Gay Identity

One blogsite I particularly like to visit on a regular basis is D. Stephen Heersink’s Gay Species.

Heersink is an excellent (and prolific) writer. His posts are erudite and insightful without being dry or lacking in humanity and humor. If you’re not familiar with his blog, then it’s one that the Leveret highly recommends you get to know.

As a teaser, here’s an excerpt from Heersink’s October 2006 reflection on gay identity – a reflection inspired by his reading of Gregory Woods’ A History of Gay Literature.

Enjoy!

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Other than two men finding erotic pleasures in each other, I’m not sure what a gay identity or a gay sensibility actually entails. Even the actual sexual practices between two men are not sufficiently standard to claim anything more than mutual eroticism in the broadest possible terms is defining of “gay.” And I’m rather insistent of this most basic feature. The erotic interests of “gay” men are not endless, mind you, but nor are they universal. Without going into extreme detail, suffice it that some gay men kiss and some do not. If something as basic as kissing is not a gay universal, then I cannot insist anything more sexual is either. From this vantage, all that is common is a male's attraction for another male, the individual dynamics taking each where each wants to go.

On another front, however, there does seem to be one universal gay sensibility that seems unquestioned and without parallel. Indeed, the absence of male aggression and fighting among gay men is rather extraordinary when juxtaposed against men in general. This is not to say that gay men won’t or don’t fight back, go to the rescue of someone being assaulted, or don’t slap a lover in an extreme situation. . . . But unlike the straight men who killed Matthew Shepard out of some perverse pleasure of exerting they’re own sense of masculinity, or who delight in lynching minorities who appear different from themselves, or fly into a jealous rage over another male’s casual look at another male’s woman, gay men are not prone to engage in violence, mayhem, or endangerment for the sheer pleasure of chest-beating masculinity to prove they are masculine. Maybe they don’t care, or perhaps they have no need to prove their masculinity to others. Whatever the reason, it is a well-documented fact that gay men do not engage in violence for its own sake like straight males.

I’ll add another gay sensibility that may not be universal, but seems pretty ubiquitous none the same. Gay men are neat. Not “personality” neat (although I think that is true), but decorum neat, tidy neat, well-organized, and civil. I’ve never been in another gay man’s dwelling where a typical “male mess” is found. Some straights think gay proclivity towards neatness, order, and hygiene (and if so disposed, toward aesthetics) is stereotypical of gay men, and I think they’re right. Most gay men are hospitable and generous in ways that straight men haven’t the slightest clue. We wash our dishes after using them, wash our clothes after wearing them, and make our beds even though no one else will know or care. We seem to extend an offering of hospitality no matter what. In other words, gay men are generally clean and orderly, and we take pride in our hospitality. If it weren’t for women and gay men, our world would be so disordered, so topsy-turvy, so on the sly, that no one would take any of us seriously. Straight men need women to calm their hyper-agitation to respectable speeds. Gay men seem to come already predisposed.

But before I go into total self-appreciation, other than homoeroticism, non-aggression, and orderliness, I’d be hard pressed to define or categorize gay men any more precisely. Oh sure, we seem to have our fair share of drama and a petulant reaction to suppression, frequently personalizing some extrinsic feature as a personal assault on our dignities, but, hey, after so much hostility by people we don’t know, much less care to know, who want to rehabilitate us in their image, cure us of our afflictions, rescue us from hell, or tell us our natural inclinations are unnatural (450 species to the contrary notwithstanding), we often get testy when we’re told we can’t or won’t be loved, because God, Yahweh, or Allah disapproves. To this day, some men are still threatened by our appreciation of male beauty, the depreciation of our same-sex love, our courage to be “different,” however or whatever form that takes, but the truth is that as every person is different, as every person seeks fulfillment, as everyone hopes for that extraordinary person who will complement us, whatever our unique individual differences, and they are legion, we will not become what we are not.

Admittedly, we’re still finding out what it means to be “gay,” whatever that may mean, but what we won’t tolerate are others’ intolerance of our difference or in exploring what it might mean for each of us as unique individuals to be unique. Maybe “gay identity” is only an illusion, but the delusions hoisted on us to conform to some mythical stereotype of the abstract man according to religious bigots, is an even greater illusion. The current environment of hostility and hate and enmity notwithstanding, we won’t forfeit our freedom to become what others want us to be. If Walt Whitman could be honest, gay, and an unabashed democrat in favor of human pluralism, the courage to be, as Paul Tillich once wrote, is the only courage to have.

To read Heersink’s reflection on gay identity in its entirety, click here.


Recommended Off-site Links:
The Gay Species
Androphilia (Heersink’s other weblog).