IDAHO Day 2012

IDAHO, the International Day Against Homophobia is the new kid on the block when it comes to gay people being out, comfortable and proud on a global level. Why do we need it? Because there is still much work to be done. Homophobia is still alive and kicking.

There is much similarity with the women who participate in the Reclaim the Night' marches. Mostly, we can all go out safely at night, but occasionally, people do run into trouble and can be threatened or assaulted. So these gallant and thoughtful folk march to say that our streets need to be safe places so that our society can flourish. You cannot have a flourishing society when there are threats of violence on the streets. Women need to feel safe on the streets. So do men. So do children. Safe streets are a signal that a society is healthy and flourishing. So they march. It is high symbolism. It draws attention to the issues. It is an acknowledgment that there is still work to be done.

So what about homophobia? Is it still out there? Well, just ask any LGBT person about the timeframe
when they last encountered some level of homophobia. Most will be able to give you an
answer somewhere within the period of the preceding twelve months. The last time I encountered it
was just one week ago on May 11 in the Comments section after I published a piece in The Punch
about sexuality and Christianity. Some of it was quite vicious. Homophobia is still alive and
kicking. It is a part of our societies. So a day like IDAHO Day is still needed. It raises consciousness
and helps to bring some focus to the world that we still have a long way to go on this issue.

The Origin of Homophobia

Where does homophobia come from? The answer to that question at least is easy. It comes from
patriarchy - the system of inequality that privileges men and masculinity over women and femininity
(from the Greek, πατριάρχης [patriarkhēs] - rule of the father). There are many ways to be a man.
But patriarchy insists that there is only one way to be a man, and this is a very specific type of
hierarchical masculinity. Patriarchy also insists that this form of masculinity is natural or normal.
Patriarchy says: this is just how males are. When ruling figures adopt this model and enforce it with
coercion, the result is a top-down effect whereby a competitive, hostile, jealous, dog-eat-dog, I've
gotta be first, emotionless, self-centred, unempathic form of masculinity becomes normalised. This
tribalistic form of masculinity is what gender sociologist R. W. Connell calls hegemonic masculinity.

And hegemonic masculinity has its less obvious forms in everyday masculinity. In the West, men are
supposed to be strong, controlled, focused, rational and independent. Women, of course are
therefore represented as the opposite: weak, uncontrolled, unfocused, irrational and dependent.
This classic gender model is not only normalised, but actually celebrated and accorded a centrality in
the way we structure society. Still in Twenty-first century Australia, men run the show. Where
women do succeed, they either have to fight like crazy to get to the top, or sadly, act like men so
they will be respected.


Patriarchy affects straight men in coercing them to conform.

Patriarchy affects women in keeping them competitive with each other for the favours of the males
(if you don't believe me, watch how women treat each other in any open plan office with a few
women in it).

Patriarchy affects all gay people in the most harmful way as I shall describe below.


So patriarchy pretty much effects everyone and steers the gender order and thus the options of
people within a society.

Patriarchy, Homophobia and Gay Men

Patriarchy and homophobia go hand-in-hand for one very definite and observable reason. Patriarchy
has as its central tenet that women are inferior to men. Any man displaying any softness,
emotionality, any sense of being in touch with a more feminine side to his nature will be
instantaneously degraded in the patriarchal imagination. He will then be punished. For patriarchy,
there’s only one way to be a man and only one way to be a woman. Thus, with patriarchy's ability to
order society in its own image, gay men and women don't stand a chance. Why?

Because the one thing you cannot be in a patriarchy if you are a man is 'not a man.' 'Not a real man' is the standard by which gay men are judged by a patriarchal society. Gay men are seen as not real men. No man should sound like a woman. No man should look feminine. No man should be soft. No man should be in touch with his emotions. No man should display passion, enthusiasm or wonder in the way that a woman is supposed to. No man should be bookish or into creative arts. It is unmanly. We teach little boys that they shouldn't cry because 'big boys don't cry.' We teach little boys from a very early age that certain characteristics or emotional displays are unacceptable. We give them names like sissy or girly. It is unbecoming for a man, even a little boy type man, to display such behaviour.

Yet such sentiment has been around for a very long time. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the fratricidal Claudius speaks of Hamlet's "unmanly grief" when Hamlet is grieving the unexpected death of his father. Men don't show emotion. Men don't talk about the deep things that trouble them. That would make them appear like women, who are very good at doing just that. So, gay men are prime targets for hegemonic masculinity or even everyday patriarchal masculinity. We are a threat to their sense of
being real men. This is why they find us disturbing and don't know what to do with us, so they often
lash out, either in discrimination, hurtful humour, emotional abuse or violence. They retain their
most hate-filled aggressive speech for us: faggot, fag.

But they have got us right to one extent although they miss the point entirely. Gay men usually are
more in touch with their more feminine side than are straight men. It doesn't mean we are women.
It just means that we acknowledge a part of us that is quite antithetical to the patriarchal
masculinity stereotype. We are not afraid to show that we care, that we sing, that we dance, that we are in our bodies, that we care about our appearance, that we are engaged with our emotional life, that we can be soft and tender, that we hug and kiss other men hello and goodbye, that we like to be creative, that we love our music. Even gay men who work as plumbers or as other tradesmen, play rough contact sport, are members of the military or in elite sports, can identify with this softer side of them that is a little more feminine.

And the wonderful thing about this incredible acknowledgment in the face of almost overwhelming societal sanction against it is that we are comfortable in this because we know there is an authenticity in it. We get to be ourselves. It has usually taken us quite a journey to come out of the closet and to cease living the life-lie, so we are reluctant to live inauthentically ever again. We know that our sexual orientation does not make us less of a man; maybe it even makes us more of a man because we do live our lives authentically and fully, unlike many straight men who must conform to the masculinity stereotype to one degree or another even when they do not want to. Straight men are not supposed to be in touch with this side of their nature. Some are of course, but they pay a price. And that price comes from a basic elemental homophobia. Men are men and that's the way it's supposed to be. Straight men who cross-dress clandestinely certainly do subvert this patriarchal system by bending gender conformity at least in the privacy of their own homes. Uncloseted gay men do it openly and unashamedly. And we pay a price too.

Patriarchy, Homophobia and Lesbians

Lesbian discourse has for years talked about the invisibility of lesbianism, both in society and in the gay world. You can see two women walking down the street hand in hand and we don’t too much bother. Society can cope with this, maybe even accept this. But two guys walking down the street hand in hand is another matter. You rarely see it outside Oxford Street, and even there now, not very often. In Australia 2012, two men openly displaying affection is still a big deal. Similarly, female cross-dressing is not considered as scandalous as men wearing women’s clothes. And yet, in some ways, lesbian women cop a double dose of the worst of patriarchy: already subjugated and devalued because of being women, they are then denigrated and often abused for being the wrong kind of women. Lesbians are considered a threat to the patriarchal system because they insist that they can live lives of integrity without marrying a man. The homophobia inflicted upon lesbians ranges from relatively mild workplace discrimination to the extremes of sexual violence.

 

Patriarchy and the Collective Unconscious

Homophobia is certainly out there. It is insidious and nasty. It is deeply misogynistic. It rejects the
feminine. And it particularly rejects the feminine in men. In Carl Jung's Analytical Psychology, he
posited that humanity has an unconscious collective mind that transcends personal consciousness.
Because it is unconscious, it is out of awareness. Thus, for the collective unconscious to be expressed
in the male, it is expressed as anima, a softer more feminine self, which has to be repressed in the
conscious life. And likewise, for the collective unconscious to be expressed in the female, it must be
expressed through a masculine inner personality, animus. We know these are present in all of us
because in our most secret moments, our most alone times, we let animus and anima out of their
cages for a while and enjoy something profoundly nourishing, something that the conscious mind of
patriarchal society cannot accept or cope with. Homophobia springs from that rejection of engaging
our opposite sex gender. It is an uncontrolled lashing out at something it does not understand.

Internalised Homophobia

As gay people, we grow up in this same society that breeds homophobes. As children, we accept the
values and mores of society and normalise them, including traditional church teachings about sex
and sexuality if we are part of a church. This normalisation process is very harmful to us if we gay. It
effectively internalises homophobia within our very lives so that we have to come out not just once,
but for the rest of our lives. The shaming aspect of homophobia shouts at us that we should be
ashamed of who we are and how we are. It bellows at us that we should go back into the closet and
hide ourselves away again for we are unacceptable. You are not a real man. You are not a real
woman. It is powerful and something that psychologists call internalised homophobia. It is where we
beat up on ourselves.

Merewether Ocean Baths photo by OzinOH

None of us are immune. True story. Personal story. In summer, just a few months ago, my partner Chris and I went for a swim in the glorious Merewether Ocean Baths. There were lots of families, lots of kids, lots of teenagers and young straight couples. While swimming around, Chris came up to me and from a body's distance from me, stretched out his legs and grasped my waist with his feet. Instantly and without thinking I brushed them off because of the fear of the humiliation of looking gay in public. Chris was hurt and began to swim off. I was immediately taken by the gravity of what had just occurred and my part in it. I had repudiated my own partner's attempt at simple affection because of my own internalised homophobia. Interestingly, where Chris and I are usually quite open and affectionate with each other in public and I thought that I was beyond that kind of attack, I drew new insight that afternoon that really, none of us are immune. My brushing his feet away was like a reflex action - you know, tap the knee, the leg jumps out bypassing the brain. This is what happened in the pool that afternoon. An automatic internalised homophobia that tried to force me back into the pretending and lying of the closet. It happened so quickly that it took me by surprise as much as it did Chris. It bypassed my brain and I reacted rather than responded. I swam after him immediately and apologised and acknowledged what had happened and we swam to the pool ocean edge and peered out to sea for a while and talked it through, bodies touching each other as we leaned our arms on the edge and talked. We have to be so careful of homophobia, both as an agent of a patriarchal society and within ourselves.

The Ubiquity of Homophobia

Unfortunately, homophobia is to be found everywhere. It is rife in the schools. High school kids suffer an enormous burden with homophobic bullying, and at a time when they do not have the emotional maturity nor life experience to deal with it properly. Homophobia is in sport. There are very few out gay men in elite sport in Australia. When someone does come out, it is usually a big deal and makes headline news. Olympian Matthew Mitcham braved homophobia and came out before he won his gold medal in diving. Homophobia is in the police force, in medicine, in the law, in just about every career that you could name. It is certainly in politics. Occasionally it rears its ugly head and makes itself manifest in the parliaments of our country. Homophobia is everywhere. In some quarters, it is particularly strong and overt, while in others it is more subtle and invidious.

Final Thoughts

As I pen this post, four men in Iran are preparing to be executed for their homosexuality. Like the
two gay teenagers in this shocking picture, they will be hanged. Let me give you their names: Saadat Arefi, Vahid Akbari, Javid Akbari and Houshmand Akbari. I want to honour them because they are our brothers. They are being killed because they dared to be authentic. Homophobia, fuelled by patriarchal religion (and they are all patriarchal to varying degrees), is going to murder them. I hope there is a last minute reprieve but the sounds coming from Iran are not good.

On this IDAHO Day, let us remember that homophobia is just another form of prejudice, the filth of which we all need to reject as being unacceptable in a world that we want to be a better and freer place.


Pax et Amor - Stuart

Being Gay - Such A Delight (Part 3/3)

In the the third and final post of this triptych, I want to look in a very different direction to that of the first two posts. In the first, I canvassed the idea that being gay was a disappointment to parents and to society because gay people cannot on their own procreate and are ispo facto doomed to experience life in a lesser way, a way that is inferior, second-best, runner-up to straight people. In the second post, I took the idea that being gay is a disappointment further by examining the idea that gay poeple are somewhow broken straight people, heterosexuals whose identity has somehow gone off the rails, that we are deviants, because we deviate from the 'normal' path of being heterosexuals. In both these posts, I reject these ideas as being wrong, harmful and unfair in their characterisation of us; in the first, by suggesting that we are able to thrive and flourish very happily without the ability to procreate together and still live perfectly happy lives ( at least as perfectly happy as any other straight person), and in the second, by reminding us that good scholarship shows that gay people are not sick, ill or disordered and that we are not deviants at all - our sexual identity gifting us with attributes and experiences that can bring great positivity to a struggling world.

Our first two posts examined  rejected notions of disappointment. This one will look at the antithesis of disappointment - this one will look at why being gay is a delight. The etymology of the word delight shows that it comes orignally from the Latin and Middle English and has direct associations with the words: alluring, pleasing, enticing, delicious, delectable, light. All these words, except perhaps the last, describe something quite wonderful, something especially pleasurable or attractive. And the word light offers us the lovely sense of adding luminosity, elucidation, clarity. So let me speak about six factors that attest to why being gay can be a delight.


Gay people have a strong sense of family
If gay people are unconditionally accepted in their families, it is not uncommon to find a particularly strong connection made with parents and siblings. Given that gay people don't generally procreate and bring into the world another generation directly from them, some of this downward energy (to a following generation) goes across sideways and back (to siblings and parents). Where unconditinoal love is offered in a family by parents to all children regardless of sexual orientation, there is often an equality that can be quite wonderful and the envy of others. Gay people will frequently forge adult relationships with their adult parents and often also have the time and inclination to look after them when they grow older. Since gay people don't typically have children, their energy and commitment to family is quite substantial and in some cases can be demonstrably more so than straight siblings. Where does this come from? Probbaly from the years of sexual identity formation where every young gay person who wants to disclose to their parents but is fearful that they will be rejected. When that doesn't occur, there is often a world of discussion opened up a  about not only orientation issues but other issues as well leading to a growth in intimacy.



And for gay people who do have children, well you won't find more committed parents than gay people who more than likely have had to struggle to become parents in the first place. As is not the case for for straight couples sometimes, becoming parents for a gay couple is never an accident.

And finally, gay people have a huge commitment to non-biological family. Friends become resolutely firm supports and such friendships are highly valued in the gay community. Seeing friends, talking to friends, hanging out with friends are all-important to the gay person. The connections made and intimacy established and developed over time is quite something to behold. It is difficult to pinpoint  but most gay people would say that there is a difference they recognsie between the nature of relationships between gay people and straight people. In my own little family, my partner and I have a couple of very dear friends whom we consider family - part of our lives forever.

Gay people can be a challenge and an example to the world
One of the most trying things in the Western world today is the notion that big corporations or big government that has lost its way, both typically run by alpha males, is the way we do things. It has predominated the culture of the twentieth century and does not look like it's about to abate in the twenty-first. The wonderful thing about gay people is that our very lives cut across that gender status quo simply by being who we are. Gay men are not usually alpha males. Gay women are definitely not alpha males. While we can and do flourish in the world of commerce, there is a softer side to the gay guy, an absence of the 'dog eat dog' ethic that runs the world. Money comes first. People come
second. And while of course there are plenty of straight people who differ from these views in their language and action, there is a strong sense that gay people more generally revile these attitudes. Why? Probbaly because we ourselves have suffered under them, either in high school or in university or out in the workforce.

Gay men generally do have a wonderful rapport with women because in some senses, we have suffered some of the same outrages that the patriarchal systems impose on women. You see, homophobia is closely related to sexism.  Both are about a controlling and negative view and treatment of women. We gay men are well connected with our emotional lives and are quite comfortable in being engaged with a softer form of masculinity that eschews machismo, the inability to emote, or the refusal to cry. So no matter how muscled up a gay guy might be, the odds are that he's not an alpha male. Gay men get women.

And lesbians too challenge the gender order that keeps women down, keeps them in positions of subservience and inferiority, because lesbians are not only women themselves, they love women. Ellen DeGeneres is a hero of mine because she has been true to herself from the outset and has been an incredibly positive role model for lesbians (and gay men) around the world. And she is not frightened to speak up if she feels she needs to. She is living proof of gay girl-power where the gender order is turned on its head.

Everyone has suffered because of the gender order - men and women and children. I could tell a thousand stories from my Consulting Rooms of real life people where the gender order dominated by patriarchy has been a destructive force in people's lives. Gay people are a challenge to this order and an example of how life can be lived a different way.

Rufus Wainwright

Gay people are creative
Okay this one might seem like a stereotype, but it is not coincidence that we see so many gay people represented significantly in the arts and humanities. Gay people are generally very attuned to music and rhythm, image and colour. We are laughed at sometimes, these days good-naturedly, by those who need some clothing advice, colour advice, music or movement advice. In the churches, we are generally involved with music and the liturgy because we are so good at it. We have seen gay people thrive in the film and theatre industry, the music industry, the dance industry, in photography, in design, in fashion, in hair, in tourism, in hospitality. But the delightful thing is that although we obviously do do well in those arenas, we also bring the same creativity to the world of education, to medicine, to my own profession of psychology, to commerce and banking, to management and business, to building and architecture and engineering. Gay people tend to be creative people - there is no getting away from it. We can think outside the square and come up with alternatives that can be positive, workable and affirming.

Gay people are often in tune with the great questions
Because gay people by our very nature have to go through a gay sexual identity formation (you can read about it on pp86-90 in BGBC), we have been introduced at a young age to the great questions of life, the ultimate concerns. Now some think these questions are a waste of time. I don't. I think they are the most important questions of all and gay people are faced with struggling with their resolutions from the onset of puberty. Who am I? Where do I fit? What does it all mean? Is this all there is? What will life be like for me? How will I navigate my sexuality in a predominantly straight world? Is there a God? Des my sexuality matter to God? And all the others. There is a certain wisdom that comes from struggling with these great questions. An openness too. An ackowledgment that we don't have all the answers. A humility in life about the human condition. Do gay people have this more than straight people? Perhaps not, but because of our early identity formation, a psychological and behavioural process that takes years, we may in fact be more open to the great questions perhaps because we may in fact be more exposed to them. Many a straight person values the ideas and input of their gay friend. There's just something about what they're saying that rings true.

Gay people are generally people of peace
You won't find many gay people who are into violence or aggression. In fact, some of us in times past, and even occasionally in today's society unfortunately, have been victims of aggression. But gay people more often than not are peace-makers. We abhor violence. We avoid it naturally. It is part of our make-up to solve difficulties without violence and aggression. We avoid hostlity and try to soothe it where we are able. Blessed are the peace makers. They are a delight.




Gay people are in tune with sexuality
Gay people talk about sex. We think about sex and we have sex. After survival, sex is just about the strongest drive in the human make-up and gay people understand this well. Why? Because our lives, on one level, are focused through a prism that holds sexuality as being normal, healthy, satisfying and positive. We tend to have done away with the whole 'sex is dirty, sex is unclean, sex is filthy, sex is not to be talked about, sex is sinful, desire and the body are to be denied' stuff that the church has spat out for two thousand years. These are the messages of the Christian church down through the ages, stemming right from St Paul himself in the 1st century and onwards through other early church fathers like Augustine and Jerome. As these views have filtered into society, they have contaminated even our modern world and have caused untold damage to millions of people. Not all Christian teaching around sexuality is in this category I hasten to mention, but the 'sex is filthy and desire is sinful brigade' are wrong and harmful and need to be challenged. And the lives of we gay people do challenge them. Through the formation of gay sexual identity, from puberty through adolescence and youth, gay people have wrestled with these toxins and won through so that we have a healthier, more postive, more life affirming view of the place of sex, the body and desire in the human life.

What can I say - being gay is a delight. I want to tell our society, its parents and teachers and priests and pastors, its doctors and lawyers and professinals and workers, that being gay is not a disappointment. It is a wonderful way to experience life. I would be happy if any of my own nephews or nieces or their children turned out to be gay. Why? Because it's not a disappointment. I want society to understand this, to change the rhetoric, to undertake the mental shift from disappointment to delight. Every kid, every person has an absolute dignity from just being human. Can we not equally value being gay with being straight? And not place the pall of disappointment on the shoulders of our wonderful gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

Being gay is a delight. It is an attractive, alluring, pleasurable, pleasing, delectable, wonderul, postive way of experiencing life. There is nothing here not to like. Of course I am not saying the absurd, that gay people live only positive pleasing lives. Not at all. But by virtue of their sexuality, they should not be handicapped by a society that looks at their prospects with the heavy burnden of disappointment before they even get started. Gay people can make of their lives what they will, just like straight people can. On pp226-229 of BGBC, I talk about some of the great gifts that gay people can also bring to the church - another reason for delight.

I also stated above that delight embeds the word light. Gay people can bring a light to the world, and yes I am very aware of the Gospel allusion. We can be a force for good in the world and a force for change. I think we do this well. And we can bring a lightness and sense of fun, a light-heartedness too. Time for society to grow up. Time for a better world. Time for all of us to start celebrating the idea that a young person might be gay. Give them the best start in life we can. Accept them. Love them unconditionally. Guide them of course. But let's also celebrate the delight of their lives as being the delight of our lives.



Pax et Amor - Stuart