Insult and the Making of the Gay Self

by Didier Eribon

  The fear of being caught may have as a consequence a generalized attitude of reserve, something like an obligation to remain on the sidelines of social life within one’s professional world in order to avoid the risk of discovery.

  Go√man gives a good description of the way ‘‘stigmatized’’ people, especially those whose ‘‘stigma’’ is invisible, can be reticent about establishing real relationships of friendship with ‘‘normal’’ people (especially in the workplace) in order to avoid being drawn into an exchange of confidences or simply to avoid being found out.∏

  As numerous studies have shown, this also implies that gay people often find themselves developing a repertory of di√erent behaviors to be used in the context of the di√erent publics in which they find themselves, moving from one set of gestures or bodily positions to another as the situation requires. Thus, for instance, those who may be quite ‘‘campy’’ when among a small group of other gay people will limit their vocabulary, their expression, and their intonation to the most strictly normal in the workplace.π

  In such situations of a ‘‘double life’’ and with much more frequency than those who live in big cities might imagine (and indeed, quite frequently within big cities themselves), it goes without saying that, for the gay man who has been ‘‘uncovered,’’ insult will no longer just be something on the horizon, an ever-present potential menace; it will be a daily hell. As the example of the schoolteacher and the blackboard reveals, insult and personal identity are intimately related (personal identity being a relation to one’s self, a self-presentation to other people, one’s ways of being and of managing one’s cultural habits, sexual desires, and emotional preferences).

  Yet even for those who live in big cities and who benefit from the freedom o√ered by gay subcultures and neighborhoods, more often than not it is necessary to hide their homosexuality in the workplace. For certain people in managerial positions, career advancement could be severely compromised were they to be open about it. And for laborers or employees, life could become unbearable. And then there are athletes, psychoanalysts, soldiers, politicians, and even academics . . .

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  Two remarks need to be added to the preceding.

  First, the obligation to secrecy and clandestinity has been (and continues to be) a place or a structure in which a certain number of gay men have taken (and continue to take) a certain kind of pleasure: the hidden life, secret meetings, clandestine social networks, all the delights of a kind of freemasonry . . . One can find regularly, in the words of gay men who lived a part of their sexual life before the 1960s and therefore before ‘‘liberation,’’ a certain amount of regret at the passing of an era in which secrecy was required, at the passing of the games that one had ceaselessly to invent to pull the wool over people’s eyes and to create the necessary complicities. It is the case that the closet was also a location of resistance against oppression, a way of living out one’s homosexuality in times and places where openness was not possible. The closet has so often been denounced by gay activists as a symbol of shame, of submission to oppression, that we have forgotten or neglected the extent to which it was also, and at the same time, a space of freedom and a way—the only way—of resisting, of not submitting to normative injunctions. And for many gays it is that still. In a certain sense, it was a way of being ‘‘proud’’ when everything pointed toward being ashamed—

  even if this pride was secret, intermittent, even transient. Perhaps it is this extraordinary sentiment of a hard-earned, constantly maintained, secret pride and freedom, one that was shared with a small group, that gay men from preceding generations find lacking in the openly asserted pride of today—a pride that perhaps seems to them too easy, too faded, having lost its flavor with the disappearance of the play with prohibition. This contemporary pride might seem to some coercive, an obligation imposed upon them as though being out of the closet were the only acceptable path for being truly gay today.

  We should also mention here the recurring remarks by gay men from

  French literary circles to the e√ect that the repressive situation, the obligation to be in the closet, allowed literature to flourish. It is doubtless the case that a good deal of the energy that sustained literary creation and gay literary expression came from the divided psychological configuration that gave rise to the opposition between the desire to speak of oneself and the obligation to be silent. Gide and Julien Green said this so frequently that we need not dwell on it here. But the idea that therefore today there can no longer be interesting literature (because it was the prohibition that fostered literary creation) seems to me ludicrous. It represents nothing but an interiorization

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  i n s u lt a n d t h e m a k i n g o f t h e g ay s e l f of the kind of social homophobia that tolerates homosexuality in literature but not in the street, or else a kind of aesthetic elitism that arises out of a regret for those repressive times when literary types could claim for themselves, and could even imagine monopolizing, the audaciousness of transgression.

  Second, we need to ask more precisely what a personal identity is, or even what it is that defines someone as homosexual. Let’s come back to the case of the small-town schoolteacher frightened of someday seeing the two letters ‘‘pd’’ written on the blackboard. Obviously there is no need for him to have had sexual relations with another man in order to fear this symbolic violence. It su≈ces for him to know—or perhaps not to know or not to want to know—that he desires to do so. It is possible, as well, that all of his psychological characteristics (and perhaps even his physical ones: his man-nerisms, his way of speaking, of walking, and so on) seem to manifest such a desire or such a personality.∫ To a≈rm that there are no ‘‘homosexual persons’’ but only ‘‘homosexual acts’’ amounts to leaving aside all those intensely lived individual experiences in which there is no necessity that any acts have been practiced in order for a certain identity to be constructed—

  sometimes unconsciously—around their very possibility, around the im-

  pulses that lead to them, around fantasies that have been nourished by images and models perceived since childhood, and even around the fear of being recognized as one of those people we know are likely to be called a

  ‘‘faggot.’’ Similarly, such a fear might be found in someone who once had a gay sex life, yet no longer has any sexuality. In short: there is such a thing as a homosexual ‘‘person,’’ and homosexual ‘‘acts’’ are only one of the elements that permit such a person to be defined.

  All of this can be seen clearly in the polemics that have surrounded the presence of gays in the military in the United States. Military leaders, by declaring that gay people could serve in the military on the condition that they not say they are gay (for to do so would be to announce their intention to engage in homosexual sex acts), have put forth a definition of homosexuality that gives a considerable degree of importance to self-declaration. To say ‘‘I am gay’’ would mean ‘‘I intend to engage in homosexual sex acts.’’ Thus, to say is to do. But it thereby becomes possible to ‘‘be’’ gay, as long as one does not say so and therefore does not create the expectation that one will be engaging in homosexual sex acts. That the potential act is determined by the statement implies that what is being refused is the possibility of the homosexual ‘‘act’’—which would apparently imperil the military community. The

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  homosexual ‘‘person’’ is not being refused, which admits that his simple presence is not prohibited by the demands of masculine life, as long as that

  ‘‘homosexual’’ does not declare himself openly and does not practice that very sexuality that one might have thought defined him as ‘‘homosexual.’’

  ‘‘Homosexual identity’’ would therefore be possible as long as sexuality itself is (at least fictively) unmentioned and excluded.

  How str
iking that this same way of dissociating ‘‘homosexual persons’’

  from ‘‘homosexual acts’’ can also be found in texts put out by the Vatican. On the one hand there are the ‘‘persons’’ who must be welcomed with pity as those who have been ‘‘wounded by life’’ (for it is not their ‘‘fault’’); and on the other hand there are the ‘‘acts,’’ which must be condemned as crimes against nature (for they have to do with individual responsibility and therefore might be avoided).

  Without dwelling at greater length on the United States military or the Catholic hierarchy—astonishing and exemplary machines for the production of guilty consciences or neuroses as well as hypocrisy and repression—we might just insist that both institutions are in agreement that there exist

  ‘‘homosexual persons’’ and that their entire discourse is tied up in the acknowledgment of the existence of such persons. Otherwise, if it were simply a question of ‘‘acts,’’ there would be no need for such convoluted argumentation. Acts could simply be forbidden. Yet no such interdiction would solve the problem of all those who, independently of such acts, perceive themselves as, and are perceived to be, ‘‘homosexual.’’

  It is, in any case, perfectly clear that this is simply rhetoric aimed at legitimating the status quo: homosexuals engage in homosexual practices, but must do so in silence and secrecy. If they are caught, they must be thrown out of the military (or the church). And the real problem is not so much being homosexual as saying that one is. For if the possibility of saying so were o≈cially allowed, then all the vulnerability and inferiority attached to being gay or lesbian, all the means of control wielded against them, would be invalidated. The control over homosexuality rests on this imposed silence and this forced simulation, as it does on the feelings of guilt and inferiority inevitably produced in individual psyches by the division between what one is and what one is allowed to do, between what one is and what one is allowed to say. Pierre Bourdieu forcefully reminds us that it is impossible to write a history of ‘‘masculine domination’’ without taking into account those institutions that work to perpetuate the established ‘‘sexual order.’’Ω Similarly, there is no sense in writing a history of homosexuality without study-

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  i n s u lt a n d t h e m a k i n g o f t h e g ay s e l f ing all those agencies (the same ones, in fact, given that we are dealing with the same ‘‘order’’) that not only produce homophobic discourse, but also create ‘‘inferiorizing’’ representations of homosexuality and work to inscribe them in both minds and laws—the church and the army, of course, but also, in di√erent registers, businesses and organizations linked to the workplace, lawyers, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, conservative or traditional organizations linked to universities, ‘‘intellectual’’ journals, journalists, and so on.

  So it is that the question of ‘‘telling’’ is so central to the experience of gays and lesbians. Must one reveal one’s homosexuality, and when? To whom can one imagine telling this? It is first through meeting other gay people that the possibility of speaking presents itself, in the discovery of a context in which one can be what one is without hiding, even if only for a few hours a week, if only with a limited number of people. This is the function that bars, clubs, and organizations have always fulfilled. It is, however, much more di≈cult to speak to ‘‘others.’’ Here again, studies done of gays and lesbians prove quite helpful. Almost all those who respond to requests for information (little, of course, can be known of those who do not respond, but we might imagine that those people speak of themselves even less) say that they have spoken of their sexual orientation or identity with a friend or with several friends, more rarely with their parents, and, when this is the case, more frequently with their mother than with their father. A much smaller percent-age have ceased to conceal their identity in their workplace or in professional circles. (Often one colleague—rarely more than one—will be ‘‘in the know’’

  but sworn to secrecy.)

  In any case, one thing that characterizes a gay man is that he is a person who, one day or another, is confronted by a decision to tell or not to tell what he is. A heterosexual man will not need to do this, being presupposed by the world to be what he is. One’s relation to this ‘‘secret’’ and to the di√erent ways of managing it in di√ering situations is one of the characteristics of gay life. It is, of course, one of the things at stake in the struggle for visibility and a≈rmation being conducted today, the struggle to show that homosexuality exists and thereby to interrupt the process by which the self-evidence of heteronormativity is reproduced. This will certainly not alter the fact that a gay man will always, at one moment or another in his life, have to tell or at

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  least let it be known what he is. But perhaps that act can be made easier and that telling less painful.∞≠

  Let us go even a bit further. The gay man who is obliged (or who chooses) to attempt to hide what he is can never be sure that the person from whom he is hiding this ‘‘secret’’ does not know it anyway, or at least suspect it, while pretending to know nothing.∞∞ We can turn to Proust again here, in particular to the pages in which the members of the Verdurin circle quietly make fun of Charlus after one of them has revealed his homosexuality, while he remains persuaded, to cite his own expression, that no one is ‘‘in the know

  [fixé sur son compte]’’ (rtp, 2:1076). For example, during a train ride, the doctor Cottard says to the sculptor Ski (who was the first, during a dinner party, to make an allusion to Charlus’s ‘‘vice’’): ‘‘You see, if I was on my own, a bachelor . . . but because of my wife I wonder whether I ought to allow him to travel with us after what you told me’’ (rtp, 2:1071 and, in general, 1070–

  77). Mme Verdurin herself casts many more or less explicit aspersions: ‘‘You must know far better than I do, M. de Charlus, how to get round young sailors,’’ she says to him when she asks him to organize a charity event in which the sailors of Balbec-Plage are to participate. On o√ering him a certain book, she makes this commentary: ‘‘Look, here’s a book that has just come which I think you’ll find interesting. . . . The title is attractive: Among Men’’ (rtp, 2:1079). Thus is it possible for the baron to believe that his

  ‘‘vice’’ is perfectly hidden while in fact his ‘‘secret’’ is known by everyone and leaves him open to sarcastic and cruel remarks that he is unable to perceive as such and to which he is unable to reply, remaining under the illusion that he is protected by his own discretion. It is an ‘‘open secret,’’ to use Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s expression, that well reveals how Remembrance of Things Past is structured by the ‘‘spectacle of the closet,’’ that is to say, the public gaze into an interior that is supposed to be unknown to all who are outside of it.∞≤

  A gay man is thus placed in a situation of inferiority because he can be the object of the discourse of others, who can toy with him and draw profit from the privilege they gain not only from what they know, but also from the knowledge that the person in question believes they know nothing and fears precisely that they may find out what in fact they already know.

  When, on the other hand, a gay man insists on a≈rming what he is, a

  heterosexual person, who is never obliged to say what he or she is, still has a certain privilege—the ability to claim that he or she does not want to know, is

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  i n s u lt a n d t h e m a k i n g o f t h e g ay s e l f not interested, cannot see why it is necessary to say anything, and so on. This is what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick calls the ‘‘privilege of unknowing,’’ the faculty not of being ignorant but of not wanting to know, of acting as if there was nothing to be known. Doubtless this is because when a gay person

  claims to be gay, a heterosexual person is obliged to think of him or herself as heterosexual, whereas previously there would have been no need to ask oneself any questions about one’s identity or the social orde
r that enables it.

  That is a state of absolute privilege. Thus arises the indignation when a loss, even a partial one, of that privilege is threatened. And thus arises the demand that gays recover their ‘‘discretion,’’ a discretion that would allow the reas-sertion of peaceful certitudes, of the comfort of a normalcy built on the silence of others. Or perhaps heterosexuals consider such gay people to be badly behaved, excessive, flagrant, overly provocative. Gay people should be only the objects of discourse, and they become unbearable as soon as they assert their right to be subjects. Proust conveys this quite well when he writes that the faithful members of the Verdurin circle ‘‘who so longed to hear the avowals he would always evade,’’ would doubtless not have accepted, were he to have become more loquacious, that he then speak in his own right.

  They ‘‘would in fact have been unable to endure any real display of his mania; ill at ease, breathing with di≈culty as one does in a sick-room or in the presence of a morphine addict who takes out his syringe in public, they would themselves have put a stop to the confidences which they imagined they desired’’ (rtp, 3:814).

  It is an insurmountable paradox: the gay man who decides to speak

  openly leaves himself open to ironic remarks or condescension, or sometimes to rebu√s, whereas the gay man who prefers to remain silent finds himself in an uncomfortable, impossible situation. The former gets lectured; the latter is made fun of. The heterosexual is privileged over the homosexual; this dissymmetry is always in play. The heterosexual decides what kind of attitude to adopt, what kind of meaning to give to a gay man’s words and gestures. The heterosexual will always have a point of view on what gay men should or should not do, should or should not be, should or should not say. The heterosexual will understand more about homosexuality than the gay man, will always have an explanation (more often than not a psychological or a psychoanalytic one) to give, and will always be ready to dismiss scornfully anything a gay man might say of himself. The heterosexual is in an ‘‘epistemologically’’ dominant position, having control over the