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The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture

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Feral:
The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture by Daniel Harris is hardly a new book. It was published in 1997. From a review of it:


--- Quote ---The eventual disappearance of gay culture constitutes a significant loss, not just for gay people, but for American culture in general." So writes award-winning essayist and social critic Daniel Harris in his devastatingly artful first book, The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture.

Harris' insinuation may come as a surprise to many people. Why, one might ask, does Harris think gay culture is disappearing? Isn't this, after all, the era of gay liberation, of unprecedented visibility for gays in the arena of popular culture: of Ellen and Elton John, of kd lang and Melissa Etheridge? And what about the spate of playful representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people in relatively mainstream films like The Opposite of Sex, Bound, Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss, and The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love? Haven't gays and lesbians effected a modicum of legislative change? Are these not signs of greater enfranchisement in the new millennium? Daniel Harris says yes, precisely. Liberation is the problem.

More accurately, Harris would say that while the gay community sought to acquire social protection and legal sanction in the last three decades, it sacrificed its cultural traditions for acceptance. Moreover, as liberation progressed, the most notable of these traditions—excellence in all artistic and aesthetic endeavors—began its fateful demise.

In his shrewd and decidedly unsentimental style, Harris traces the gradual erosion, over the past 25 years, of an indigenous form of gay resistance suffused by campiness, bitchiness, and acerbic wit—an indigenous form of resistance, mind you, born not of an innate predisposition for swishiness but of social marginalization writ large. Says Harris, before gay liberation, gay men battled the psychic injuries of cultural disapprobation with refinement rather than legislation. In short, before they were activists, gay men simply had better taste.

Decrying the decline of a distinctly gay sensibility, Harris identifies diametric changes in significant features of gay culture, from camp to underwear advertising to the representation of AIDS. Harris attributes these changes (to oversimplify) to the rampant cultural homogenization of America and to unintended side effects of social-movement ideology. He concludes that the gay liberation movement, in its inevitable quest for mainstream American acceptance, has sold out the gay community and thrown out the homosexual with the bath water.
--- End quote ---

The New York Times has thoughtfully posted the first chapter.

Rain:
Wow....

Just today I was starting an essay called "The Last Sodomite".  The point being that sometimes I feel as if I'm the last sodomite.  It seems to me that most gay men have seen fit to adopt the mores of the (heterosexual) past as a way of mainstreaming themselves into the future. 

If there was one thing that historically set our people apart it was the blanket rejection of any notions of acceptable personal sexual behaviour.  Yes, AIDS has had a lot to do with changing that perception.  But really, is AIDS all that different than the plagues of syphillis, gonorrhea, hepatitis and every other communicable illness that gay men (mostly) and women (rarely) have had to overcome historically.

In my view, we've allowed the mainstream to cow us into a prone position on sex.  And it's not one that will give us any kind of satisfaction.  And all this only because they have always feared our freedom.  Such is their twisted moral bigotry.  The hidden message is this:  Can't you see that there is no joy in gay sex (and by extension, in their minds, in being Gay), that your sexual freedom only gave you pain and death? 

It's an argument that I personally cannot accept.  Yes, people died because of the sexual choices they made.  I know it too well.  But many more have died historically so that we can MAKE those sexual choices. 

This is one of the things that puts me at odds with Larry Kramer.  I will defend an adult Gay person's right to engage in any kind of sex, so long as it is mutually consensual.

Part of the problem here is that any attempt to sanitize Gay sex ultimately sanitizes our view of ourselves as sexual beings.  We live in fear and we fuck in fear.  There have been recent revolts against this mindset.  The current debate over "sero-sorting" is one blatant example of people who are just tired of what is, quite rightly, abnormal sex.  Rather than swallow the mandate of "do as you're told", many are now opting to actively research their options and their sexual partners so that they can have the kind sexual experiences that they find personally fulfilling.

However, I'm not as pessimistic as Mr. Harris or Mr. Kramer.  These shifts in cultural attitudes are nothing if not cyclical.  The pendulum does swing in the other direction eventually.     



   

Rain:

--- Quote ---In his shrewd and decidedly unsentimental style, Harris traces the gradual erosion, over the past 25 years, of an indigenous form of gay resistance suffused by campiness, bitchiness, and acerbic wit—an indigenous form of resistance, mind you, born not of an innate predisposition for swishiness but of social marginalization writ large. Says Harris, before gay liberation, gay men battled the psychic injuries of cultural disapprobation with refinement rather than legislation. In short, before they were activists, gay men simply had better taste.
--- End quote ---

My reasons for championing the causes of Polari and Faggish, precisely.  Those are tethers to a long historical past that had been maintained and passed down through generations.  At the core of each are nuggets of the bittersweet essence that has suffused Gay life.

Feral:
I've been browsing "reviews" and I came upon this --


--- Quote ---I wished he would have pointed out more clearly how gay men can stop and fight against assimilation through building our culture which I think for any scholar is a very blurry answer.
--- End quote ---

Is it really that obscure a point that it must be made?

Assimilation is an active choice. Of course you may refrain from doing so. Of course you can. You just have to want to. "Building our own culture" sounds like such work, doesn't it? Someone should come up with a couch-potato's translation.

Be Gay. Having succeeded at that, be Gayer.

Rain:
We should have tee-shirts made that state simply and boldly:  BE GAY.

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