[This
article appeared in the Journal of Homosexuality, Volume 24, Numbers
3/4 (1993). It is a talk I delivered at an international conference
—
Homosexuality, Which
Homosexuality? —
which was held in
1987 at the Free University in Amsterdam.]
Political-Economic
Construction of Gay Male Identities
by
John Lauritsen
Social
Construction is an ill-defined approach, lacking in specificity and
poorly suited for solving problems of the real world. A concrete
analysis of negative aspects of the Gay Clone Lifestyle, with a
particular focus upon the premier gay clone drug,
“poppers”
(or nitrite inhalants), is contrasted to the desultory verbalizing
characteristic of most social constructionist writing. The central
point: Many features of the gay clone lifestyle were not created by
or in the interests of gay men at all, but rather were economically
constructed. The gay subculture largely evolved according to the
profit-logic of an expanding sex industry.
Over
a dozen years ago, the sidewalks of my neighborhood, New York City's
Lower East Side, were spray painted with the slogan, “CLONES
GO
HOME!”. This was not an act of antigay bigotry. Gay men
themselves had done the spray painting. Living in the Lower East Side
— New York's traditional “melting pot”
—
these men had a way of life they wished to preserve from the
encroachment of the “Gay Clone” lifestyle. [1]
Gay
Lower East Siders considered themselves part of a diverse and vital
community. They looked upon the newly emerging Gay Clone lifestyle as
the product of a ghettoized mentality, an embodiment of
commercialism, conformism, and vacuity. Living in a tough
neighborhood, they were not impressed by leather queans with
expensive wardrobes, nor by ersatz cowboys, nor by make-believe
lumberjacks. They despised disco as an uninteresting species of
sub-music, referring to it as “Mafia Muzak.”
Nevertheless,
the clone lifestyle came to prevail all over the world, so that an
entire generation of gay men defined their own identities in terms of
adherence to clonism: little mustaches; very short haircuts; plaid
flannel shirts, boots, denim or leather jackets; a particular
repertoire of movements, sounds, facial expressions, drug taking, and
sexual practices. By the mid-70s
there was a phrase in Frankfurt, “ein
falscher Amerikaner”
(“a fake American”), to describe a German gay man
who had
adopted the lifestyle of the American clone.
At
present, the clone lifestyle seems to be on the way out, though no
doubt there are those who will carry it with them, as their
identity, to the very end.
The
purpose of this paper is to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of
social construction theory for understanding the clone episode in gay
male history. I am particularly interested in the issues of
continuity and specificity.
My
Approach: An Interdisciplinary Focus on Male Love
From
my own academic training I favor an interdisciplinary approach, and
regard intellectual compartmentalization, or an excessive attachment
to any particular schema or dichotomy, as a sign of provincialism.
Every gay scholar has the right and the obligation to define the
scope of his or her inquiries, and my choice has been to focus upon
all-male relationships. Benedict Friedlaender (1904) asserted that
love, sex and friendship were different aspects of one and the same
phenomenon, for which he used such terms as “Uranian
Eros”,
“Platonic Love”, and “male-male
love”. I
agree. My preferred term is “male love”, whose
linguistic
heritage goes back to classical antiquity.
Basics
of Social Construction
Social
constructionists have devoted much analysis to conceptual changes
that occurred in the latter part of the 19th century. Beginning in
the 1870s, medical thinkers grouped both all-male relationships and
all-female relationships under a single rubric:
“homosexuality.”
[2] This new term denoted a
presumably abnormal condition of
being attracted to one's own sex, not being attracted to the opposite
sex, or both. Sometimes this was confounded by additional
psychological or physiological issues
(“masculinity”,
etc.). Corresponding substantives such as “the
homosexual”,
“a homosexual”, “homosexuals”
referred to
individuals who were defined by their homosexuality, who were set
apart as “different from others”. Social
constructionists
correctly criticize these 19th century notions for assuming that
“homosexuals” in the medically-constructed sense
had
always existed, that these labels reflected universal truths about
human sexuality.
In
historical perspective, these 19th century medical views were based
upon false premises. It is a pity that social constructionists seldom
go back much further than the 19th century, for historical evidence
is still the most powerful refutation of medical constructionist
(or essentialist) fallacies. On the one hand, the great civilizations
of classical antiquity had no categorical condemnation of same-sex
eroticism. Male love occupied a place of honor in ancient Greece. On
the other hand, the condemnation of sex between males is
“theologically constructed”. Roughly 2500 years
ago, the
Levites, the priestly class in Judea, formulated a taboo on all-male
sex, as part of their Holiness
Code.
This taboo, carried
forward by Jew and Christian alike, evolved into the concepts of sin,
crime (sodomy), sickness, and deviance.
The
above argument is not new. John Addington Symonds a century ago
rebutted 19th century medical views by asserting the antiquity and
nobility of “masculine love” and placing the blame
for
unhappiness upon the circumstances surrounding the “type of
passion” in modern times:
“What
has to be faced is that a certain type of passion flourished under
the light of day and bore good fruits for society in Hellas; that the
same type of passion flourishes in the shade and is the source of
misery and shame in Europe. The passion has not altered; but the way
of regarding it morally and legally is changed.” (Symonds
1983)
Criticisms
of the use of the word “homosexual” as a
substantive —
a noun describing a type of person, rather than an adjective
describing a type of activity — are not new either. Among
others, such criticisms were made effectively by Alfred Kinsey (1948,
1953) and Wainwright Churchill:
“Whatever
convenience there may be in the habitual use of this word as a
substantive is offset by the confusion and abuse to which such a
habit inevitably leads. Talk about the “homosexual”
encourages generalizations that usually cannot be substantiated by
reality, and one is never sure to whom this substantive really
refers.” (Churchill 1967)
Regrettably,
the social constructionists, having perceived the fallacies inherent
in the terms “homosexuality” and
“homosexuals”,
frequently use them without qualification as if they were oblivious
to their own analyses. [3]
Problem
Areas in Social Construction
In
the long run, social construction will be judged according to its
accomplishments: whether it leads to the acquisition of specific
historical or other information, or whether it increases our
understanding of the information we already have.
Compared
to the formidable scholarly achievements during the first decade
(1897-1907) of the homosexual rights movement in Germany (as
documented in the Jahrbuch
für sexuelle
Zwischenstufen),
the record of the social constructionists has not been very weighty.
(Lauritsen and Thorstad 1974)
Social
construction seems to languish in a bog of desultory verbalism,
withdrawn from practical endeavors. It too often falls into what C.
Wright Mills termed “Grand Theory” —
“an
elaborate and arid formalism in which the splitting of Concepts and
their endless rearrangement becomes the central endeavor.”
According to
Mills, both “Grand Theory” and its
counterpart, “Abstracted Empiricism,” are
abdications of
classical social science, which lead away from the solution of
concrete problems:
“As
practices, they may be understood as insuring that we do not learn
too much about man and society — the first [Grand Theory] by
formal and cloudy obscurantism, the second [Abstracted Empiricism] by
formal and empty ingenuity.” (Mills 1959)
There
is nothing profound in the dichotomy:
“essentialism-constructionism”.
“Social construction” is ill-defined, and I'm sure
many
of us would be grateful if the proponents of social construction
could provide us with a clear and concise definition of their
concept. The meaning of “essentialism” is not
clear, and
I cannot help expecting its opposite to be
“existentialism”,
the murky philosophy that was fashionable in the 1950s. In recent
polemics, feminists have attacked “essentialism” in
the
same ways that they used to attack “nature” or
“biology”,
and I suspect they regard these words as more or less synonymous.
Behind the “essentialism-constructionism”
opposition I
sense the ghosts of earlier dichotomies
(“nature-nurture”,
“heredity-environment”). If this is the case, then
the
attack on “essentialism” is naive, for nearly all
human
phenomena result from an interaction of both heredity and environment.
If
the attack on essentialism means simply a rejection of
transhistorical “universals”, then rejecting
essentialism
is simply affirming the millennia-old dictum of materialist
philosophy: “The only absolute is change itself.”
However, I don't
think this is what social constructionists have in
mind. [4]
The
question of “continuity” is raised, with
essentialism
apparently implying a maximum of historical continuity, and
constructionism, a minimum. This echoes the nature-nurture dichotomy.
Here I would argue for specificity. If we consider male love as a phenomenon,
as a type of experience,
or as a type
of passion,
then it is as old as humanity. The heritage of male love, its
traditions and literature, is ancient. Male love may have manifested
itself differently and been received differently from one society to
another, but it is real,
not just a
socially constructed
concept. [5] In addition, I am
convinced that the
erotic attraction
of human males for each other is biologically inherent, and
therefore, a product of evolution. But that is another topic.
One
might expect social construction, with its roots in labelling theory,
to be useful in understanding how individuals define themselves and
are defined by others as being “gay”, and in
understanding how a gay subculture develops. Here again is a need for
historical specificity. Some aspects of the gay male subculture
—
certain words, gestures, rituals, even certain meeting places
—
may be centuries old. Other things, like the clone mustache or disco,
are recent and presumably ephemeral.
The
Gay Clone Lifestyle (1974-1982)
It
may be generally agreed that the gay clone lifestyle came into being
and flourished in the years following the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969
and that it began to wither during the troubles of the 1980s. The
above dates are admittedly arbitrary. 1974 is the year that poppers
and disco became common features of the gay male lifestyle; 1982,
when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) formulated its first
surveillance definition for the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
(AIDS).
In
his thoughtful essay, “Male dominance and the gay
world”
(Plummer 1981), Gregg Blachford identifies the Leitmotiv of the clone
lifestyle as a “celebration of masculinity”.
Sometimes
Blachford gives the impression that gay men are voluntarily
constructing a culture to meet their own needs and desires. At the
same time, he emphasizes a dilemma in which: “The sub-culture
itself, through its own actions, cannot alleviate the conditions that
led to these problems.” (Plummer 1981)
I
shall argue that many features of the gay clone lifestyle were not
created by or in the interests of gay men at all, but rather were
economically constructed,
that the
gay subculture largely
evolved according to the profit-logic of an expanding sex industry.
Gay
men who came out in the 1970s encountered a subculture that seemed
almost too good to be true. Neophyte clones became avid consumers of
“gay” clothes, grooming styles, music, and drugs.
Forming
their new gay identities and relating to each other largely on the
basis of these things, they embraced a lifestyle of “commodity
fetishism”, with its inherent alienation.
To
be sure, the creation of the clone lifestyle was a complicated
process, and not all aspects of clonism stemmed directly from
business interests. Shirt manufacturers had no vested interest in
plaids versus stripes, and barbers made no more money from cutting
hair short, rather than long or in-between. And most clones took care
of their little mustaches all by themselves. However, a case could be
made that the clone look was itself a commodity — that, for
example, the dress codes, of the legendary Mine Shaft or the more
fashionable discos, were essential features of what was being
purveyed by these establishments.
Sexuality
itself became reified. Sex was reduced to frenetically fleeting
encounters in baths or back rooms. In the latter environment, sexual
partners were not even seen, let alone confronted as complete human
beings. Some clones came to define their sexual identity in terms of
an unseemly repertoire of acts
—
without learning the
ABC's of making love, they became adepts at performing skin piercing,
“tit jobs”, “rimming”, enemas,
“golden
showers” and “scat”, and other such acts
which they
had been taught by hard-core porn or S&M/leather publications.
[6]
With
the appearance of AIDS in the 1980s, the euphoria of the previous
decade dissipated, and it became urgently necessary to determine
whether the gay male lifestyle, either in whole or in part, might be
toxic.
The
Immunosuppressive Lifestyle
Viewed
without rose-colored spectacles, the clone subculture was in many
ways an Immunosuppressive Lifestyle. With the gay bar as the primary
meeting place, some men became alcoholics. Excessively loud barroom
jukeboxes prevented socializing through the oldest of barroom
diversions, conversation. At gay discos, regular and prolonged
exposure to pain-threshold noise posed serious health hazards
(stress, immunosuppression, and premature deafness). Promiscuity led
to frequent infection and re-infection with a wide spectrum of
venereal diseases, including syphilis, gonorrhea, amoebiasis,
chlamydia, hepatitis, CMV, etc. Not only were frequent treatments
with antibiotics necessary, but some men began taking them
prophylactically: they would swallow a handful before going to the
baths. [7] Inadequate sleep,
malnutrition; and
feelings of
alienation, loneliness, and low self-esteem were concomitants of the
lifestyle.
Epidemiological
studies have indicated that virtually all of the gay male AIDS
patients were regular and heavy users of such
“recreational”
drugs as the nitrite inhalants (“poppers”),
marijuana,
amphetamines, cocaine, LSD, quaaludes, ethyl chloride, barbiturates,
MDA, Eve, Ecstasy, and heroin. In one study, 58% of the gay male AIDS
cases used five or more different “street drugs.”
(Lauritsen 1990) With
the possible exception of marijuana, all of
these drugs are known to be dangerous. [8]
Poppers:
The Premier Gay Drug
The
poppers industry represents an extreme case in which the gay male
subculture was constructed according to profit-logic, rather than the
needs of gay men. (Lauritsen and Wilson 1986)
Almost
all gay men, but few other people, know what poppers are: little
bottles containing a liquid mixture of isobutyl nitrite and other
chemicals. When inhaled just before orgasm, poppers seem to enhance
and prolong the sensation. When used by the passive partner in anal
intercourse, poppers facilitate things by relaxing the smooth muscle
of the rectum and the sphincter muscle, deadening the sense of pain.
With regular use poppers become a sexual crutch. Some gay men are
unable to have sex, even with themselves, without the aid of poppers.
The
original poppers were little glass ampules enclosed in mesh, which
were “popped” under the nose and inhaled. They
contained
amyl nitrite manufactured by a pharmaceutical company and were
intended for emergency relief of angina pectoris, a heart condition
afflicting mostly elderly people. Amyl nitrite was a controlled
substance until 1960 when the prescription requirement was eliminated
by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). From 1961 to 1969 some gay
men, especially those who were into S&M, began using amyl
nitrite
as a “recreational” drug. At the request of the
pharmaceutical industry, the prescription requirement was reinstated
by the FDA in 1969.
In
1970 a new industry stepped into the breach, marketing commercial
brands of butyl and isobutyl nitrite. By 1974 the poppers craze was
in full swing and by 1977 poppers were in every corner of gay life.
At
its peak, the poppers industry was the biggest money-maker in the gay
business world, grossing upwards of $50 million per year. Gay
publications were delighted to run full-page, four-color ads for the
various brands of poppers, with revenues running into many tens of
thousands of dollars. One poppers manufacturer boasted he was the
“largest advertiser in the Gay press”.
Every
time a gay man picked up a gay publication he was confronted with
vivid ads persuading him that the act of inhaling noxious chemical
fumes was butch and sexy, an essential ingredient in the
“celebration
of masculinity.” [9]
One brand, Rush, had a
brilliant red and
yellow label which was so distinctive that a successful gay political
candidate in San Francisco used
the color scheme on his campaign posters as a subliminal
reinforcement.
Accessories
were marketed: for leather queans there were little metal inhalers on
leather thongs, a proper part of an evening's wardrobe. One magazine
had a comic strip entitled “Poppers”: its hero,
Billy, is
a child-like but sexy blond who just simply loves sex and poppers.
In
1981 Hank Wilson, a gay activist in San Francisco, noticed that many
of his popper-using friends were developing swollen lymph nodes.
After reading medical literature on the nitrite inhalants, which was
extensive even then, he founded the Committee to Monitor Poppers.
In
1983, after reviewing the literature on AIDS, I realized that
environmental factors necessarily had to be responsible for the
syndrome's being compartmentalized and that poppers were high on the
list of suspects. I contacted Hank Wilson and we started
collaborating. Since we have written a book on poppers (Lauritsen and
Wilson 1986) I will give only the barest summary here:
Poppers
are hazardous to the health in many different ways. They are
immunosuppressive, reduce the ability of blood to carry oxygen, cause
anemia (Heinz body hemolytic anemia and methemoglobinemia), cause
cellular changes, are mutagenic (i.e.,
damage chromosomes),
and have the potential to cause cancer by producing deadly N-nitroso
compounds.
There
are strong epidemiological links between the use of poppers and the
development of AIDS, especially Kaposi's sarcoma. Obviously poppers
are not the cause
of AIDS. But, in
light of their toxic
effects, they are likely to be a major co-factor. [2007: For more
information on poppers click here.]
Whose
Gay Community? Cui Bono?
Often
we speak of the “gay community”, the “gay
press”,
etc., as though it were self-evident that it is to us, gay people,
that these things belong. But maybe not. I have talked to gay men who
were incredulous when I described the known toxicity of poppers. They
were sure that if poppers were really harmful they would have read
about it in the gay press. How naive they were! Beginning in 1981
Hank Wilson regularly sent out packets of medical reports to the gay
press. These were ignored. In 1982 a research scientist sent a letter
to the Advocate.
She urged the
editor to publish it so gay men
would know that “persons using nitrite inhalants may be at
risk
for development of AIDS.” She was informed, “We're
not
interested.” In 1983, at the request of a poppers
manufacturer, the Advocate
ran a
series of advertisements
(“Blueprint For Health”) which falsely claimed that
government studies had exonerated poppers from any connection to
AIDS. (Lauritsen and Wilson
1986) For some of the gay press, advertising dollars were more
important than the lives of gay men.
Although
poppers are now illegal in the U.S., they are easily obtained on the
black market. Articles claiming that the ban on poppers is a denial
of civil liberties, and that the drug is really innocuous, have
recently appeared in the gay press. More
could be said about poppers, but the point is made: to a large extent
the “gay community” is constructed around profits,
not
the welfare of gay men.
One
might also analyze how the gay male subculture is politically
constructed. On one level politics and economics are
intertwined.
Politics is money and the poppers industry knows how to use its
political “influence”. The FDA and other government
agencies have accepted the ridiculous claim that poppers are a
“room
odorizer” rather than a drug. The poppers industry, which has
a
full-time lobbyist in Washington, has demonstrated in practice that
it can “influence” academics, gay leaders, gay
doctors,
state representatives, and even a U.S. senator.
On
another level, it is noteworthy that, during the present health
crisis, nearly all of the gay press and AIDS groups in the U.S. have
followed the government's lead. No critical thinker would believe
what the U.S. government says about Southeast Asia, South America,
Grenada, or the Middle East. Yet the gay press, with the notable
exception of the New York
Native,
have endorsed the Public
Health Service's untenable etiological hypotheses, [10]
its
statistical prevarications, its incompetent epidemiological research,
its hysteria-mongering, and now its unconscionable promotion of AZT —
a toxic drug which causes cancer and destroys bone marrow, whose
alleged benefits derive from incompetent and/or dishonest research,
and whose speedy approval resulted from improper and illegal
collusion between its manufacturer and branches of the U.S. Public
Health Service. (Lauritsen 1990)
The
best intellectual approach at this point is one that will enable us
to buckle down to the tasks at hand, for there is a lot to be done.
We are living in a time of crisis, fighting a war on many fronts
against unrecognized enemies. The outcome is uncertain. If we
survive, we shall have to do a ruthlessly honest reappraisal of our
environment, our identities, and the ways that we live.
# # #
NOTES:
1.
Two groups were responsible for the spray painting: Faggots Against
Gays (FAG) and Faggots Against Facial Hair (FAFH).
2.
In historical perspective, the forced grouping together of gay men
and lesbians is questionable, a consequence of the “social
construction of the homosexual”. As men, gay men have more in
common with all men, gay or straight, than with women, lesbian or
otherwise. At any rate, the concept “straight man”
is
extremely problematical and deserving of close analytical scrutiny.
Further, a case could be
made that gay men have more in common with women who love men, as
they do, than with women who do not. Gay men must fight to reclaim
the right to be fathers of families, as well as to experience and
practise male love — to be full male human beings, as the men
of ancient Greece were. Their need is for women who will love them
and bear their children, not women who reject them.
3.
Observe, for example, the wildly indiscriminate uses of these words
in the social constructionist bible, Making
of the Modern
Homosexual (Plummer 1981)
4.
It is not essentialism, but rather constructionism (obsessed with
nebulous concepts of consciousness, identities, lifestyles, etc.)
that tends to the idealist end of the philosophical spectrum. In
contrast, a materialist approach would concentrate upon more
fundamental and specific phenomena: practice, the concrete
circumstances in which gay men find themselves, the political and
economic underpinnings of those circumstances.
5.
John Boswell (1982) has provided an intelligent analysis of the
essentialism-constructionism (or
“realism-nominalism”
debate.
6.
Totalitarian tolerance
seems to be a
tenet of clonism. In
1983, during a meeting of the New York Safer Sex Committee at which
scatology and “golden showers” were being
discussed, I
commented, “A civilized human being does not repudiate his
childhood toilet training.” I was immediately rebuked and
told
that I had no right to be judgmental towards another's lifestyle.
7.
One New York City bath house (now closed) sold black market
tetracycline on the second floor, along with “recreational
drugs” of all kinds.
8.
In New York City the main gay discos and bathhouses were, among other
things, drug distribution centers.
9.
Two muscular guys, leaning against gasoline pumps, are
lecherously
looking over a third guy, also very muscular and stripped to the
waist, who is on a motorcycle. The caption says: “New from
the
makers of RUSH. HEAVY DUTY BOLT LIQUID
INCENSE ” [2007: For more information on
poppers click here.]
10.
The HIV-AIDS hypothesis has been elegantly and powerfully refuted by
the eminent molecular biologist, Peter Duesberg (Duesberg 1989, 1990;
Duesberg and Ellison 1990).
REFERENCES:
CHURCHILL,
W. (1967), Homosexual
Behavior Among
Males: A Cross-Cultural and
Cross-Species Investigation, New York: Hawthorne.
DUESBERG,
P. (1989), “Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired
Immunodeficiency Syndrome: Correlation But Not Causation”,
Proceedings of the national
Academy of
Sciences,
Vol. 86,
February 1989.
DUESBERG,
P. (1990), “AIDS: Non-Infectious Deficiencies Acquired By
Drug
Consumption And Other Risk Factors”, Research
in Immunology,
Vol. 141.
DUESBERG,
P. and ELLISON, B., “Is the AIDS Virus a Science
Fiction?”,
Policy Review,
Summer 1990. (Followed
by intense and
voluminous correspondence in the Fall 1990 issue.)
FRIEDLAENDER,
B. (1904), Renaissance des
Eros Uranios:
Die physiologische
Freundschaft, ein normaler Grundtrieb des Menschen und eine Frage der
männlichen Gesellungsfreiheit, Schmargendorf-Berlin:
Renaissance (Otto Lehmann); reprint 1975, New York: Arno.
KINSEY,
A.C. et al. (1948), Sexual
Behavior in
the Human Male,
Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders.
KINSEY,
A.C. et al. (1953), Sexual
Behavior in
the Human Female,
Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders.
LAURITSEN,
J. (1990), Poison By
Prescription: The
AZT Story, New York,
Pagan.
LAURITSEN,
J. and THORSTAD, D. (1974), The
Early
Homosexual Rights Movement
(1864-1935), New York, Times Change.
LAURITSEN,
J. and WILSON, H. (1986), Death
Rush:
Poppers & AIDS, New
York: Pagan. [Online in 2007: to read it click here.]
MILLS,
C.W. (1959), The
Sociological Imagination,
New York: Oxford.
PLUMMER,
K., editor (1981), The
Making of the
Modern Homosexual, New
Jersey: Barnes & Noble.
SYMONDS,
J.A. (1983), Male Love: A
Problem in
Greek Ethics and Other
Writings, New York: Pagan.
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