Freedom to Differ. Diane Helene Miller
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The resurgence of right-wing efforts to halt and reverse social change, the persistence of anti-gay violence, and ongoing discrimination against gays and lesbians in areas such as housing, employment, child custody, and military service have all galvanized the lesbian and gay rights movement to renewed social and political struggle in the 1990s. Partly as a result of the movement’s battles, victories, and defeats, media coverage of gay and lesbian issues has proliferated. American public discourse has returned again and again to discussions of homosexuality: what “causes” it; what should be “done” about it; and to what degree it should be accepted or tolerated in families, schools, communities, the arts, religious institutions, and the military. As a result, “in place of the silence that once encased the lives of homosexuals, there is now a loud argument” (Sullivan 1993, 24).
Lesbian and gay rights are undoubtedly among the most contentious and widely debated issues of our time. These debates reach into the heart of individual and community values, raising questions about gender roles, love, sexuality, and the family. Inevitably, then, the discussions generated around such issues have been numerous, heartfelt, and heated. Gay and lesbian issues, like gays and lesbians themselves, continue to grow both more central to and more controversial within American public discourse. How we talk about such issues, and how we hear others talk about them, influences our sense of self, our perceptions of one another, and our vision of the society we want to live in, now and in the future. Just as various views of women have influenced the fate of women’s rights throughout history, so today competing portrayals of gays and lesbians call for different political strategies and produce varied social consequences. The public discourse generated today around gay and lesbian issues will have lasting effects on how we see ourselves, sexually and otherwise, well into the next century.
At one level, what is at issue for gays and lesbians today is whether and where we will “fit” in a heterosexist, patriarchal society, as evidenced by the struggle for control over laws and other forms of public influence. Yet beneath this level of struggle lie issues of representation and self-definition, crucial questions about who we are, how we want to be perceived, and how much we are willing to sacrifice as the price of “tolerance.” The interaction of public and private discourse in debates over gay and lesbian rights may encourage, erase, liberate, or regulate gay and lesbian identities. In doing so, such speech may enrich or impoverish the range of available opportunities for gay and lesbian lives. It can present us with possibilities we had not previously imagined, or conversely, it can construct barriers that limit the potential we see in our lives. These questions thus involve not only the present but also the future of the gay and lesbian movement.
Given the importance of language in influencing the strategies and success of the movement, as well as the quality of gay and lesbian lives, my investigation seeks to answer two broad questions. First, what kinds of lesbian representations emerge from the competing discourses in each of these case studies? How are “lesbians” and “lesbianism” constructed, represented, and understood within these contexts of American public life? The second and related question examines the effects of these representations. How do the strategies of supporters and opponents broaden the possibilities for lesbian self-definition and enable a wider range of lesbian identities and politics? How do these rhetorical choices constrict or eliminate such possibilities?
This book investigates the construction of the category “lesbians” in political and military discourse. The relationship between language and identity in lesbian representations is of particular interest because homosexuality represents a “limit case” of the range of invisibility experienced by marginalized groups. Members of nondominant groups experience varying degrees of invisibility in relation to the dominant group (Sedgwick 1990). Some minority individuals are literally “visible” to others, due to characteristics such as gender, skin pigmentation, facial features, or physical disability. However, these individuals may nevertheless be ignored by members of the dominant culture, treated individually or collectively as though they cannot be seen or do not exist. Others may be able to “pass” as members of the dominant culture in some situations, as they may or may not be recognized as members of a marginalized group; examples include many Jews, lightskinned African Americans, and those who are physically disabled in ways that are not apparent in all situations. Still other marginalized individuals and groups are rarely or never identifiable by outward characteristics. For them, visibility requires an act of will, and invisibility may become a strategy for survival. Members of these groups, whose nonconformity to the assumptions of the dominant culture is not visually marked, are constantly misrecognized unless they take steps to counter such assumptions (Taylor 1995).
It is in this last category that lesbian identity is most often located, because despite popular stereotypes, lesbians are not reliably recognizable from external features (particularly to nonlesbians). Lesbian identity is most often invisible unless specifically acknowledged by the lesbian herself. Such a revelation is referred to as “coming out of the closet,” or simply “coming out.” Coming out is the act of making one’s sexual identity known to oneself and others. Because of the prevailing assumption of heterosexuality, revealing one’s lesbian identity frequently requires a deliberate act of verbal or nonverbal communication. Moreover, the paucity of lesbian representations in the mass media and the lack of role models in the experience of most lesbians mean that creating a lesbian identity depends heavily on the transmission of experiences either interpersonally or from available books and other resources (Lynch 1990; Plummer 1995;Trebilcot 1994).
Coming out by publicly identifying oneself as a lesbian has long been, and remains today, an important means of combating both sexism and heterosexism.9 Although much has changed in the discourses of gay rights and lesbian feminism since the 1970s, the importance of reclaiming a marginalized identity remains fundamental to many gays and lesbians. Where our identities have been used as weapons against us, many believe, we are empowered by reclaiming those identities and organizing around them to produce social change. Such a view has been continually asserted by many in the lesbian/gay rights movement, as well as by members of other social movements. Affirming one’s love for a member of the same sex in the context of a homophobic society is such a radical and transformational act that it has generally been viewed as a cornerstone of gay and lesbian liberation.
The act of coming out, for this highly invisible group, is not a one-time occurrence but an ongoing concern. In every situation and with each new person encountered, the choice must be made whether or not to acknowledge one’s minority identity (Sedgwick 1990; Zimmerman 1982). Hiddenness and visibility are rarely absolute, so that for most of us, secrecy and openness coexist, in various combinations and with differing degrees of comfort or unease. Most of us are out to someone significant in our lives: a friend, a family member, a counselor, or another lesbian or gay man. Yet, because of the stigma and the material disadvantages imposed on gays and lesbians, “there are remarkably few of even the most openly gay people who are not deliberately in the closet with someone personally or economically or institutionally important to them” (Sedgwick 1990, 67-68).
Moreover, given “the deadly elasticity of heterosexist presumption,” even gays and lesbians who make a concerted effort to be out in all situations “find new walls springing up around them even as they drowse.” Each day requires a renewed commitment to self-disclosure, for “every encounter with a new classful of students, to say nothing of a new boss, social worker, loan officer, landlord, [or] doctor, erects new closets” (Sedgwick 1990, 68). Like communication itself, the act of coming out is a continual process. It occurs in an endless variety of contexts, and its effects depend on numerous situational variables. Though little studied, the coming-out process may represent a central mode of interpersonal and public communication in contemporary societies, where multiple differences abound but dominant cultural assumptions remain entrenched.
The figure of the closet and its attendant rebellion of coming out originated in the lesbian and gay community. However, it has been borrowed by other marginalized groups to refer to any act of acknowledging or revealing a marginalized identity, regardless of its degree of visibility. For example, one can come out as a Jew (Bennett 1982; Sedgwick 1990), but one can also come out with pride as a fat woman (Sedgwick 1990). Thus the rhetorical processes that produce lesbian and gay identities do not exist in a vacuum but are related to the