Coulmn Fodder: The Gay Class
Aug. 26th, 2003 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eggwardsPersonal Note:I've been sitting on this for a week. I can't seem to get it right. It's all disjointed and I can't seem to get to a clear point, but I'm putting it out here hoping for some feedback. There's something here to be said, but I'm not doing it justice right now...
For many school starts this week or the next. Millions of students return to the classroom and college students work towards their degrees, or at least the next great party. Many of those students will stick to the basic courses, following a degree plan and working to get out to and get a job.
Others will find much more. College can be a great time of discovery and awakening, away from the family and exposed to different ways of thinking. Often there are courses, and professors that challenge and enlighten.
At the University of Michigan this fall professor David Haleprin will be gearing up for another semester teaching the provocatively titled class, How To Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation.
The class explores what aspects of gay society are taught and learned as opposed to being innate. As we know, the gay community is diverse, but there are stereotypes. Camp, drag, muscle culture, style, fashion, and a love of show tunes are all attributed to being gay, but not everyone shares these traits. How do these stereotypes get created, and why do people perpetuate them? Why do gay men seem to flock to Cher, Madonna and Judy Garland?
The class allows students not only to learn about gay culture, but experience gay life through a required class project. There are also screenings of movies and shows that seem to form the backbone of gay reference points, both with gay messages, such as the Boys in The Band, and not, such as Mommie Dearest. The students will examine several gay culture references, looking at gay identity from the social practices and cultural identifications and learning how a separate culture has developed.
Folks, they are going to a gay bar.
One of the questions the class asks is how much of these references, and the images and practices of gay culture are a part of an individual's coming out and eventual identity. The class is also focused on how one not only identifies with gay culture, but also how one disassociates with the stereotype, saying "I'm gay, but I'm not like that". One might see Priscilla, Queen of The Desert and both identify with the character's plights, but never want to become a drag queen.
The question: Is there a textbook?
So here's a class that explores the gay subculture, and what it means to the identity of gays. Of course the class is tragically named. Rather than just calling the class "Gay Studies" or "Gay Culture", Prof. Haleprin wants publicity and interest in his class. Obviously, How To Be Gay is a provocative name, meant to stand out among all of the other classes. Then to add "An Initiation" further provokes those who believe it's a choice. The problem is, it attracts ire form those who choose not to understand.
Haleprin and the university are under fire by a group known as the American Family Association. As you probably already know, any group with the word "family" in it is pretty much not going to be rationally thinking about gay rights. The class has been under fire before by the same group. The group states that they don't want taxpayers money to go to such a class. This, of course is the nice, polite argument from the group.
The true fear is exposed by the Center for Reclaiming America, their website calls the class a "Homosexual Training Course." They and others were pleased when the course was cancelled a few years ago due to public pressure and lobbing of the Michigan Legislature to stop funding to the university for what they said was promoting illegal acts, under Michigan's sodomy laws.
Now, the class has re-appeared and the sodomy law has been overturned and the Christian Right is worried that Professor Haleprin is working hard to change all of the men at the U of M into happy homos. It's a bad time for straight-laced america when it seems that the whole country is going gay around them, and they are ready once again to stand up and scream about it.
But there are students on the U of M campus who are coming out, and a class like Haleprin's could be just the thing they need. There's also a level of understanding and tolerance that could be gained by having other students see what gay men go through to find themselves, and be able to see what shapes our worlds.
Unlike Christianity, recruiting someone to be gay isn't really possible, but there are touchstones, little experiences and references that are shared by so many of us in the community. They deserve to be looked at. The idea of Gay and Lesbian studies is still young, and there's still a lot of psychological and cultural work that needs to be done to bring understanding even to members of the community itself. It's going to take constant pressure from us to get courses like this on the curriculum, and and even harder fight to keep them there when there's constant pressure to kill them, for both funding and religious reasons.
Although the name of the class is apt, it's also inflammatory, and that's precisely why it's there, nothing shocks people more than being open and honest about a fear, no matter how unfounded it is. The class should be eye opening for some, life altering for others, and certainly applauded for exploring a formerly taboo subject.
For many school starts this week or the next. Millions of students return to the classroom and college students work towards their degrees, or at least the next great party. Many of those students will stick to the basic courses, following a degree plan and working to get out to and get a job.
Others will find much more. College can be a great time of discovery and awakening, away from the family and exposed to different ways of thinking. Often there are courses, and professors that challenge and enlighten.
At the University of Michigan this fall professor David Haleprin will be gearing up for another semester teaching the provocatively titled class, How To Be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation.
The class explores what aspects of gay society are taught and learned as opposed to being innate. As we know, the gay community is diverse, but there are stereotypes. Camp, drag, muscle culture, style, fashion, and a love of show tunes are all attributed to being gay, but not everyone shares these traits. How do these stereotypes get created, and why do people perpetuate them? Why do gay men seem to flock to Cher, Madonna and Judy Garland?
The class allows students not only to learn about gay culture, but experience gay life through a required class project. There are also screenings of movies and shows that seem to form the backbone of gay reference points, both with gay messages, such as the Boys in The Band, and not, such as Mommie Dearest. The students will examine several gay culture references, looking at gay identity from the social practices and cultural identifications and learning how a separate culture has developed.
Folks, they are going to a gay bar.
One of the questions the class asks is how much of these references, and the images and practices of gay culture are a part of an individual's coming out and eventual identity. The class is also focused on how one not only identifies with gay culture, but also how one disassociates with the stereotype, saying "I'm gay, but I'm not like that". One might see Priscilla, Queen of The Desert and both identify with the character's plights, but never want to become a drag queen.
The question: Is there a textbook?
So here's a class that explores the gay subculture, and what it means to the identity of gays. Of course the class is tragically named. Rather than just calling the class "Gay Studies" or "Gay Culture", Prof. Haleprin wants publicity and interest in his class. Obviously, How To Be Gay is a provocative name, meant to stand out among all of the other classes. Then to add "An Initiation" further provokes those who believe it's a choice. The problem is, it attracts ire form those who choose not to understand.
Haleprin and the university are under fire by a group known as the American Family Association. As you probably already know, any group with the word "family" in it is pretty much not going to be rationally thinking about gay rights. The class has been under fire before by the same group. The group states that they don't want taxpayers money to go to such a class. This, of course is the nice, polite argument from the group.
The true fear is exposed by the Center for Reclaiming America, their website calls the class a "Homosexual Training Course." They and others were pleased when the course was cancelled a few years ago due to public pressure and lobbing of the Michigan Legislature to stop funding to the university for what they said was promoting illegal acts, under Michigan's sodomy laws.
Now, the class has re-appeared and the sodomy law has been overturned and the Christian Right is worried that Professor Haleprin is working hard to change all of the men at the U of M into happy homos. It's a bad time for straight-laced america when it seems that the whole country is going gay around them, and they are ready once again to stand up and scream about it.
But there are students on the U of M campus who are coming out, and a class like Haleprin's could be just the thing they need. There's also a level of understanding and tolerance that could be gained by having other students see what gay men go through to find themselves, and be able to see what shapes our worlds.
Unlike Christianity, recruiting someone to be gay isn't really possible, but there are touchstones, little experiences and references that are shared by so many of us in the community. They deserve to be looked at. The idea of Gay and Lesbian studies is still young, and there's still a lot of psychological and cultural work that needs to be done to bring understanding even to members of the community itself. It's going to take constant pressure from us to get courses like this on the curriculum, and and even harder fight to keep them there when there's constant pressure to kill them, for both funding and religious reasons.
Although the name of the class is apt, it's also inflammatory, and that's precisely why it's there, nothing shocks people more than being open and honest about a fear, no matter how unfounded it is. The class should be eye opening for some, life altering for others, and certainly applauded for exploring a formerly taboo subject.
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-26 08:11 am (UTC)One point that occured to me: having heard from others who've taught similar courses, it's relatively rare that straights are interested in them, and those straights who ARE interested tend to be highly secure about their heterosexuality.
It's difficult to "recruit" people who don't already have their own reasons for showing up to such a class. With a few wonderful exceptions, those reasons are usually more a matter of "self-exploration" than of "wanting to be a good friend to gay people."
Queers tend to "recruit" ourselves much more than we GET "recruited."
The "family" people either don't understand this or don't want to.
Either they think you really CAN "make" someone queer (some of them DO seem to believe this, which may explain why they think you can "make" someone straight, too).
Or they realize you CAN'T make someone gay, and that a class like this is most likely to appeal to people who are already queer ... in which case their objection is not really about "recruitment," but about the possibility that we might wind up being our genuine selves with less prejudice and isolation. I think some of them DO fear this: they fear that we might be happy.
The other thing I want to say, of course, is that one place the gay community is vulnerable to the Right is in thinking concretely about bisexuality.
I've never felt that being bi was a "choice" I made, but it certainly can LOOK that way to outsiders. And how I *act* on my bisexuality will ALWAYS be a choice ... in much the same way that gay men and lesbians face daily choices about whether and how to act on being gay.
The Right is canny: they notice that some bisexuals can be pressured into "going straight" (just as some gay men and lesbians can be pressured into *passing* for straight in a different way), and they use this as a weapon against all queers.
As long as the gay and lesbian community doesn't have anything better to offer than an insistence that sexuality and sexual identity are NEVER a choice in ANY sense, the Right will be able to keep exploiting that loophole.
I haven't tracked Halperin's work in much detail, so I don't know whether he addresses this at all. Most people outside bi communities don't seem to think about it much. The exploitation of bisexuals against gay men and lesbians is most often described as a moral failing of individual bisexuals, rather than a common problem we can all work on. Those of us who don't like being used as a political football by either "side," particularly the Right, are still largely invisible, despite our best efforts.