How to Bring Your Kids up Gay Author(s): Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Reviewed work(s): Source: Social Text, No.

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How To BringYour Kids Up Gay

EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK

In the summerof 1989, the United States Departmentof Health and Human Services released a studyentitled "Reportof theSecretary'sTask in response to the apparently Force on Youth Suicide." Written burgeonby childrenand adolescents ing epidemic of suicides and suicide attempts in the United States, the 110-page reportcontained a section analyzing the situationof gay and lesbian youth.It concluded that,because "gay verbal and physical youth face a hostile and condemningenvironment, from and and and isolation families abuse, rejection peers," young gays and lesbians are two to threetimes more likely thanotheryoungpeople to attemptand to commit suicide. The reportrecommends,modestly against youthson the basis of such enough, an "end [to] discrimination characteristics as...sexual orientation." On October 13, 1989, Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, Secretaryof the Departmentof Health and Human Services, repudiatedthissectionof thereport - impugningnot its accuracy, but, it seems, its very existence. In a Sullivan said, "the views expressedin thepaperentitled written statement Male and Lesbian Youth Suicide' do not in any way represent my 'Gay I am strongly committed or the beliefs personal policy of thisDepartment. to advancing traditionalfamilyvalues.... In my opinion, the views exto thataim."' pressed in thepaper runcontrary who cares forher It's always open season on gay kids. Whatprofessor students'survivaland dignitycan fail to be impressedand frightened by the unaccustomed,perhaps impossible responsibilitiesthat devolve on enjoined on, forexample, facultyas a resultof thehomophobiauniformly and secondarylevels of public school - who are teachersin the primary subject to being fired,not only forbeing visibly gay,but,whatevertheir thathomosexual desires, identisexuality,for providingany intimation adolescents have a rightto expression or ties, cultures,adults, children, or existence. And where, in all this, is psychoanalysis? Where are the "helping I mean to ask, not about professions"?In this discussion of institutions, the affordances of the mother-texts, but and Freud possibly spacious in the US as theyare functioning about psychoanalysisand psychiatry in revisionistpsychoanalysisincluding today.2I am especially interested in influential and developmentsfollowingon the Amerego-psychology, ican Psychiatric Association's much-publicized1973 decision to dropthe
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pathologizingdiagnosis of homosexualityfromthe succeeding Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III). What is likely to be the fate of children broughtunder the influenceof psychoanalysisand psychiatry today,post-DSM-III, on account of anxieties about theirsexuality? on the subject is, to begin with,as faras I The monographicliterature can tell exclusivelyabout boys. A representative example of thisrevisionbe would Richard C. Friedman's ist, ego-based psychoanalytictheory Male Homosexuality:A Contemporary PsychoanalyticPerspective,published by Yale in 1988. (A sort of companion-volume, thoughby a nonis Richard Green's The 'Sissy Boy Syndrome' psychoanalystpsychiatrist, and the Development of Homosexuality (1987), also from Yale.) Friedman's book, which lavishlyacknowledges his wife and children,is strongly marked by his sympathetic involvement with the 1973 It containsseveral visiblyadmiringhistories depathologizingmovement. in non-therapeutic of gay men,manyof themencountered contexts.These include "Luke, a forty-five-year-old career armyofficerand a life-long exclusively homosexual man" (152); and Tim, who was "burly,strong, and could work side by side with anyone at the most strenuousjobs": "gregarious and likeable," "an excellent athlete,"Tim was "captain of [his high-school] wrestlingteam and editor of the school newspaper" individual," "had regularsexual (206-7). Bob, another"well-integrated with a different but few partners nevercruisedor visitedgay bars activity or baths. He did not belong to a gay organization.As an adult, Bob had had a stable, productive work history.He had loyal, caring, durable withbothmen and women" (92-3). Friedmanalso, by way of friendships comparison,gives an example of a heterosexualman with what he considers a highly integrated personality,who happens to be a combat jet pilot: "Fit and trim,in his late twenties,he had the quietlycommanding decision maker"(86).3 style of an effective Is a pattern Revisionistanalystsseem preparedto like some emerging? male homosexuals, but the healthyhomosexual is one who (a) is already grownup, and (b) acts masculine. In factFriedmancorrelates,in so many with"global characterpathology"and words,adult gay male effeminacy what he calls "the lower part of the psychostructural spectrum"(93). In the obligatoryparagraphsof his book concerning"the question of when behavioral deviation froma definednormshould be considered psychopathology,"Friedman makes explicit that,while "clinical concepts are often somewhat imprecise and admittedlyfail to do justice to the rich variabilityof humanbehavior," a certainbaseline concept of pathology will be maintainedin his study;and thatthatbaseline will be drawnin a between nonconformists and peoveryparticularplace. "The distinction is usually clear enough duringchildhood. Exple withpsychopathology tremely and chronically effeminate boys, for example, should be understoodas fallinginto the lattercategory"(32-3).

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and chronicallyeffeminate "For example," "extremely boys" - thisis The same theabject thathauntsrevisionist DSM-III that, psychoanalysis. thatdid not containan entryfor"homopublished in 1980, was the first thatdid containa new diagnosis, numbered sexuality,"was also the first (for insurance purposes) 302.60: "Gender IdentityDisorder of Childthisdiagnosis is actuallyhighlydifferhood." Nominallygender-neutral, ential betweenboys and girls: a girl gets thispathologizinglabel only in therarecase of assertingthatshe actuallyis anatomicallymale (e.g. "that she has, or will grow,a penis"); while a boy can be treatedforGender IdentityDisorder of Childhood if he merely asserts "that it would be if he displays a "preoccubetternot to have a penis" - or alternatively, as activities with female manifested stereotypical by a preference pation or simulatingfemale attire,or by a compelling foreithercross-dressing desire to participate in the games and pastimes of girls."4 While the decision to remove"homosexuality"fromDSM-III was a highlypolemicized and public one, accomplishedonly underintensepressurefrom gay activists outside the profession,the addition to DSM-III of "Gender IdentityDisorder of Childhood" appears to have attractedvirtuallyno - nor even to have been perceived as partof the same outside attention has neverbeen quick Indeed, theofficialgay movement conceptual shift.5 There to attend to issues concerningeffeminate is a discreditable boys. or stigmatized reason forthisin themarginal positionto whicheven adult have oftenbeen relegated in the movement.6 men who are effeminate A reasonthaneffeminophobia, moreunderstandable however,is theconceptual need of the gay movementto interrupt a long tradition of viewing genderand sexualityas continuousand collapsible categories- a traditionof assumingthatanyone,male or female,who desires a man mustby definitionbe feminine;and thatanyone, male or female,who desires a woman must by the same token be masculine. That one woman, as a woman, might desire another; that one man, as a man, might desire another:theindispensableneed to make thesepowerful, subversiveassertions has seemed, perhaps,to requirea relative de-emphasisof the links children. To begin to between gay adults and gender-nonconforming theorizegenderand sexualityas distinct thoughintimately entangledaxes of analysis has been, indeed, a great advance of recentlesbian and gay thought. There is a danger,however,thatthatadvance mayleave theeffeminate boy once more in the position of the hauntingabject - this time the hauntingabject of gay thoughtitself. This is an especially horrifying theoretical thoughtif- as many studies launched frommany different and political positions have suggested- for any given adult gay man, whereverhe may be at presenton a scale of self-perceivedor socially ascribed masculinity(ranging fromextremelymasculine to extremely feminine),the likelihood is disproportionately high that he will have a

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or non-maschildhood historyof self-perceivedeffeminacy, femininity, In this case the eclipse of the effeminate boy fromadult gay culinity.7 morethana damagingtheoretical discourse would represent gap; it would a node of annihilating homophobic,gynephobic,and pedophorepresent bic hatredinternalized and made centralto gay-affirmative analysis. The effeminateboy would come to functionas the open secret of many politicized adult gay men. I mean cauOne of the most interesting aspects - and by interesting is that are based of new the developments they psychoanalytic tionary move of distinguishing on preciselythetheoretical genderfrom sexuality. This is how it happens that the depathologizationof an atypical sexual object-choice can be yoked to the new pathologization of an atypical the gender-constructivist research of, gender identification. Integrating for example, JohnMoney and Robert Stoller, research that many have as havingpotentialforfeminist taken(thoughperhapswrongly) uses, this called Core Gender workposits theveryearlyconsolidationof something - one's basal sense of being male or female- as a separate Identity stage prior to, even conceivably independentof, any crystallizationof Disorderof Childor sexual object choice. GenderIdentity sexual fantasy hood is seen as a pathologyinvolvingtheCore GenderIdentity (failureto withone's biological sex); sexual object-choice, develop a CGI consistent a thisCore GenderIdentity on the otherhand,is unbundledfrom through moves. Under the reasonablyspace-makingseries of two-phasenarrative of havingto show how gay adults whomhe considers pressure,ironically, well-integrated personalitiesdo sometimesevolve fromchildrenseen as of psychopathology, Friedmanunpacks several develthe verydefinition opmentalsteps thathave oftenotherwisebeen seen as rigidlyunitary.8 between gender One serious problemwith this way of distinguishing and sexuality is that,while denaturalizingsexual object-choice, it radiplace, cally renaturalizesgender.All ego psychologyis prone,in the first arounda none-too-dialectical its developmentalnarratives to structuring tropeof progressiveconsolidationof self. To place a veryearlycore-gender determinant (howeverlittlebiologized it maybe) at theverycenterof thatprocess of consolidation seems to mean, essentially,thatfora nontranssexualperson with a penis, nothingcan ever be assimilated to the thisprocess of consolidationunless it can be assimilatedas self through boys, Friedman masculinity.For even the most feminine-self-identified uses thephrases"sense of masculineself-regard" (245), "masculine commasculine" (244) as petency" (20), and "self-evaluationas appropriately for for self-esteem and, ultimately, any self. As he deany synonyms scribes the interactiveprocess thatleads to any ego-consolidation in a boy: whom estimate to in relation to others themselves they Boysmeasure thiscan meanonlymenand other be similar. [ForFriedman, boys.] The of self-assessment on consensual validation. Similarity depends

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others must theboyis andwillremain similar to them. The agreethat of males(peersand oldermen)as boy mustalso view bothgroups foridealization. Notonlymust in some he be likethem appropriate want be like he must to them in others. in turn must want ways, They himto be like them. must havethecapacity to Unconsciously, they withhim.This naturally themale [!] fitbetween occurring identify is thejuvenilephasesocial worldand theboy's inner objectworld to the child's withthe counterpoint preoedipal relationship specific mother. (237) out gay,accordingto thisaccount,is that The reason effeminate boys turn wistful othermen don't validate themas masculine.There is a persistent, fantasy in this book: "One cannot help but wonder how these [prehomosexual boys] would have developed if the males theyidealized had had a more flexible and abstractsense of masculine competency"(20). For Friedman,the increasing flexibilityin what kinds of attributes or activitiescan be processedas masculine,withincreasing seems maturity, fullyto account forthe fact thatso many"gender-disturbed" (pathologically effeminate)littleboys manage to grow up into "healthy" (masculine) men, albeit afterthe phase wheretheirsexualityhas differentiated as gay. Or rather, it almost fullyaccounts forit. There is a residue of mystery, at resurfacing several points in the book, about why most gay men turn out so resilient- about how they even survive- given the profound initialdeficitof "masculine self-regard" characteristic of manyproto-gay of it that childhoods, and the late and relativelysuperficialremediation comes withincreasingmaturity. Given that"the virulenceand chronicity of [social] stress [against it] puts homosexualityin a unique position in how to account for"the fact that sethe human behavioral repertoire," does not occur more frequently" vere, persistentmorbidity among gay adolescents (205)? Friedman essentially throws up his hands at these of possible explanationsarise, butone seems particmoments."A number ularly likely to me: namely,thathomosexualityis associated with some psychological mechanism,not understoodor even studied to date, that protects the individual from diverse psychiatric disorders" (236). It "mightinclude mechanismsinfluencing ego resiliency, growth potential, and thecapacity to form intimate (205). And "it is possible relationships" that,forreasons thathave notyetbeen well described,[gender-disturbed boys'] mechanismsforcoping withanguish and adversityare unusually effective"(201). These are huge blank spaces to be leftin whatpurports to be a developmental account of proto-gay children. But given that ego-syntonic consolidation fora boy can come only in the formof masculinity, given that masculinitycan be conferredonly by men (20), and given that in a person witha penis, can represent but deficitand femininity, nothing disorder,the one explanationthatcould never be broached is thatthese

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skills of survival,filiation, and resistancecould derive from a mysterious secure identification with the resource-richness of a mother.Mothers, to contribute to thisprocess of masculinevalidation, indeed, have nothing and women are reduced in the light of its urgencyto a null set: any is involvementin it by a woman is overinvolvement, any protectiveness and, forinstance,mothers overprotectiveness, "proud of theirsons' nonviolent qualities" are manifesting unmistakable "family pathology" (193). For bothFriedmanand Green,then,thefirst, imperative developmental is to get a properly male task of a male child or his parentsand caretakers and perhaps more Core Gender Identityin place, as a basis for further flexible explorationsof whatit may be to be masculine- i.e., fora male person, to be human. Friedman is ratherequivocal about whetherthis masculine CGI necessarilyentails any particular or whether it is content, an almost purelyformal, differentiation once that, preconditional firmly in place, can cover an almostinfinite He rangeof behaviorsand attitudes. does not see a between and connection certainly necessary masculinity since ego psychologytreatsthe any scapegoatingof male homosexuality; as non-problematical afteradolesdevelopmentof male heterosexuality cence, as not involvingthe suppressionof any homosexual or bisexual as completelyunimplicated withhomopossibility(263-7), and therefore sexual panic (178), it seems merelyan unfortunate, perhaps rectifiable or that for a child to identify accident "masmisunderstanding proto-gay his his involve identification own erasure. with culinely" might and enforcement of genderassignment is not the The re-naturalization of gay acceptance, however.The worst news about the new psychiatry worstis thatit notonly fails to offer, butseems conceptuallyincapable of even the resistance to the wish endemic in the culture offering, slightest and it: the wish thatgay people not exist. There surrounding supporting are many people in the worlds we inhabit,and these psychiatrists are among them,who have a stronginterestin the dignified unmistakably of any gay people who may happen already to exist. But the treatment numberof personsor institutions by whomtheexistenceof gay people is a needed conditionof life,is small. The treatedas a preciousdesideratum, of value betweenheteroand homo goes assignment presidingasymmetry on advice how to help yourkids turnout gay, unchallengedeverywhere: not to mentionyour students, clients, or yourtherapy yourparishioners, is less ubiquitousthanyou might think. On the subordinates, yourmilitary otherhand, the scope of institutions whose programmatic is undertaking to preventthe developmentof gay people is unimaginably large. There is no major institutionalized discourse thatoffersa firmresistanceto that in the US, at any rate,most sites of the state, the military, undertaking: thechurch,medicine,and mass culture education,law, penal institutions,

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enforce it all butunquestioningly, and withlittlehesitation at eventhe recourse to invasive violence. Thesebooks,andtheassociated andinstitutions, therapeutic strategies are notaboutinvasive violence. What of squalid are aboutis a train they arepredicated lies. Theoverarching lie is thelie that on anything but they disavoweddesirefora non-gay the therapists' for outcome. Friedman, that with intervention instance, speculates wistfully proper therapeutic - the sexual orientation of one gay man whomhe describes as quite have been "have shifted on (not but) healthy might conceivably changed a he its own" (Friedman's "not remarks, italics): speculation, artlessly value-laden with to sexualorientation" book,com(212). Green's regard of interview is a tissueof his lies to children transcripts, posed largely motives for in. (It was "notto prevent abouttheir them parents' bringing from he tells one manwhohadbeen homosexual," becoming you young to "it was because subjected behavior-modification, youwereunhappy" same he but later on the confirms to (318); very page, unself-consciously his trusted that of sons reader who entered were...wor"parents therapy behavior thecross-gender with later sexualriedthat portended problems He men to "reassure" their ity.") encourages predominantly gay young him are that "bisexual" so he feels better" ("Tell justenough parents they ofmarrying theoption andkeeping their (207)), andtoconsider favorably wives in thedarkabouttheir sexualactivities (205). He lies to himself and to us in encouraging to lie to him.In a seriesof interviews patients withKyle,forinstance, to behavioral theboy subjected Green therapy, him "'I as that he withdrawn is unusually reports saying supposeI've beenoverly sensitive whenguyslookat meorsomething eversinceI can after remember, youknow, mymomtoldme whyI haveto go to UCLA intoa homosexual"' I'd turn because theywereafraid (307); as saying that homosexuality
is pretty bad, and I don't thinktheyshould be around to influence children.... I don't thinktheyshould be hurtby society or anything - especially in New York. You have them who are into like that thatis reallysick, and I think leatherand stuff like that.I mean,I think thatmaybetheyshould be put away (307); as saying thathe wants to commitviolence on men who look at him he 'would take (307); and as sayingthatifhe had a child like himself, him where he would be helped' (317). The very image of serene self-acceptance?

Green'ssummary:
underscoresthe Opponents of therapyhave argued thatintervention child's 'deviance,' rendershimashamed of who he is, and makes him this suppresshis 'trueself.' Data on psychologicaltestsdo notsupport of clinical interviews. nordoes thecontent The boys look contention; on treatment. back favorably if They would endorsesuch intervention they were the fatherof a 'feminine' boy. Their reason is to reduce

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childhood conflict and social stigma. withtheseboys apTherapy this.(319) pearedto accomplish Consistent with this, Green is obscenely eager to convince parentsthat theirhatredand rage at theireffeminate sons is really only a desire to - even whentheparentsname their protectthemfrom peer-group cruelty own feelingsas hatredand rage (391-2). Even when fullyone quarterof parents of gay sons are so interestedin protectingthem from social crueltythat,when the boys fail to change, theirparentskick themout on the street.Green is withering about mothers who display any toleranceof theirsons' cross-gender behavior(373-5). In fact,his bottom-line identificationsas a clinician actually seem to lie withtheenforcing peer group: he refersapprovingly at one pointto "therapy, be it formal(delivered by (deliveredby thepeer groupand thelarger paid professionals)or informal society via teasingand sex-role standards)"(388). directed Referring blandlyon one page to "psychological intervention at increasing [effeminate withbeing male" (259), Friedboys'] comfort man says muchmorecandidlyon the nextpage, the rights of parents to overseethe development of children is a Whois to dictate that long-established principle. maynottry parents to raisetheir children in a manner that of a maximizes thepossibility heterosexual outcome? (260) Who indeed - if the membersof this professioncan't stop seeing the of gay people as an ethical use of theirskills? prevention Even outside of the mentalhealthprofessionsand withinmoreauthendiscourses, the theoreticalspace for supporting tically gay-affirmative to Epistegay developmentis, as I have pointedout in the Introduction have tended to mology of the Closet, narrow.Constructivist arguments keep hands off the experience of gay and proto-gaykids. For gay and gay-lovingpeople, even thoughthe space of culturalmalleabilityis the only conceivable theatrefor our effectivepolitics, every step of this constructivist nature/culture argumentholds danger: the danger of the in the seeminglynaturaltrajectory of intervening fromidentidifficulty to inventing an ethical or therapeufyinga place of culturalmalleability, tic mandate for cultural manipulation, to the overarching, hygienic Westernfantasy of a world without any morehomosexuals in it. That's one set of dangers,and it is as against them,I have argued,that essentialist and biologizing understandings of sexual identityaccrue a certaingravity. The resistancethatseems to be offered by conceptualizing an unalterablyhomosexual body, to the social-engineeringmomentum apparentlybuilt into every one of the human sciences of the west, can reassure profoundly. At the same time,however,in thepostmodern era it is becomingincreasingly an idenproblematicalto assume thatgrounding tityin biology or "essential nature"is a stable way of insulatingit from If anything, societal interference. the gestalt of assumptionsthatunder-

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debates maybe in process of directreversal.Increasgird nature/nurture ingly it is the conjecturethata particulartraitis geneticallyor biologian oestrus cally based, not thatit is "only cultural,"thatseems to trigger in the technologicalinstitutions of the culture.A of manipulativefantasy relative depressiveness about the efficacy of social-engineeringtechniques, a high mania about biological control:the Cartesianbipolar psychosis that always underlaythe nature/nurture debates has switched its a bit of its hold over the collecpolar assignmentswithoutsurrendering tive life. And in this unstable context,the dependence on a specified momentum is homosexualbody to offer resistanceto any gay-eradicating vulnerable. AIDS, thoughit is used to proffer every single tremblingly public thecrystallizedvision of a worldafter day to thenews-consuming the homosexual, could never by itself bringabout such a world. What whets these fantasies more dangerously,because more blandly, is the conpresentation,often in ostensibly or authenticallygay-affirmative for of deviant behavior that are texts, biologically-based "explanations" in couched terms of or "im"excess," "deficiency," absolutely invariably balance" - whetherin the hormones,in the genetic material,or, as is If I had ever,in fashionable,in thefetalendocrineenvironment. currently seen even researcher or refer once to any any medium, any popularizer as circumstance theproper hormonebalance, or supposed gay-producing the conduciveendocrineenvironment, I would be less forgay generation, chilled by thebreezes of all thistechnologicalconfidence.As thingsare, a medicalized dreamof theprevention of gay bodies seems to be the less far more of the AIDS-fueled public dream underside visible, respectable of theirextirpation. In this unstablebalance of assumptionsbetweennatureand culture,at any rate, under the overarching, relatively unchallenged aegis of a culture's desire that gay people not be, there is no unthreatened, unhome for theoretical a concept of gay and lesbian origins. threatening What thebooks I have been discussing,and theinstitutions to whichthey is thatthe wish forthe dignifiedtreatment of are attached,demonstrate already-gaypeople is necessarilydestinedto turnintoeithertrivializing apologetics or, much worse,a silkilycamouflagedcomplicityin oppression - in theabsence of a strong, explicit,eroticallyinvestedaffirmation of many people's felt desire or need that there be gay people in the immediateworld. Notes
written fora "psychoanalysis and homosexuality" This essay was originally panelat theModem of itare adapted 1989.Severalparagraphs from what becamethe December, LanguageAssociation, to myEpistemology Introduction and Los Angeles:University of California of theCloset(Berkeley Cameron me inthedirection ofthese Patton fortified Press,1990).Jack texts, Cindy pointed particular to them, and Jonathan the argument made here.The Goldberg my resistance helpedme articulate motivation for thisessay, and someofitsapproaches, areimmensely indebted to several other friends, as well- mostparticularly to conversations overa longperiod with MichaelMoon. comes from in the New York Native: 1. This information 23 September 1989,pp. 9-10; 13 reports November 1989,p. 7. 1989,p. 14; 27 November

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of psychoanalytic to male homosexuality is 2. A particularly overview illuminating approaches availablein Kenneth Lewes,ThePsychoanalytic (New York:Simon Theory ofMale Homosexuality andSchuster, 1989). 1988; rept. Penguin/NAL/Meridian, thegaymenFriedman admires havecompletely control that 3. Itis worth noting always discretionary no sensethat else's knowledge oftheir others ownintuitions overeveryone mayhavetheir sexuality; ingay (physical, no visibleparticipation are gay;no senseof physical that cultural, effeminacy; they wouldbe or community. Formanycontemporary semiotics sartorial) gay people,suchan existence of culture, itwouldseemstarvingly in terms fora great many, community, impoverished impossible; andmeaning. and Statistical Manual ofMentalDisorders D.C.: The 4. Diagnostic Edition) (Third (Washington, American Association, 1980),pp.265-6. Psychiatric 5. The exception tothis is Lawrence Mass,whoseDialoguesoftheSexualRevolution, generalization and Sexuality" ParkPress,1990) collectsa decade's vol. 1, "Homosexuality (New York:Harrington of interviews with and sex researchers, conducted forandpublished in worth originally psychiatrists a number areaskedunder often the thegaypress. In these ofMass's questions interviews, illuminating is simply that"American of reconceptualizing engagedin a long,subtle psychiatry process premise as a mental disorder of childhood'" illnesswith another name- the'gender identity homosexuality (p. 214). cometo overlap 6. Thatrelegation and/or as, in many maybe diminishing places,"queer"politics ofwhat tobe the ofthevery with Part I understand word exciting charge "gay"politics. "queer" compete whathave formanypeople been formative is thatit embraces, instead of repudiating, childhood andstigmatization. ofdifference experiences see Friedman, of thisliterature, The "SissyBoy 7. Fordescriptions Green, pp. 33-48;and Richard and theDevelopment (New Haven: Yale University Press,1987),pp. of Homosexuality Syndrome" from a gay-affirmative wouldbe A. P. Bell,M. ofthesestudies 370-90.The mostcredible standpoint Sexual Preference: S. Weinberg, and S. K. Hammersmith, Its Development in Men and Women concludes: "Childhood Indiana Gender Press, 1981),which (Bloomington: University Nonconformity to adulthomosexuality outto be morestrongly connected thanwas anyother variable in the turned study" (p. 80). with on his interdisciplinarity, 8. Priding himself taken recent neuroendocrinhe is much moreover, that ofthefetal stress on themother structuration brain mayaffect ologicalworksuggesting prenatal cues to thechildas lateas adolescence be in sucha waythat hormonal may processed differentially. dataas datais notvery His treatment results that to ofthese (e.g.,problematical only responsible point to positive differences" inonechapter "knowledge" (p. 24) havebeensilently upgraded "hypothetical the conditions two chapters later(p. 51)); nor is it veryimpartial as (forinstance, hypothesized are invariably to as inadequate to gay development referred (14), deficit androgenization conducing with thismodeldoeshavetwouseful effects. itseemsto generate First, (15), etc.).Buthis infatuation this series oftwo-phase narratives about narratives that further bydirect analogy psychic development, between thecircumstances under whicha particular structure is organized discriminate and psychic thatmayturn outto enablesomenew sinuosities thoseunderwhichit is activated, forother, more and pluralist of developmental narration. (This analogicalprocessis made gay-embracing projects itgoesa longwaytoward on241-5.)Andsecond, andnarrativizing de-totalizing, demystifying, explicit in a recognizable (the promise?) by a supposed way any reader'ssense of the threat presented visionofthealready-gay malebody. neurobiological

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