Freedom to Differ. Diane Helene Miller
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inquiry because “what we count as ‘real’ or as ‘knowledge’ about the world depends on how we choose to label and talk about things” (Foss 1996, 6). The term rhetorical criticism describes the process of analyzing persuasive symbols and their effects in a given situation or context. Rhetorical critics analyze how persuasive appeals are constructed to create particular understandings of the world and to affect a given audience in a specific way. Such critics are therefore able to suggest how certain kinds of “knowledge” and versions of “reality” come to be widely accepted, and how others come to be devalued or erased, through the strategic use of symbols. Rhetorical approaches focus on how language and images function in concrete situations. They thereby enhance our ability to become more thoughtful, discerning, and critical consumers of public discourse.
Although those who study rhetoric have not granted the issue of gay and lesbian rights the attention it deserves, given its social significance, a rhetorical approach does have a valuable and needed perspective to add to those that are contributed by other disciplinary and interdisciplinary standpoints. Rhetorical perspectives can make a dual contribution to the analysis of lesbian and gay rights initiatives. First, they take as their texts persuasive, nonfictional public discourse, which enables them to analyze representations that proliferate in some of today’s most widespread and influential discussions. Second, they illuminate not only the intentions that motivate such discourse but also the consequences of particular uses of language for various audiences. Rhetorical analysis allows us to set aside questions of “positive” or “negative” images. It allows us to examine, instead, how particular language and images function in a given context and for a designated audience.
This book investigates the representations of lesbians produced in two primary arenas of civil rights struggle: the United States political and military systems. It focuses on two case studies of discrimination against lesbians, examining how the language and images employed by advocates and opponents in each case shape available understandings of lesbian (and often gay) lives. More specifically, it examines how a focus on equal rights arguments, also referred to as civil rights strategies, constrains lesbian and gay identities and self-definitions; how such an approach regulates future liberatory endeavors; and how it prescribes a particular set of lesbian and gay public images that excludes certain individuals and communities. This book identifies those possibilities we create and those we exclude through an emphasis on civil rights strategies. It examines, finally, the role rhetoric can play in illuminating the heterosexual nature of institutions, both military and political, and in revealing the inherent inequalities on which such institutions are founded.
More broadly, this book points to the ways in which all categories of sexuality are shaped and delimited by language and in which sexual and other minority classifications may be produced by the very discourses that seek to regulate or protect them. These discourses at once assume the existence of such categories and create their parameters. In the process of constructing minority identities, dominant identities are also established and legitimated. Their boundaries are strengthened by the force of the binary opposition at work, and by the marginalization of the out-group. This process of group definition and differentiation solidifies distinctions between heterosexuality and homosexuality. The dividing line between categories is thereby strengthened, and sexual self-definition is limited on both sides. This process is thoroughly rhetorical and of the utmost importance. It influences at an intimate level the ways in which we are able to conceive of ourselves and others, touching on our most deeply held convictions about our own identities and the identities of those around us.
I begin this book by highlighting the exclusion of lesbians from much of feminist scholarship and gay studies. I offer a brief introduction to the mainstream lesbian/gay rights movement and its guiding civil rights agenda, examining how the specific oppression of lesbians challenges a number of this movement’s goals. A lesbian feminist analysis of lesbian/gay rights discourse enables us to consider both the advantages and the risks of two of the movement’s guiding objectives: voice and visibility. Voice refers to political participation and cultural influence, while visibility represents the right to acknowledge openly a gay or lesbian identity. To explore the complexity that is introduced into these concepts when lesbian specificity is taken into account, I examine the cases of Roberta Achtenberg and Grethe Cammermeyer. Their stories illustrate some of the ways in which lesbians have been represented in recent years through particular institutional discourses. I focus on the language and images used to characterize these women and to establish their relationship to the category “lesbian.” I also suggest how these representations might influence broader public understandings of lesbians as individuals and as a group.
I argue that when some level of lesbian and gay voice or visibility is achieved, as in these high-profile cases, another level of institutional oppression is imposed to maintain the dominant culture’s control over the images and language that proliferate around a controversial issue.6 Images and language are continually subject to the threat of misinterpretation or assimilation, and the gains associated with greater visibility are balanced with some attendant losses. Rhetorical criticism examines not only the value of expressing one’s identity but also the consequences of public discussions of identity. In this book, I analyze such discussions for their potential to extend or limit opportunities for self-definition and the formation of individual and group identities. Metaphors of visibility and voice convey the importance of self-expression as a form of individual empowerment, independent of its public consequences. However, social movements must concern themselves not only with individual self-realization but also with identifying broadly effective political strategies and creating coherent visions for liberation. These imperatives call for a rhetorical perspective, grounded in textual analysis, to examine how various discursive strategies produce particular outcomes. Rhetorical analysis, drawing on the theoretical insights of feminist, gay, and lesbian studies, can bring these insights to bear on the concrete circumstances that directly affect the lives of millions of gays and lesbians every day.
As I begin this investigation, a few qualifications will help clarify my terminology, my intentions, and the scope of my analysis. Throughout this book I refer to a “dominant” American culture, an identifiable “mainstream,” and “dominant” groups of people whose views have shaped traditional institutions. Yet it is important to recognize that such references are inevitably problematic and oversimplified. Our identification as insiders or outsiders in relation to a “dominant” culture is constantly shifting, so that nearly all of us feel included based on some elements of identity and excluded based on others. We may be privileged by our gender, race, age, education, physical ability, religion, or social class, to name but a few variables; we may also be excluded based on any of these characteristics. Very few of us can identify consistently as either mainstream or marginalized, when all social stratifications are accounted for.
Thus, while I want to account for the effects of oppression on marginalized individuals and groups, I do not want to perpetuate the fiction that we can identify a single, powerful group of individuals who constitute a societal mainstream (Clausen 1997). I am not suggesting that a particular individual or group can be identified either as omnipotent or as entirely without power. Nor do I wish to homogenize individuals based on their group identification, and so fail to acknowledge, for example, feminist men, antiracist whites, gay- and lesbian-friendly heterosexuals, and others for whom privilege has not blunted social consciousness.
Likewise, by identifying the political strategies favored by a powerful or “dominant” group of mostly white, middle-class or affluent gay men within the lesbian/gay rights movement, I do not wish to deny or discount the presence of more radical gay men. Groups of gay men such as the Radical Faeries or Black and White Men Together are often denied the publicity granted to those in the movement who present more mainstream or “acceptable” media images. I do not wish to minimize, either, the presence and influence of outspoken lesbian feminists throughout the history of the movement. Even my use of the phrase “lesbian and gay rights movement” represents a distortion. Rather than having one cohesive political center, the movement has always been a divided, contested site. Conflicts have occurred within the movement both historically and currently. Thus, although the themes of assimilation and equality have predominated, they have never been exclusive themes. My use of this phrase, while necessary, nevertheless obscures and artificially unifies a multitude