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livI have a feeling that IDAHO is one of those American events that people on the internet take to be international, but anyway, it's spread as far as my university at least. The university did a fairly big publicity campaign, which is positive, and a series of events targeted mainly at students. On the negative side, after making a big deal of it they shoved the whole event into a small classroom, which didn't really have room for the (not particularly startling) numbers who attended, even without the fact that half the space was taken up by stalls for various interest groups and tables of refreshments. It feel a bit of a mixed message: yay we're so inclusive and we love LGBT people, in fact we love you so much that you can have a whole day (during the period when most of the university is preoccupied with exams) and even a whole 10 square metres of space.
Anyway. I attended a really interesting talk by one of the lecturers, Dr Rosenfeld who is a sociologist of ageing who specializes in gay issues. Rosenfeld did a very credible job of presenting a large chunk of her life's work in a half-hour talk to non-experts, but be assured that any errors in reporting what she said are mine! Basically she did this ethnographic study of gay and lesbian people who were born in 1930 and earlier (a few years ago when a larger proportion of that cohort were alive and well to be able to talk to her). She's American originally and this portion of her work was done in the USA, but it seems some of it is more generally relevant.
Her theory was that, despite being roughly the same age, this group can be divided into two very distinct and even conflicting sub-groups in terms of how they see and perform gay identity. The first group, which apparently is fairly male-dominated, had distinct gay identities in the years between WW2 and the Stonewall uprising in 1969. The second, female-dominated but not exclusively female, group, only started seeing themselves as gay post-Stonewall and during the era between the "gay liberation" movement and the AIDS epidemic of the 80s.
The pre-Stonewall group saw being gay as a stigmatized character trait that was only revealed to a few trusted people if at all, and kept strictly to the private sphere. The post-Stonewall group believed in "gay pride" and saw being gay as an essential part of their identity. So there's an obvious moral clash here: you have some people who take pride in being as closeted and secret as possible, and see outness, even associating with other people who are out, as a massive (and absolutely real) threat to their safety. They have a subculture which allows them to meet likeminded people, but it's only possible if you are secret-agent level careful about not ever letting the wrong people find out. And then a bunch of people come along who take literal and metaphorical pride in being "loud and proud" and consider it cowardice, dishonesty and betrayal to try to pass. However even these people have to manage the process of coming out quite carefully; they don't just go around telling everybody how gay they are at every possible opportunity, it has to be in an appropriate context.
Very interesting stuff about the stigmatized trait people. Older gay men apparently had a degree of authority because they were the only people who could introduce new members into the underground gay networks and their hidden culture. Gay men and lesbians worked closely together out of necessity; they had joint meetings so that if the police raided their events they could swap partners and pretend to be het and thus avoid arrests, violence and punitive mental illness "treatments". They contracted lavender marriages to further aid their ability to pass. Apparently both of these things were rather lost for the essential identity, gay liberation people; gay men stopped having any kind of social or political contact with lesbians at least until the AIDS era, and there was a loss of generational continuity as the younger generation didn't need the elders so much.
What it reminds me of is the divisions within the trans community at the moment (and yes, I know that trans people were very much involved throughout 20th century gay history and particularly in Stonewall and the gay liberation movement.) But currently you have people who think that the ideal of a successful trans person is one whose sex and gender are completely accepted by everybody around, so that the sex they were assigned at birth is no more than a quirk of their medical history. Versus people who are politicized about being trans and see it as an essential part of their identity and are willing to educate or at a last resort fight anyone who has a problem with that; their ideal trans person is one who is widely known to be trans and is completely out. (I suspect the ongoing imbroglio about whether you write "trans man / trans woman" with a space or "transman / transwoman" as a compound noun is related to this division.) Of course I wouldn't presume to express an opinion about which approach is better, especially as it's often not a matter of pure individual choice anyway, but it helps me understand where the battle lines come from.
That's just speculation but I do want to be part of the discussion that emphatically includes trans issues in IDAHO. There was one talk from a law lecturer who specializes in gender and transgender aspects of law, but I wasn't able to make it due to timing issues. I don't feel I need to complain about the omission, anyway.
Some people said on Twitter, perhaps ironically, that people should stop tweeting about IDAHO and actually do something about it. Writing a blog post isn't much of a step up, but it's something. And I made my face known at the events so that colleagues will see me as someone at least friendly to LGBT causes (I did get a couple of "oh, you're one of us?" glances.) I think the most useful thing I can do is advocate for one of our imaginary patients to have their biography slightly altered to include a same-sex partner. At the moment the students do have a module about sexualities and medicine but only in the third year, and at least mentioning a bit earlier on that not everybody is straight might be useful.
Anyway. I'm against homophobia and transphobia and every other type of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Just in case anyone was confused in that regard!
Anyway. I attended a really interesting talk by one of the lecturers, Dr Rosenfeld who is a sociologist of ageing who specializes in gay issues. Rosenfeld did a very credible job of presenting a large chunk of her life's work in a half-hour talk to non-experts, but be assured that any errors in reporting what she said are mine! Basically she did this ethnographic study of gay and lesbian people who were born in 1930 and earlier (a few years ago when a larger proportion of that cohort were alive and well to be able to talk to her). She's American originally and this portion of her work was done in the USA, but it seems some of it is more generally relevant.
Her theory was that, despite being roughly the same age, this group can be divided into two very distinct and even conflicting sub-groups in terms of how they see and perform gay identity. The first group, which apparently is fairly male-dominated, had distinct gay identities in the years between WW2 and the Stonewall uprising in 1969. The second, female-dominated but not exclusively female, group, only started seeing themselves as gay post-Stonewall and during the era between the "gay liberation" movement and the AIDS epidemic of the 80s.
The pre-Stonewall group saw being gay as a stigmatized character trait that was only revealed to a few trusted people if at all, and kept strictly to the private sphere. The post-Stonewall group believed in "gay pride" and saw being gay as an essential part of their identity. So there's an obvious moral clash here: you have some people who take pride in being as closeted and secret as possible, and see outness, even associating with other people who are out, as a massive (and absolutely real) threat to their safety. They have a subculture which allows them to meet likeminded people, but it's only possible if you are secret-agent level careful about not ever letting the wrong people find out. And then a bunch of people come along who take literal and metaphorical pride in being "loud and proud" and consider it cowardice, dishonesty and betrayal to try to pass. However even these people have to manage the process of coming out quite carefully; they don't just go around telling everybody how gay they are at every possible opportunity, it has to be in an appropriate context.
Very interesting stuff about the stigmatized trait people. Older gay men apparently had a degree of authority because they were the only people who could introduce new members into the underground gay networks and their hidden culture. Gay men and lesbians worked closely together out of necessity; they had joint meetings so that if the police raided their events they could swap partners and pretend to be het and thus avoid arrests, violence and punitive mental illness "treatments". They contracted lavender marriages to further aid their ability to pass. Apparently both of these things were rather lost for the essential identity, gay liberation people; gay men stopped having any kind of social or political contact with lesbians at least until the AIDS era, and there was a loss of generational continuity as the younger generation didn't need the elders so much.
What it reminds me of is the divisions within the trans community at the moment (and yes, I know that trans people were very much involved throughout 20th century gay history and particularly in Stonewall and the gay liberation movement.) But currently you have people who think that the ideal of a successful trans person is one whose sex and gender are completely accepted by everybody around, so that the sex they were assigned at birth is no more than a quirk of their medical history. Versus people who are politicized about being trans and see it as an essential part of their identity and are willing to educate or at a last resort fight anyone who has a problem with that; their ideal trans person is one who is widely known to be trans and is completely out. (I suspect the ongoing imbroglio about whether you write "trans man / trans woman" with a space or "transman / transwoman" as a compound noun is related to this division.) Of course I wouldn't presume to express an opinion about which approach is better, especially as it's often not a matter of pure individual choice anyway, but it helps me understand where the battle lines come from.
That's just speculation but I do want to be part of the discussion that emphatically includes trans issues in IDAHO. There was one talk from a law lecturer who specializes in gender and transgender aspects of law, but I wasn't able to make it due to timing issues. I don't feel I need to complain about the omission, anyway.
Some people said on Twitter, perhaps ironically, that people should stop tweeting about IDAHO and actually do something about it. Writing a blog post isn't much of a step up, but it's something. And I made my face known at the events so that colleagues will see me as someone at least friendly to LGBT causes (I did get a couple of "oh, you're one of us?" glances.) I think the most useful thing I can do is advocate for one of our imaginary patients to have their biography slightly altered to include a same-sex partner. At the moment the students do have a module about sexualities and medicine but only in the third year, and at least mentioning a bit earlier on that not everybody is straight might be useful.
Anyway. I'm against homophobia and transphobia and every other type of discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. Just in case anyone was confused in that regard!
