Gay Voluntary Associations in New York. Moshe Shokeid
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and many gay men to the victims of HIV/AIDS was reminiscent of the treatment of lepers, the outcasts of earlier generations. Ralph Bolton, a leading ethnographer of gay life, made a compelling defense of the gay society lifestyle, blamed by both heterosexuals and homosexuals for the spread of AIDS. He commented that “AIDS is about promiscuity. In the voluminous material on this epidemic, promiscuity stands out as the key concept, dominating and linking together diverse genres of thought and discourse about AIDS” (1992: 145). A similar position was taken a few years later by Murray: “Blaming victims is a leitmotif of public discussion of AIDS, derived directly from the view that “promiscuity” is an invariant, defining characteristic of gay men” (1996: 108). He also highlighted “the predisposition to equate the outbreak of unexpected diseases among gay men with anal transmission” (106). This statement implies the guilt of the receptive role (“bottoms”) in gay sexual intercourse, a theme angrily raised during my first meeting with Martin.
The situation of both HIV-positive men and those with full-blown AIDS has greatly changed since the discovery of new drugs that prolong life and erase the visible physical marks of the disease. This has not diminished the binary position and the worries of stigmatization between HIV-positive and HIV-negative men (Munoz 2009: 46–47). Jeff, a survivor of an earlier generation, was still experiencing the trauma of devastation and social stigma that its victims endured. I remember the public excitement caused by the late Mel Rosen, president of CBST, who revealed in Jewish Week (February 3, 1989) his medical condition as an AIDS patient. About the same time, he also announced his disease at a public event at B’nai Jeshurun, a major mainstream Conservative synagogue in New York. It needed a leading figure in the New York State health administration and a man of considerable personal charisma to come out with that stigmatizing secret. Mel Rosen was also endowed with a robust masculine appearance (he was the tallest man at any gathering), which made his appearance contradict popular stereotypes about the looks and demeanor of gay men. His statements, both written and spoken and to both homosexual and heterosexual audiences, displayed a forceful protest, as expressed by Bolton, against the “fact that people do lie about their sexual histories, about their drug habits, and about their HIV status” (1992: 177).
Jeff admired Mel Rosen, but he could not imitate his heroic example. Jeff was masculine in appearance and demeanor, presenting himself as a “top” in the sexual act. His somewhat macho clothing style and his comportment projected the image of an easily identifiable type of gay New Yorker. However, he lacked the extraordinary personal and social capital that made Mel Rosen a quintessential advocate of gay rights and helped him publicly admit his medical condition. Rosen was virtually fearless in that sphere of his personal life. Jeff, however, was afraid of losing my friendship and respect, as well as jeopardizing Martin’s love.
Albeit in a different social situation, I too had my fears. I was afraid of losing Nigel’s friendship, which would have also positioned my work in a new fieldwork site at risk. Without doubt, Jeff’s worries and my own were exaggerated or even completely misguided. But we had no way to predict the reaction of our buddies and mates once they discovered the secrets that threatened to expose us to shame and stigma. Certainly, the comparison covers two very different personal circumstances. Jeff’s revelation about his medical situation came about by default. In contrast, I volunteered the information about my deception. But the pain and the risk of the revelation must have been far more severe for Jeff.
“True Reports”
In retrospect, the unexpected circumstances that prompted the discovery of Jeff’s medical situation offered me a better understanding of the painful existential condition of a close friend and “informant” in the professional terminology. However, it presented an example of the exceptional experiences in daily life that might engage “ordinary” people—researchers and their subjects included (Shokeid 1992). Jeff’s case exposed the risk and the discomfort entailed in concealing sensitive personal information from one’s significant others. It also displayed the emotions and the calculation that might compel the individual to continue concealing his/her secrets. That suppression of personal information appears less threatening and less painful than the potential consequences of confronting close relatives and friends with damaging revelations. The study of sexuality and of the life of a sexual minority presents the ethnographer with additional difficulties. Few other subjects in social life exhibit similar issues of shame and secrecy.
I believe my report reflects on an old tradition in ethnographic writing: narrating a captivating account from the field and its interpretation in terms relevant to broader issues in the anthropological repertoire. My discussion is not intended to introduce yet another convincing proof of the faults of the positivist approach in ethnographic research. We have long since lost the “innocence” of the founders of anthropology. “Have your data right … shut your mouth and open your ears”—these were the farewell warnings and blessings my supervisor, the late Max Gluckman, offered novices on their way to the field. These methodological prescriptions have become part of our professional folklore and the stuff of nostalgia for a lost golden age and its promise of “reliable” ethnographic testimonies. We are convinced there is no “true report” from the field in the legal or scientific meanings of the term.
The case that instigated this thesis serves as a mirror image of the constraints that might hinder the efforts to gain “true” observations and “valid” reports in research conducted by ethnographers who are committed to a rigorous fieldwork methodology.4 However, unlike earlier critiques of the theoretically misconstrued, ethnocentric, or distorted colonialist perception of the native’s behavior, my discourse exposes the human condition of the subjects of the research, and sometimes of the researchers themselves, which might handicap the ethnographer’s mission designed to realize the Malinowskian vision.
In this light, a symposium I attended at the packed annual AAA meeting grand ballroom session, in the late 1980s, dedicated to the Mead-Freeman controversy, seems now a grotesque show. It needed a dead tribal chief and a vengeful maverick to expose the poor quality of field research and the lack of good supervision that might have forestalled a presumably shabby ethnographic work. My supervisors at Manchester, avowed fieldworkers and propagators of the “extended case-method,” never inquired about my field experiences or asked to see my field notes. They were ignorant about my field site, the language, and the local culture, as Franz Boas was equally nescient about Samoa half a century earlier. Yet they could evince some unkind reactions when they felt that the novice anthropologist was displaying personal weaknesses adjusting to his/her designated field site. The “human condition” in its various manifestations was not part of the constraints condoned by the propagators of that research project.
For better or worse, we continue to rely on the anthropologist’s personal integrity, dedication, and creative ethnographic imagination. Despite the doubts often expressed about the quintessential position of fieldwork in the craft of anthropology,5 I assume that the method will stay with us as a major identifying disciplinary marker for many years to come.6 A growing awareness of our subjects’ sensitivities, as well as of our own role in their social and moral world, might enhance the authority of ethnographic work—more particularly when anthropologists move away from the “classic” field sites in Third World countries.
In conclusion, I gained this “educational” revelation through the agency of a close friend who also took on the role of a master teacher in my entry into the field of gay life. As mentioned earlier, Jeff and Martin moved to Florida in 2010; although we call each other occasionally, we may never meet again. I feel like Victor Turner, among my models for ethnographic writings, on the day he parted from Mochuna. We anthropologists owe so much of our professional gains and our emotional well-being to the natives, in an African village or in metropolitan New York, who open their hearts and unlock the gates to let us penetrate their personal and social worlds.
CHAPTER 3
The Regretless Seniors
I begin my presentation of the organizations I observed at the Center with the SAGE group (Senior Action in Gay Environment). They appeared on the list of the daily activities I saw at the reception desk when I first entered the building and began my regular observations at that site. The participants