Get Used to It: Ep. 44, "Ambiguity, Paradox, & Maturity"

(typewriter clicking) (typewriter clicking) (typewriter clicking) (upbeat music) - Hi, welcome to Get Used To It. I'm Sheila Kuehl, your host. And today we're presenting the second in a very occasional series, of discussions with these same four people, including me, whom I will introduce to you in a minute, these are meant to be sort of wider ranging discussions than we normally have, Philosophical, spiritual, intellectual, pragmatic questions of sort of what's going on with our movement and how we see it, how other people see it. We think that it's often a good idea to kind of step back and instead of talking about a particular subject matter and kind of look and see how we think we're doing in history poised on the edge of the millennium. So it's my pleasure to introduce to you again, Phill Wilson, who is the founder of the Black Gay and Lesbian Leadership Forum, and is the director of the AIDS social policy archives. Welcome Phill. - Good to be here. - Rabbi Denise Eger, who is the spiritual leader of congregation Kol Ami, West Hollywood's reform synagogue, and also a participant in a number of coalitions of communities of faith. Welcome Denise. - Thank you. - And Robert Dawidoff, who is a history professor at the Claremont Graduate School a columnist, as I think we know for the Los Angeles Times, occasionally. and also a Getty scholar in the Getty Research Institute. Welcome Robert. - Thank you. - Well, here's the question sort of here. Here's the tossed out question and where we go with it, heaven only knows. When individuals mature and I guess though we're not incredibly old in this group, we've done our job so far of maturing, I think. At least one of the things that I feel has happened to me is that I am better able to deal with complexity. Things don't have to be either this or that. Ambiguities, though they are troubling are often easier to deal with, even paradox, which I incorporate happily in my life now. And I'm sort of amazed. And I guess the question is, does the same thing happen to movements, specifically, our movement. I hear a lot of voices out in the country about the gay and lesbian movement, even within it and among our own people, who say, well, there's a lot of diversity of thought now. And I find that very troubling. I mean, shouldn't we speak with one voice because we're still at risk out there, and the press wants to hear, how do we feel about this and that? And other people say, no, no, this is a good thing. I mean, my voice was never heard before in the movement. And I don't like this political correctness. But there are still numbers of dichotomies. We pretend, I suppose, or at least we assume, the men and the women are working so well together, our racism is happily being solved, and even conservatives and liberals seem to be able to coexist. We see lots of books coming out. We're being marketed to, you know, as though we are some kind of a monolith with money. So given that very general sort of notion, Phill start with you, what do you think? - Well, you know, it's interesting that we are talking about this today. I'm spending a lot of time with my nephews and my nieces. And so this whole issue of maturity and what happens in the human development is something that's on my mind. I have nieces and nephews who are five and six, and the way they view the world is one way, and I have a group that's 14 and 15 and 16, and they view the world another way, and I have a goddaughter who is 22 and she views the world yet another way. And you can kind of observe the changes from kind of this internal world, to kind of this opening up to an external world. And movements, I think, experience the same thing. And what you mentioned around ambiguity, I think is, is really a key. One of the things that strikes me is that, at some point, a person develops an identity. You know, "I am this or I am that." And over time that in fact changes, but nevertheless, now a person to a develops an identity. and this happens with movements also. People kind of forget how young this movement really is. And I use sometimes as a metaphor, kind of an illusion from a song during the sixties, I think the group was Smokey Joe and the Fish, and it was the Vietnam War song and the phrase, "What are we fighting for?" And that becomes a question that we have to ask ourselves as a movement. You know, what are we fighting for? What is this about? Why are we engaged? And how does that relate to us as individuals? And how do we share that among each other? And for me, I guess, because now I embody issues around race and gender and sexual orientation and health status, now, I deal with that every single day. And so my worldview would suggest that, again, lesbian, bisexual, transgender community, or movement. And we in fact have debates about whether or not that even exists, you know, that it has to include issues that relate to race, gender, sexual orientation and health status. Now, because cause if it doesn't include all of that, then a part of who I am gets left out. And so, I would define a movement that is broad. There are others know who, as they deal with issues of inclusion or exclusion, kind of go through the list and say, you know, if I weren't gay, I'd be just like the people in power. So then the only thing I to worry about is the issues around sexual orientation. And I define that as, and I said this earlier, and I define that as gay rights, meaning the rights of white gay men to oppress the rest of us, like their straight white counterparts, and asking the question is this movement about a group of people who have an expectation of privilege, being denied that privilege, or is this movement about, truly equality and kind of creating a level playing field fit for all people? The truth of the matter is that I don't think we have an answer to that question, and I'm not sure if we have to have answer to that question, I certainly, am willing and regularly offer my opinion on that particular subject. But that is the challenge in my view of the ambiguity and the dichotomies that we face, defining who we are how we move forward in that regard. - Well, it's interesting because, the community often compare itself to the civil rights movement. We talk about ourselves as a civil rights movement, and we find some real parallels, but I know there are folks within our own movement and not all of them, people of color, though, many. who say there are significant differences here, and that it's not wise on our part, or in some ways even honest to compare ourselves. What do you think? - Well, I think that clearly, there are parallels and there are places where there are diversions that go on. I think the issue for me is that if we are going to compare ourselves to the civil rights movement, then we have to hold on to the principles of that movement. And as I look at that movement, I come to questions around Martin Luther King's decision around the Vietnam War. That that was not necessarily a race question, as it was presented at the time, but he viewed it as a justice question. The fact that when he was in Memphis, that was about, that was about workers, that was about poverty. The fact that they in fact changed the March on Washington from quote unquote, the civil rights march on Washington, to, "the poor people's march on Washington." And what that was about in my view is about maturity. It was about saying, let's look at the folks we're dealing with. What happens on ground zero? What happens to the lives of the folks that we're advocating for? Now, if we can define this in a way that embraces the issues that they deal with on a day to day basis, and it's not about theory, and it's not necessarily about, political perspective, but about how people live their lives, then let's approach these issues from that perspective. And so relative to our movement, if we're gonna compare ourselves to the civil rights movement or any other movement, A, we have to understand what those movements were really about. And then we have to relate the issues of those movements to the lives of gay and lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered folks. - Denise, what do you think? - Well, I think this is a really important discussion because it works itself out in so many ways in our lives, from the political to the personal and everything in between. when Phill talks about moving this discussion and relating it to the lives of the people within the movement, that in and of itself, for me tells me, we've gotta have diversity because the people in our movement, they're very, very diverse people and diverse subcultures within an overarching culture and diverse communities within those subcultures and cultures. And therefore there's not, for me, at least, only one vision of how this has to unfold. And I liken it to my congregation. For me, we never talk about our temple family at Kol Ami, even though most of us relate in familial ways to Jewish ritual and the holiday cycle and to one another, because we're a very diverse group of people with very diverse interests. And in that way, we're a community, a community of people that care about one another, come together for worship and holidays, but we've got radically different kinds of people doing very different kinds of things with very different concerns, very different political concerns, and also very different movement concerns. Sometimes the men in our congregation can't understand the baby boom that's happening among the women. Sometimes the men in our HIV support group, can't understand why all the big corporations are now going to give their money towards breast cancer and are leaving the issues around AIDS and AIDS advocacy, and AIDS fundraising. And in that regard, I think we have to pay more attention to some of the diversity that's happening. And I don't personally feel that it's a threat. I feel that there's strength in that diversity. I can live with ambiguities. I think it's really hard though, for many people within our community to live with ambiguity, because part of the coming out process was to get rid of the ambiguity in their life. - [Sheila] Mhm. - We lived our lives before we came out with all kinds of ambiguities, where we passed as part of the heterosexual, multi, massive mega culture, but inside we didn't feel quite right. And so the whole step of that movement forward of coming out was to get rid of that ambiguity, to say, and define our identity. And so then to have our movement be in a maturing place that is multivalent, and has lots of overarching themes with it. It's hard for people. Because they're afraid we're gonna say, "Oh, is this a different kind of closet that we have to live in? And can't we speak with one voice?" And so, we don't always have to speak with one voice. - Well, maybe there's a difference between community and movement. And this is a theme that I've struggled with too, because I very, sort of flipped manner, one day said, well, a movement is a community on wheels, but the notion to me is, what binds us together is not frankly our own identity as gay, and lesbian, or bisexual, or transgendered people. That is not a difference that we chose to emphasize. and have everybody say, I see you as a lesbian. This was something that was handed to us. We were treated worse because of that. and sometimes extremely badly. So out of that, we form a community, the community of oppressed people, the community of people with no rights, the community of people who share one thing and generally not much else. And of course that community, he started to identify itself first, I think among men. Although I don't know the my own history, and maybe when Robert who's our professor of history, can correct me because I know that he knows a great deal about it. But I think that we shared this one thing and sort of grouped together because of it. Now we need to move for our rights, and our rights, as far as the theorizing went were, don't treat us worse than somebody who's straight. Don't take something away from me because of this. but a community like Kol Ami, a community like, you know, a club or an organization, or even a journal, or whatever, a gathering of folks who share something, and they're gay, that's different than a movement, which is supposed to have at its core, some notion of what it wants from the greater world, right? Not just pride, but some notion of what we are asking from systems, et cetera. And so maybe as a community, we can have this cacophony and this babble, but maybe as a movement, I don't know if we can. - Well, The difference though, is, if you don't have the cacophony, if you don't have lots of things happening at once, the question then is who sits at the table to make those decisions? And then you have, the item that Phill talked about, is who's oppressing whom? And who's longing to be with the majority oppressors? And that's, I think something that, really has to be dealt with. - Well, the other thing that Phill was talking about had to do with an identification with other movements, and understanding not only with other movements, but understanding the, the great variety, I mean, we keep coming back to the notion of class, of property ownership, whatever, that has divided just about everybody. And whether we see that as a community, we need to understand those issues and those needs. We have healthcare issues. So does every other community, and they're serious when they're not taken care of by the majority, or even when it's invisible. And to see them played off against each other too, when people say, oh, you're not getting it anymore. Now I'm getting it, or vice versa, that that can be something, sometimes imposed from the outside. Robert, what do you think? - I try to think about these things. I guess a couple things first. On the issue of the civil rights movement, I think it's important for us to remember that the civil rights movement to which Phill is referring, primarily that aspect of the movement was something that succeeded agitation, and of course gone on for more than a hundred years, that resulted in legislation. And I think that, although I think that the analogies between gay, lesbian civil rights and African-American civil rights are limited. I tend to believe what Dr. King said, and as had to boys and other people, which is that no group, that is oppressed has any more franchise on rights than a group that is oppressing. But I do think that the issue of civil rights by which I mean equal protection of the laws and the removal of discrimination from the laws of the land is the project that came out of the founding in Los Angeles. Because people tend to forget this during in the Mattachine. It was a decision by a particular kind of gay man of that time, and you sort of have to imagine what they must have been like to be so bold. They were also, many of them were trained and socialized by the communist party. So that the capacity to have a movement that was in a cell, and that was secret, combined with a public agenda for what we think of as civil rights, and I just think of as constitutional guarantees, that has been the focus of the gay movement all along, is one of those historical accidents that I regard as good. Remember that the most significant, theorizer and strategist of the King-oriented civil rights movement and A. Philip Randolph's time as well, was Bayard Rustin, who was, proud, as far as one can tell from reading gay men and who never was willing to make an issue. And I think we have to remember these issues play out in different ways. And I think the problem we run into is that it's still the case that most people who see themselves as happening to be that thing, which is now called gay or lesbian, on my experience and reading suggests that, proud people don't see themselves that way, that the power of stereotypes has to do with the fact that if you wanna find out what it means to be lesbian or gay in the culture, you have to look for it, and what you get is this demeaning, if often, appealing stereotype. I mean, I'm going through a cliff and wide period, (Sheila laughs) but I think that the next part of that, and has to do very much much with what Denise was getting at, I guess I would put it this way. It seems to me the issue of ambiguity as you're putting it and all the rest has to do with this. I mean, if you have a movement, whatever that means, based on an individual, person's needing to decide that the thing that seems central to their affective and erotic life is more important than everything they've ever learned about it. That is about a kind of individualism, not necessarily wise, prudent, or deep, but necessary. There's something you have to do something yourself. I think that is the kind of thing that most groups get to deal with after the politics. I think that issues of what you're calling identity are very much part of the strength of the degree to which lesbians, gay, et cetera, are now in the culture, but also has to do with the fact that the movement is, an ambiguous one. Think of this, for example, the amount of money that now, just say in the last three weeks has been poured into advertisements, targeting us on a certain TV program, compared with all of the money that all of the organizations have been able to get. I think it's up to us to think that through and to wonder why it is. See, my allegiances are so completely to a movement. That's just sort of the way I would think about things, but I'm not sure that's typical. I think people are much more moved by their support groups, their friends, their encounters, their, you know, the life, than by it's being structured by a movement. Finally, if I may, I think the issue of maturity, which I'd better not duck, I think you're right, although I'd put it a little differently. I think the older I get, I miss two things. One, well, more than two, but let's talk about the two one could talk about. one of them is that, I am now aware of the fact that there are all these younger lesbian, gay people who have a way different view and history from on. And how, foolish it is of me to think that I can define out of what is after all, my experience, not any knowledge, what their lives should be like. And yet I do look at them in some ways, the way an older people looks at younger people. And I think there's a drive to control and fix that, that much more to do with, leftover power surges than anything serious. On the other hand, I also think that you're exactly right, that the more people you meet in life, the more things that happen to you, the less certain, you either become less or more certain, which probably the same thing in some deep way. I think I know less and less about what it means for other people to act, don't have a view. Well, of course, I always have a view on how they should dress. But I don't have a view about what it means to be that. And I think, however, that is a very difficult insight to translate, which is why it's hard to think that any culture has ever been based on wisdom and tolerance. But it seems to be the question is the right one, because I'm not sure what maturity means when you're talking about the kinds of lives that we have to invent as we live. Maturity, is also not, although it's a shame, but just as in the rest of the culture and sometime one thinks more, the qualities you're really talking about tolerance, wisdom, a certain prudence, a certain restraint are all almost by definition, not what appears to be high on the personal agenda of people who are contending with what they believe are suppressed personal possibilities. - But dealing with ambiguity doesn't mean not having a point of view. Because maturity doesn't mean, "Gee, now I no longer have any idea how I feel about all of this stuff." - I think dealing with ambiguity, I meant to say, does have an implication for how strong a point of view you have with respect to what other people are supposed to do, which is the core of any movement. Let's not kid ourselves movements are not deliberative, they're agenda-setting things. And so I think that the ambiguity to which you refer you're referring to its capacity to be tolerated. And what I'm suggesting is that it's hard to know how to put that tolerance and pluralist expectation into practice. - Well, it seems to me, the further along you get in a movement, the more you lose control of it. I mean, and the people who were in it, who are in it, who are, seem to be the people moving along these young people that we've been talking about, or younger people who have different notions about this and that, or I look at the women's movement, or even the civil rights movement where the everyday lives of people who have been affected by whatever's happened are very different and they have their own notions about what should happen. And isn't that a good thing? - I Think it's a very good thing. One of the things that, that struck me so far in this conversation is that we've talked about what we want, and I guess I started the ball in that regard. We've not mentioned yet, what is our responsibility and what are the responsibilities when a people or a movement or a community matures. And I guess if I were to personalize that for the point of kind of being clear, A few years ago, I was ending a relationship and I am out with my family and my family was supportive of the relationship. And we had moved to the point where it took my partner six months before he could tell his family that we were ending our relationship. And it took me 16 months before I could tell my parents that we were ending the relationship, and it took, 32 months before I was able to tell my nephews and nieces, that we were ending, now this is with a gay relationship, you know. I guess my point being is that, not too long ago, it would've taken that long and longer to say to our families that we're in a relationship, And now it's kind of my mother, as my mother says, "Can you have to be careful what you ask for?" But there was a responsibility that was attached to my family saying your relationship is as legitimate as anyone else's relationship in this family. And that we were obligated to be respectful of that. Now I know there are people in our movement who will find that extremely offensive and what have you, and they'll just have to deal with that. But my point there is simply about the issue of responsibility. And as I think about the work that I do, one of the areas that I find to be the most exciting is not so much about what, what black gays and lesbians are asking of the larger black community. But in fact, what we are offering to the larger black community, and that, as we look at the issues that are affecting African-Americans in this country, we have responsibility to bring to the table remedies to those problems. And I think as I'm sure you're experiencing, I know you're experiencing 'cause I watch you do it. Now, you approach your job in that same way in the state legislature, you know, that your experience brings to the table, remedies that if you were not there, those remedies might not come to the table. - Well, and I, you know, at this point in the show, let me just tell everybody it's fine to interrupt each other, because from now on, this is the kind of discussion that we have when the cameras aren't on. When we, you know, sit around talking to each other about it, but it is true. My job in the movement, if I am in the movement and I work in an essentially, very straight environment, much of it hostile to our issues, some of it very ambivalent about our issues. And some people deeply invested in our issues in a way that they don't want me to drop a bill that they've become invested in for us. A lot of variety and dichotomy of thought. But I have to have an idea about what the very specific desires are of our, "community." Do we want a law that says we ought to be able to adopt? Well, we certainly don't wanna be precluded from adopting. And therefore, if the governor here is going to say, we can't do it, we need a law that says we can do it, but people have to develop that out of their own experience. And say to me, our children are getting beaten and harassed sometimes to death in our schools. What can we do about that? And it's really sort of looking at the law, which is really only one of the tools. As David Garrow said in his book, "Liberty and Sexuality," actually didn't say it, but I got from his, - [Robert] Let him shut up. - I got from his book because he didn't say anything, actually. - [Robert] Second edition, I'll get in touch. - He told a lot of stories in his book. It was really the press, the pulpit and the law, that were your, your indicators, that there was to be a sea change in public opinion. It went beyond the movement, it went beyond the organizers, it went beyond the advocates and the activists, and suddenly you'd see it in the paper or on television. You'd hear it from the pulpit where it became as we talked about last time, an aspect of morality, some preacher, some rabbi, saying discrimination is wrong, and in this matter, it's just as wrong. Or to see someone bring a bill and try to get it through, that's part of the maturity of it too. We have pretty much gotten into these institutions. - I was just gonna pick up on this, issue that Phill articulates about responsibility, which I think for our movement, if we can still call a movement after today's show, is that the fact that we can utter those words. because our movement's history is grounded in a sense of that early sexual freedom that rejected responsibility. And so if we can come to the table now and say, there are obligations that we have to one another, that we have to our movement, that we have beyond our movement to other movements to our country, is part of this maturation process and is something that isn't talked about very much within our community. Issues of responsibility to one another as gay and lesbian, bisexual, transgendered people. - I wonder if anyone would take issue with that notion, that sexual freedom is incompatible with responsibility. And we talked about this on the issue of, is it really true that the men and the women in our movement have come together to such a grand extent, that we're just sharing Philosophies, or do we still have, is that sort of the attitude a woman would speak, but maybe not the right way? - [Robert] Depends on who you know, I think. - [Denise] I think that's right. - But I think there are, there are a couple of ways of getting at this, although I share more and more, the less I do the older I get, the fetish of responsibility. And there's no question, but that the kinds of responsibilities that you're discussing are critical. I think in a way you sort of have to go back a little more. I think the first thing is we are all assuming we talk about movement. I mean, there's no question, there is movement in the culture. There is even something you might call a movement, which is a movement of people out the closet towards greater acceptance, towards greater, the kind of diversity that happens when people are living lives. But the, "a movement" part, meaning the civil rights movement, the social activist movement, several things appeared have happened. One, I think that the burden of AIDS and now the shift in the very nature of how AIDS has responded to had both exhausted, and now in some ways is vitiating that how organizations have worked and been funded in our community for 20 years. And I think that's just, I don't think it's good or bad, it's just a change. But if you look at Lambda and the legal work, it's been striking. Case after case, very often with greater local regional impact, than national impact, the legislative agenda seems to have moved along some, but all of them are separate, and different groups appear to have different responsibilities. What I see is constantly happening, is in some way, much more superficial. And that is that our change has taken on the character of the times. And the times or times in which nothing is as important as commodified celebrity. I mean, it's just the most important thing. That can be good, but it also means if you listen to people, they see themselves not as people, but spokespersons. I mean, when you read, when you read what people say about their own lives, when you listen to interviews, I mean, I love it in a way that every kid who sees it, him or herself as gay or lesbian, often has a kind of maturity of this is who I am, and this is what it means. It's almost like we have a litany before we have our lives. And there, I think is the issue of sexual freedom and responsibility. I don't know, feeling more often than not, just like I'm wasting my sexual freedom and absolutely overplaying my responsibility, but it does seem to me that there is, it is not the same thing to say, that you should have sexual freedom and to maintain very different views of sexual responsibility. For some people that means traditional fidelity. For some people, it will always mean not doing anything at all. And for others, it will mean varieties of personal satisfaction. The issue is with respect to that, the key issue is with respect to the spread of sexually transmitted disease, in which the evidence indicates that the particular aspects of gay male culture continue to put too many people at risk, as in other subcultures of certain kinds of uses of freedom. - Except I think that two things or, two separate things were happening. They got blended. On the one hand, the politics of the sexual freedom of the sixties, or what have you, was about kind of, rejecting the notion that our sexual expression was bad, or dirty, or whatever. That was one thing that was going on. The other thing that was going on, particularly in the male community, was what happens when sexual adolescence happens at chronologically later in life than with heterosexuals. Now, the fact that, if I become a sexual adolescent, when I'm 25 and I have a job, and I can get into bars, and I can do all those things, but I still have the maturity, this sexual maturity of a 16 year old, I'm gonna manifest that differently. And so those two things were happening at the same time and they got blended together. I'm not sure that sexual freedom, was a requirement, to do sexual binging. Now, I don't think that would, - [Robert] I don't think so. - They often happen, - I think one doesn't lead to the other necessarily. - Right. Right. And I think that what we're seeing more now, is that, as, young people come to terms with their sexual identity at ages, gay and lesbian young people, coming to terms of their sexual identity, at ages that are more compatible with heterosexual teenagers, I think what we're seeing is that their sexual behavior tends to be similar to the sexual behavior of their heterosexual counterparts. Maybe not the same, because I don't think we're at a level playing field yet, but that they're similar, and which is different from the experience of the sixties. - I hope you're right. I mean, that is, is very heartening, seriously. but you know, as well as I do that the figures, particularly with respect to sexually transmitted diseases, paint an alarming, an alarmingly consistent picture throughout the last 20 years. And that the figures that have been collected, there are limits to how much has been done on particularly, the younger gay male population are highly alarming. I don't disagree with your analysis, but I think it's, it's just hard not to look at the cultures into which people are socialized. - But the comparison in that, we compare young white gay men to young, straight white men, - That figures that I am talking about are not racially selected in the way. - When we compare the sexual statistics, sexual transmitted diseases statistics of young gay men to, for example, African-American heterosexual females or Latino males, what we find that those numbers are not so different from each other. So my point is, that the issue around that is not necessarily tied exclusively to sexual orientation, that it may be tied to a whole bunch of issues around, - But Phill, you know perfectly well that we would not be having the same discussion if we were talking about how drug use puts people at risk for AIDS. That is to say the degree to which the freedom to use narcotics is connected to our freedoms, and it's one of the challenges of freedom. What you do and don't do. But I don't think many people would have the same reluctance that I think we share when we're talking about sexual freedom, because it's so connected to what we are not willing to lose, but if we're not prepared to look, and I don't know the answers, but to look at the different sexual communities, and I think the women's has aspects too, that I gather are changing and relevant in this area, although don't think it plays out the same with respect to HIV. - [Sheila] Well, it's not, - But we are talking about a culture which, is persistently, risking certain things, and very few of us, I think, have known how to address that. - But it's not a historical either. I mean, it is also a product of its time. I mean, in terms of this move towards sexual freedom, in the sixties, there was a lot of, experimentation among heterosexuals. And I believe that there is starting to be this notion in a new sort of fashion in the nineties. It is not, we see what happens in our own communities and with our own friends, pretty clearly. The rest is all statistics. I mean, we are not familiar necessarily with it. I mean, I was struck by the fact, for instance, that women with AIDS, a very, very, very high percentage of them are victims of domestic violence. And that they're infected as an aspect of the violence against them, by men who are HIV affected and who know it, and who as an aspect of the violence will rape and infect. And that is completely different from a notion of sexual "freedom." The other thing is, we are still defined, primarily by the straight society as sexual beings and just sexual beings, and that's a bad thing. It relates to, what in their minds, it relates to whether we can be trusted with children, because anyone who has as sexual, by definition, theoretically, is not to be trusted around children, caring for children, having children, et cetera. And this relates a lot more to men than to women. Women have also been very critical of the sexual freedom of gay men that they felt was without responsibility, as you know, as Denise has said. But in my opinion, none of this is true, and it's all true. I mean, it happens, it is not exemplary. One of the things about diversity, well, actually one of the things about communication, is that we can hear these stories, but people want to pigeonhole us. - Well, I'm fascinated by the conversation because, the issue of responsibility is not just about sexuality and that was precisely my point. I mean, I was fascinated by the digression around sexual freedom, but my sense of this issue of responsibility towards one another goes way beyond issues of responsibility in dealing with sexuality. Yes, people ought to be responsible around issues of sexuality, I think there's a morality that we can claim as well as moral human beings. But our responsibility towards one another, as gay and lesbian people within our community, I think goes beyond issues of sexuality, and talks about the ways in which we treat one another, the ways in which we talk to one of another, the ways in which we're there for one another. And the example of learning to be there for one another, I think came through through the AIDS crisis, that brought the men's community and the women's community much closer together. The question is, can we continue to sustain that responsibility that we forged out of that crisis towards one another? And were we transformed by that in any real way? That sustainable, not just for the generation that endured it, but for the younger generation that comes up. That's an issue of maturation and responsibility that whether we can inculcate it. - [Robert] Inculcate what? I'm sorry. - Inculcate this, for the example of the bridge and bond between the lesbian community and the gay male community. When I have a younger gay man come to me and say, "I don't wanna hear about all this AIDS stuff. I don't know anybody that's died of AIDS, and I can't understand why we still do all this AIDS stuff." I'm troubled by that. I'm troubled because what we haven't translated generationally, is a sense of how that has transformed our community. - And some of that, I think, two things, one, I think it's that, that transformation has happened. I think that it's manifesting itself in different ways today, I think, and it presents itself with the number of lesbians who are deciding to become mothers, and the number of gay men who are deciding to become fathers or adopt. It has always presented itself in my opinion, among my African-American gay brothers, in that when I look at the list of my friends, without exception, every one of them has, a primary responsibility for a sibling, or a nephew, or a niece, or a child, or a parent of some sort, and so I think that, that the notion we're starting to focus on, this kind of transformation and we wanna look, it is most crystallized when we talk about AIDS and HIV, but I don't think that that's the only place it has ever been, and it certainly has manifests itself in new places today. - I guess I really do disagree. I mean, I value what you're saying, and I know that on a different occasion, like the last time I would just have agreed, but I guess, I think a couple of things. First of all, of course, it's not all about sex. But the reason I'm talking about sexual freedom is the fact that we all know, people still do not come to say, "You know, I must be a lesbian because I identify with this, with responsibility." I mean, I do think that it is a perception that's formed in erotic attachment. What that means, I'm not sure. And it certainly doesn't mean that that's all there is, but it is an issue, and it's the dominant issue. I think for many people in their lives, although how it plays out, is very different. And I think, for example, your case of the degree to we have responsibility in our families, which is a perception I value because I also see it. but I think the issue is, shall we always have? The question is what has been changed because of people being out and are being known. And I guess I have to say that, and I want to be real clear. I'm part of the problem, not part of the solution, nothing that I'm saying does not implicate me. I wish I were better. But you know, I look around, of course I live in West Hollywood, but you know, at all the mesomorphs with their little dogs and these magnificent, scarecrows of what seemed to me still shame and compensation. Now, I may not be right in interpreting it that way, but I don't think it's missed many people of the look, for example, of the culture generally. The degree to which media is so important, the degree to which so much of the personal transformation is being accomplished through images. I know that you have to say, I want someone who looks like me, people like me, this is crucial. But I also do think there is a danger that people have in accepting, just throwing it up on the shadow wall of the culture. What do I think should happen? I think that issues of shame and homophobia are much deeper. I think the solution to the gender issue is not frankly, a community of caring, which is great, but a community of identifying how many people are beginning to see that what we suffer, what our younger people suffer, what our elders have suffered has to do with other issues. It's real clear that gender is a big issue, and the oppression of gay men, but it is also clear, and here, I think your point is exactly right. That too many gay men still, and in the past, have been agents of misogyny. I think there are issues around sexuality that are very important, either there has to be a way for us to not just be like other people. I mean, there are many of us who don't want kids, - But I think the point that you make raises the issue around the paradox associated with diversity. For example, I don't live in West Hollywood. When you said, when you talk to mesomorphs with a small, I had to think, "What is he talking about?" - [Robert] I'm just talking about the body focus, that's all. - No, I understand, but my world is so different from that, that I didn't know what you were talking about in beginning. - [Robert] Okay, but you also know perfectly well the world that I am talking about. - I do, but my point is that, that in a diverse culture, as we are creating, our experiences are different in that regard. As a black man, for example, if I, in 1997 America, if I depended on the media for images, I would disappear. - It is true. - So I can't rely on that, so I have-- - [Robert] But is that true for everyone that you know? - No, of course it's not, nothing that any of us would say be true for everyone. But my point is simply this. That there's certainly a segment of our community, that is reflected in what you just described. But there's also a segment of our community that is reflected in what Denise has described and what I've described. And in fact, that is what I think this, this discussion around maturity of communities is all about. Is that we're coming at it from different places and that on ground zero, as we live our lives, they come from different places. - Well, here's a question really, that came to me when you were talking, Robert, and also out of your response to that, the moment that a person realizes, they're gay, what happens to them? I mean, if you were a Martian anthropologist and you would say what, I don't get what is the big deal here? So we begin to study about gender and what a difference gender makes. We notice for instance, that people only ask one question when a baby's born, you know, "What'd you have?" And that's about gender. That's all it's about. Why everyone wanna know is the first question about a brand new life. - [Robert] You see, I always ask, artificial or real? - Is it a boy or a girl? Yeah, right. But what happens in a person's mind when they know they're gay? Do they think, "Gee, that's wonderful"? Do they think, "Oh, that's terrible"? "I have shame." People still have a great deal of shame about it. Why? Because of difference, we have a lot of stuff around difference. You know you're black from the minute you're out. - That's right. - Of it. But I know I'm gay at a moment in my life of consciousness, you know, not raised to be gay. So where do I go with that? I see images. Some of them, they don't look like me. They don't seem to be going through what I'm going through. Except now there's a new one, which is close. I don't see very much that makes me feel like I don't even know if there's a community. I hear the words, but I don't know. And that's the crucial moment that we need, I think that we should focus on as a movement. - So you think that community in that sense as sort of, a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, et cetera, community, that that is a positive good. See, I think many people, now, don't. - There's also much more going on in terms of cross, movement and cross, I don't know what, you know. Certainly everything but generational, I guess. In which people are also, especially younger people, are sort of throwing off that dichotomy notion and having collaboratives and collectives that are multiracial, multicultural, multi gender, - [Robert] National. - Multinational, I mean, and they, of course, have different issues of who's better and who's worse. And people do. But it's just interesting, it's sort of like Western Europeans in the first part of this century used to be very aware of who was Irish and who was German and who was Scottish and who was, you know, French or whatever. And here we are, and you very rarely, I mean, some guy named O'Malley in the legislature is not thought of, and we don't have one. I'm just making him up. And it's not thought of as "The Irish politician," out here anymore. We think about race as our diversity, but it used to be Western European countries that you heard about, and that was who was, who everybody knew who was Italian, you know, and who was Irish, et cetera, this blends in a way, and other things emerge. Young people don't wanna be either straight or gay. They want to be, they wanna figure out who they are. - Except of course, when young, and again, I think your point it's really important about when you're having your adolescence, but it's also the case. Isn't that almost not exclusively, but pretty much most of the time, there's a phase when an order to come out, as Denise was saying earlier, that's what you have to be. The problem is then having done that work, you said, "Well, is that what I want to be? Is that enough?" And then you get more and more people. - [Phill] Is that all there is? - Well, exactly. - Imagine how disappointed your family would be, having put through, you put them all through dealing with you as a gay man, if you suddenly turned out to be straight. I mean, this whole investment of energy and time and I've seen this happen. (Phill laughs) I've seen this happen, where it can really-- - [Robert] In the name of family values, Phill, don't do it! (everyone laughs) - Well, but there's something here. I wanna get back to that first moment notion. What goes through the mind of a young person who thinks, "Uh-oh, I'm attracted to persons of the same sex. Or this person?" - I think it depends where that happens and where that kid is. First of all, geographically, in terms of access, in terms of images, - [Sheila] Access to what? - Access to other gay and lesbian people, you know, I think it's different. I think it's different in the deep South, I think it's different in rural America. I think it's different than someone who grows up at a high school in San Francisco. And so again, there's not one experience that's paradigmatic in that sense. And that's why I think a diversity of images is helpful, for us, if we're gonna talk about images for a minute, - I'm a little confused, because you were talking about diversity of access. - Access. - Are you also saying that's diversity of experience? - Yeah, well, I think it makes a difference in the experience. - So in terms of what you-- - I think it makes a difference in the experience. And I think the best example of this has been the internet. When kids have been able to get online and go through and search all the different directories and find access to gay, and other gay and lesbian people through the internet, they have made connections and dealing with their process of coming out very differently than those people who are isolated from either other gay and lesbian people or community. So I think it's both-- - Well, apparently they say, and again, I'm just noticing the books of, you know, George Truancy, various books, apparently one of the big differences, is that increasingly after homosexuality was invented along with heterosexuality a hundred years ago, by these medical types, and with increased, the more people are aware of this thing called lesbian and gay, the more difficult childhood experience in this becomes, 'cause apparently it was not at all uncommon in fact, way more than that, for there to be sexual relations among men and among women, which required, for example, Abraham Lincoln's passion for his pal Joshua Speed, which when you read, you don't know for sure what they did in bed. You really don't know, but it's very clear that Joshua Speed adored his friend, was loyal to him and went off, got married, but that for Lincoln, it was deep, apparently it was his worst depressive instance. Now, what that meant for him is not so important, although it's fun to think about. As the possibility that one person could have one experience of a relationship and another person, an entirely different that you could have a, this is just a sexual fooling around, but I want to be with men or with women heterosexual view, but at the same time, and apparently that is the thing that's becoming more and more difficult, that it is almost impossible now in the same way for even playing around as a kid, to be innocent of the connotations. - Let at me interrupt, you're not gonna believe this, but the hour, has flown. And I think that, it sort of brings it full circle. At least my job is to do that. Because the notion of, being stuck in something is what's different. Where you would think of everything as a phase, even crushes didn't matter, even being interested in being an artist, but you would then grow up to be a scientist, because you know, you don't want to be stuck in something that might be bad. And the interesting things about movement is that it apparently identifies and frees up, gives you too many choices, talk about diversity. Now, maybe it's not bad to be gay or lesbian. And therefore, things become much more complicated, 'cause we know it's not bad. Anyway, this is gonna go on for another hour. I'm really sorry that you won't be able to hear the rest of it because we're clearly gonna have to stay, stay here and talk to each other more. But let me thank you very, very much. We will do this at least every six months, if not sooner. Thank you, Phill Wilson. Thank you, Denise Eger. Thank you Robert Dawidoff. Thank you very, very much for joining us and we hope to see you again, at Get Used To It. (upbeat music)