CHAPTER 1

      The Anthropologist in the Field of Sexuality

      The study of gay people inevitably involves a consideration of the ethnographer’s engagement with issues of sexuality, the major indicator of his/her subjects’ social identity. Moreover, it calls attention to the observer’s own comportment in this field of behavior. That topic naturally reminds us of the turmoil raised among anthropologists with the discovery of Malinowski’s diaries (1967). His confessions touched on various sensitive issues. Particularly embarrassing seemed the revelation of his sexual frustration during his work among the Trobrianders. Nevertheless, it took another twenty-five years for that issue to arouse more serious interest in professional forums.¹ The discourse of reflexivity in ethnographic texts, which has continuously expanded in recent decades, has finally penetrated the most intimate sphere of the ethnographer’s life during fieldwork: his/her own sexuality.

      Since the early 1990s, conference sessions, articles, ethnographies, and edited volumes have removed the veil of secrecy² and the taboo that surrounded the sexual demeanor of anthropologists (e.g., Newton 1993; Wade 1993; Kulick and Willson 1995; Bolton 1995, 1996; Carrier 1995; Lewin and Leap 1996; Markowitz and Ashkenazi 1999; Haller 2001; Goode 2002). While gay and lesbian anthropologists seemed to be more aware and open about that dimension in their professional life, heterosexual anthropologists gradually shared revelations similar to those of their homosexual colleagues.

      By and large, the ethnographers mentioned above contested the old code that desexualized anthropologists during fieldwork and taught them to hide any sexual involvement with their informants. The reformist ethnographers considered these implanted guidelines seriously wrong, both professionally and ethically. The lone anthropologist, they argued, whether a man or a woman, is “a human being” also during fieldwork, and as such, not devoid of a sexual drive or of a sexual persona. By abstaining from sex, ethnographers are apparently observed by their informants as strange, if not deficient, people. Consequently, this behavior has shut them out of a major dimension of their subjects’ lives.

      Not surprisingly, for many decades anthropologists have studied “family and kinship” but only rarely dealt with the sexual lives of the people they studied (e.g., Vance 1991; Tuzin 1991; Friedl 1994). The pioneers, Malinowski and Mead, proved to be far less prudent (and prudish) than later generations of anthropologists who left the field of sexual behavior to the monopoly of other academic disciplines and the mercy of therapists. This narrowing of the ethnographer’s domain of competence also legitimized the ethos that taught older and younger practitioners to refrain from any breach of morality engaging them in a sexual alliance with their informants.

      Not only were anthropologists careful to refrain from studying sexuality and concerned about any sexual distraction in the field, they were also anxious to keep their distance from activities and groups defined by a stigmatized sexuality. In particular, they avoided any association that might mark them with the stigma of homosexuality. Observations of homoerotic interaction were rarely reported in ethnographic texts since the anthropologist’s reputation was at stake (e.g., Read 1980: 184–85; Shokeid 2003, 1995: 22–27; Markowitz and Ashkenazi 1999). Read’s confession is particularly illuminating. In Other Voices (1980: 184), he returned to his New Guinea ethnography of 1955: “The gaps in my record of the Gahuku cannot be retrieved now and I advise skepticism in accepting my statement that homosexual practices did not exist…. As a ‘legitimate’ study, homosexuality remained the ‘vice without a name’.”

      More radical, and still largely controversial, has been the claim by a few “maverick” anthropologists, both heterosexuals and homosexuals, that having sex with one’s informants is beneficial for fieldwork. Anthropologists who are sexually involved with their informants, they argue, are better integrated into the community they wish to study.

       Heterosexual Anthropologists Reveal Sexual Secrets

      Peter Wade (1993), Fran Markowitz (1999), and Erich Goode (2002), all heterosexuals, described the path that had led them to have sex with close informants. Wade, who studied black Colombians, had two romantic/sexual affairs during his two fieldwork projects, the first in a small village and the second in Medellin (one of the largest cities in Colombia). He claims that his intimate affairs affected his standing with both men and women: “My position in both Unguia and Medellin was consolidated and legitimized by virtue of my relationships with Marcela and Roberta…. As a result, many people saw me as part of the community: the relationship implied some commitment to Colombian, especially black, society” (208).

      In her study of Soviet immigrants in New York, Markowitz describes an encounter with a male informant to whom she said that her professional ethics inhibited her from having sex with men she interviewed. “‘What?!’ he exclaimed with incredulity ‘Aren’t you a human being?!’” Eventually, as she dropped her celibacy, it “brought with it a great deal of advantages that last into the present” (168). She claims also that her female informants expected and supported her sexual involvement with Soviet men. Nevertheless, Markowitz ponders her standing within the conventions of the discipline: “My biggest problem, however, remained the nagging thought that I was doing something wrong that went against the ethical foundations of the discipline” (168).

      Goode, who conducted research on the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), recounted a number of sexual liaisons, including one that resulted in the birth of a daughter. Although his research was not a story of great success, he nevertheless assumes that sex between social scientists and their informants cannot be avoided in certain circumstances: “And pretending that it doesn’t take place and that it isn’t a fit topic for discussion, strikes me as a variety of collective insanity” (2002: 529).

       Gay Men’s Sexuality and Gay Anthropologists

      The Hidden Observer

      The ethnographic work available on sexual behavior in Western society has been mostly carried out in the field of anonymous gay sex. However, for many years, the ethnographers who conducted that research performed their task as unidentified observers (e.g., Humphreys 1970; Delph 1978; Style 1979; Leap 1999). Such studies have been relatively easy to conduct without developing close relationships with the “natives.” That trend won methodological and theoretical support from the school of symbolic interaction (as represented by Goffman in particular).

      Laud Humphreys was probably the first researcher who conducted intensive ethnographic work among gay men. His Tearoom Trade (1970) remains a landmark not only for its methodological innovation and sociological revelation, but also for its ensuing scandal. Humphreys observed men having sex in public restrooms in the parks of an American city. He conducted his observations by adopting the role of a “watch queen,” warning the participants of the approach of the police and unidentified visitors. Humphreys could take notes about the participants’ visible, though silent, sexual communication, but he had almost no additional knowledge about their lives outside these meeting sites. The men were quick to depart and had no wish to carry on conversations that might have revealed their identity. They