The entry below is part of my attempt to shape material for a panel I'm moderating/presenting on at Sunstone next week. The title of the panel is "Will, Grace, and Angels in Brokeback America: Straight Women, Gay Men, and Mormonism." I can already tell I will have too much to say--I always do--and am worrying about how to cover what's most important. I will be grateful for any suggestions on how to deal with this material.
"The society of buggers has many advantages--if you are a woman," declares Virginia Woolf in her memoir "Old Bloomsbury."
It is simple, it is honest, it makes one feel, as I noted, in some respects at one's ease. But it has this drawback--with buggers one cannot, as nurses say, show off. Something is always suppressed, held down. Yet this showing off, which is not copulating, necessarily, nor altogether being in love, is one of the great delights, one of the chief necessities of life. Only then does all effort cease; one ceases to be honest, one ceases to be clever. One fizzes up into some absurd delightful effervescence of soda water or champagne through which one sees the world tinged with all the colours of the rainbow. It is significant of what I had come to desire that I went straight--on almost the next page of my diary indeed--from the dim and discreet rooms of James Strachey [one of her brother's gay classmates] at Cambridge to dine with Lady Ottoline Morrel at Bedford Square. Her rooms, I noted without drawing any inferences, seemed to me instantly full of "lustre and illusion."
Woolf arrives at this conclusion after trying to puzzle out why certain of her brother Thoby's university classmates, who would visit the home she kept with Thoby and their sister Vanessa, were simultaneously brilliant and boring, gifted and barren, why certain "young men [made] one feel that one could not honestly be anything? The answer to all my questions was, obviously--as you will have guessed--that there was no physical attraction between us."
Although this lack of physical attraction makes certain things impossible, it makes others things possible--the advantages already mentioned, for instance. But learning to accept--not merely tolerate--the sexuality of others allows Woolf to embrace and experience the world more fully. Woolf relates an anecdote involving a visit from Lytton Strachey, who once proposed marriage to Woolf only to withdraw his offer when it occurred to him that if he married her, he might actually have to kiss her, though he had no intention of ever bedding her. Woolf had been arguing with her brother-in-law Clive Bell, while Clive's wife Vanessa sat on the couch doing needle work.
Suddenly the door opened and the long and sinister figure of Mr. Lytton Strachey stood on the threshold. He pointed his finger at a stain on Vanessa's white dress."Semen?" he said.
Can one really say it? I thought and we burst out laughing With that one word all barriers of reticence and reserve went down. A flood of the sacred fluid seemed to overwhelm us. Sex permeated our conversation. The word bugger was never far from our lips.
Woolf declares that as a result of being able to discuss openly, "the whole aspect of life was changed," adding that
there was now nothing that one could not say, nothing that one could not do, at [the home she shared with her siblings]. It was, I think, a great advance in civilisation. It may be true that the loves of buggers are not--at least if one is of the other persuasion--of enthralling interest or paramount importance. But the fact that they can be mentioned openly leads to the fact that no one minds if they are practiced privately. Thus many customs and beliefs were revised.
I am grateful to Virginia Woolf, her siblings, and Lytton Strachey et al., for helping to revise so many customs and beliefs. I think there are still more customs and beliefs to be revised. One example is gay marriage. I know the gay community is split on the issue of marriage--many believe that heterosexual marriage is an inherently flawed and repressive institution, one that lesbians and gay men would be better off not emulating or participating in, and what's really desirable is a transformation of all romantic and sexual partnerships into something more respectful and equal. I certainly respect that point of view, but until we achieve that transformation, I feel that if consenting adults of legal age want to marry a same-sex partner, they should have the legal right to do so, regardless of whether or not they take advantage of that right. And I feel as well that there are important reasons why those among the straight community should work to make this change.
to be continued
That's a terribly complicated subject to cover in a single panel!!!
I suppose that through the lense of Mormonism, the focus will be on the kinds of relationships where the gay guy feels pressured to persue a romantic relationship with a woman, and the woman takes her role either unknowingly or in hopes of "saving" the guy.
By crazy coincidence, just yesterday I ordered a book (a self-published memoir) by a woman who started a (Mormon) family with a guy, only to discover that he was gay. They eventually divorced, of course.
From your post here, I gather you're more interested in talking about the dynamics involved in the gay guy / straight woman friendship in which all parties have accepted that gayness is not just some sort of bad habit that can be broken like smoking. Such friendships have tons of interesting facets to explore. Do you think you'll get to such advanced topics, though? I've never been to a Sunstone symposium, so I don't know how they go...
I like the parallel you suggest here between the ease Virginia Woolf feels in the company of buggers and the question of the repressiveness of marriage. She notes a feeling unavailable to her in relationships in which there is (or may be) a sexual charge but also notes a feeling that is unavailable to her among gay friends. The suggestion here is that in both such sexually ordered relationships, it is not entirely possible to be fully and freely oneself. Is the critique of marriage based on the idea that it could be a life sentence to such unfreedom? I know only a little bit about the way that gays and lesbians have critiqued marriage -- the pro-marriage perspective was overwhelming when I was in Toronto because about that time, Canada began legally recognizing gay marriages. If this is the basis of the critique, why is marriage like that? I think a clear answer to the "why" question is needed before we could decide if marriage needs to be abolished for people to be freely and fully themselves, or if gay marriage fundamentally changes the institution. And there may not be a single answer: given the fraught history of plural marriage, is the institution the same among Mormons as it is outside of the Mormon community?
Good start--the panel should be provocative!
Have you visited the blogs that comprise the gay Mormon "bloggernacle"? Here are some links to a few. I don't know if they'll help, but most of these guys are gay men who married and are now living out the conundrum between their sexuality and their eternal vows.
http://www.pmeo.org/foxx/
http://elbowbrady.blogspot.com/
http://mormonmisadventures.blogspot.com/
http://ardentmormon.blogspot.com/ (This guy's blog has a lot of links to a longer list of GLBT Mos in the bloggernacle.)
http://gayhurricane.blogspot.com/
http://ldsgayrm.blogspot.com/
http://blog.buckandmike.com/
And P.S., Brenda and I are still trying to find a weekend to come see you. When does school start again for you?
Have fun at Sunstone!
Janet
Hi CL--
Yeah, a lot of the panel will focus on the kind of destructive marriage you mention, mostly because three of the four panelists were in one--one of the panelists is Emily Pearson (daughter of Carol Lynn of Good-bye, I Love You fame), who runs Wildflowers, a support network for women currently or formerly married to gay men.
Originally I had wanted to do a scholarly analysis of the all the literature and film out there about the topic--from Good-bye, I Love You to Advise and Consent to The Smith Family to Angels in America--but Dan, who directs Sunstone, talked me into do a panel, partly because this is the 20th anniversary of the publication of Good-bye, I Love You.
I know so many Mormon women who have been married to gay men, and so many more like me, who were engaged, but lucky enough that the guy broke it off.
I know it can take people a while to figure out their sexual identities, and sometimes people realize ten years into a marriage that they're gay. It happens, and I'm sure it's heartbreaking. But it seems there's something else more pernicious in the case of these marriages between men who know from the outset that they are gay, and still go ahead and get married anyway, because they have this sense of entitlement via patriarchy--witness the guy whose article from Dialogue I quote, arguing that marrying women shouldn't be "the exclusive territory of straight men."
And I'm pretty sure it will be time constraints rather than restrictions imposed by organizers or audience that will determine how far I can explore the topic. I've been in some pretty wild panels at Sunstone--I met Janet in 2001 when she organized a panel on Mormon women's sexuality, aka the Mormon Vagina Monologues, or as I retermed it, the Vagina Testimony Meeting.
Janet--since I mentioned you already--thanks for the links, few (if any) of which I've seen before. I confess that if they're still in the church and trying to make it work, it pretty much drives me crazy to read what they produce.... Yeah. I guess that's all I'll say about that.
And classes start Sept 5--but I'll be teaching Tues-Thurs this fall so as far as showing up on campus, I've got a 4-day weekend every week. I'll just have lots of grading some weekends, but that can always be juggled.
Hi Spike--you asked,
Is the critique of marriage based on the idea that it could be a life sentence to such unfreedom?
Not from what I've read/heard--I was in a dissertation-writing group with a guy pursuing the topic; his argument against marriage was much more prosaic, much more rooted in the kinds of critiques made by John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor: in marriage, someone always ends up being the wife, and the position of the wife is inherently subordinate.
given the fraught history of plural marriage, is the institution the same among Mormons as it is outside of the Mormon community?
this is something I'm trying to decide how to present: I definitely feel that part of the legacy of polygamy is that Mormon women are always taught their sexuality is of lesser importance than that of any man they might marry. It's one reason Mormon women seem more willing than other women to try to "save" gay men by marrying them.
Holly,
I have to admit, I'm also impatient with the GLBT Mormon bloggers who are constantly trying to figure out how to stay in the church AND be gay. And yet, I was once one of those people, too. My impatient and lack of complete sympathy is surprising to me; I'm able to empathize, as I've been where many of them are now, but I also find myself frustrated by them and want to leave comments on their blog telling them to get over and it and just come out. Easier said, than done, though. Particularly in a Mormon context.
By the way--I grew up with and went to school with Emily Pearson in Provo, Utah. She and I competed for the attentions and affections of our mutual friend, Jennie McCloud (daughter of Mormon harlequin novelist, Susan Evans McCloud). We hated each other! Wish I was coming to Sunstone this year just to see and hear this panel.
Janet
My impatient and lack of complete sympathy is surprising to me; I'm able to empathize, as I've been where many of them are now, but I also find myself frustrated by them and want to leave comments on their blog telling them to get over and it and just come out. Easier said, than done, though. Particularly in a Mormon context.
There's something about watching people try to do something that is both impossible and incredibly damaging that just makes you want to scream, "STOP IT ALREADY!"
Which is why I don't watch.
No one stops until they're ready to stop. We know from experience that they're going to fail, but it's their failure and they get to experience it as they want/need.