish good close personal and working relationships with women is not simply a product of not trying to seduce them. It actually takes a great deal of hard work. The point is, serious problems of gender relations occur between gay men and women all the time, in spite of the large common territory and the occasional political and theoretical convergence. 20
Every man, and this includes gay men, has been hurt by women and received pain at their hands, whether from mothers, sisters, teachers or lovers. Every man - as he is taught to be a ‘man’ by his father and mother - has also experienced the painful foreclosure of the feminine and the subsequent sense of exclusion and desertion. Thus, no less than other men, gay men must actively construct their relations with women; those relations are not an intrinsic quality of a sexual preference. In fact, gay men’s relations with heterosexual women are often quite problematic. There is a good deal of homophobia among heterosexual women. Effeminate gay men are often parodied and patronised by women. They may be okay for a giggle or a new hairdo, but are not to be seriously befriended. Gay men are often expected to witness verbal attacks on men’s penises in feminist discourse and join in the laughter; this is becoming an increasingly intolerable expectation. In particular, many gay men are on the receiving end of the emotional forays and sexual foraging of heterosexual women and have to weather attempts to prove that a good heterosexual fuck will fix them.
DIFFERENCES TO FEMINIST THINKING In some of the most vexed areas of sexual politics at present, the gay intelligentsia is also at loggerheads with sections of the women’s movement, eg. on the issue of pornography. There has also been some dispute between feminists and gay men in reference to the images and metaphors of gay sexuality employed to attract gay men to safe sex in order to prevent the transmission of HIV. One feminist analysis, for example, argues that gay male erotic images play into the hands of a distinctly male (read ‘heterosexual men’s’) conception of sexuality, one that oppresses women.12 This is particularly the case with reference to the positioning of penises and erections in gay promotional material for safe sex, in which the erect penis is seen inherently as a dominating threatI Gay male representations of gay men’s bodies and their imaging of gay men‘s desire are thus read with women’s eyes. The ‘passive’ anus is read as an analogue to the ‘dominated’ vagina. Yet the ability to interchange positions in homo-
Reproductive
sexual intercourse renders such a reading as extremely suspect, and this is ignored. Gay men may not read the anus as passive, or receptive anal intercourse as submissive, and they may not regard the erect penis as dominating in anal intercourse, yet this is also put aside. Gay men’s reading of these images is deemed secondary to a feminist reading, and the definitions of bodies and their meanings in relation to the problems of heterosexuality are privileged over those relating to gay men’s sexuality. This privileging of gender ln theories of sexuality leads in practice to the absurdities that often occur in HIV/AIDS work, where the categories of sexual risk are listed as ‘men who have sex with men’, ‘men who have sex with women’ and ‘men who have sex with both men and women’. In other words, choosing, a partner is about male entitlement to choose from the variety available. The underlying assumption is that male sexuality is a uniform manifestation, an essence of maleness. Not only does this ignore the clearly subordinate position of homosexuality in Western culture, it also fails to recognise the social construction of sexual expression. Recently, some feminists have begun to question the privileging of gender and to argue for a broader cluster of concepts that involve not only gender but also sex and sexuality.13,14 Without this, gay men’s issues in relation to sexuality are seriously disadvantaged and the central part played by homophobia in the construction of our cultures may fail to be recognised. Yet there has been an almost deathly silence from non-gay men on these issues of sexual politics, which should be of concern to all men and women whose goal is human liberation.
DAILY LIFE A second issue concerns the politics of daily life. If I can be allowed to caricature the issue for a moment, it is about each man’s relationship to his vacuum cleaner. I have no doubt that issues of domestic politics are serious for most men and women. I have witnessed some mighty battles among my colleagues and friends on this issue. Yet such struggles seem more to do with heterosexual relations than with masculinity, particularly those relations captured by the notion of ‘sex roles’. This has been challenged as a profoundly heterosexist concept and, as such, large-
Health Matters, No 7, May 1996
ly irrelevant to gay men’s social and political concerns.t5 Indeed, contemporary gay life at times looks remarkably different from the domestic concerns that preoccupy heterosexual social relations. Issues faced by many gay men at present are: discrimination in housing and insurance; pensions; financial support for those caring for ill partners; recognition of gay relationships for taxation, social welfare and immigration purposes; adoption and care of children; and significant issues of death and dying, wills, nextof-kin arrangements, and the development of appropriate rituals of grieving and renewal as a result of the HIV epidemic. The lack of social support for gay relationships has been a longstanding concern of the gay movement. I have yet to see the complex manifestation of these issues raised in any systematic way in progressive social movements, in feminism, or in men’s studies or research on masculinity. As a result of this neglect and as gay community life internationally increasingly provides more of the social, political and cultural space within which gay men can lead their lives, the relevance to gay men of the ‘men’s movement’ and of heterosexual concerns in general will steadily diminish. The emergence of gay communities has transformed the domestic relations of gay men from hidden households and friendship circles to the highly elaborate social networks and institutions of full community. In the West, the gay communities of Sydney, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, San Francisco and New York are linked by a common yet diverse culture, an international literature and reciprocity of image, language and purpose, and a recognisable and pursuable sexual life. There is an increasingly sophisticated sense of a long history of ‘gay persons‘ and a recapturing of a ‘gay past’ through the identification as homosexual of various writers, artists, intellectuals and philosophers. This linkage and convergence of purpose is most evident in the fight against HIV and AIDS in the last decade. Gay men have not simply developed a recognition of a common sexual orientation, but an internalised identity as gay, a citizenship, identifiable patterns of social relations and a body dressed as gay, desired as gay and redolent with the sensation and satisfaction obtained from the unique sexual pleasures available to men alone. 21
Dowsett
For those homosexually active men unattached to this emerging community, living with a foot in both camps, as it were, is difficult and painful.16 Gay communities are offering a solution to that difficulty, though not always successfully, but the ‘option’ is definitely available to most homosexually active men.
AIDS AND THE HIV EPIDEMIC AIDS and the HIV epidemic are perhaps the
most urgent problem. Ninety-seven per cent of Australian cases of AIDS occur in men. And if a thought slipped through your mind on reading this such as ‘Oh, but they’re mainly gay men’, then I rest my case. For it is exactly that separation and distancing from gay men‘s concerns that I refer to. Women are increasingly recognising their danger in the epidemic, and we hear much nowadays of the need to problematise heterosexual masculinity to fmd a way to overcome the staunch resistance of heterosexual men to using condoms to protect themselves and their partn8rs.l’ Gay men are back on the pedestal, showing the way toward successful adoption of safe sex and condom use. Successful sexual behaviour change among gay men in response to HIV and AIDS relies on a pro-gay, pro-sex approach.18 The answer to successful safe sex education campaigns among heterosexual men and women lies in finding a way to use pro-sex approaches quickly, which actually validate aspects of masculine heterosexuality. I say ‘quickly’ because there is little time, in the face of the epidemic, for indulging in angst about (hetero)sexual politics. However, masculine heterosexuality is already problematised negatively in analyses of rape and sexual and physical abuse of women, children and homosexuals. That is the problem. It is important not just to problematise male heterosexuality but to address heterosexuality itself. At the same time, homosexuality is central to understanding the structure of masculine heterosexuality and, indeed, patriarchy. Sedgwick rejects the notion that homophobia is a product of repressed homosexuality in heterosexual men. She believes that it is the non-sexual relations between men that keep them in power and which, she argues, are profoundly homophobic.7 This analysis throws light on the increased 22
levels of violence recently experienced by gay men and lesbians in Sydney and many other cities in affluent countries.1g,20 Gay men are being bashed, murdered, and often raped by packs of young, undoubtedly very troubled, often working class youths. Meanwhile, a roaring trade in male prostitution with a clientele of largely married men is being carried on in the same cities. These examples point to the existence of a crisis affecting hegemonic mas*I Again, these issues concern all men; CUlilli~. they are not the worries of gay men alone. They point to a certain dangerous waywardness in masculine heterosexuality that is having a grave impact on gay men as well as on women - all the more reason for a convergence of effort.
SEX However, these issues are the easy ones. It is not so difficult dealing with the challenges of daily life and relating to women, and only a little harder to challenge conservative feminism on vexed issues of sexual politics. It is difficult but
Reproductive Health Matters, No 7, May 1996
not insurmountable to work at stopping the HIV epidemic. Each of these gets harder to do, and there is less support for gay men from non-gay men in working in these areas. But a chasm really opens when it comes to doing it with another man, gay sex itself, sex for the sake of pleasure. Whether manifested in the increasingly disturbing habit of pro-feminist heterosexual men insisting on hugging gay friends and colleagues, or in the ever-present married men frequenting public sex sites to seek sex with men, or in those moments when a mate ‘comes across’ when drunk or drugged, there is an inherent precariousness in male heterosexuality that all gay men recognise. There has been a determined effort by gay men to resist the notion, given credence during the HIV epidemic, that there has been a return to relationships, to meaningful sex, to sex with emotion. Part of the difficulty gay men have had in responding to HIV and AIDS has been the constant requirement that they clean up their sexual act, give up the excesses, settle down, stop doing it in parks or behind rocks, or with more than one partner at a time.2z I am happy to report that the attempt to make gay men sexually respectable is being resisted to the last orgasm. The sexual challenge of gay liberation is not dead and continues to provoke hegemonic heterosexuality and the implicit heterosexism of those who demand sexual conformity. The interest in and capacity for recreational sex among gay men challenges the prevailing notion of ‘privatised’ and ‘meaningful sex. The preoccupation with the equalisation of relations between men and women in heterosexual sex (a vital task for ending the oppression of women) is not, however, a central concern for gay men even though the gay liberation movement has consistently supported women and pro-feminist men in their struggle on this issue. There has been little support in return for gay challenges to monogamy - surely the lynch-
pin of the ‘ownership’ of women by men challenges to ‘privatised’ sexual activity, to the arbitrariness of age-of-consent laws and to end the sanitising of sexuality that pervades sexual politics today. On these issues, I predict only more distance, a greater divide, further incomprehension. The challenge remains to tackle head-on the issue of sex, all sorts of sex; to resist the heterosexist imperative to sidetrack gay sex from the debate; and to move beyond the liberal kind of research on masculinity concerned with housework and role-swapping and head for the sweaty, smelly, gritty bits. Gay sex has been scrutinised until every nook and cranny and every proclivity has been documented and catalogued, now that the HIV epidemic is with us. As gay activist Joseph Bristow says of homosexual men: We are, to the heterosexual world, walking definitions of sex. We mean sex. Our lifestyle is defined as a sexual lifestyle, a lifestyle that says Tuck’. . . Gay men provide a convenient target for the displacement and projection of widespread social confusion about heterosexuality on to a small ‘perverse’gro~p.~~
It is time we really looked at masculine heterosexual sex, its erotics, its ambivalence. It is time to ask, again, why you won’t do it with us? After all, I’ve shown you mine, and have done so for a long time now. It’s about time you showed me yours.
Note This article fist appeared as ‘Gay men, masculinity research, men’s studies and sex’ in Theory and Society, 22:697-709, 1993, and is reprinted here with kind permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers. It was reprinted in On the Level 3(4), 1995, with the title “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours” from which this revised version was prepared.
References 1. Miller S, 1983. Men and Friendship. Gateway Books, London. 2. Nichols J, 1975. Men’s Liberation. Penguin, New York. 3. Fasteau M, 1975. The Male Machine. Delta, New York.
4. Kinsey AC et al, 1948. Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male. WB Saunders, Philadelphia and London. 5. Weeks J, 1985. Sexualityand its Discontents: Meanings, Myths
and Modern Sexualities. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. 6. Dollimore J, 1991. Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault. Clarendon Press, Oxford. 23
Dowsett
Sedgwick E, 1990. Epistemology of the Closet. University of California Press, Berkeley. Fuss D (ed), 1991. Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories. Routledge, New York and London. Ahman D et al, 1989. Homosexuality, which homosexuality? In: Essays from the International Scientific Conference on Lesbian and Gay Studies. Uitgeverij An Dekker/Schorer, GMP Publications, Amsterdam and London. 10.Greenberg D, 1988. The Construction ofHomosexuality. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. 11. Plummer K Ied), 1988. The Making of the Modern Homosexual. Hutchinson, London. 12. Wihon T, 1991. Feminism and the erotics of health promotion. Paper presented at the Fiffh Social Aspects ofAIDS Conference, London, March. 13. Butler J, 1990. Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. 14. Pringle R, 1992. Absolute sex? Unpacking the sex/gender relationship. In: ConneII RW and Dowsett GW. Rethinking Sex: Social Theory and Sexuality Research. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. 15. Watney S, 1986. The banality of gender. Oxford Literary Review. 8:13-21. 16. Dowsett GW et al, 1992. Gay lifestyles of the not-so-rich and quite unfamous. In: A&itch and Wotherspoon (eds). Gay Perspectives: Essays in Australian Gay Culture. University of Sydney, Sydney. 17. WaIdby C, Kippax S and Crawford J, 1990. Theory in the bedroom: a report from the Macquarie University AIDS and Heterosexuality Project. Australian Journal of Social Issues. 25:177-85. 18. Dowsett GW, 1990. Reaching men who have sex with men in
RBSUMB Dans les discussions ou les etudes sur la masculinite, les hommes homosexuels occupent une position assez particuliere, car ils ne sont ni tout a fait dedans, ni tout a fait en dehors. Le fosse qui va s’elargissant entre les homosexuels, hommes et femmes, et les autres est precisement l’objet de cet article, qui traite des relations avec les femmes, des differences avec la pensee feministe, des preoccupations de la vie quotidienne, de l’epidemie de VIWSIDA, et - question plus troublante et difficile a resoudre - des rapports sexuels. Contre cette separation croissante et ses consequences negatives, I’article incite les feministes et les hommes heterosexuels a discuter de l’homosexualite et de l’homophobie pour tenter de comprendre les relations heterosexuelles masculines, la masculinite et les politiques touchant a la sexualite.
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Australia. An overview of AIDS education: community intervention and community attachment strategies. Australian Journal of Social Issues. 25:186-98. 19. Comstock GD, 1991. Violence Against Lesbians and Gay Men. Columbia University Press, New York. 20. The Streetwatch Report. Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby, Sydney, 1989. 21. ConneII RW, 1983. Crisis tendencies in patriarchy and capitalism. In: ConneII RW (ed). which Wayis Up? AUen and Unwin, Sydney. 22. See Crimp D, 1988. How to have promiscuity in an epidemic. In: Crimp D (ed). AIDS, Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activism. MIT Press, Cambridge MA. 23. Bristow J, 1989. Homophobia/ misogyny: sexual fears, sexual
definitions.In: ShepherdS and
WaIIis M (eds). Coming On Strong: Gay Politics and Culture. Unwin/Hyman, London.
RESUMEN Los homosexuales ocupan un extraiia position cuando se discute o estudia la masculinidad: no e&in realmente dentro ni totalmente fuera de la esfera de la n-&ma. Existe tma creciente brecha entre 10s hombres y mujeres homosexuales y 10s heterosexuales, dlscutida en este ensayo en lo referente a las relaciones con las mujeres, diferencias en cuanto al pensamiento feminista, preocupaciones de la vida diaria, forma de enfrentar la epidemia de1 VIII&IDA y, lo m&s preocupante y difmil de resolver, en relation al sexo. Para superar esta creciente divisi6n y sus negativas consecuencias, este ensayo reta a las feministas y a 10s hombres heterosexuales a tener en consideracidn 10s temas vinculados a la homosexualidad y a la homofobia, coma parte integral de1 proceso de intentar comprender el sexo heterosexual masculine, la masculinidad y la politica sexual.