Queer Words, Queer Images

Front matter

CRE

P, the Construction of SE sy

EDITED BY R. JEF PREY RINGER

PART ONE: Gay and Lesbian Rhetoric

1. The Logic of Folly in the Political Campaigns of Harvey Milk 7 KAREN A. FOSS

2. On the Owning of Words: Reflections on San Francisco Arts and Athletics vs. United States Olympic Committee 30 PAUL SIEGEL

3. Die Non: Gay Liberation and the Rhetoric of Pure Tolerance 45 JAMES DARSEY

4. Reflections on Gay and Lesbian Rhetoric 77 JAMES W. CHESEBRO

PART TWO: Portrayals of Gay Men and Lesbians in the Media

5. Guilt by Association: Homosexuality and AIDS on Prime-Time Television 91 EMILE C. NETZHAMMER AND SCOTT A. SHAMP

6. Whose Desire? Lesbian (Non)Sexuality and Television’s Perpetuation of Hetero/Sexism 107 DARLENE M. HANTZIS AND VALERIE LEHR vi Contents

7. Old Strategies for New Texts: How American Television Is Creating and Treating Lesbian Characters 122 MARGUERITE J. MORITZ

8. What Is Wrong with This Picture? Lesbian Women and Gay Men on Television 143 LARRY GROSS

PART THREE: Portrayals of Gay Men and Lesbians in Language and Text

9. A Portrait ofthe Adolescent as a Young Gay: The Politics of Male Homosexuality in Young Adult Fiction 159 KIRK FUOSS

10. Self as Other: The Politics of Identity in the Works of Edmund White 175 NICHOLAS F. RADEL

11. Female Athlete = Lesbian: A Myth Constructed from Gendex Role Expectations and Lesbiphobia 193 KAREN PEPER

12. The Politics of Self and Other 209 LYNN C. MILLER

PART FOUR: Interpersonal Communication in Gay and Lesbian Relationships

13. Self-Disclosure Behaviors of the Stigmatized: Strategies and Outcomes for the Revelation of Sexual Orientation 221 TIMOTHY EDGAR

14. Gender and Relationship Crises: Contrasting Reasons, Responses, and Relational Orientations 238 JULIA T. WOOD

15. Gay and Lesbian Couple Relationships 265 MARY ANNE FITZPATRICK, FRED E. JANDT, FRED L. MYRICK, AND TIMOTHY EDGAR

Contents vil

16. Reflections on Interpersonal Communication in Gay and Lesbian Relationships 278 DOROTHY S. PAINTER

PART FIVE: Coming Out in the Classroom

17. Performing the (Lesbian) Self: Teacher as Text 289 JACQUELINE TAYLOR

18. Coming Out to Students: Notes from the College Classroom 296 ELENIE OPFFER

19. Coming Out in the Classroom: Faculty Disclosures of Sexuality 322 R. JEFFREY RINGER

20. Ways of Coming Out in the Classroom 332 MERCILEE M. JENKINS

Contributors 335 Name Index 339 Subject Index 345

Acknowledgments

Many people have contributed to this project. At the beginning six associate editors (James Darsey, Joe DeVito, Karen A. Foss, Fred Jandt, Mercilee Jenkins, and Lynn Miller) read over 100 essays to identify the best and most appropriate for this volume. Each of these essays was anonymously reviewed by two associate editors. Together we selected fifteen of the essays that appear in this volume. I would like to thank them for the many hours they contributed as readers and for their advice that helped shape this volume.

After these essays were selected I invited a guest author to read each of the essays in a section and to comment upon them. These outstanding individuals (James Chesebro, Larry Gross, Lynn Miller, Dorothy Painter, and Mercilee Jenkins) are experts in their fields. Their essays have added tremendously to this volume by providing synthesis and direction.

I would like to thank several individuals from the Ohio State University. James Darsey served as a liaison while I was working in Denmark for one year. His department provided support for duplicating, mailing, and clerical help. We would like to thank department chair Joseph Foley, Betty Moeller, and Elizabeth Carlson for this assistance. I would also like to thank James Darsey for his comments and advice on the introduction.

In addition to the associate editors and guest authors, the remaining authors were extremely cooperative and understanding of this long process. Their patience has been greatly appreciated.

At St. Cloud State University, Donna Banks provided clerical assistance by typing and mailing letters. The Department of Speech Communication at St. Cloud under Chairs Chuck Vick and Judy Litterst were extremely supportive of me while I was working on this project. I appreciate all of the ix x Acknowledgments support I have received from the entire department. Financial assistance and support were provided by Dean Michael Connaughton of the College of Fine Arts and Humanities. Indeed, the entire university has been supportive.

At New York University Press, our editors Niko Pfund and Despina Papazoglou Gimbel have been tremendously supportive and understanding— particularly of missed deadlines. Their assistance has helped make this project a reality.

Finally, the Caucus on Gay and Lesbian Concerns of the Speech Communication Association deserves recognition. Their presence has given all of us the motivation to investigate these important issues that are often ignored by mainstream researchers. Their strength and devotion ensures that we will continue to explore and understand the communication in our lives.

R. JEFFREY RINGER, PH.D.

St. Cloud State University

Queer Words, Queer Images

Introduction R. Jeffrey Ringer

The origin of this book dates back to 1981. At that time, the Caucus on Gay and Lesbian Concerns of the Speech Communication Association published an anthology of essays on gay male and lesbian communication entitled Gayspeak: Gay Male and Lesbian Communication. The central premise of that anthology was that the social reality human beings have created around the concept of homosexuality has made homosexuality an issue. In a departure from investigations that sought to explain aspects of sexual orientation, the responses to the behavior rather than the behavior itself became the legitimate subject of inquiry. Thus, the authors in Gayspeak chose to examine human responses to homosexuality from the viewpoint of the communication discipline. “Homosexuality,” contended James Chesebro, the editor of Gayspeak, “is predominantly a communication problem, and. . . a humane understanding and resolution of this issue is to be found in established frameworks, methods, principles, and perspectives of the discipline of communication” (1981, xiii).

Gayspeak examined the languages of lesbians and gay men, communication patterns among lesbians in established relationships, the rhetoric of the gay rights and lesbian-feminist movements, images of gays and lesbians in the media and drama, the campaign efforts of pro- and antigay forces, as well as other communication related topics. These articles, reflecting the substance and diversity of the communication discipline, have been acknowledged as pioneering efforts in understanding gay and lesbian communication.

The current anthology is based on premises similar to those that motivated its predecessor. The Caucus on Gay and Lesbian Concerns continues to believe in the value of examining the language, nonverbal acts, and symbols of gay men and lesbians. Thus, Queer Words, Queer Images: Communication and the Construction of Homosexuality examines the rhetoric of gay politicians, the symbols and strategies used during the coming out process, the strategies used to resolve conflicts in gay and lesbian relationships, and the decision whether or not to come out in the classroom as these reflect the gay and lesbian experience, primarily in the United States, today.

The editor and authors also continue to believe in the importance of examining the ways in which heterosexuals conceive of and respond to homosexual behavior. Thus, this volume critically examines a court case that involves the use of a well-known symbol by a gay/lesbian group, portrayals of gays and lesbians in literature and in the media, and the “female athlete = lesbian” myth.

These concerns focus on what James Darsey (1981), in a contribution to Gayspeak, termed the idiographic aspects of gay male and lesbian communication, those aspects that provide insight into the unique patterns, usages, and strategies of the gay male and lesbian communities negotiating with each other and with the larger society, those aspects that would have the greatest importance to the emerging area of gay studies.

But to read these essays only in this light is to neglect a significant part of their value. In addition to their contribution to understanding homosexuals and homosexual behavior, these essays should enrich communication theory in general and should find an audience among those interested in what Darsey identified as their generic aspect. Research into the communication patterns and behaviors of gay and lesbian couples—who often assume different role relationships than members of heterosexual couples — will clearly provide rich information for the development of marital communication theory. Models developed from analysis of one gay man’s political campaigns may be useful to other politicians and students of persuasion regardless of sexual orientation. Analysis of portrayals of lesbians and gay men in the media and literature help us develop theory and increase our understanding of the role that media play in all our lives. As the reader will see, most of the articles in this book not only inform us about gay and lesbian communication but inform us about human communication in general.

Introduction 3

For each of the five sections in this collection, we have invited a distinguished author to comment on the articles in that section. These authors were asked to reflect upon the major issues identified in the articles in their section, to identify how the concepts and issues raised in these articles relate to communication theory in general, and to identify a research agenda for the area. These commentaries add their own unique perspective to the issues at hand as well as make the book more useful for the classroom. Students reading any section will be guided in their understanding of the material in that section by reading the accompanying commentary.

There are four goals for this book. The first is to provide current substantive research findings for those interested in viewing homosexuality from a communication perspective. The articles reflect five different areas of the communication discipline: gay and lesbian rhetoric; interpersonal communication among lesbians and gay men; portrayals of gay men and lesbians in language and text; portrayals of lesbians and gay men in the media; and a specific issue related to instructional communication— coming out in the classroom. The second goal is to identify how research into gay and lesbian behavior informs communication theory in general. The third is to provide a research agenda for the future. And the fourth is to provide a supplemental textbook for courses that desire to explore the issues raised by the human response to homosexuality.

It was with great pleasure that I was able to work with these authors to make this second volume a reality. I hope that it lives up to the tradition of the original volume by providing an outlet for much-needed research on gay and lesbian communication, encouraging more research, and providing a classroom tool for student exploration of these important issues.

Chesebro, James W. 1981. Introduction to Gayspeak: Gay Male and Lesbian Communication, edited by James W. Chesebro, ix-xvi. New York: Pilgrim Press. Darsey, James. 1981. ““Gayspeak:’ A Response.” In Gayspeak: Gay Male and Lesbian Communication, edited by James Chesebro, 58-67. New York: Pilgrim

Press.

PART ONE Gay and Lesbian Rhetoric

1. The Logic of Folly in the Political Campaigns of Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk did not enter politics until he was forty-three; he lost three of the four political offices he sought; and when finally elected, he served only eleven months in office. The political record of San Francisco’s first openly gay supervisor, however, does not tell the whole story. In the course of four political campaigns, Milk moved from being an unknown outsider in virtually every way possible to a member of the Board of Supervisors, a position of considerable political power in San Francisco.

Milk’s background offered little evidence that he would become successful in San Francisco politics or that he would become a symbol for gay rights." He grew up in a suburb of New York City and kept his gay identity a secret through college and during a stint in the Navy. Dissatisfied with his chosen career as a high school teacher, Milk moved from job to job before becoming a financial analyst on Wall Street. At the same time, he began working on a friend’s Broadway productions, which introduced him to the counterculture of the 1960s. When his partner took a job as stage manager for the San Francisco production of Hair, Milk moved with him to San Francisco, again taking a job as a financial analyst. He was fired for burning his BankAmericard during a protest against the Vietnam War, after which he returned to New York to again work in theater. Milk settled permanently in San Francisco in 1973, where he and his new partner, Scott Smith (who would become his campaign manager), opened a store called Castro Camera.

The failure of government to meet people’s needs was the impetus for Milk’s decision to enter San Francisco politics. Three separate incidents in the summer of 1973 infuriated him: the lack of honesty in government revealed by the Watergate scandal, a special tax charged him as a small-business owner, and a request by a teacher to borrow a projector from the camera store because her district could not afford one.” Milk decided he could make a difference in politics and announced his candidacy for the 1973 supervisorial race. He did surprisingly well for a newcomer to San Francisco politics, coming in tenth out of thirty candidates. °

Milk ran again for the Board of Supervisors in 1975; this time, he came in seventh after the six incumbents on the Board, all of whom were reelected.* George Moscone, the new mayor of San Francisco, appointed Milk to a seat on the Board of Permit Appeals. °

Milk announced his decision to run again for public office only two months after taking his seat on the Board of Permit appeals.° This time, his goal was the California Assembly; he sought the Democratic nomination for a seat in the Sixteenth District. Again, however, Milk was unsuccessful, losing to Art Agnos by a narrow margin.’

Milk was successful when he ran for supervisor for a third time, in 1977. Out of the seventeen candidates in the race, he won 30.5 percent of the votes cast. Milk, however, served only eleven months of his term. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Supervisor Dan White.? On the day of the killings, Moscone was to have announced his decision not to reappoint White to the Board of Supervisors, from which White recently had resigned.

On the surface, the campaign strategies that are evident in Milk’s political campaigns appear to be the usual moves of a candidate who becomes increasingly astute about the political process; they suggest typical adaptations in terms of language, dress, and decorum to the political arena. Milk’s name recognition alone, after conducting three campaigns in four years, undoubtedly contributed to his ultimate political victory. That Milk was gay, however, and ran for office at a time when the gay and lesbian community, even in San Francisco, was not a political force, created a rhetorical situation that was far from ordinary.

In this essay, I suggest that the logic of folly provides a means of explaining how Milk’s political campaigns effectively addressed the particular circumstances he confronted as a gay man seeking political office. Milk used the dimensions of folly as an underlying logic to preserve and foster his relationship with the gay community while simultaneously appealing to traditional political audiences. This study of Milk’s campaign rhetoric, then, offers a model useful for other gay and lesbian office seekers and may apply to other contexts in which gays and lesbians —and other outsider groups — seek positions of influence without abandoning or compromising their own identities.

In using the term folly in reference to Milk, I am not suggesting the casual meanings of the term—lacking good sense or refusing to accept reality —that are more likely than not to imbue contemporary definitions of folly. Instead, I refer to the notion of folly as defined and experienced in traditional societies. While fools of one sort or another have been part of virtually every culture, traditional folly was a distinct historical phenomenon in prerational societies: “when human societies were not yet ruled by bureaucracy, technology, and the sciences, when human minds were leavened with metaphysical notions and associative patterns of thought, when reality was experienced as a vast field of contingencies, structured mainly by fictitious and magical connections between cause and effect.” 1°

In such a worldview, any kind of change or period of transition was experienced with a certain amount of trepidation and awe. Even the expected transitions of everyday life—the movement from one season to another, from the old to the new year, from life to death—were vulnerable times in which reality lost its usual structures and meanings. To cope with these times, traditional people invented rituals and ceremonies that functioned as rites of passage.!! The fool was held in esteem because s/he could deal with the mysterious and especially difficult phase of transition. Neither male nor female, good nor evil, fools embodied and spoke for worlds that existed beyond reality. They reminded society of the power, energy, and magic of the cosmos, of “what could become of them if they would chance to abandon tradition and forsake the established norms and values of their society.” !2

While modernity has altered profoundly the nature of folly,!3 the essential dimensions of it can still function profitably as a critical framework for illuminating periods of transition. Among the central features of folly is its parasitic status—it is simultaneously outside of and in society. Folly flourishes in those moments that are outside the usual social order and thus is a phenomenon marked by marginality; yet folly is dependent on the very reality it calls into question. The effectiveness of the fool depends on the ability to hold a mirror up to the traditional social order, exaggerating its features and showing that reality as it is experienced could very well be different. The function of folly is to show the members of a society the borders of their worldview, and by bringing to consciousness taken-forgranted assumptions about what reality is, folly reinforces existing values, norms, and meanings of society.

The two techniques that are the special province of the fool are reversal and laughter. Reversal is the epitome of how folly functions since the fool’s essential act is to invert the social order and thus suggest that the world may not be as it appears:

Folly would focus on the opposites of human existence, . . . [and] play an irreverent game with them: male fools would dress up and behave like women, female fools would act like men and assume male roles and responsibilities; they would change into animals or undifferentiated, crassly materialistic and rudely erotic monsters. Left would be changed into right, right into left, sacred into secular, secular into sacred. 14

The technique of reversal permits a society to envision new alternatives and ways of doing and being. Ernesto Grassi’s study of folly in the writings of the Italian humanists further underscores the importance of folly as a critical perspective. Grassi sees folly as embodying the fundamental human process, embedded in language, of making connections and seeing similarities; folly is “reality in the unveiling of its essence.” 1! Donald Verene, in the preface to Grassi’s work on folly, elaborates: “To see human affairs as folly is to have an ontological insight into what is possible in any situation; that is, to see all as folly is to realize that things are never what they seem.” 16 Folly, then, is not a loss of contact with reality—a form of psychotic insanity—but the distinctive human capacity to imagine self in new situations and to deal with those situations effectively: “It is folly which allows the projection of ... one’s own desires, hopes, worries, expectations, fears. . . on the age of life.” 17

Laughter is also the particular province of the fool, a feature that, like reversal, accomplishes important functions for a society beyond mere entertainment. When watching a fool “fool around” in terms of worldviews, meanings, values, and norms, laughter often seems to be “the only sensible response” to the performance: “the fool renders his audience speechless.”!® Under the guise of laughter, ideas that would be unsettling in other circumstances can be raised without anyone having to take them too seriously. Thus, folly provides a way by which to verbalize what has heretofore been unspeakable, and the fool can encourage dialogue about issues that previously were not available for discussion. !%

Traditional folly, then, was serious business and bore little resemblance to the forms of comedy, humor, and wit that accompany modernity. In contrast to the contemporary tendency to use the word “fool” as only a derogatory label, the traditional fool held a position of considerable importance because of the capacity to respond ritually to a world that was seen as unpredictable, hazardous, and enchanted.

The description of traditional folly has many parallels to the situation in which Milk and the gay community generally found themselves in the early 1970s. San Francisco had become a haven for gays and lesbians, and the long-time residents of the city generally displayed a benign tolerance of the openness of the gay/lesbian community. At the same time, gays had not yet secured representatives in any of the leadership positions in the city; the record on gays and lesbians in politics in San Francisco looked no different from most cities in its reluctance to grant a formal voice to this community.” Furthermore, gays had been so continually harassed that they did not see themselves as a group with political power and were reluctant to publicly declare their collective support for any political candidate. *!

In response to the existing political atmosphere, indirectness characterized gays’ approach to politics. The leaders of the gay community urged gays to work to elect liberals who would be sympathetic to their demands once in office, and various gay political clubs were formed to work toward these ends. For all of these liberal friends, however, gays had not been appointed to any city commissions or achieved a comprehensive civil rights law that banned discrimination against gays.

The political world Milk sought to enter, then, was in direct opposition to the marginalized gay world. Political success was granted to those prepared to stay within a narrow range of expectations and behaviors. Typical politicians were straight family men who dressed appropriately in suits and ties; in their campaign rhetoric, their aim was to avoid offending as many segments of their audience as possible. In contrast, Milk was a hippie, which violated traditional values of the political realm about lifestyle and dress; in fact, hippies have been considered examples of contemporary fools in the premium they played on nonrational thoughts and feelings, rejection of rational structures, and a search for “emotionally gratifying enchantments. ” 22

That Milk was gay heightened the similarities with images of fools because gays and lesbians, like traditional fools, play havoc with traditional gender roles. What the dominant society has considered “normal” in terms of intimate relationships, reproduction, and family directly is contradicted by the preferences and experiences of gays and lesbians. In fact, many have not considered gays to be human, and inhumanity is a feature frequently ascribed to the fool. In addition, the gay community is known for literally reversing traditional gender roles. Dressing “in drag,” for example, flaunts a reversal of gender characteristics and makes problematic the intrinsic connection between sex and gender to which the dominant culture typically subscribes. The similarities between the position of gays and lesbians and fools has not been lost on the gay community. One of the earliest gay groups in the United States, the Mattachine Society, took its name from the Italian Matachinos, court jesters who, behind a mask, could speak the truth to otherwise intractable rulers.”

A large gap, then, existed between Milk and the attainment of political office, which he addressed by turning for tactics to folly. Using laughter, reversal, transcendence, and his insider/outsider status, Milk helped create a climate in which dialogue on issues became possible. He also provided a means to integrate the disparate voices of his various constituencies. In order to highlight the progression of his strategies, I will deal with each of Milk’s four campaigns in turn.

The 1973 Campaign for Supervisor

In Milk’s first campaign for supervisor, his antics demonstrate especially close parallels with the role of the fool. This is not surprising given the gap that existed between the gay reality and the political system in San Francisco. Among the most obvious manifestations of the presence of folly was Milk’s total disregard for political authority and decorum. He wore blue jeans and refused to cut his long hair, pulling it back instead into a ponytail. He was also given to making outrageous statements that only confirmed the beliefs of many about him—that he was at best foolish and at worst crazy. Michael Wong, who later became a staunch Milk supporter, had such a reaction upon meeting Milk for the first time at a candidate’s forum:

I had heard from the so-called gay leaders—Jim Foster and the Alice B. Toklas Gay Democratic Club—that this guy was a nut. I was very wary of even talking to him. But in the course of the conversation I was really impressed with the issues he brought up. . . . But halfway through this conversation, . . . Harvey told us that he thought . . . that some father who learned that he’s homosexual will come out and shoot at him and he'll survive the shooting but that’ll give him so much sympathetic publicity that he’ll win on that. . . . And then I thought, Jim Foster was right—this guy is a nut.”

Milk’s irreverence gained him considerable negative publicity, but Milk knew that even this kind of press kept his name before the voters: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but just spell my name right.”?° His embodiment of folly made him visible to voters in ways that less outrageous approaches would not have done.

In addition to the irreverence he exhibited toward political decorum, Milk played up his marginalized role. As an outsider in virtually every way possible—gay, Jewish, a hippie, a newcomer to San Francisco and to politics—he portrayed himself as a symbol for all underrepresented and disenfranchised groups: “I stand for all those who feel that the government no longer understands the individual and no longer respects individual rights.” ?6 In a flier about the waste of taxpayer money, he focused on how he would serve as a representative of all disgruntled taxpayers because of his embodiment of that role: “I am an irate taxpayer. . . . I’m irate enough for all of us. . . . Give me your support and I'll fight for you. . . . TI fight for you because I am you.”?’ Milk capitalized on the marginality that is endemic to the fool’s role to create identification with underrepresented groups in the city. His campaign slogan, “Milk Has Something for Everybody,” proclaimed this desired identification.”® |

Milk’s first campaign also revealed evidence of the technique of reversal, holding a mirror up to existing society and showing its alternate possibilities. Milk’s portrayal of what was needed to make San Francisco a great city provided one example of this strategy in action. Milk envisioned a city that could be improved with less rather than more money:

San Francisco can start right now to become number one. ... We can start overnight. We don’t have to wait for budgets to be passed, surveys to be made, political wheelings and dealings . . . for it takes no money. . . it takes no compromising to give the people their rights . . . [and] it takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no political deal to give people freedom. It takes no survey to remove repression. 2?

Milk also used the technique of reversal to construct and present a vision of the city that directly contradicted that espoused by the Board of Supervisors. While the Board members advocated building more garages in downtown San Francisco, Milk argued that “private auto traffic in [the] downtown core area” be banned.*° Rather than proposing complicated solutions for improving the city’s rapid transit system, Milk argued for an amendment to the city charter to require city officials to ride Muni to work everyday: “It’s the only way that the people of San Francisco will ever get better Muni service.”*! As a final example, Milk contrasted traditional images of the impersonal nature of city life with images of neighborhoods as places of connection and caring:

The American Dream starts with the neighborhoods. If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living. To sit on the front steps—whether it’s a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city—and talk to our neighborhoods [sic] is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living room lounger and watch a make-believe world in not-quite living color.*?

The outcome of Milk’s “foolish” techniques during the 1973 campaign was dialogue, one of the possible results of a fool’s performance. In the process of pointing out the range of choices that existed in terms of political candidates and their visions of San Francisco, Milk created an atmosphere in which dialogue among opposing factions was possible. He then cultivated opportunities in which that dialogue could culminate in action. One of his campaign leaflets, for example, listed Milk’s position on thirteen city issues on the left-hand side of the page; on the right side, he described the present Board’s stance on each issue. In the middle, complete with blank lines, was a column titled, “Write in Your Position.” Milk sought to encourage conversation among the disparate groups in San Francisco, even if that conversation meant his own position would not necessarily win out. He wanted the supervisors talking with the streetsweepers, the gays with the union workers, and police officers with small-business owners.

Another example of Milk’s ability to facilitate the exchange of ideas where normally there would be none—a hallmark of the fool—occurred because of the treatment Milk received at a candidates’ forum. Milk and another supervisorial hopeful, Alfred Siniora, called a joint press conference “to complain of shabby treatment” by the various city clubs that held candidates’ nights, charging the clubs with encouraging their members to vote early in the evening before even hearing the lesser known candidates.” That Milk—a gay Jewish Democrat—and Siniora—an Arab Republican busmessman— joined forces proved especially effective in generating talk about campaign procedures.