Headcase - Queers who don't act right
Of gay sex, marriage and the sauna
A few months ago, without warning, the mainly gay LA Fitness at Ansley Mall closed its small sauna. No explanation was given, but word got around quickly that sex was to blame. This was effectively confirmed when the sauna reopened with a picture window that offers a locker-room view of those naked few who care to be on display like overheated zoo animals. The entrance now features a sign warning that the gym is cooperating with Atlanta police to curb "misconduct."
I'm sure the people of Midtown are sleeping more soundly now that they know they are safe from the inadvertent sight of fellatio — I mean, misconduct — at LA Fitness.
The sauna drama came to mind last week when I went to hear Matt Bernstein Sycamore talk about his radical anthology, That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, at Outwrite Bookstore. Sycamore talked about the way the gay movement, which in the '70s radically opposed the institutions of the dominant culture, now mainly seeks assimilation by those institutions.
Marriage, of course, is the primary example of that, with military service following close behind. In Sycamore's view, the desire to marry or join the army only perpetuates patriarchy, sexism and imperialism. In his anti-assimilation view, the proper role of queers is to oppose such institutions, not to join them.
From that perspective, homosexuality inherently opposes oppressive institutions because it represents a difference — a profound sexual one — that cannot really be transcended. Homosexuals have always been targets when a culture war — an ideological conflict — erupts. Of course, mainstream gay people abhor this fatalistic attitude, but we have no better evidence of its truth than the present.
After a decade of attempting assimilation, even making some real progress in the overturning of sodomy laws, gay people have been freshly demonized by President Bush. In order to secure his election and entrench the power of his party, he has actually proposed making discrimination against gay people a feature of the U.S. Constitution. And 11 states in the last election adopted anti-gay marriage laws, many of whose fine print goes further in discriminating.
Obviously, focusing on the right to marry does little to address the underlying homophobia of the culture. It produces a reflexive backlash of virulent legislative homophobia. And making marriage such a priority legitimates the notion that heterosexual-style union is the ideal. Mainstream gay Americans seem oblivious to the fact that a state-sanctioned marriage, although granting some legal benefits, isn't inherently more valid than any other kind of relationship. From a perspective like Sycamore's, we should be fighting to extend the benefits of marriage to everyone, not trying to get married to share them.
How does that relate to the drama of the sauna at Ansley Mall?
The effort to control sexual expression is the principal effort of the assimilation movement. Using the argument for "decency" and respect for social conventions, the assimilation-minded attempt to render the principal difference of gay people — their sex lives — invisible. (Of course, nothing makes sex look more wholesome or boring or invisible than marriage.)
I know it's shocking, but many gay men have lots of sex in lots of strange locations for the simple reason that they can. It does not mean they commit acts of sodomy in intentional public view. The only thing that makes sex in a sauna a public act is the intrusion of someone else. If that were not so, the remedy would not be a picture window!
There is a famous instructional film to teach police departments how to catch men having sex in bathrooms by installing secret cameras. The film is full of shots of (mainly married) men furtively coupling. But an objective viewer realizes that the only thing that makes the sex truly public is the camera's presence. Whenever anyone enters the bathroom, the men stop what they are doing, and most are doing it hidden within a stall, anyway. The objective is obviously not to stop the otherwise unseen sex, a silly enough objective, or they would put the camera in open view, in the same way LA Fitness installed a picture window. The real objective is to punish the men for having sex at all.
Now gay people do this to themselves. In West Hollywood, America's only gay-governed city, I used to work out at a gym where you could be expelled simply for looking too intently at someone in a shower. And the city was among the country's most aggressive in enforcing laws against sex in public restrooms.
Personally, I find stumbling upon any sex scene to which I have not been invited annoying, but I've not felt the need to call 911 or the eye bank for emergency treatment of my offended gaze. Gay people can have a variety of feelings about the virtue of assimilation and they can establish their own boundaries about sexual expression. But trying to impose conservative decisions in that regard on the entire community only duplicates the right wing's demand for compliance and invisibility. It is obvious that such compliance earns them nothing.