The Washington Blade
January 1, 1999
Culture clash
Michael Bronski explores straight America�s love-hate relationship with the Gay
community
by George De Stefano
Has the American melting pot frozen over?
Cultural critic Michael Bronski says he wrote The Pleasure Principle: Sex,
Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom (St. Martin�s Press) to explore why
American culture is still giving Gays the cold shoulder, despite the
increasingly warm reception some aspects of Gay culture have received in recent
years.
"Lots of culture created by Gay and Lesbian people has been crossing over and
has been accepted by straights," Bronski says. "The drag queen movies, like
Birdcage and To Wong Foo, are the most obvious examples, but it�s happening in
many other ways, too."
Bronski notes that Gay culture, in addition to its indisputable impact on the
arts, also has deeply influenced American cultural attitudes towards sexuality,
gender, and social institutions such as marriage and the family.
"I thought that the more Gay culture became assimilated into the dominant
culture, the more Gay people would be accepted," he says. "I bought the classic
myth of American assimilation, in which the Irish or the Italians come to
America, bringing their cultures, which become flavors in the melting pot. They
bring us wonderful gifts, are accepted as Americans, and everybody is happy.
"I used to think this would happen with Gays and Lesbians," he continues. "I
thought we were near the point where straight people enjoyed and wanted our
culture, and that when that happened, they would admit that we are Americans,
too."
But Bronski says that exactly the opposite has happened.
Fantasy and fear
"From the late 1970s onward," Bronski notes, "there has been a whole new wave of
attacks on the political and social advances made after Stonewall. This backlash
has simply gotten worse and worse, to the point where today it is a hallmark of
American conservative politics. So we are faced with a situation where straights
want Gay culture and enjoy it, yet are acting worse toward Gay people."
Bronski claims that although many heterosexuals fear homosexuality, they may
also envy the freedom and pleasure that Gay culture represents. He says that an
early Gay liberation slogan perfectly captures the ambivalent relationship
between the Gay and straight worlds: "We are your worst fear. We are your best
fantasy."
Bronski maintains that this contradiction has its roots in Western culture�s
conflicted attitudes toward pleasure and sexuality. Homosexuality, he observes
in his book, "offers a vision of sexual pleasure completely divorced from the
burden of reproduction: sex for its own sake." Bronski argues that because
homosexuality is by definition non-reproductive and "justified by pleasure
alone," it "strikes at the heart of the organization of Western culture and
societies."
Homosexuality and Gay culture also tap into "heterosexuals� discontent with
their lives," he writes, "and envy over the perceived freedom of gay people to
organize their lives in ways more fulfilling than traditional ones." In other
words, homosexuality is "at once a threat and a temptation."
The Pleasure Principle ranges far and wide in its exploration of Gay culture�s
relationship to the so-called mainstream. Bronski finds parallels to the Gay
experience in the Jewish ghettos of medieval Venice. He delves into the theories
of Sigmund Freud and of legal theorist Lani Guinier. He draws on the legend of
the Pied Piper, and the contemporary stories of TV star Pee Wee Herman and
Covenant House founder Bruce Ritter, to expose heterosexual hypocrisy
surrounding sexuality and youth.
Bronski says he chose this expansive focus because he wanted "to place Gay and
Lesbian people in a broad panorama of Western and particularly U.S. history and
culture."
"We have tended," he says, "to conceptualize Gay and Lesbian history as a
distinct entity, much the same way people talk about Jewish or Italian American
history. But it became clear to me that this is shortsighted. It doesn�t bring
us far enough."
His reading of American history convinced him that Gay culture was more akin to
that of African Americans than to that of European immigrants. Although the
latter experienced varying degrees of bias and discrimination, he says, most
eventually were accepted as assimilated Americans. But racism, he argues, has
denied African Americans the full rights that citizenship was supposed to
confer. Black culture, therefore, has tended to emphasize racial identity and
resistance to racism.
What comes next?
While noting that "racism and homophobia are structured very differently,"
Bronski argues that homosexuality, like racial difference, is regarded by the
dominant white and straight culture as a barrier to "an authentic American
identity." Gay culture, like black culture, tends to reinforce group identity
while offering a critique of mainstream values. And both minority cultures offer
"enticing alternatives" that are simultaneously threatening and appealing to the
mainstream.
Bronski acknowledges that "tons" of Gay people actually want to be assimilated
or "integrated."
"They don�t want to be queer or revolutionary or outsiders," he says. "My answer
to that is, �But ya are, Blanche!� as Bette Davis would say. The most upright
and uptight investment counselor can be bashed coming out of a Gay bar. I still
think that anything that raises the specter of homosexuality is viewed as a
serious threat to mainstream culture. And I believe that this threat will never
be mitigated by trying to be like straight people, by following this classic
mode of assimilation."
The key to increased Gay acceptance, he argues, is not changing Gay culture, but
changing straight culture.
"Gay people are never going to be free and full citizens until heterosexuals
change," Bronski insists. "It�s not we who have to change, but them. And in fact
they have been changing tremendously."
But as the current anti-Gay (and anti-feminist) cultural backlash shows, he
says, many straight Americans still resist social change.
"The world heterosexuals found security in, and the lies they were told, such as
�the family is the best place for women and children,� �children have no
sexuality,� �real men don�t eat quiche� -- all this has been challenged," he
says. "And they like it! But they�re also frightened, because these changes
destabilize the world they knew.
"Heterosexuals," Bronski says, "are deeply confused about what to do next."
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