October 11th is National Coming Out Day. It still matters. – The lawyer

By James Brooks

It should be said that homophobia is not an isolated incident in small towns like Kapaau, HI, where I live. You could perhaps reframe it to look like a “local” morality, but it's really just the same old irrational fear of men, in this case them differ of traditional masculinity norms. It creates an impressive sense of control in small-town communities like Kapaau. Enough to cause many queer men here to carefully hide their sexuality from friends and family. Of course, it's not new or unique for men to hide their sexual orientation, but “Down Low” or “DL” undermines our ability to function as who we are and in the communities in which we live.

Just as “the closet” always did, for many men a “discreet” DL life in Kapaau is treated as if it were a new exercise in personal freedom. But it avoids, as The Closet always did, being publicly identified as gay and protects the actor from possible anti-gay prejudice. It is entirely reasonable for a queer man to hide his sexuality, especially if he can pass as heterosexual, as this will help him avoid possible condemnation. But hiding one's queerness has always led to quiet concessions to pervasive homophobia on a societal level, whereas being publicly “out” is a completely different stance. It was and is a self-sacrificing step, as it traditionally puts personal security and social alienation at risk. Being openly queer where you are was also the only way to show the world that you weren't ashamed. Socially and politically, it was our way of resisting this constant bigotry.

Kapaau Town's version of prejudice, with its conventional power to police and punish queer men, culminates in a community-held stigma of being queer. Wherever the fear of being identified as gay is greatest, Research shows that the corresponding level of obfuscation increases, i.e. when homophobia is high, queer men's values ​​go down. Concealment is the lack of active disclosure, general openness, and public knowledge about being gay or bisexual, which, unlike race, for example, represents a concealable stigma. Importantly, and particularly for queer men who don't “look queer”, the mere decision to be open about it discredits them. Because the price of being seen as anything other than a “normal” man in Kapaau Town is relatively high, a heterosexual-seeming queer man here only carries the stigma of abnormality if it is known to others. When, how and to whom he discloses his stigma is entirely up to him Scholars He points to the current, widespread attitude that queer men are abnormal, which leads to so much internalized discomfort that he may avoid a gay or bisexual identity altogether. The evidence that this internalized and self-generated shame still exists is the pragmatic label “men who have sex with men.” embossed in HIV epidemiology. Public health researchers are targeting and testing better high risk Populations, that is, men who sleep with men by avoiding asking them if they identify as gay or bisexual. To more effectively determine a man's relative risk of an STI, Research suggests it's better to ask him if he sleeps with other men and avoid questions of identity altogether.

The “scourge of homophobia” affects over 80% of sexual minorities worldwide still hiding their sexual orientation. With “Make America Great Again” comes a call to return to traditional gender roles, which reinforces anti-queer rhetoric and in turn invokes the homophobic fantasies of the mainstream in conservative states. With the first declaration of the Human Rights Commission a National emergency For LGBTQ+ Americans, this rhetoric has led to a rise in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative attacks, making living conditions increasingly hostile for queers and their allies.

Right against the backdrop of marriage equality and LGBTQ workplace discrimination protections, “groomer tropes” are on the rise again in the United States. The term “groomer” is primarily aimed at transsexuals and is also a historical term for gay men as regular “recruiters” of children. Among other things, they are considered crazy pedophiles who recruit boys to abuse them. The Florida Don't say gay Laws supposedly protecting children, ripping off homosexuality as a form of recruitment – ​​are a very old and extremely homophobic form of socially sanctioned terror directed against LGBTQ+ people. Javier Vendrel, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, explains in his Book The seduction of youthspecifically, the gay male pedophile, originated in Germany in 1929. Protecting adolescent boys from being seduced into the gay lifestyle had the side effect of replenishing after the loss of over two million men after World War I cause a celebration after the First World War. Hysteria over a decline in the birth rate survived the Nazi regime and reached the United States. Between 1947 and 1955, 21 states and the District of Columbia passed laws to identify and arrest “sexual psychopaths” for gay men living in the United States before 1973 World. These laws were instrumental in introducing the term “gay groomer” to the United States.

With the rise of Trumpism and the accompanying resurgence of aggressive rhetoric that preys on mainstream fears, the social environment for queer men has only become more violent. For a queer man, hiding is convenient and makes even more sense now. As George Weinberg observed the moral power of anti-gay panic in the 1960s, that authority remains Today with the don't say gay mob despite the growing acceptance of queer. With their newly established U.S. Supreme Court, this mob has produced something unprecedented Verdict with very little mainstream censorship – unlike Dobbs, for example. The court allowed a web designer to refuse to create a marriage website for same-sex couples under the guise of religious freedom. Said Justice Sonia Sotomayor of 303 Case Creative v. Elenisthe Constitution “contains no right to refuse service to (gay people) in the marketplace” and no “act of discrimination (based on one's religious beliefs)” has ever “constituted protected expression under the First Amendment.”

Back in Kapaau Town, where being openly queer is still a punishable offense, going to the DL inadvertently makes a queer man part of this machine that continues to drive inequality. The real and imagined fear of alienation that creates the impulse to DL in the first place undermines other queer men's ability to be accepted. A DL status does not force the heterosexual world to accept our very real existence. It does not expand our scope and influence by forcing an integration that has always been associated with violence. Being publicly queer was and is a general collective action that generates solidarity based on identity Visibility. A bloc of openly queer men is the primary way we have constructed the idea that we deserve equal rights. Being “out” means sociologist Abigail Saguy is still the only way to effectively fend off the anti-gay mob. More openly queer men would dominate the level of social equality in Kapaau, where civil rights have always included coming out or coming out in the community. Discovering that others are queer is a unique unifying mechanism that makes queer life better. Saguy points to the questioning of heteronormativity in the formation of laws protecting LBTBTQ+ people over the past 55 years as a central tool of the gay liberation movement. Protective measures that improve the mental and physical health of queer people.

A 51-year-old business owner from Kapaau I interviewed has been mostly DL his entire life. He doesn't want to be a target of discrimination, even though Hawaii has modernized laws that explicitly allow marriage for same-sex couples. “I know a few (gay) local men who moved away so they could live their lives openly,” he said. In order to “live my normal life, I married a woman and had children. Growing up here, all I heard was people making fun of gay people. I didn't want to be the person that people made fun of.” He was bisexual at the time of his marriage – he also kept that part top secret – and said: “Every (gay) relationship I've had has been out of town , not here.”

The constant stress of hiding reflects other sexual and gender experiences of minorities in Hawaii and those they face cool health disparities compared to their heterosexual counterparts. The work associated with a DL status leads to internalizing and corrosive mental health conditions as these are associated with cognitive, effective and behavioral stress responses in a person who, if they disclose, expects to be rejected by their colleagues. If we look at homophobia as “a scourge of modern times despite greater acceptance of sexual variation,” he says Antonio Ventriglio and co-researchers, And An attack on queer well-being. Queer visibility is the countermeasure. Easier said than done. But building a visible structure of queer men pushes for more freedom. The business owner described this convincingly: “I can't imagine a local male couple living here,” he said, but then he started seeing newcomers to the area and “For some reason I feel like no one cares He then said, “If I met the right person, I think I might just live my life with that person and not care about the people.”

About James:

I have published several articles on the politics of strange Identity in The lawyer (City University of New York) and The Hawaii Humanities Journal. I have an MA in Communications from San Francisco State University. I currently live on the Big Island with my husband and dog Ranger.

https://www.jamesbrooks-writer.com