Beyond the Closet

The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life

Steven Seidman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135321918
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: LGBT Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Gay life has become increasingly open in the last decade. In Beyond the Closet , Steven Seidman, a well-known author and leading scholar in sexuality, is the first to chronicle this lifestyle change and to look at the lives of contemporary gays and lesbians to see how their "out" status has changed. This compelling, well-written, and smart account is an important step forward for the gay and lesbian community.

CHAPTER ONE

In the Closet

Heterosexual domination may have a long history, but the closet does not.¹ As I use the term, the closet will refer to a life-shaping pattern of homosexual concealment. To be in the closet means that individuals hide their homosexuality in the most important areas of life, with family, friends, and at work. Individuals may marry or avoid certain jobs in order to avoid suspicion and exposure. It is the power of the closet to shape the core of an individual’s life that has made homosexuality into a significant personal, social, and political drama in twentieth-century America.

The closet may have existed prior to the 1950s, but it was only in the postwar years that it became a fact of life for many gay people.² At this time, there occurred a heightened level of deliberateness and aggressiveness in enforcing heterosexual dominance. A national campaign against homosexuality grew to an almost feverish pitch in the 1950s and 1960s. Observes Allan Berube, author of Coming Out under Fire,

[Gays came] under heavy attack during the postwar decade.… When arrested in gay bar raids, most people pleaded guilty, fretful of publicly exposing their homosexuality during a trial.… Legally barred from many forms of private and government employment, from serving their country, from expressing their opinions in newspapers and magazines, from gathering in bars and other public places as homosexuals, and from leading sexual lives, gay men and women were denied civil liberties.… Such conditions led to stifled anger, fear, isolation, and helplessness.”³

The attack on gays accompanied their social visibility. After the war years, many gay individuals moved to cities where they expected to find other people like themselves and at least enough tolerance to put together something like a gay life. My sense is that gay visibility was less the cause than the justification of an anti-gay campaign. A growing public homosexual menace was invoked to fuel an atmosphere of social panic and a hateful politic. But why the panic around homosexuality?

Despite popular images of domestic tranquility on television and in the movies, the 1950s and early 1960s was a period of great anxiety for many Americans.⁴ There was a feeling of change in the air that evoked new hopes as well as new dangers. For example, as the war ended America emerged as a true superpower. However, it now faced what many considered to be a growing Soviet threat. Hysteria around the red scare narrowed social tolerance. Dissent and nonconventional lifestyles were associated with political subversion. Communists and homosexuals were sometimes viewed as parallel threats to “the American way of life.” As invisible, corrupting forces seducing youth, spreading perversion and moral laxity, and weakening our national will, communists and homosexuals were to be identified and ruthlessly suppressed. And ruthlessly suppressed they were.⁵

Moreover, though the war was over and America was victorious, this nation was changing in ways that were troubling to many of its citizens. For example, women now had some real choices. Their social independence during the war gave many women a sense of having options; some wanted only to return to being wives and mothers, but others wished to pursue a career or remain single. Set against the happy homemaker on television shows such as I Love Lucy, Leave It to Beaver, and Ozzie and Harriet was the “new woman” in Cosmopolitan or Helen Gurly Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl. The Cosmo girl may have been heterosexual, but she was also educated, career-minded, and sexy.

Men were also restless. During the war they had been exposed to different types of people, places, and ideas. While many men wanted little more than a job, wife, and a home, the world they returned to offered them many choices—a bounty of well-paying jobs, free higher education, and “good” women who did not necessarily believe that sex had to lead to marriage. Hugh Hefner’s playboy lifestyle may not have expressed men’s actual lives, but it tapped into a reality and a wish for expanded sexual choice.

It was not just adults who were restless. There was a growing population of young people who were becoming downright unruly. The popularity of rock ’n’ roll expressed something of their restless spirit. Many young people wished to fashion lives that expressed their individual desires and wants rather than the social scripts of their parents and society. The panic over “juvenile delinquents” and “loose girls” expressed Americans’ fears that the family, church, and neighborhood community had lost control of their youth.

So, while changes in the postwar period created a sense of expanded choice for many Americans, it also stirred up fears of disorder and social breakdown. Many citizens looked to the government and cultural institutions like television and magazines such as The Reader’s Digest to be reassured about what this nation stood for. On the global front, protecting what came to be thought of as “the American way of life” meant flexing our military muscle to ward off the communist threat. On the domestic front, moral order was thought to require stable families—and such families were to be built on the exclusive foundation of heterosexuality, marriage, monogamy, and traditional dichotomous gender roles. In this context, the homosexual stepped forward as a menacing figure, invoked to defend a narrow ideal of respectable heterosexuality. In popular culture and in the psychiatric establishment, the homosexual came to symbolize a threat to marriage, the family, and civilization itself; he or she was imagined as predatory, seductive, corrupting, promiscuous, and a gender deviant. The moral message of this campaign against homosexuality was clear: anyone who challenges dominant sexual and gender norms risks homosexual stigma and social disgrace. The homosexual was not alone in symbolizing social disorder and deviance; there was also the “loose woman,” “the delinquent,” and “the sex offender.” All these menacing figures served to reinforce a narrow norm of the respectable sexual citizen—heterosexual, married, monogamous, gender conventional, and family oriented.

By the end of the 1960s, the idea of a rigid division between the pure heterosexual and the polluted, dangerous homosexual began to take hold in American culture. The state and other institutions were given the moral charge to protect America from the homosexual menace. Gay men and lesbians were to be excluded from openly participating in respectable society. They were demonized, and any trace of them in public was to be repressed. The world of the closet was created.

THE CLOSET AS SOCIAL OPPRESSION

Not all instances of homosexual concealment should be described by the term the closet. Consider Lenny (b. 1935), one of the people I interviewed.

Lenny was keenly aware of his homosexuality as a young person. However, he was not clear about what these feelings meant. Growing up in a small town in the 1940s and early 1950s, he was not exposed to any explicit ideas about homosexuality. He never heard the term used in his family, among peers, or in the popular media. Throughout adolescence and even as a young adult, he thought of his homosexuality as a discrete feeling or impulse that could be isolated and managed. His homosexuality did not figure in the way that he defined himself.

Heterosexuality and marriage was so deeply ingrained in the world of his kin and peers that it was never doubted or questioned. Lenny grew up wanting to marry, to have a family, and to be part of a respectable heterosexual society. These heterosexual longings were deeply felt; they were real feelings and wants.

Lenny didn’t anguish over his homosexuality through his adolescence and early adulthood. He knew that these feelings were not acceptable and he kept them hidden. He never entertained the idea of a life organized around his homosexuality. Until he was well into his forties (in the 1970s), he had never known an openly gay individual; he had never read about homosexuality; and he doesn’t recall having been exposed to images of the homosexual in the movies or on television. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Lenny never knew there were gay political organizations such as the Mattachine Society, a small, secretive organization that focused on educating the public. Lenny felt little pressure to think of his homosexuality as an identity, and there was virtually no social encouragement for him to live an openly gay life.

Lenny eventually married. Even today, after a gay movement has vilified the closet and championed the idea of a proud, public gay self, Lenny doesn’t view his straight life as a strategy to pass. “I married because that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted that kind of a life.” He still enjoys a heterosexual way of life. Lenny doesn’t buy into the view that his straight life is a lie or is inauthentic. Lenny’s life, at least through early adulthood, should not be described as “in the closet.”

If the concept of the closet is to be sociologically useful, it should not be used casually to cover any and all acts of homosexual concealment. The closet is a historically specific social pattern. This concept makes sense only if there is also the idea of homosexuality as a core identity. Viewed as an identity, homosexuality cannot be isolated and minimized as a discrete feeling or impulse; choosing to organize a public heterosexual life would create a feeling of betraying one’s true self. The closet may make a respectable social status possible but at a high price: living a lie. Not surprisingly, the closet is often likened to “a prison,” “an apartheid,” “a coffin-world,” or to “lives led in the shadows.”⁶ It is said to emasculate the self by repressing the very passions that give life richness and vitality. Listen to Paul Monette, author of the award-winning memoir Becoming a Man: “Until I was 25, I was the only man I knew who had no [life] story at all. I’d long since accepted the fact that nothing had ever happened to me and nothing ever would. That’s how the closet feels, once you’ve made your nest in it and learned to call it home.” Monette’s struggle for an authentic self is narrated as a war against the closet, which he variously describes as an “internal exile,” an “imprisonment,” and as “the gutting of all our passions till we are a bunch of eunuchs.”⁷

In short, the closet is about social oppression. Among its defining features are the following. First, to be in the closet means that individuals act to conceal who they are from those that matter most in their lives: family, friends, and sometimes spouses and children. Being in the closet will shape the psychological and social core of an individual’s life. Second, the closet is about social isolation. Individuals are often isolated from other homosexually oriented individuals and are often emotionally distant from the people they are closest to—kin and friends.⁸ Third, secrecy and isolation are sustained by feelings of shame, guilt, and fear. The closeted individual often internalizes society’s hatred of homosexuals; if he or she manages to weaken the grip of shame, the fear of public disgrace and worse enforces secrecy and isolation. Finally, secrecy, isolation, shame, and fear pressure individuals to conduct a life involving much deception and duplicity.⁹ To be in the closet is, then, to suffer systematic harm—to lack basic rights and a spectrum of opportunities and social benefits; to be denied respect and a feeling of social belonging; and more than likely to forfeit the kinds of intimate companionship and love that make personal happiness possible.

This notion of the closet makes sense only in relation to another concept: heterosexual domination.¹⁰ The closet is a way of adjusting to a society that aggressively enforces heterosexuality as the preferred way of life. In the era of the closet, heterosexual dominance works not only by championing a norm of heterosexuality but also by demonizing homosexuality. The making of a culture of homosexual pollution is basic to the creation of the closet. Enforcing the exclusion of homosexuals from public life also involves aggressive institutional repression. Homosexuals are suppressed by means of laws, policing practices, civic disenfranchisement, and harassment and violence. The state has been a driving force in the making of the closet. To the extent that heterosexual privilege is enforced by keeping homosexuals silent and invisible, we can speak of a condition of heterosexual domination.

The closet does not, however, create passive victims. Too often, critics emphasize only the way the closet victimizes and strips the individual of any sense of integrity and purposefulness. But closeted individuals remain active, deliberate agents. They make decisions about their lives, forge meaningful social ties, and may manage somewhat satisfying work and intimate lives, even if under strained circumstances.

Passing is not a simple, effortless act; it’s not just about denial or suppression. The closeted individual closely monitors his or her speech, emotional expression, and behavior in order to avoid unwanted suspicion. The sexual meaning of the things (for example, clothes, furniture) and acts (for example, styles of walking, talking, posture) of daily life must be carefully read in order to skillfully fashion a convincing public heterosexual identity. For closeted individuals, daily life acquires a heightened sense of theatricality or performative deliberateness. The discrete, local practices of “sexual identity management” that is the stuff of the closet reveals something of the workings of heterosexual domination but also of how gays negotiate this social terrain.

Accommodating to the closet is only part of the story. Rebellion is the other. For individuals to rebel against the closet they must be seen as active, thoughtful, and risk-taking agents. Passive victims do not rebel; they surrender to things as they are. To reject the closet, individuals must view the disadvantages and indignities of the closet as illegitimate and changeable. They must have the inner resources and moral conviction to contest heterosexual domination. As sociologists have put it, rebellion is propelled less by utter despair and victimization than by “relative deprivation.” Individuals rebel when social disadvantages feel unjust but changeable—which is to say, when they don’t feel only like victims.

Finally, it is perhaps more correct to speak of multiple closets. The experience and social pattern of being in the closet vary considerably depending on factors such as age, class, gender, race, ability or disability, region, religion, and nationality. In this chapter I convey something of the negotiated and varied texture of the closet through a series of case studies. These examples are not intended to capture the full spectrum of closet experiences, but to show something of its oppressive, negotiated, and varied character.

THE CLOSET BEFORE STONEWALL: LENNY’S STORY

We’ve already been introduced to Lenny. He grew up in a small town in Massachusetts at a time when few Americans were exposed to clear ideas about homosexuality. Lenny understood that his attraction to men had to be kept secret; no one had to tell him. Heterosexuality pervaded and organized his world. His family, friends, popular music, and peer culture conveyed a simple truth: heterosexuality was the right way to live. There was no need to aggressively enforce heterosexual dominance.

At the age of twenty-two (in 1957), Lenny had his first homosexual experience. It happened in the navy. It was hard for Lenny to forget the pleasure associated with that encounter. Confused and fearful, Lenny initially suppressed his homosexuality. He thought of these feelings as a strange, disturbing part of himself that needed to be controlled. Lenny didn’t define himself as a homosexual; this notion was alien to him. He moved forward in his life. He did what was expected of him, which was also what he learned to want. He married and had a family. Lenny and his wife are still married and living in the town he grew up in.

However, between the 1950s, when Lenny was coming of age, and the 1970s, America had changed. Homosexuals were now a part of public life; they were in the news and from time to time the topic of homosexuality surfaced in conversations among family members and peers. His approach to homosexuality also began to change. Lenny learned that his attraction to men was more than a minor impulse; it meant, at least in the eyes of others, that he was a homosexual, something nobody wanted to be.

Lenny’s fear of exposure intensified. “I had a wife and a child, and I certainly didn’t want anybody to know about it. I had too much to lose. I enjoyed married life. I enjoyed what it gave me by way of security, home, family, children, relatives, and friends.” Lenny stepped into the closet and has remained there. “No one knows about my homosexuality—not family, friends, or neighbors. I never thought about telling anybody. I won’t tell anybody.”

Although closeted, Lenny no longer represses his homosexual feelings. His initial homosexual encounter stirred up passions and pleasures he had not felt with women. He decided to find safe ways to have sex with men. He minimized the risk of exposure by separating these experiences from the rest of his life—geographically, emotionally, and socially. His work allows him to travel, and during his trips he has sex with men. Lenny enjoys homosexual sex and considers it natural and normal, though he is convinced that others don’t see it this way. Accordingly, being closeted is, for Lenny, not about denying his homosexuality but regulating it.

Managing his homosexuality means minimizing its importance. Despite a culture that views homosexuality as an identity, he continues to think of it as merely a sexual feeling or impulse. Lenny keeps these feelings separate from the rest of his emotional and social life. Although he acts on these desires, they lack any deeper meaning for his sense of identity. Lenny understands his homosexuality as a sexual impulse that can be psychologically compartmentalized.

Socially speaking, managing his homosexuality involves a twofold practice. On the one hand, Lenny has to successfully perform a public heterosexual identity. Being married and a father makes this easy, he says. On the other hand, he must avoid homosexual suspicion. Lenny says that his marital and parental status, along with a conventional masculine gender status, makes passing relatively effortless.

Yet as Lenny described his daily life it was obvious that avoiding homosexual suspicion involves considerable effort and focus. Fear of exposure is almost constant. “I am always concerned that somehow, some way, I will be found out. I am always suspicious that somebody might pick up something.” Accordingly, daily life must be deliberately and carefully managed. For example, Lenny is silent in the face of homophobic comments by family, friends, or coworkers; he will never defend gay or lesbian people for fear of arousing suspicion. He not only avoids the company of openly gay people but will not associate with people who might be suspected of being homosexual. Lenny is especially mindful to avoid staring at men for fear of being noticed. In order to reduce the risk of exposure, Lenny travels about fifty miles from his hometown at least once a week to have sex with men. In fact, he went into his present business in part ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE In the Closet
• CHAPTER TWO Gay and Lesbian Life after the Closet
• CHAPTER THREE Straight Encounters
• CHAPTER FOUR From the Polluted Homosexual to the Normal Gay
• CHAPTER FIVE From Outsider to Citizen
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Notes
• Index