We are a story-telling species.
Our lives are bound together by folk-tales and legends about who we are, where we came from and how we should live.
For gays and lesbians, we are given a particular tale about ourselves — what I call the ‘oppression story’.
The oppression story is the dominant perspective globally on ‘queer’ identity, shaping the discourse of films, gay media, political actors and LGBT organisations.
Below is my attempt to re-think that story.
The Oppression Story
The oppression story goes something like this:
In the beginning, gays and lesbians existed unfettered by social prejudice. From the Ancient Greeks to Indigenous cultures in Australia and the Americas, sexual diversity thrived.
Then Western civilisation came of age and with it homophobia and heterosexism. Gays and lesbians were shunned, stigmatised and oppressed. The Church cast their love as ‘sin’ and untold pain was caused to gay lovers.
Throughout the 19th century, sexually repressed Victorians began encouraging their institutions to structurally institutionalise and criminalise gays and lesbians. Great queer heroes like Oscar Wilde paid the price.
Then came the 20th century and oppression was at its peak. Tens of thousands of gays and lesbians were killed in concentration camps. Men and women led shame filled lives trapped within cookie-cutter nuclear families. Conversion therapies thrived and suicides skyrocketed.
It was in this peak of oppression that gays and lesbians came together in Stonewall, 1969, to fight against police brutality and to launch a gay liberation movement. This movement fought hard against social conservatism and prejudice to decriminalise homosexuality and fight for the rights of gays and lesbians to exist across the world.
Today, this fight continues. With ‘queer’ movements taking up the mantle to fight the social oppression still experienced by the sexually diverse in a heteronormative culture which fuels violence and creates stigma for gay and lesbian people.
It’s a familiar tale. It’s also quite a romantic one. For gays and lesbians, seeing your life as the zenith of centuries of struggle provides a point of pride as well as a sense of obligation to continue the fight ahead.
But there are many flaws in this tale, and smashing the ‘origin myths’ of queer identity is an important step in better understanding the history of sexuality and difference.
Myth #1: Ancient Culture Embraced Diversity
No culture has ever existed without sexual shame.
As much as we would like to think of a polymorphously perverse primordial state, this isn’t the case.
Cultures regulate pleasure. Indeed, studies of Aboriginal customary law document many prohibitions on sexual expression including the public exposure of genitals, adultery, incest and general rules on relationships.
Indeed, the perspective that ancient cultures were somehow ‘sexually free’ seems to be adopting the perspective of colonisers who would often view Aboriginal peoples as ‘unrestrained’ and ‘unruly’ in sexuality.
In terms of Ancient Greek and pagan sexuality, there was also a robust culture of self-mastery over sexual urges and a limited pool of acceptable outlets.
For theorists such as Georges Bataille, the existence of sexual taboos is a natural consequence of cultural organisation. Our insatiable sex drives interrupt the need to work and contribute socially, therefore require taboos.
All cultures, past and present, set up prohibitions and restrictions on sex whilst also organising suitable outlets to transgress those taboos and release.
Did the past have different sexual taboos? Yes. Did they embrace sexual diversity? Definitely not.
Myth #2: Homosexuality Is Eternal
According to English sociologist Gail Hawkes the word sexuality “appeared first in the nineteenth century,” reflecting “the focus of concerns about the social consequences of sexual desire in the context of modernity.”
Without sexuality, ‘homosexuality’ makes no sense.
Indeed, the categorisation of the self on the basis of desire is a reflexive state particular to modernity. It’s also incredible silly.
Why monitor your sexual desires to see what category you fit into? Indeed, why monitor your desires at all?
For most of history, prohibitions on sex were focused on actions, not desires.
Because sexuality wasn’t conceivable in the past there is very little evidence that the kind of sexual desire experienced by gays and lesbians today, a persistent, recurring desire for the same sex, was prevalent. Indeed, there are even cultures that exist today which don’t appear to have gays and lesbians.
For many gays — myself included when I first understood this — the lack of a a-historical identity feels like a loss. However, it also opens up incredible opportunities to re-think and re-contextualise the past.
Myth #3: Those Prudish Victorians
A lot of people read Michel Foucault’s A History of Sexuality but very few appreciate its repercussions.
There is a simplistic Marxist approach to sexuality, which takes the turning point of prudish sexual sensibilities as beginning in the Victorian 17th century and continuing until the mid-20th century. The reason this is a Marxist critique, is it often links sexual repression to the rise of capitalism and bourgeois society.
Foucault tells us though that this genealogy — from repressed Victorian to an enlightened modern-day libertine — is a complete myth.
Instead, it was this Victorian-era discourse which created the categories that we — the “liberated” — now use to talk about sexuality in our progressive “sex-positive” modern world.
Philosopher Mark G. E. Kelly summarises Foucault’s thesis as this:
[Thanks to the Victorians] we now have sexualities indexed to our age (infantile or mature sexuality, teenage sexuality), indexed to our ‘tastes or practices’ (such as homosexuality), ones indexed to our ‘relationships’ (for example as patient or doctor), and ones indexed to space (in the home, in the workplace, etc.) (47/65). These correlate to particular ‘procedures of power’ which ‘solidify’ the sexualities (47–8/65): ‘The growth of perversions . . . is a real product of the interference of a type of power on bodies and their pleasures’ (48/65–6*)
From this perspective, the notion of ‘gay rights’ or indeed any form of ‘gay identity’ is an entirely Victorian invention.
Myth #4: The Hellish 1900s
The cultural image of 20th century gays and lesbians is that of shame and secrecy.
The most evocative image that comes to mind is that of the character of Frank Whitaker, from the 2002 film ‘Far from Heaven’.
Frank Whitaker in Far From Heaven (2002)
Frank, played by Dennis Quaid, is married to Cathy, played by Julianna Moore. Cathy is the dutiful housewife caring for her husband, until one night she receives a phone call from police saying that Frank is in a cell. Turns out Frank has been exploring local underground gay bars in secret. Frank, deeply ashamed by his actions, turns to conversion therapy and alcoholism to cope. At the end of the film, Frank finds himself a lover and leaves Cathy.
How accurate is this dismal depiction of gay life in America in the 1950s?
During this period, the dominant discourse on homosexuality was psychiatric and psychoanalytic. The studies of Kinsey and Freud made sexuality a popular topic of discussion, particularly the various paraphilias and ‘invertions’ of normal sexuality.
The idea that this pathologisation provoked universal shame amongst gays and lesbians though, is a myth.
Indeed, the proliferation of psychiatric literature on homosexuality in America has been implicated for the creation of early gay social scenes.
Amongst the turbulent times of the 1950s and 60s, homosexuality was viewed as a display of rebellion and non-conformity. Psychoanalyst Robert Linder in his series of essays entitled Must You Conform? discusses homosexuality positively in the same breath as youth rebellion and political dissent.
It is no coincidence that the most out and proud gays and lesbians during this time were also communists, beatniks and artists. Sexual deviance had become a mark of respectability within certain urban circles.
This association with rebellion, can be seen in earlier writing where the psychoanalytic discourse was just beginning to take hold.
Edith Ellis was a feminist writer active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her sexual desires were almost exclusively for women, yet she married Havelock Ellis, a male sexologist who diagnosed Ellis as a ‘sexual invert’.
How did Ellis respond to this deviant diagnosis? She wore it with a badge of pride!
In the wonderful ‘Alternative histories of the self : a cultural history of sexuality and secrets, 1762–1917’ Anna Clark notes that Ellis viewed herself, not as excluded by mainstream society but as an improvement.
Ellis, a follower of Nietzsche, had tremendous appreciation for the ‘abnormal’ in society — allowing her husband to measure her finger lengths and question her sexual history in order to better understand how she had ascended to such supreme individuality.
Ellis’ thoughts would prove incredibly influential on the lesbian feminist movement, and is a wonderful example of how ‘deviancy’ within 20th century discourse was often adopted enthusiastically by the sexually diverse.
In the words of Ellis: “better to be an active Devil, than a crushed Saint”
MYTH #5: Stonewall Kicked Off Liberation
‘Stonewall was a riot!’ we are told, but a riot lacks organisation and is a poor indicator of the start of a movement.
Indeed, the history of 20th century gay liberation movements is a lot more messy than is often depicted.
Americans have a distinct advantage in setting cultural narratives. They produce the overwhelming majority of films, TV shows and other popular media that we consume to tell us our history.
The yanks are also not well-known for being humble. So, when you hear ‘Stonewall kicked off the gay liberation movement’ it’s always worth putting on a bit of scepticism with an ear for American arrogance.
The Kingdom of France decriminalised sodomy in 1791, Brazil in 1830, Portugal in 1852, The Ottoman Empire in 1858, Italy in 1890 and most of Europe decriminalised prior to the 1950s. The first ‘gay bar’ (a place where men met to have sex with men) was opened in Japan in the early 18th century. The first gay rights group, The Order of Chaeronea, was British.
All of this is to say: Stonewall was, from the perspective of the time, just a riot. Albeit one that the more radical offshoots of the well-established Mattachine Society used to its advantage.
The early American gay liberation movement was poorly organised and ideologically inconsistent. Most of the major players copied language and organising tactics from more well-established feminist and black liberation groups.
This led to an awkward melding of democratic socialist ‘civil rights’ narratives with revolutionary communist calls for direct action and resistance. Attempts to get gay men and lesbians to agree on anything also seemed impossible, an issue which continued into the 80s, 90s all the way until today.
The international spread of ‘gay liberation’ was the result of well-established global networks within the Mattachine Society combined with international interest in American scandal and culture.
Big wins of the early gay liberation movement, such as the de-listing of homosexuality as a mental illness, were the result of organised internal campaigns by establishment figures and not grassroots activists.
The movement ultimately came together most effectively in America during the AIDS crisis, where peer support and activism became more sophisticated in order to tackle a plague.
The AIDS crisis is the more significant point of departure for gay activism. It led to the proliferation of health alliances and social support organisations that still have presence today.
All of which is to say, pegging Stonewall as some foundational moment for sexual freedom is playing a bit too heavily into the myths of American exceptionalism.
MYTH #6: Prejudice As Disease
The terms we use to describe gay social oppression today have a history — and a questionable one at that.
As Daniel Wickberg notes in Homophobia: On the Cultural History of an Idea:
Postwar [American] liberalism has been infused with a psychological orientation from its inception, and the concepts of racism and sexism, as forms of something called prejudice, have been seen as rooted in psychological needs from their beginnings.
It was in this context that the term ‘homophobia’ was first coined. It was designed to ‘flip the narrative’ on the depiction of homosexuality as a disease, by creating a new pathology — a ‘phobia’ through which to label oppressors.
It has also been criticised as an inadequate term since its inception.
Discrimination and violence against gay people occur because we are different, not because we provoke fear. As such we are seeing a shift in the literature away from terms such as ‘homophobia’ and towards terms such as ‘heteronormativity’ and ‘heterosexism’.
The latter terms describe a social pathology, not an irrational fear of homosexuals. Heteronormativity and heterosexism are said to result from a cultural preoccupation and normalisation of heterosexuality to the exclusion of sexual diversity.
This is a much better definition, but retains the post-1960s obsession with attempting the medicalise and pathologise queer exclusion. It’s also worth testing whether current social attitudes do indeed exclude gays and lesbians.
Pew Global Research 2013
The graph above outlines the findings of Pew research undertaken in 2013, which asked people across the globe ‘Should homosexuality be accepted in society?’.
As can be seen, overwhelming majorities in Australia, America and the United Kingdom do believe that homosexuality should be accepted. On that basis, can we really argue that current social attitudes exclude the sexually diverse? In my mind, we can’t.
So how are we to explain poor mental health and violence experienced by gay and lesbian people in modern society?
Rather than looking for a sexually specific social pathology, we are far better off looking at the impact of being different (in whatever way) to violence risk and mental health.
The findings of poor mental health amongst LGBT people are consistent with findings for people who are overweight or dress differently. The key to fighting these dismal figures is to build strategies of resilience, not to externalise responsibility for their feelings to some abstract social pathology.
What about violence? Research has consistently shown that most violent crime (against all groups) is committed by a small group of repeat offenders. These offenders are opportunistic, often targeting groups they see as vulnerable. Again, the key to tackling the experiences of violence by LGBT people is to implement broad strategies of violence prevention, not to externalise these issues to society as a whole.
Even today, we are the result of the narratives that we tell ourselves. Concepts like homophobia and heteronormativity are a direct result of a story we have adopted from the past.
It’s important to consistently test our ideas, concepts and theories against the best evidence we have available.
Both theories of difference and theories of heterosexism accurately describe our current world, but the latter has a questionable origin worthy of critique.
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This essay is not an attempt to dismiss or undermine the achievements of gay rights. Because of the courage of gays and lesbians of the past, I’m able to live my life openly, for which I’m eternally grateful.
However, nobody benefits from a false view of history. Indeed, by critiquing the social oppression narrative I hope that it opens up the horizons for people to create their own sense of meaning.
Take note of the views of Edith Ellis — difference is an improvement on the status quo. We should be proud of our individuality, even if it doesn’t follow some neat civil rights narrative.
Sex is one of the few inherently pleasurable aspects of the human experience, don’t get too bogged down by identity and historical place.
Live your lives proudly and choose your own narrative.