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SEQUENCE 4 GAY MALE SEXUALITY

Sexuality must not be described as a stubborn drive, by nature alien and of necessity disobedient to a power which exhausts itself trying to subdue it and often fails to control it entirely. It appears rather as an especially dense transfer point for relations of power: between men and women, young people and old people, parents and offspring, teachers and students, priests and laity, an administration and a population (Foucault, 1976, p.103).

4.1 Views of homosexuality Throughout the modern era, conceptualizations of homosexuality have been laden with negative discourse. The legal system, for example, criminalizes homosexuality. Historically, legislation has outlawed sodomy or anal penetration – sexual acts equated with homosexuality (Isaacs & McKendrick, 1992). Religion views homosexuality as sinful (Herron, Kinter, Sollinger, & Trubowitz, 1982), aligning itself with the procreation value of sex following the logic of biology, thereby morally judging, to various degrees, those non-procreative values such as sex as a means of communication or sex as a pleasurable activity (Siegel & Lowe, 1994). Homosexuality defied reproductive biology, espousing the multitude of choices in human behaviours and morality. This expansion of human freedom should not necessarily signify homosexuality as a negative force for human living and sex. Sociopolitically, in its alternative to religious beliefs, homosexuality presented a threat to social control, leading to society eventually reacting through institutionalising it as abnormality, specifically in psychology and psychiatry.

Psychology has regarded homosexuality as mental illness (Herron et al., 1982), and sociology constructed it as deviance. Until 1973, homosexuality was pathologized in the DSM (Stainton Rogers & Stainton Rogers, 2001; Weeks, 1991). This psychomedical model established and reinforced the belief that homosexuality was mental illness. Kaplan and Sadock (1981) explain that the broad category of ‘psychosexual disorders’ in the DSM-III included a disturbance called ‘ego-dystonic homosexuality’. In this condition, distress was associated with having same-sex attraction and the afflicted individual also desired to change the behaviour or lessen the distress. Also, in the medical model, homosexuality was not only viewed as a disease, but promoted popular belief that it was the cause of diseases (Weeks, 1991). When the diagnostic category of homosexuality was lifted, the picture of homosexuality changed (Siegel & Lowe, 1994). 61

Weeks (1991) comments that this removal from medical disorders resulted neither from nor medical grounds, but from the political mobilisation of social movements. Homosexuality in itself is not equivalent to pathology (Herron et al., 1982), but clinical psychology contributed to creating this negative discourse.

Traditional psychoanalytic theory of normative development posits that the heterosexual boy harbours erotic fantasies about a relationship with his mother. The corollary about a gay boy positions the father as a romantic object in erotic fantasies, which is then repressed (Siegel & Lowe, 1994). For Herron et al. (1982), psychoanalysis focusses on homosexuality as disturbance: pre-oedipal factors are considered central rather than the Oedipal crisis. In this way, psychoanalytic thinking still viewed homosexuality as a developmental disorder. If this was the case, as Herron et al. (1982) point out, homosexual persons would ‘look sicker’ than heterosexuals on mental health profiles, but research does not support this. Likewise, Gershman (1983) concludes that heterosexual persons manifest similar symptomatology such as obsessions or depression, but the difference in prevalence is not that homosexuals manifest mental illness and heterosexuals do not, but that homosexual persons experience more anxiety. The reason for this difference, as explained by Herron et al. (1982) in their research review, is that greater intrapsychic stress in a homosexual person stems from antihomosexual attitudes of society. In this perspective, homophobia contributes to pathology in gay men, in contrast to older views that pathologized homosexuality itself with a heterosexist bias (Davies, 1996a; Malyon, 1982). In this sense then, homosexuality cannot be considered as pathology.

The psychodynamic factors of homosexual behaviour determined definitions of homosexuality in traditional psychoanalysis. Socarides (cited in Herron et al., 1982) distinguishes various forms of homosexuality in this approach. The first is the pre- oedipal type that results from developmental fixation between birth and three years. It arises from anxiety, is ego-syntonic and identification with a same-sex partner allows a man to achieve masculinity. This lessens castration anxiety, which also occurs in the second oedipal type where the male does not successfully resolve the Oedipus complex, resulting in him assuming the female (mother) role with other men (the father). In keeping with the view of homosexuality as emotional illness, Socarides’ other types included schizohomosexuality (comorbid schizophrenia and homosexuality), situational homosexuality (a consequence of inaccessibility to heterosexuality), variational 62 homosexuality, latent homosexuality (having a pre-oedipal/oedipal dynamic but overt sexual activity with a same-sex partner is absent) and sublimated homosexuality (actions avoiding homosexual conflict). Another subtype, pseudohomosexuality, suggested by Ovesey (cited in Herron et al., 1982), is associated with heterosexuals who experience anxieties about being homosexual.

Psychoanalytical theory, however, conflates social sex-role and sexual orientation in its paradigm of pathology, stating that an individual, as a compensation for lost masculinity, becomes homosexual (orientation) after a derailed development of masculinity (sex-role). Psychoanalysis does not define homosexuality, but equates it with loss of masculinity associated with an overprotective mother and a weak absent father (De Cecco, 1981). A study by Shively et al. (cited in De Cecco, 1981) showed that sexual orientation is assumed from social sex-roles. Homosexuality becomes pathology in psychoanalysis only when sex-role is confused with sexual orientation.

Psychodynamic theorists regard homosexuality as being classified in terms of identity, but a more sociologically-informed approach may offer classifications of identity in terms of lifestyle, particularly because homosexuality is not a singular entity. Bell and Weinberg (cited in Gershman, 1983) identified five major lifestyles: the close-couple homosexual, the open-couple homosexual, the functional (single, out) homosexual, the dysfunctional homosexual and the asexual homosexual.

Unlike the psychomedical paradigm’s view that homosexuality occurs when an individual directs affective and genital interests to same-sex partners (Kaplan & Sadock, 1981), Weinberg (1978), adopting a sociologically-derived perspective, maintains that actual same-sex behaviour leads to self-labelling as a homosexual only when interpreted within a set of social definitions about homosexuality. The individual needs to perceive behaviour as ‘homosexual’. A homosexual identity may not be taken on by many ‘men who have sex with men’ (MSM). If adherence is made to certain behaviours, these MSM do not define their sex acts as homosexual. For example, male prostitutes do not define their behaviours as homosexual or heterosexual, but they ascribe other meanings. In such a social interactionist account, a collection of appearances, for example, effeminate conduct contributes to making homosexuality a pattern. Identity may also change over time through redocumentation. Additionally, participation in sex acts does not dictate 63

taking on a homosexual identity, just as heterosexuals do not have to engage in heterosexual intercourse to be heterosexual. The social interactionist definition allows for flexibility and fluidity in sexuality within a social context, in contrast to the psychomedical perspective, which, based on essentialist assumptions, avoids the social constructedness of sexual signification.

Another conceptualization of homosexuality allows the individual to label his sexuality. Weinberg (1978) studied patterns of homosexuality and found a chronological relationship between identity and homosexual behaviour. The investigation located subpatterns of the ‘doing gay’ and ‘being gay’ combinations. The main subpattern was engaging in behaviour, suspecting a homosexual identity, then labelling. A related pattern was engaging in sex followed by labelling. The next subpattern was a suspicion of being homosexual, followed by sex with males, then labelling. The least common was the ‘homosexual virgin’ where there was suspicion, then labelling, then engaging in sexual acts. In Weinberg’s (1978) study of developmental patterns, many respondents did not accord homosexual meanings to their early behaviours. Also, some of those participants did not have certain appearances (indexical particulars) that would define themselves as homosexual, so they did not take on a gay identity. Thus, being homosexual was based on how meaning gets accorded to sexual behaviours.

Besides ascribing individual meanings to behaviours, the social context indicated whether or not behaviours should be interpreted as homosexual. In Weinberg’s (1978) study, sexual play with peers was not interpreted as homosexual because the context of friendship delimited such a signification. When this context changes, such as when the peer group moves onto heterosexual dating, then the process of ‘doing gay’ changes into ‘being gay’. If contact is made with other gay men, then identity becomes redefined. This altered context assists in making the link between ‘doing’ and ‘being’. When this contact is with other comfortable gay men, positive role models are witnessed and the homosexual/gay identity may be assumed (Weinberg, 1978). According to this distinction, homosexuality or a gay identity is only assumed when the male experiences ‘being gay’ self-reflective thinking. These views, however, imply an internal or psychological bias, which obscure the socio-political factors that have contributed to the historical development of a label such as a ‘gay identity’.

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The perspective of Critical Theory incorporates ideological analyses of homosexuality in cultural and historical contexts, particularly following Foucault’s ideas, unlike the modernist views of psychodynamic, psychomedical and sociological models. It is compatible with liberationist and postmodernist views of sexuality. Foucault (1976) explains that the identity of a homosexual began in the late 19th century when sexuality became medicalized. Weeks (1991) also analyses the historical development of the gay identity, describing its ideological basis. The development of the notion of a gay identity, as a form of ‘reverse affirmation’ (p.103), is the result of continued mobilization for self- definition to resist social hostility and oppressive norms. A historical view of homosexuality links the development of this modern identity to social and political changes in the Western world, and this perspective is often used by critical theory.

The originator of this perspective, Foucault (1976) explained how sexual repression from the 17th century led to the silencing of sex but people had to talk about sex in the context of confession, particularly in psychoanalysis and medicine. Sex was publicly spoken about in a particular way, that is, it was managed, regulated and policed. In the 19th century, sex required interpretation and this led to a scientific discourse. With the rise of capitalism, sex was regarded as economic behaviour, leading to the study of demography. Sex had to perpetuate economically useful sexuality, that is, procreative sex. Even though sex was supposedly repressed, society was ironically structured around sex, for example, schools were designed on the assumption that sex existed actively in children, and education needed to control and curb children’s sexuality. Knowledge of sex was linked to power. In these ways, Foucault showed how the systems of education, medicine, psychiatry and criminal justice contributed to the social control and surveillance of sexuality (Foucault, 1976).

In Foucault’s (1976) analysis, sex and power always have had a negative connection, and power places sex into a binary category system such as ‘permitted’ and ‘forbidden’. Since the Middle Age, power developed as law, established through monarchy, and becoming juridicial, but it is also tolerated and accepted because it is secretive. Power over sex was uniform, operating ‘according to the simple and endlessly reproduced mechanisms of law, taboo, and censorship’ (p.84). Foucault (1976) then adds that sex should not be analyzed merely through repression or the law, but through power, because power infiltrates in complex multiple strategies in local and unstable ways to create a ‘grid of intelligibility of the social order’ 65

(p.93). So, rather than sexuality being repressed, sexuality was produced through particular mechanisms to incite a historically-constituted discourse and to position the family as ‘the most active site of sexuality’ (p.109). These mechanisms that applied power and knowledge to sex, included the hysterization of women’s bodies (the female body was negatively constructed in terms of pathology and medical discourse), the pedagogization of the sexuality of children (a child’s sexual activities was dangerous but paradoxically had natural urges that needed surveillance and control), the socialization of procreative behaviour, and the psychiatrization of perverse pleasures (certain behaviours were normalised and others that were pathologised required treatment). Homosexuality, associated with the last-mentioned mechanism, was therefore considered a perversity (Foucault, 1976).

This led Critical Theory to to offer a social critique of the psychiatrization of homosexuality and to also reveal how homosexuality threatens male-dominated structures, how a search for causes of homosexuality presupposes a problem, how offering any treatment of homosexuality is futile and a form of social control, and how ‘theories’ of homosexuality are irrelevant when constructing it as deviance (Heather, 1976). Defending this response, Heather (1976) remarks that causes of heterosexuality are not similarly sought, pointing to the incredulity of psychology’s parallel attempts at finding causes for homosexuality. In Critical Theory’s perspective, masculinity regulates male subjectivity, limits experimentation with identity and prevents intimate relationships amongst men because male bonding has become equalised with sexual desire and homosexuality (Duff, 1999). Sexuality gets conceptualized as a point of knowledge and discourse, and gay men’s challenges and experiences are conceptualized with the notions of homophobia and heterosexism, exemplifying the application of Critical Theory ideas.

Davies (1996a, p.41) quotes Weinberg’s definition of homophobia as the ‘dread of being in close quarters with homosexuals – and in the case of homosexuals themselves, self-loathing’, and following the argument that homophobia does not refer to a classic phobia, he reviews various authors who have renamed this concept ‘homoerotophobia’, ‘homosexophobia’, ‘homosexism’, ‘homonegativism’, or ‘shame due to heterosexism’. Additionally, ‘biphobia’ (p.42) refers to fear of and prejudice against bisexual persons. Davies (1996a) also distinguishes between internalized homophobia (gay, lesbian and bisexual persons fearing and loathing homosexuality) and institutionalized homophobia (discrimination against gay, lesbian and 66 bisexuals that arise from societal structures). Homophobia results from the entrenched belief that male homosexuality threatens the central patriarchal structure that accords dominance to men and their masculine values. Prejudiced (heterosexual) persons need to maintain their self-esteem through oppressing and categorizing others. They become persecutors, who, through scapegoating and projection, dissociate from their own unacceptable impulses and attack those to whom these impulses get attributed. For example, as a defence against the knowledge that heterosexuals perpetrate paedophilia, heterosexual people erroneously attribute child sexual abuse to homosexuals (Davies, 1996a).

Institutionalized homophobia, also called heterosexism, is the system that assumes heterosexuality is superior, natural and the only acceptable choice. Education, sports, media, employment and mental health professions incorporate such institutionalization. Davies (1996a) cites Tinney, explaining that social structures assume all people are heterosexual, oppressing through processes such as conspiring to silence gay issues, denying and rewriting culture and history to exclude positive references to homosexuality, denying the strength of the gay populace despite the statistics of homosexual behaviour, fearing open discussion of homosexual concerns, ghettoizing or creating defined public spaces for gay people, denying self-labelling of orientation, and reinforcing stereotypes to deny legal and social rights to gays and lesbians. Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers (2001) comment that homophobia became the sickness after homosexuality was removed from the DSM, representing a major shift in psychological theory about sexuality. In such ways, in the ideological context of heterosexism and homophobia, a socio-political view of homosexuality adopts a more holistic, critical and liberatory perspective than traditional (biological, legal, religious, sociological, medical, psychoanalytical) views.

4.2 Researching Homosexuality The many views of homosexuality have implications for how sexuality should be investigated. Qualitative methodology is preferable in the research of sexuality because it interrogates cultural meanings of gender, releases suppressed local voices and allows participants to become less objectified. As Foucault (1976) has explained, the study of sexuality and its ‘perversions’ arose out of the medical sciences. Consequently, Gay and Lesbian studies, as a contemporary school was antithetical to positivist research. Even 67

though positivistically-derived methods are discouraged, these same methods ironically were used to demystify heterosexist science itself (Gamson, 2000). Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) have commented that pre-1970’s research approached homosexual behaviour from the perspective of congenital and psychological pathology, but the post- 1970’s research adopted a social perspective. Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers (2001) echo that, following removal from the DSM, research into homosexuality shifted from the pathology model (deviance, sickness, diagnosis, etiology) to homophobia and heterosexuality. From the 1970’s, historical, ethnographic and autobiographical narrative formats were used. Thereafter, the constructionist perspective was absorbed into research, construing sexuality as socially constructed, avoiding essentialist assumptions. In the 1990’s, the movement, Queer Theory, rooted in literary theory, expanded this viewpoint with a poststructuralist focus and emphasised the operation of binary sexual oppositions in society (Gamson, 2000).

Gay and Queer Theory differed from its forerunners because it conceptualized heterosexuality and homosexuality not as identities, but as forms of knowledge and discourses (Gamson, 2000), opposing heteronormativity and heterosexist practices. Pioneered by Foucault, proponents criticized medical sciences for constructing a perverted identity of ‘other’ sexualities, indicating how discourse places ontological and experiential limits in the form of masculinity, for example, to regulate male subjectivities (Duff, 1999). Gay Theory criticizes the dominant views of sexuality because they are created by heterosexual theorists with heterosexual values (Stainton Rogers & Stainton Rogers, 2001). Textual practice was favoured over lived experience. Being gay, for Queer Theory, is not a unitary experience; therefore, research should not focus on identity (Gamson, 2000). Postmodern and social constructionist theories merged with Queer Theory to form Queer Studies.

In this study, allegiance tends towards Queer Theory and Queer Studies rather than to Gay and Lesbian studies, which through association with the gay liberation movement, advanced a political agenda, postulating specific criteria for a ‘truly gay person’ (De Cecco, 1981). Queer Theory does not postulate such criteria because it is compatible, for example, with ethnographic research that is not a site for mere revelation of identity, but for playing out various identities. Queer Theory is also preferred because the researcher- 68

author’s voice is not privileged through a self-indulgent autoethnographic narrative (Gamson, 2000).

4.3 Gay development and identity Developmental psychology refers to identity to account for growth and maturation of the human being. Identity is a modernist concept, evolving out of psychodynamic writing. According to Gershman (1983), Freud explained that human beings have neither an automatic sexual instinct, nor a fixed behavioural identity. Lacking such typical lower-animal characteristics, humans can create their identities. Identity, often threatened, must be maintained over any other intrapsychic behavioural determinant, including reality and pleasure principles.

Colgan (1988, p.101) defines identity as ‘a personal construct of self-worth’, and when positive, the individual understands himself internally as having a positive self-worth. In Colgan’s (1988) psychodynamic formulation, a positive identity enables the individual to give and receive love, and to contribute to others’ welfare, thereby achieving a satisfaction in love and work. When identity is negative, the individual engages in relationships that perpetuate a poor self-worth. This then affects intimacy (Colgan, 1988; Frost, 1997).

Identity is based on self-esteem regulation. Frost (1997) distinguishes between the sense of self (internal) and body narcissism (external) as two systems in such regulation. The internal system for gay men is defective because it is one of shame and because others perceive gay men as bad. Gay men do not grow up in a system where they are viewed as lovable and interesting. A positive self-esteem cannot be established when a boy struggles with shame and with the sense of being different (Frost, 1997).

Shame is the emotional fall-out from social isolation and rejection. Shame characterizes how the gay boy permanently feels about himself, believing ‘he is bad, or wrong, or damaged, or evil, or inadequate, or freakish, he senses that he does not meet his loved ones’ expectations either for them or for himself’ (Siegel & Lowe, 1994, p.57). Besides shame about his identity, the gay boy also feels guilt for causing conflict and shame to his parents. Classically, this may be indicated by a mother who blames an absent or distant father, and this father who blames the mother for being overprotective and so feminizing the boy (Siegel & Lowe, 1994).

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At the core, the most potent experience for the gay boy is the sense of difference. This is not merely a difference in terms of sexual desire or sexual orientation. Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) describe this as an existential difference. Siegel and Lowe (1994) elaborate on this in describing this difference throughout the developmental process. Growing up, gay boys experience a sense of being different from other boys. This sense of difference is vague and undefined, and can be a reaction to gender incongruity, particularly for the female-identified child. Manifested through behaviour, this difference leads to earlier stigmatization for the female-identified gay boy. The male-identified gay boy experiences stigmatization only when he is able to comprehend the category of homosexuality, but escapes social ostracism through gender-appropriate behaviour even though he feels lonelier than his female-identified counterpart. Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) agree that the difference, although primarily sexual, is expanded to sensitivities and to socialized images, and is maintained through oppressive social forces. Reinforcing the developmental difference, is the labelling throughout (modern) history of gay persons as ‘disorded, deviant, promiscuous, queer, perverted’ (Isaacs & McKendrick, 1992, p.193).

Different-ness is identified as the central, recurring concept in Siegel and Lowe’s (1994) model of gay development. They offer the following stage divisions: • ‘turning points’, namely, pre-emergence, self-acknowledgement and self- identification; • ‘coming out’, consisting of assuming a homosexual identity, accepting homosexuality and celebrating self-expression; • Maturing, including re-evaluation/renewal and mentoring.

In the pre-emergent phase, sex play in all boys is largely homosexual. However, this play is not defined as homosexual because boys may not have learned this label or are not sexually educated and also because the play is motivated by curiosity. A heterosexual boy may be more comfortable with group or mutual masturbation but not with kissing which may be attractive for a gay boy. Only after learning judgements from adults about such play, boys learn about socially acceptable uses for the body. Not merely physical pleasure and release, such play is different for a gay boy because of his desire for closeness or his experience of attraction towards peers. Following disclosure of being gay, however, adolescents are placed at risk, either for exile from the family, or at least, for receiving less familial support. Psychologically, a greater condemnation is not from the external 70

environment but from internalised negative judgments, leading to a loathing of the self. Because of this homophobia and the associated shame, adaptive strategies may be learnt. One strategy in adolescence and continuing into adulthood, is for the gay individual to cultivate multiple identities in a hostile world. Another strategy, isolation, also used to prevent detection, allows the pre-adolescent to separate from peers and family, withdrawing into an internalized world. Or, he develops a confrontational personality that responds with exaggerated femininity. These are the characteristics of the pre- emergence stage of the gay male (Siegel & Lowe, 1994).

Pre-emergence is followed by self-acknowledgement when different-ness is supplemented by ‘the added recognition that the difference is same-gender attraction’ (Siegel & Lowe, 1994, p.77). Sexuality is associated with affection and infatuation with another boy or man. For example, a gay boy invests (unrequited) emotions in sexual relations with a straight boy. Rejection follows, but the gay boy may also conclude that something is wrong with him. Often the conscious recognition of being gay occurs with the discovery that another male is attractive. Like heterosexual development, this realization occurs between ages thirteen and eighteen, even though for many men, this realization can occur in adulthood, particularly if such memories are repressed because of pressure from the homophobic environment. After acknowledgement, defences such as repression, denial and forgetting can help defy development of the natural category of being gay. These defences, however, sever boys’ true selves from their emotional selves. If social support was normative for the gay boy, then this would parallel the linear development of the heterosexual peer. Developmentally, therefore, the gay boy encounters interruptions or delays. The gay boy hovers between denial and acknowledgment, blocking or postponing chronological sexual development. Shame was the emotion of the pre-emergent stage, but guilt is the emotion of this self- acknowledgement stage. In this acknowledgement stage the gay boy acquires adaptive processes to self-alienation when he first gains knowledge about his homosexuality (Siegel & Lowe, 1994).

In the next stage, self-identification, the gay male has to confront the idea that others perceive him as deviant, and thereafter must adjust to social rejection. He must also accept the losses constituted in the heterosexual blueprint, including being a father and husband. This is the loss of the structure of life as it is known. For Siegel and Lowe 71

(1994), the gay male faces career losses in choices such as educational, pastoral or military domains. In this stage, adaptive strategies may include internalization of homophobia and subsequent self-hatred and lowered self-esteem. Other boys might develop a more affirmative construct. On the one extreme the individual celebrates his self; on the other, he faces complete repression of any memories of the emergence of homosexuality. In the middle of this continuum is the male who reveals his gayness in certain environments, but who lives life as a heterosexual (the closet gay). He fragments his identity but expresses homosexual needs in assigned places for sex contacts. The person who defines himself as bisexual is also midway on this continuum. For still others, another strategy is exaggerated condemnation of homosexuality and in its extreme, gay bashing. A refined aesthetic sensibility is a further form of adaptation to oppression. Those who do not repress homosexual emergence begin the self-discovery process, are sensitive to nuances and subtleties, and are guarded about self-revelation (Siegel & Lowe, 1994).

Dank (1971) confirms self-identification in coming out, but adds cognitive change to this process, following his finding that subjects in his study took on a new cognitive category, mostly changing the meaning of the category before placing themselves in the category. Changing the meaning involves finding a sense of cognitive belonging and emotional relief in a new construct and changing the negative stereotype of that category (Dank, 1971). This view agrees with Siegel and Lowe’s (1994) notion that an affirmative identity includes reconstructing societal stereotypes when self-identifying as gay.

The sense of difference pervades not just the internal world, but brings hostile reactions from the social world. Siegel and Lowe (1994, p.45) state, For a gay boy, safety is an illusion. Alienation and rejection replace the sense of protection, comfort, and belonging to which childhood ought to entitle him as his different-ness becomes increasingly apparent and begins to disturb both him and those who encounter him.

The reaction of adults to different-ness initially entails comparisons of the boy to those who conform to gender-appropriate behaviour (Siegel & Lowe, 1994). Boys are called ‘sissy’, ‘queer’, ‘pervert’, ‘homo’, ‘fag’ or ‘fairy’ (Frost, 1997; George, 2000).

The coming out phase begins with the stage of assuming a homosexual identity. The three sub-stages of this phase include disclosing to another gay man about being gay, then coming out in public, then openly confronting prejudice. The protagonist in the 72

autoethnographic narrative in Siegel and Lowe (1994, p.124) states, ‘I … began … a process of becoming who I was supposed to become, alternately on three fronts: becoming gay, becoming a man, and becoming a gay man’. Heterosexist rules need to be unlearned, and in the face of discrimination, the gay man is socialized into a new subculture. The connection to this culture, realized via sexual and emotional exploration, increases his self-esteem. External affirmation from another gay man is needed and the gay man proceeds with this in uncertainty. The task is therefore disclosure, then awaiting its consequences. The adaptive strategy of this stage is sexual experimentation, though intellectually the task is to make the shift towards the flexibility of the sex-emotion divide. This is a philosophical and intellectual restructuring about sex. To quote extensively, The sexually participating gay must be able to maintain the sexual-emotional connection when sex serves a communicative purpose, and also be able to suspend the relationship between sex and emotion for the unfamiliar new occasions when sex either serves a self-identifying purpose or serves no familiar purpose whatsoever, except the pure enjoyment of itself (Siegel & Lowe, 1994, p.128).

The gay man has to discard religious, moral and ethical restrictions, and invent a sexuality where identity is built through sex acts. Through the gay sub-culture the gay man ‘learns, consciously or subconsciously, that nobody can heal a damaged self-concept alone, and as he encounters others of his kind, he takes more risks’ (Siegel & Lowe, 1994, p.132).

At this transitional stage, a variety of partners is sought. In cruising behaviour, partners are screened, even unconsciously, in line with fantasy, but this allows discovery of hidden aspects of the self. This leads to early relationships, which are intense and uninhibited, but do not lead to a realistic attachment. First relationships, however, influenced by heterosexist conditioning, tend to be more conflictual than creative. The challenge is to restructure the relationship. Heterosexual maps such as monogamy and sexual fidelity are secondary to enhanced trust and open communication. More non-traditional arrangements such as threesomes, for example, require revitalized trust. The danger is that first relationships may be premature, occurring before the developmental stage of exploration has run its course (Siegel & Lowe, 1994).

The next sub-stage of the coming out phase involves accepting a homosexual identity. The gay man creates a family of choice - a kinship network established through the continuous coming out process. The impact on identity is a shift from being a homosexual to being a gay man, a new category with its own values. The adaptive 73

strategy of creating a family of choice serves to heal the loss of the split from the biological family of origin. The new family, which may include former lovers, biological family members and sex partners, may be used creatively for reasons broader than a heterosexist family of origin, that is, for love, friendship, fun, recreation, socializing or financial support. Siegel and Lowe (1994) seem to imply that the family of choice is a deliberate unidirectional action the gay man makes. It may not be so intentional. Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) place the emphasis more on the sub-culture that creates an extended surrogate or symbolic family for the gay person. The sub-culture contributes to the sense of difference, even though separate sub-groupings are differentiated within the sub-culture itself.

The support system that is built around a chosen community gains prominence in the stage of accepting a homosexual identity. The gay sub-culture has healing possibilities, because it legitimizes gay life when the gay man creates a family of choice. The gay man develops a critical view of the dominant society along with the chosen community’s function of re-orientation (Siegel & Lowe, 1994). Dank (1971) confirms this idea that a gay social context is valuable for self-acceptance, hypothesizing that those who identify themselves as gay outside of a context of interacting with similar men will be more prone to feelings of guilt.

In the stage of self-expression, the gay man progresses to feelings of pride and confidence about his identity. The impact of this includes positive changes in heterosexist persons and substitution of his negative views with positive values. Coming out is now approached as an act of self-love, and others are defined in binary categories of gay or not gay. Additionally this stage includes either activism for the gay cause or simpler public acts such as marching in a pride or holding a lover’s hands (Siegel & Lowe, 1994).

In Siegel and Lowe’s (1994) final developmental division of maturing, the gay man realizes that heterosexual people may not necessarily respond with hostility, but that gay men with internalized stigma may be equally hostile. The first sub-stage of this division, named ‘re-evaluation and renewal’, is akin to the traditional mid-life crisis. The individual becomes aware of the temporal limits of life, intensely self-examining his life, usually re- evaluating professional, social and paternal dreams, and also re-evaluating various roles. 74

This is easier for the gay than heterosexual man. The gay man is more prepared because he has been doing this since childhood and since he acknowledged the different-ness of his sexuality. This crisis is also more easily handled because, unlike the heterosexual man, he has separated sex and love, thus integrating the recreational purposes of sex. Also, the gay man has always considered AIDS (currently more appropriately referred to as HIV) in his sexual relationships, unlike the heterosexual man, who at a mid-life crisis, has to now consider this factor. The gay man has faced thoughts of death; the heterosexual man has not faced these thoughts in the context of sexuality. When Siegel and Lowe (1994) made these comments, AIDS had not reached the high incidence in the heterosexual community, as it has currently, feeding into the earlier belief that gay men face uncertainty and mortality more pervasively than heterosexual men. The gay man is also more prepared for aloneness, having been denied the social support systems logically granted to the heterosexual man. The gay man has developed reliance on his own resources. Depending on partnership history, freedom and attachment are re-examined in this stage and unlike heterosexual men, self-partnering with a family of choice is still an option. The gay man who has married faces particular decisions in this mid-life crisis. He is faced with fathering decisions, disclosure and a clinging to the learnt strategies of his heterosexual marriage. Gay men in this stage may also evaluate their need for procreation and raising children (Siegel & Lowe, 1994).

In the mentoring sub-stage, the gay man faces the health limitations that accompany aging and serial losses. Unlike the heterosexual man, the gay man’s history is filled with repeated familiarity with such stressors. The gay man has independence; he does not lose either emotional or institutional support which the heterosexual man loses with ageing. As a mentor, the older gay male nurtures, encourages and advises younger men, providing a supportive role, despite being the target of discrimination for his decreasing attractiveness and decreasing physical strength in a subculture, which obsessed with youth, has ‘glorified youthful masculinity as a defense against society’s feminized stereotyping’ (Siegel & Lowe, 1994, p.224). Siegel and Lowe’s (1994) model is a gay-affirmative theory, which downplays pathology even though it takes a developmental approach. Other writers, particularly those with a psychodynamic or object-relations influence, highlight the pathological factors in the construct of gay identity. A developmental perspective views coming out as an explorative continuous process in contrast with older ideas, such as Dank’s (1971, p.190) opinion of coming out as ‘the end of a search for … identity’. 75

Ideally, in Eriksonian identity formation, an interpersonal context facilitates experimentation with psychic and empathic peer attachments. The ego must express its needs, values and interests for self-actualization and psychodynamic integrity. However, unlike the boy with opposite-sex erotic and affective capacities, the boy with same-sex attractions does not receive validation and nurturance through adolescent object relations. The psychosocial and ideational ontogeny striking the identity of the boy is psychosexually incongruent. To adapt to this conflict, the boy develops a false identity, a heterosexual persona suppressing homoerotic motivations (Malyon, 1982). In colloquial language usage, this is referred to as being ‘in the closet’ or being a ‘closet queen’.

The ‘closet queen’ does not take on a homosexual identity but engages in homosexual relations for an extended period, states Dank (1971), who also quantifies this period as ten years or longer. Malyon (1982) adds that adaptation of a false identity interrupts identity formation and ego integrity. Conformity to social norms fragments the ego and ‘psychological defences become highly elaborated to bind the accompanying chronic anxiety and to maintain a tenuous and brittle false identity’ (Malyon, 1982). At the extreme, the identity of conformity that has the greatest internalised negative stereotypes is the ‘closet queen’ (Dank, 1971). The ‘closet queen’, in Dank’s (1971) sociological perspective, represents society’s image of the ideal homosexual because he accepts the stereotypes and feels guilt for doing what homosexuals do, ‘yet believes he is really different from homosexuals is some significant way’ (p.193). On a psychological level, though, fear, anxiety and contaminated self-worth form the basis of the ‘closet’ subjectivity.

Identity is not built without reference to an outer reality. Socialization builds the ego, and identity, as a pillar in the ego, becomes affected through socialization - a biased heterosexist socialization (Malyon, 1982). Unlike heterosexuality, anticipatory socialization is absent in homosexuality (Dank, 1971). Through socialization, homophobic beliefs become unconscious introjects of the ego as well as a conscious affect and belief system. Guilt too results from these introjects into superego functioning. Developmental processes are skewed in a gay man because the homophobic introjects become etched both during pre-genital and latency phases, and with conscious homoerotic motivations in the genital period, the adolescent begins his identity struggles with an ego that constructs homoerotic realizations as alien. The boy 76

cannot resolve this. He considers his desires repulsive and therefore cannot develop a positive self-worth (Malyon, 1982).

From boyhood, through others responding to the different-ness, self-esteem takes its biggest blow. With a low self-esteem, the gay male believes he is unlovable. Later, the external system regulating identity then has to compensate with a focus on the body or on behaviours such as lying and hiding. External or addictive agents (sex, alcohol, food, body-building, another man) decide the positive sense of self in identity dysfunctions (Colgan, 1988). This external system becomes the focus in intimacy because an external object does not satisfy the internal needs, and gay men continue to feel shame towards their real selves. A cycle ensues where the external system reels into a fantasy and the search for the idealized love object is dynamically a (failed) search for self-esteem. Frost (1997) relates this to Kohut’s grandiose self. This is a distorted self.

The distorted self, with its introjects, shapes the subjectivities for intimacy and sex. As adults, many gay men still carry homophobic introjects with them. This influences preferences for partners and sexual activities, consequently influencing how intimacy is played out. Personal advertisements on internet sites (e.g. Gaydar, Mambaonline, GaySA) and popular gay tabloids (e.g. Exit, 2005, 2006) illustrate how the social system determines choices and how gay men themselves feed into the heterosexist socialization of this system. For instance, many personal advertisements for sexual partners or relationships show men looking for SA/SL partners. SA and SL are abbreviations for ‘straight-acting’ and ‘straight-looking’. Other advertisements specify ‘no fems’ or ‘no queens’, even extending to racial restrictions, such as ‘whites only’.

Du Plessis (1999) comments that the popular ‘no fats, no fems’ restriction in advertisements indicates idealizing of youth and appearance. George (2000) explains that the ‘no fems’ requirement is another message of internalized homophobia when a man looks for a partner. Afraid of threats to their own fragile egos, and taking on a heterosexual or ‘butch’ or ‘SA/SL’ personas themselves, the homophobia has been internalised and determines choices of partners. Siegel and Lowe (1994) concur that such requirements for partners are defences against the stereotypical images spawned by society. Based on these ideas, I believe that sexual attraction can be argued to be subjective and personal, but is still principally influenced by heterosexist socialization. 77

The psychotherapist must help the gay patient challenge introjected homophobia to redress gay identity development.

Identity about the physical self can be influenced by the gay social context. The broader gay culture places increased value on both physical attractiveness and youth (du Plessis, 1999; Weinberg & Williams, 1975). Frost (1997) examines studies that illustrate how gay men experience ‘accelerated aging’, that is, the gay man in comparison to his heterosexual chronological age peers, experiences himself as older than he is, particularly in a culture that values youth. Likewise, Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) confirm that studies have indicated that negative stereotypes are compounded with age-conscious and age- associated prejudice aimed at older gay men. These ideas suggest social constructionist thinking which can examine how values and stereotypes affect the development of identity within a changing social environment.

The physical identity, however, should not be equated with femininity. Too often, homosexuality is equated with a feminization of the male, but this needs questioning. Even though dominant homophobic images create the image of the gay individual as an effeminate, limp-wristed ‘moffie’ or ‘sissie’ or ‘queer’, an ironical twist of body representation appears predominant in gay culture. Sullivan (1999) describes how homosexual men in gay clubs parody the masculine: the gymed muscular bodies, the proximity of sweat, the hunting for sexual partners all create a self-conscious sexuality - ways in which gay men have appropriated the ‘very male supremacy that stigmatises and marginalizes them’ (p.12). For Sullivan (1999), this is thus a way of reclaiming masculinity in a society that once denied masculinity to gay men.

The gay liberation movement imprinted a particular notion of gay identity into social consciousness following its reaction to the view that homosexuality is deviant or perverse, but continued to rigidify sexuality because it neglected the fluidic, polymorphous and corporeal features of erotic pleasure (De Cecco, 1981). For De Cecco (1981), the gay liberation movement instilled the notion of a ‘truly gay person’ – a trained gay individual satisfying certain requirements in sexual behaviours and in the love object (another ‘truly gay person’). Gay liberation men fostered particular criteria: engaging in open relationships, having only gay friends, working alongside gay co- 78 workers and not working for the ‘establishment’ (De Cecco, 1981). Denouncing the narrowness of such criteria, De Cecco (1981) explains: Relationships are required to be both sexual and affectional and to exist in substance as well as in form. Lovers must build a nest together, live and stay together, share their nest with other couples, pool their resources, and bequeath what is left to the surviving partner.

Amusingly, De Cecco (1981) continues that a ‘truly gay person’ is expected to have extinguished internalised homophobia. Tests were devised to assess this achievement. According to this gay liberation view, the gay person must reveal his identity to the heterosexual world, particularly parents, siblings and grandparents, followed by doing ‘missionary work among the heathen’ (p.54) or interpreted less emotively, educating heterosexuals. With a distinct identity, minority social status was created, followed by fights for equal legal rights because of discrimination.

In response to criticisms to the aforementioned enforcing of a lifestyle and subjectivity for living out a particular gay identity, De Cecco (1981) outlined four components of sexual identity: (a) biological sex: determined at birth through identification of genital apparatus; usually morphological and chromosomal sex are congruent; (b) gender identity: a conviction of being male or female; in post-operated transsexuals, gender identity agrees with morphological sex but not with chromosomal sex; (c) sex-role: culture decides which physical and psychological characteristics are male or female; these characteristics become stereotypes of masculinity and femininity; (d) sexual orientation: this is not a unitary concept but can be further subdivided: • Physical sexual activity: identifying the person’s erotic bodily contact with one or more others; this may or may not involve genital contact; • Interpersonal affection: love or trust associated with friends, lovers, co-workers, marital partners; this may or may not involve physical sex acts; • Erotic fantasies: mental images of individuals performing physical sexual activities or engaged in idealized, romantic or affectional relationships. De Cecco (1981) recommends that research look within and between these components, claiming that such classification will improve clarity in discussions of homosexuality.

The development of gay identity is a distressing process. Besides ‘coming out’, the developmental path of gay men lacks positive gay role models because older gay men 79 came out both before the era of AIDS and before the gay rights movement. The older generation developed gay identities under persecution and isolation. For these older men, development of a gay identity occurred mainly through being highly sexual active to make connections with other gay men, but AIDS (initially) altered this once dominant means of establishing gay identity (Frost, 1997).

Identity is not only a reference to sexual preference or orientation. Other than the sexual identity that has been discussed, an individual also takes on identities such as ethnic, racial, religious, vocational, cultural and national identities. Often these identities influence and transact with the important sexual identity. Vocational identity overtly illustrates this. Isaacs and McKendrick (1992), for example, contended that service occupations (e.g. social work) attract gay persons because a compensatory process allows them to cope with alienation when they feel needed by others. High profile positions also compensate for low self-esteem in allowing amassing of material possessions. Even though disclosure of sexual identity is inhibited in the workplace, the freedom of certain occupations (e.g. performing arts) prevents the stress that could otherwise result from dual (i.e. ‘closet’) identities (Isaacs & McKendrick, 1992).

Relevant to this research are the racial, community and cultural identities of the participants. Referring to ethnic minority groups, Moon (1996) states gay men must confront integrating their racial and cultural identities with their sexual identities. Because of past sociopolitical discrimination against Black South Africans, reference to research on ethnic minorities, such as Moon (1996), may offer insight to working with persons who are oppressed because of race. The challenges of Black clients include specific coming out difficulties, establishing a place in the gay community when already being oppressed, and difficulties in reconciling sexual orientation with racial identities. This includes adjusting to the largely Eurocentric gay culture.

This sub-section incorporated discussion on ‘identity’. However, this concept psychologizes complex lifestyles and varied behavioural practices, whether social, romantic or sexual. Weeks (1991) argues that there is no single gay identity. Heterosexual men also engage in sex with other men, and sexual behaviour in different contexts (e.g. in prisons) problematizes any real monolithic concept such as a gay identity. The idea of a ‘gay identity’ is a product of social changes in the last few hundred 80

years, rather than an expression of ‘essential differences between homosexual and other people, whether rooted in biology, psychology or environmental shaping’ (Weeks, 1991, p. 104, emphasis is Weeks’).

4.4 Coming out and intimacy After a gay male acknowledges his identity, he struggles with intimacy. Formulations of gay development, therefore also link coming out, intimacy and relationships as the guiding pivot of gay development. For example, Coleman’s framework (discussed at length below) primarily makes these links, being a frequently cited model in literature on coming out and intimacy.

Gershman (1983) generalizes that all people are in closets because they wear many facades demanded by societal codes, and so only in few instances can a person come out and be truly open and honest. Any characteristic when revealed, making a person feel inferior, rejected or humiliated, implies a coming out process. For psychoanalysts, neurotic defences hide the real self. Yet, these defences support the person and through coming out they get removed. Anxiety and fear result. Expressing the true self brings anxiety. Not expressing the true self brings anxiety. This is the emotional conflict.

Coming out is only one aspect of identity development (Isaacs & McKendrick, 1992). It can be experienced at any age, but identity formation, as the defining element of this process, implies dealing with intrapsychic conflicts usually associated with primary adolescence. The gay male experiences two phases of identity formation. The first opportunity is presented during adolescence and the second is the coming out process, the completion of which restores a healthy ego and prepares the stage for mature intimacy (Malyon, 1982).

Sociologically-based views of coming out identify the gay community as an important condition for the process. Isaacs and McKendrick (1992, p.181) define coming out as, a set of experiences, and the consequent interpretation of them by the person as “legitimate”. It involves recognition by the person that he is “homosexual”, and it is associated with the external rituals of the sub-culture which impact on the identity of the individual.

A similar community or sub-culture element characteristic of such sociological definitions is also evident in Dank’s (1971) view, which, based on deviance, 81

conceptualizes coming out as a change to a homosexual identity, associated predominantly with entering a homosexual community. Social contexts form the conditions isolated as leading to self-identification as homosexual (Dank, 1971). In Dank’s (1971) view, coming out occurs if other homosexuals are present, and the individual must perceive the contexts to be homosexual, such as acting in social situations with other homosexuals, reading about homosexuality, or visiting physical settings. ‘One-sex’ locales (male only contexts) pre-empting coming out include mental institutions, military settings, school dormitories, YMCAs, gay bars and environments for impersonal sex (Dank, 1971). In Dank’s (1971) study another context involves having a relationship with a heterosexual, followed by being exclusively homosexual. This view from deviance theory, however, assumes a change of sexual identity – it assumes everyone is originally heterosexual; it assumes ‘normal’ identity is heterosexual. Deviant people make the shift!

In Isaacs and McKendrick’s (1992) study, 88% of their sample experienced coming out from mid-adolescence to young adulthood, but the oppressive South African context at the time of their study brought the mean age of coming out to 22, a relatively high age compared to that of gay men in the more liberal U.S context at the same time. In 1971, Dank’s (1971) conclusion that coming out was occurring at increasingly younger ages, was based on his finding that the mean age for coming out of men aged 30 and older was 21, but for the below-30 age group in his sample, the mean age was 17, leading him to predict that coming out will continue to occur at earlier ages.

Many situations contribute to the coming out process, and in Isaacs and McKendrick’s (1992) study the most common factors included this process ‘just happening’ and the gay man seeking out other gay persons. In contrast to this sociologically-based approach, the psychologically-rooted model of Coleman uses conceptual recourse to identity development and attachment. Coleman’s (cited in Colgan, 1988) model of the coming out process conceptualizes healthy developmental tasks of attachment and separation that adult gay men have missed. In this model, the pre-coming out stage comprises the period from birth until the conscious recognition of being ‘different’ from other males. The difficulty in this period is that gender non-conforming boys experience rejection and emotional abandonment. Parents who are not secure within themselves do not offer a healthy environment for the boy’s development. Boys are punished for deviating from 82 traditional sex-roles and for emotional expressiveness. Identity does not develop positively because individuality is curtailed. A rejecting, disapproving, hostile father faced with a gender non-conforming boy creates stress and the boy is set up for problems with intimacy with other males. The boy needs an emotional connection with a significant male to form healthy adult bonds (Colgan, 1988).

Colgan (1988) continues to draw on Coleman for whom the coming out stage entails acknowledging difference in terms of homosexual affect, and both self and others accepting this. George (2000), however, conceptualizes self-acknowledgement as the first phase and sharing with other gay people as the second phase. Colgan (1988) explains that psychologically, the male responds to difference negatively. Homosexual boys in his study were unhappy because of external gender non-conformity (appearance and overt behaviour), but also because of internal gender non-conformity (feeling different sexually). In heterosexual socialization all males need to be emotionally inexpressive, but for gay males gender non-conformity creates additional stress. Consequently, the emerging homosexual male has a derailed positive identity in general, a negative sexual identity specifically, and few or no opportunities for healthy expressions of intimacy. At greatest risk for intimacy dysfunction and negative identity formation is the pre- homosexual boy who overtly had gender non-conforming behaviours. He withdraws and rejects himself, and the parents withhold emotional reassurance. Even if his parents value his sense of difference, peers do not assure acceptance. A gender conforming pre- homosexual boy though, resorts to secrecy and self-rejection of his sexuality, but he too then over-separates or over-attaches (Colgan, 1988).

The next developmental stage, exploration, can usually repair early damages. In the exploration phases, gay men in the ages 18-24 engage in same-sex sexual contacts according to Colgan (1988). Other gay men may offer support. This stage is akin to the demands of George’s (2000) second stage of coming out when the gay male acknowledges to other gay people that he is gay, builds a support system, participates in dating and explores male-male relationships. George (2000, p.163) compares the affect of this stage to the experience of being in a ‘candy store filled with attractive men [wanting] to try this one and this one and this one’. But this candy store encounter is problematic because boys have no guidelines for dating men. Only guidelines for adolescent heterosexuals are known. For heterosexual boys, additionally, certain end-products of dating (date, love, 83

marriage, buy a house, live together) are also known. Gay boys do not have this. The candy store mentality is a developmental process that needs to be encountered fully. George (2000) comments that non-gay mental health practitioners regard this phase as proof that gay men are fickle with fickle relationships. These are just homophobic messages. George (2000, p.164) further reminds gay men, ‘there is nothing wrong with your adolescent behaviour’ and also that relationships - begun when a man is emotionally an adolescent - would not easily succeed, just as heterosexual adolescent marriages are also unstable. In my opinion, critics, both gay and straight, miss the initial developmental benefits of this behaviour, leading to their erroneous judgements that gay men are therefore ‘promiscious’.

In this explorative phase, drugs or alcohol-use accompanies sex behaviour and many men fixate on sexual contact as the sole means of connecting with other gay men, at the risk of compromising intimacy. According to Silverstein (cited in Colgan, 1988), one way this is acted out is in taking on the role of a ‘rejector’: the gay man rejects others out of hostility to his father who conditioned him to believe he was unworthy of love; another way is over-attachment when taking on the role of a ‘suitor’: abandoned by his father, he still believes in romantic love and searches repeatedly for the perfect love that his father has denied.

Exploration in healthy development then leads onto the next stage - first relationships - through which a man can express physical and affectional attraction. The problem, though, is that males are socialized into denying affective expressiveness. A positive self- worth helps successful resolution of this stage, but over-separation and over-attachment make this stage particularly demanding. Over-attachment patterns include ‘limerance’ which excludes separation; and here too, balance between attachment and separation is absent (Colgan, 1988). Colgan (1988), writing about Coleman’s model, maintains that a man should ideally traverse the first-relationships stage via many short-term relationships, and in each one the gay man refines his identity with greater self-knowledge and self-understanding, and refines his skills for being in an intimate relationship by developing more realistic expectations of his partner. Learning from his experience, he gradually chooses one person who appears to suit his needs. In essence, he learns about balancing identity and intimacy (p.113).

A safe relationship is a context to redress early ‘developmental wounds’ (Colgan, 1988, p.114). In this stage, relationships often adapt to stress unless a crisis ensues, in which case, crisis 84

management treatment should involve both partners, focussing on removing the external agent causing the crisis. On the individual level, a positive self-concept has to be renewed through psychotherapeutic treatment; on the dyadic level, interpersonal communication skills need to be taught (Colgan, 1988). These various stages should lead to healthy lifespan development for the gay male, and if not, patterns of dependency and overseparation result. In any of these stages, the balance of intimacy and identity is re- enacted. This harmony can be enhanced when the gay man, as client, rediscovers his positive identity through the intimacy of an empathic and accepting relationship with a consistent good object, the therapist.

Before coming out, the homosexual orientation brings shame and anxiety, entailing living secretly in a state of fear - the fear of leanings being made public. Gershman (1983) maintains that a dependent homosexual externalises an idealized image, an image forcing expectations onto the love object. The love object cannot fulfil the fantasies of the dependent homosexual and a relationship is severed. Gershman (1983), following the lifestyle taxonomy, adds that dysfunctional and asexual homosexuals generally are the homosexual sub-types that seek psychotherapeutic help, and, as a biased sample, create perceptions that pathology is determined by homosexuality.

In a psychodynamic framework, intimacy and identity create a dialectical movement. A balance between these forces builds psychological health (Colgan, 1988). A man must like and know himself to develop emotional intimacy, and if this positive self-worth was played out in early familial interactions, then emotional intimacy is experienced (George, 2000). For gay men this is rare. To experience emotional intimacy, the man must work on his sense of self (George, 2000). Gay men are beset with unconscious developmental delays, and a gay man will find it difficult to re-enact these object relations in everyday life (the significant other has a derailed development too). Therefore, to attain mature intimacy, he needs to re-enact these dynamics in psychotherapy.

Emotional intimacy involves mutual self-disclosure. For gay men this is threatened by three main factors, namely competition between men, aversion to vulnerability with men, and few role models (Moon, 1996). As a sign of problems with male intimacy, George (2000) isolates the instance of a man being unavailable for relationships. In psychodynamic terms this is conceptualised as overseparation that involves the rigid 85

maintenance of identity (Colgan, 1988). Being too busy or overscheduled or waiting for former lovers or choosing unavailable men or using the body as an excuse not to meet men, are all indications (George, 2000) of overseparation.

Johnson (cited in Colgan, 1988) has explained that overseparation in adulthood can be traced to rejection by cold parents during infancy when a lack of basic trust promoted exclusive dependency on the self. This leads to an inability to experience intimacy in relationships. In overseparation, a man controls or denies his affective life. Malfunctioning of the intimacy system, however, causes affective needs to take over to create overattachment behavioural patterns (Colgan, 1988). When infant-parent bonding is prematurely disturbed, abandonment results (Johnson, cited in Colgan, 1988). In adulthood, this pattern of needs is expressed in overattachment.

Colgan (1988) cites studies of male babies being at a greater risk of rejection, and subsequently they experience overattachment as adults. For gay men, unique factors such as gender non-conformity complicate development. If a boy is effeminate, intense rejection follows. That then promotes adult overattachment. In adulthood, the gay man overattaches because he seeks to re-establish those emotional bonds interrupted in childhood. If overattachment does not occur in these cases, intimacy is affected because emotional expressiveness is curtailed in boys who have intimacy problems as adults. In both instances, gay men will not achieve balance between intimacy and separation.

In contrast, the scale tips towards the intimacy end of the scale when overattachment sacrifices identity. In overattachment, there is insecure attachment, communication of positive feelings only, suppression of negative feelings, depression, clinging behaviours, grandiose romantic preoccupations, neglect of self and tolerance of emotional, psychological and/or physical abuse (Colgan, 1988).

The gay man finds intimacy more difficult than the heterosexual man (Malyon, 1982). Sex-role stereotypes, masculine conditioning, homophobia, a lack of ‘eroticised and affectional pre-intimacy involvements with other males, and the relative unavailability of models of male intimacy’ all contaminate the potential for long-term and mutually-satisfying relationships amongst gay men. As Malyon (1982, p.67) illustrates, psychotherapeutic attachment can address this arrested capacity: 86

It is sometimes necessary that conflict resolution, de-conditioning, and cognitive re- structuring precede intimate involvement. The transference relationship has a special efficacy in this regard. It provides an affective interpersonal milieu in which the homophobic and neurotic misperceptions and conflicts that are sometimes stimulated by intense emotional involvement can be made manifest and transformed.

With relationships, a primary clinical theme in therapy would be anxiety management. Gay men grow up being vigilant of being found out, learning to decide quickly if another man is ‘gay, interesting, interested, or a danger’ (Frost, 1997, p.275). This behaviour is learnt, becoming autonomous to the extent that other men may be located for anonymous sex, for non-anonymous sex, or for dating (Frost, 1997). From the social-interactionist viewpoint, a person who starts to come out passes hints in social relations about his gay identity (Weinberg, 1978). I would theoretically expand this: these hints get conveyed even well beyond the coming out phase, hence gay men may be able to receive these intuitive and non-verbal messages. In interactional contexts, I have observed this intuitive sensitivity of recognizing and identifying gay men or potential male sex partners who are not necessarily other self-identified gay men. In my experience this ability is commonly referred to as ‘gaydar’ within the contemporary gay sub-culture.

Homophobia does not only influence the self-concept or personality structure, but also affects intimate relationships. George (2000) contends that being a gay couple is more difficult than being gay because of the internalised message that gay men cannot maintain long-term relationships. Many men adopt this nihilistic view, particularly after a few short-term relationships. A self-fulfilling prophecy and a self-defeating belief system about failed relationships become evident.

Regarding intimacy problems, Isaacs and McKendrick (1992), describing the sexual constructs of gay persons and borrowing the concept of transitional object from object- relations psychodynamic theory, interpret the relationship with another gay person as a transitional object that gets rejected before it may reject. Stemming from anxiety about intimacy, the gay person seeks another object, maintaining the cycle of intimacy at an erotic and transitory level. However, this is not purely an internal experience; the sub- culture, according to Isaacs and McKendrick (1992), sanctions and validates cruising behaviour, multiple sex partners and sexual addiction. A heterosexist bias seems evident in their interpretation that takes on a pathological and negative slant on gay sex behaviours. Even though a distorted pattern of intimacy occurs, this particular view ignores greater homophobic and societal dynamics that contribute to these defensive 87

patterns, downplaying the specific function of sexual expression in establishing an identity for gay men. Such a view, expressed at a time prior to gay-affirmative therapy’s insights, focused on unhealthy attachment patterns.

This unhealthy intimacy occurs when identity is based on external agents. Dependence on external agents threatens emotional well-being and so attachment and separation are not well-balanced in a relationship. Opposed to this, healthier intimacy is possible when self-affirming individuals interact with each other. This includes the affective components of trust and care, the behavioural component of effective communication, and the cognitive component of affirmations in the relationship. Intimacy is healthy when needs are respected and attachment valued, yet retaining the self through separation (Colgan, 1988). In a relationship, contracting allows partners to negotiate and clarify the boundaries of the relationship and preferred sex styles (Isaacs & McKendrick, 1992).

A Foucauldian view would sideline the views of coming out in the above developmental perspective, because it would contextualize it as a historical moment, associated with power relations and social control. The urge to confess homosexuality has become conceptualised ubiquitously as central to being gay, but a Foucauldian analysis comments that the idea of confessing sexuality is a Christian view – in religion, sin must be confessed, and in psychoanalysis, this confessionary stance was reinforced. Coming out represents, through confession, that homosexuality exists, in contrast to sexuality before the 17th Century (such is in the Roman Empire, India and Japan) where sexuality, rather than considered to be dirty and shameful, was considered artistic and special (Ipce, 2000).

4.5 Sexual expression Even though sexual behaviour is the integral, often defining expression of gay development, identity, intimacy and worldview, it is discussed here separately. As Weeks (1991, p.106) points, out, homosexuality is not just a ‘personal predilection or a series of erotic practices’, but a ‘way of life … inevitably, inextricably concerned with sexual needs and desires and with intimate relationships’. Significant in understanding men’s sexuality, is that the prevalence of male-male sex is not restricted to self-identified gay men. Heterosexual and bisexual males, whether married or not, older or youth, may also engage in sexual contact with other males. Dank (1971) bravely reports that heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual 88

persons may have homosexual feelings or engage in homosexual sex acts, making the point that a homosexual identity is separate from male-male sexual behaviours. Another study supporting this, is substantive research conducted by Savin-Williams (cited in Davies, 1996d, p.132), with findings that included, ‘not all homosexual adolescents are sexually active’, ‘many homosexual adolescents are heterosexually active’, ‘many heterosexual adolescents are homosexuality active’, and ‘for probably a great many people, their sexuality is not fixed and may change over time’. Kinsey, though, has been the most famously cited seminal sexology researcher who reported similar findings about male sexual behaviour.

Kinsey and his associates observed that sexual orientation fluctuates, finding no clear exclusive sexuality. The Kinsey studies expressed surprising findings in 1948 when one in three men reported a homosexual experience since adolescence, although exclusive homosexual practices were found to be less common (De Cecco, 1981). Specifically, the Kinsey statistic was that 37% of men had at minimum one sexual encounter to orgasm with another male during adulthood (Davies, 1996a). Using Kinsey’s findings, De Cecco (1981) elaborates that homosexuality is not found in few individuals only, but is integral to human sexuality. According to De Cecco (1981, p.58), Kinsey’s empirical findings supported Freud’s notions of bisexuality, who as a pansexualist, ‘believed that all human beings are capable of making a homosexual object choice and do, in fact, make one in the unconscious’.

Opposite gender sexuality is considered ‘normal’ because of the anatomical logic and biological morphology linked to sex and reproduction, and any other sexuality not fitting into procreation norms is therefore considered abnormal (Siegel & Lowe, 1994). Siegel and Lowe (1994) add that biochemical-emotional systems do not always work towards the procreative design. Rather, they explain, feelings operate according to a psychosexual system that subverts the procreative premise. The premise for humans (as higher mammals) is that sex signifies language or recreation or expression. Sex can therefore be passion and love, or it can be meaningless and playful. It does not need to occur in a relationship; it does not require emotional maturity, connection, commitment, or privacy. It also need not be limited to a specific number of participants or a particular frequency. Heterosexual rules do not necessarily apply to sex, although people choose these rules, and sex for gay men ‘requires only the abandonment of irrelevant restrictions, assumptions, suppositions, fears, and judgements’ (Siegel & Lowe, 1994, p.131). De Cecco (1981) summarises anti-procreation views by rhetorically asking, 89

is it possible that particular genitalia lose their central importance and the partner’s general physical and emotional appeal, the charged situation, and the unusual relationship created within the encounter become the focus of interest?

De Cecco’s view, in response to prevailing one-dimensional definitions of homosexual sexuality, argues that sexuality is not necessarily experienced solely for genital goals.

As an example of one-dimensional definitions, Isaacs and McKendrick (1992, p.76) summarise literature to define homosexual sexuality as: An expression of physical love toward another person or people. It culminates in an act of intimate responses leading to bodily (and emotional) exploration. This exploration is governed by fantasy and genital, oral, and physical sensation. The majority of homosexual sex acts (either individually or with others) culminate in heightened sensate arousal leading to complete ejaculation with orgasm.

This definition focuses on the physical expression of the sex act, ignoring social and psychological constituents of being gay, such as identity, intimacy and desire. If Isaacs and McKendrick’s (1992) skewed and psychologically conservative definition served to identify homosexual persons, then even some heterosexual people (such as occasional MSM or prisoners) could be gay. Moreover, their description assumes a goal-directed (orgasm) and mechanistic (‘physical love’) view of gay sexuality, attributing sexual motivation predominantly to physical impulses. Such a prevailing view is concordant with popular sexual discourse that Hamilton (1995) describes as constructing a genital focus of male sexuality that is directed at penetration and orgasm.

In contrast, De Cecco (1981, p.64) describes sexual orientation as ‘a tapestry far richer and more intricate than … imagined’. Sex acts do not define identity. As Dank (1971) warns, theoretically, a person can be homosexual and still not have engaged in sex. This idea links with the argument that a male does not need to have had any sexual contact with a female to gain a heterosexual orientation.

According to Kaplan and Sadock (1981), just as heterosexual relationship patterns vary, so do homosexual patterns, but at the time this comment was made in 1981, they added that short-lived relationships may start in gay baths and bars, and few others in parks and public restrooms. Even in Isaacs and McKendrick’s (1992) review of literature, the dominant image of gay sexuality is of ‘promiscuous’ short-lived encounters. This idea is more an impression reinforced in media, and statistical data reviewed by Stainton Rogers and Stainton Rogers (2001, p.190) confirm that the ‘promiscuous gay man seems to be the 90 exception rather than the rule’. Other myths of gay sex behaviour include the mimicking of female or male sexual roles and satyriasis (Isaacs & McKendrick, 1992). These are misconceptions because homosexuals have individual preferences for sexual behaviours in the same way that heterosexuals do, and typically, stereotypes for male-male sex practices may be absent (Kaplan & Sadock, 1981). Kaplan and Sadock’s observations, particularly about the genesis of homosexual relationships and sexual behaviour, however, also seem one-dimensional because: • their medical, heterosexist model downplays sociocultural factors, • they were writing before the crisis of AIDS, the advent of which may have altered sexual behaviours, • their description of homosexuality ignores individual and relativist meanings of sexual behaviours, • they were writing when gay sub-culture was largely a fringe and underground culture, at a time preceding the assimilation of gay culture into the dominant culture. Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) present a similar picture of the gay sub-culture that seems distorted and one-sided, particularly in a hyperbolic presentation of the slang of a gay person. These authors have an unintentional mocking tone, and their outdated presentation creates a picture of a foreign, alien culture.

Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) explain that sexual behaviours peculiar to the gay sub- culture include focussing on genital, oral and anal bodily preferences, searching for the ideal sex object, sexual predation or ‘cruising’, ‘cruising’ in public and clandestine areas, the pursuit of erotic or pornographic materials, and relating to others in relationships as if they were transitional objects. Such findings, documented in South African society before gay rights were constitutionally and legally entrenched, reinforce popular stereotypes, even though other studies (e.g. Hamilton, 1995; Siegel & Lowe, 1994) have found that gay men express desires for long-term committed relationships.

Isaacs and McKendrick’s (1992) ‘empirical’ depiction of gay sex behaviour, however, could be deconstructed as a portrayal of an underground, subversive culture, selected to mask their fears about gay sexual behaviours threatening a dominant culture. Even in discussing the various sex acts, their tone implies the belief that these sex acts are inherently abnormal. Their unexamined assumptions keep their account in the camp of 91

the deviance perspective. They do, however, capitulate that ‘promiscuity’ is a false notion and sex-searching behaviours constitute the process of self-discovery (Isaacs & McKendrick, 1992, p. 83, authors’ emphasis): Searching behaviour accompanied by sexual testing out is not promiscuity per se, but an attempt to negotiate standards of identification and patterns of sexual comfort, and, of most importance, to achieve a means of self-verification. …Sexual searching satisfies many psychological components of the gay person.

This rationalization or justification of ‘promiscuity’ is not convincing, because it resorts to psychologizing without questioning the preferred values hidden in such messages. For the gay reader, such uncritical and free use of the term ‘promiscuity’ becomes offensive. In contrast, Siegel and Lowe (1994, p.131), in their narratives restructuring gay sexuality, remark that the term ‘promiscuity’ is associated with the ‘sociopolitical structure of a publicly monogamous relationship, marriage’. In other words, the hidden subtext of the term ‘promiscuity’ implies preferred heterosexist ways of sexual conduct and attachment.

My objection to the genital-focused view is that it reinforces oppressive discourse about gay male sexuality. Even though gay men can explore varied sexual practices, impersonal encounters are not the only expression of their sexuality. The point here is that practices outside heterosexual marriage and procreation threaten dominant discourse. Research requires a balanced view of sexuality without bias on heterosexist preferences of sex behaviours. Some gay men also desire extended emotional contacts, as opposed to quick genitally focussed encounters that feed into cultural stereotypes.

Like conventional male-female sex between married or attached persons, male-male sex may occur in traditional personalised spaces such as private homes. For predominantly heterosexual persons, this may include romantic or intimate social contexts such as marriage, attachments, established relationships or cohabitation, but also less romanticized relations such as ‘one-night stands’, ‘affairs’, or ‘swinging’. Outside of private homes, heterosexual persons may also resort to prostitution, escort agencies and massage parlors.

Public contexts for gay sex, however, in a sociological perspective, form part of a particular sub-culture, and contain features that may have unique characteristics. Within the framework of gay sub-culture, Isaacs and McKendrick (1992), focussing on the urban centre of Cape Town, classify gay social institutions into gay bars, gay clubs, gay literature 92

and book shops, and gay camping and cruising spots. Like most of their other findings, this categorization is not currently valid. Therefore, instead of their classification that was based on values and accessibility, I have devised a conceptual classification for MSM and gay contexts, based on socio-sexual activities and their organization. The discussion that follows uses the following classification system for discussion of male-male sexual expression in public contexts: • Gay clubs, bars and resorts (primarily established as social contexts) • Sex venues (formally-structured for sexual contacts) • Cruising locales and other venues (appropriated as sexually-inspired contexts) • Media-based contexts (print, internet, telecommunications) • Institutional contexts This classification concerns the public and cultural contexts of sexuality rather than personal and private domains.

Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) found the gay bar to be the most common social setting for gay people to meet. The gay club, which has a dance floor, allows expression of sexuality and intimacy without societal judgement, and patrons functionalise their gay identities in being assimilated into the sub-culture (Isaacs & McKendrick, 1992). Isaacs and McKendrick (1992), however, describe gay clubs with concepts such as cloning and ‘discotheque psychosis’ (p.99), drawing ideas from explanations of joining a cult. Still, they describe how bars and clubs allow possibilities for cruising and camping behaviour, with some clubs physically structured with spaces for sexual activities. Gay clubs and bars, though, are primarily established as social settings.

Sex venues are contexts created purposefully for recreational sex such as sex bars, massage or escort parlors, adult (franchise) shops and bath-houses. Male-male sex includes the variety that has been described as anonymous, casual or impersonal. These are not neutral descriptions; I prefer the more generic liberal term of recreational sex, a term consistent with the gay-affirmative perspective. Also agreeably naming such practices, Weeks (1991) argues that ‘public sex’, a phenomenon that assumed visibility in the 1970’s, normalised sex as recreation and pleasure, and even with the AIDS crisis in the 1980’s, gay men were predicted to respond with safer forms of sexual pleasure rather than resorting to celibacy or monogamy.

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One context that allows for the social organization of the recreational variety includes steam or gay baths, namely, ‘licenced men’s health clubs that provide a setting for impersonal homosexual sex’ (Weinberg & Williams, 1975, p.126). Sex in such settings is construed as ‘easy sex’, that is, ‘sex without commitment, obligation, or a long-term social relationship’ (p.125), which for Weinberg and Williams (1975) supports equivalent research findings that impersonal sex in this setting is not qualitatively better than personalised sex, but situationally expedient. Also, such sex does not always substitute for personal sex, but functions as an end in itself or for variety, and can even lead to more personalized involvements.

Weinberg and Williams’ (1975) analysis of the steam bath context, conducted through fieldwork observation and interviews, describes a known, shared and organized system that fosters opportunities for diverse physical preferences in encounters socially bounded for impersonal sex. In gay baths, rules and territories bound sex as an outcome, which often restrict any socializing and close off expectations for future contacts with the same partners. Its physical layout commonly includes a steam room and/or sauna, lockers, private cubicles, shower and toilet amenities, and a ‘dormitory’ or ‘orgy room’ (p.127). Behaviourally, visitors share ‘road maps’ or rules for sexual and social interaction. Interaction is congenial rather than friendly because sexual intent is transformed into interaction through nonverbal signs and body language. These baths also foster anonymity through limited lighting, reduction of clothing to a towel and delimiting of conversation. Anonymity allows increased sexual arousal through social ease, and protection is offered by a locale considered ‘safe, inconspicuous, [and] private’ (p.129). Sex occurs in most areas of the setting, and the darker ‘orgy room’ (p.127) allows for group sex and spectator activity in addition to pursuit of coupling. Erection and orgasm, usually demanded in heterosexual performance, are not conditions in such settings, because of acts such as fellatio and receptive anal penetration.

In this way, gay baths offer impersonal sex that can be interpreted as informing a market mentality and objectification. However, this interpretation should be modified, add Weinberg and Williams (1975) for two reasons. First, emotions, even of friendliness, hurt, embarrassment, or rejection, do not indicate complete detachment because participants create meanings of their experiences, reacting emotionally, and second, participants could also define such relations as positive, constructing their experiences as 94

‘fun, enjoyable, or satisfactory’ which the ‘market-type social organization’ (p.135) conveniently facilitates. Still, these authors implicitly frame their analysis from assumptions characteristic of the sociological perspective of deviance.

Venues such as massage or escort agencies are also formal structures for sexual behaviour. This includes economically-transacted recreational sex encounters, and these venues are advertised in newspapers. However, gay men who seek sex-workers for sex straddle the classification system of gay sexual expression because they may also meet sex-workers in public spaces and cruising locales. Even though clients of sex-workers may be gay, as Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) explain, sex-workers may deny they are gay.

Cruising locales refers to openly public spaces that have been informally appropriated for the purposes of negotiating or engaging in sexual activities. These are settings not originally created for sexual purposes. The seminal work of Humphreys (cited in Koch, 2006), Tearoom trade: Impersonal sex in public places, which pioneered research into impersonal sexual gratification in closeted homosexuality, studied sex behaviours in the particular cruising locale of public restrooms. This research, regularly cited in academic texts, challenged stereotypical views of homosexual behaviour, showing that the men who engaged in such impersonal, anonymous, inexpensive sex were not exclusively gay. Humphreys found that 54% of the men were married and only 14% were gay or primarily interested in same-sex relationships (cited in Koch, 2006). Recently, such sex behaviour became contested on a public stage when the famous pop star, George Michael was discovered engaging in such ‘lewd’ behaviour in 1998. He was publicly ‘outed’ but later believed that he deliberately allowed himself to be arrested for this behaviour. Nevertheless, he proceeded to produce a pop song and music video about this discovery, creatively transforming the experience into personal and professional gain. (“Michael charged,” 1998, “Michael: My,” 2002).

Isaacs and McKendrick (1992, p.105), in their detailed analysis of these contexts, offer theoretical reflection on such sex behaviours, defining cruising (and camping) as a conscious and deliberate attempt to negotiate a liaison with another person (or people) for the primary purpose of engaging in … sexual activity. It involves self-awareness and the awareness of others, with the object of being noticed, observed, or indulging in generally coquettish [sic] behaviour.

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They describe the interactional dynamics of participants in cruising locales such as an internationally-known nudist beach, parks, gardens and railway stations. For gay men, these public locales, vicariously yet paradoxically, allow defiance, indirectly offering a public image, even though gay bashing and police raids have been reported. Camping, which involves particular behavioural styles and non-verbal cues, confers belonging in the sub-culture, verification of gay identity, and represents activity for conquest, testing behaviours and sexual release, but is also linked emotionally to internalised homophobia (Isaacs & McKendrick, 1992). Furthermore, activities in these settings are outlets for clandestine sexual contact for married, older or bisexual men who can participate in ‘fantasy construction in relative psychological safety’ (p.107). Cruising behaviour occurs in bars and clubs too, where such behaviour is more normative and therefore openly conducted.

Media-based contexts have evolved in complex and multiple ways since Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) described newspapers and publications as sources of making sexual and intimate contacts, although, as Davies (1996c) points out, men in rural areas may have less access to written literature. The advances in internet and telecommunications, however, have equalized the field of access to meeting partners, irrespective of geographical differences. One media-based means of contacting potential partners is through telephonically-mediated services. Gay men can call these lines to meet available partners in or nearby their residential locations.

Besides advertisements in print media (e.g. Exit, 2005, 2006) and telephonic technologies, the internet now allows gay men to make contact for sexual ends. Internet sites such as Gaydar, Mambaonline, GaySA are three popular South African media-based contexts that contain advertisements through which men can specify their needs, statuses and requirements. Respondents to the advertisements then make contact with prospective partners through email, telephone or on-line instant-messaging sessions. In a chat-room, or via webcam, consumers may opt for cyber-sex if they do not agree to a face-to-face meeting. Cyber-sex, a virtual encounter between two or more individuals who send messages of explicit sexual content, allows role-playing, fantasy, stimulation and gratification. It offers safer-sex practices and allows geographically-separated partners or strangers to engage in sexual expression (“Cybersex,” 2006; Stainton Rogers & Stainton Rogers, 2001), but can reach compulsive or addictive characteristics (Brody, 2000). Other than cyber-sex, internet advertisements allow quicker access to a variety of 96

sex partners, the opportunity to seek out specific types of partners and safer contexts for cruising behaviour. However, as explained (see p.76), the advertisements reflect patterns where gay men have become focussed on a search for idealized objects that imply introjected homophobia, heterosexist socialization and the use of defences that protect against both anxiety and the development of emotional attachments.

The fourth division, institutional contexts, such as prison, military, psychiatric, or migrant labour compound settings, are not directly related to the gay sub-culture. They are not established either directly or indirectly for the gay populace or for sexual contact. They are not strictly public domains. However, as Dank (1971) has described, such settings, which are also social, non-personalized contexts for male-male sexual activities, contribute to coming out and gay identity. Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) refer to sexual behaviour in such settings outside of the gay culture as ‘situational’ or ‘accidental’ homosexuality, variants based on sexual motives.

This classificatory system devised on the basis of the organization of sexual expression in differing contexts excludes variants that Isaacs and McKendrick (1992, p.27) call ‘homosexual-linked behaviour patterns’. Unlike the contextual system above, their additional discussion of sex behaviour is based on identity development, identifying associated patterns including transient homosexuality (i.e. experimental or curious), situational homosexuality (e.g. compound living), accidental homosexuality (e.g. substance-related), bisexuality, transsexuality, transvestism, androgyny and heterosexual homosexuality (the ‘straight gay person’). Their model is essentialist, resulting in labelling. In contrast to such an approach, a postmodern approach looks instead to contexts and the social construction of sexual expression. A socio-political view, aligned with postmodern ideas, suggests that differing interactional contexts give rise to differing sexualities. Foucault’s (1976) ideas have influenced the postmodern interpretation that has been advanced.

A discussion of gay sexual expression should also include reference to the implications of the HIV-AIDS crisis, primarily for a historical contextualization. Through the onset of the AIDS crisis, sex-role preferences and sex styles needed further negotiation in the behaviour of gay men. Vulnerability characterized the psychological response to AIDS- related crises. The precipitant of these crises included onset of physical symptoms, a positive result on an HIV-test, loss of a partner, or witness to people living with AIDS 97

(Isaacs & McKendrick, 1992). The meta-crisis for a gay person can be the exposure of the homosexual world to a hostile heterosexual world.

Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) wrote about HIV-infection when AIDS arose initially as a specific gay crisis, with infections spread through receptive anal male-to-male sex. This was in line with the initial cases of AIDS and the prevalence of opportunistic infections restricted to gay men. The original image of AIDS as a gay plague created further discrimination for the already oppressed group, and at first, experts were not clear whether AIDS was a gay or a public health issue, adding further stigma to being gay. In that context, AIDS moved from an individual to a collective issue, negatively affecting intimacy between gay and heterosexual people, and between gay persons themselves. As Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) write, this resulted in gay men feeling betrayed because gay sexuality became exposed and investigated from medical principles and moral values, leading to ‘fear, panic, and disgust reflected in responses from scientists and the public alike’ (p.119). This compounded the victim experience of gay people. Assault trauma associated with victimization led to further distress in gay men. Because of the value of sex in constructing gay identity, the AIDS crisis presented gay men with the task of changes to their identities. On the one hand, this distress prevents healthy coming out; on the other, denial of the disease could lead to over-indulgent sexual behaviours.

Weeks (1991) comments that AIDS threatened not only individual lives or particular sexual practices, but represented a ‘threat to only recently achieved positive identities and to a whole way of life’ (p.106). The challenge for gay men was now a ‘remedicalization’ of homosexuality. Gay men, however, took on this challenge, first, in collective initiatives in community organizations that directly addressed gay men’s health concerns, and second, further creative adaptation of lifestyles that involved adopting and promoting ‘safer sex’ (Weeks, 1991).

4.6 Psychotherapy with gay males Notwithstanding the foregoing discussion’s reference to therapeutic implications of psychological issues at dispersed points, therapy for gay male clients is discussed in depth in this sub-section.

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Traditional psychotherapy assumed that homosexuality was pathology. The paradigm of pathology encouraged treatment of homosexuality with the goal of reorientation. Behaviour therapy introduced aversion techniques where ego-dystonic homosexual men received shocks or experienced nausea and vomiting while viewing erotic stimuli of male sex partners (Kaplan & Sadock, 1981). Heather (1976, p.122) is quoted extensively to describe this procedure: Typically, the patient is asked to bring along photographs of people he or she finds attractive, possibly including past or present lovers, and is then given a protracted course of electric shocks or nausea-inducing drugs while looking at them. In more sophisticated versions, pictures of heterosexual sex symbols are shown to the patient just after the cessation of electric shock, thus associating relief from pain with sex objects acceptable to the psychologist.

From a critical psychological perspective, Heather (1976, p.123, author’s emphasis) continues, quoting a gay liberation pamphlet’s description of aversion therapy: ‘Ours is a society which claims to uphold romantic love – yet allows doctors to induce people to vomit over pictures of those they love’. We must conclude, I think, that the punishment of homosexuals by aversion therapy is a more refined and legalized form of queer bashing.

With its assumption of pathology, psychoanalysis too could not successfully change homosexuals to heterosexuals because homosexual desires and thoughts cannot be permanently and absolutely removed (Herron et al., 1982). Herron et al. (1982) comment that changing sexual orientation through psychoanalysis is not an achievement. Even if orientation is changed, behaviour is altered via an inherent heterosexual potential; basic sexual preference is not changed. Despite these criticisms, Herron et al. (1982) claim that psychoanalysis as therapy may be valuable to gay clients because it can help improve sexual functioning.

Recently, psychologists have considered broader socio-cultural contexts and become influenced by the contributions of poststructuralist and constructivist paradigms. Herron et al. (1982) explain that psychoanalysis now incorporates meaning-making systems, explores the interconnections among gender, sex-roles, sexual orientation and personal identity, and accommodates biological and social discoveries. Psychoanalysis is therefore considered valuable when practiced to explore past, present and future lives in a developmental perspective, along with bracketing judgements of pathology. To quote Herron et al. (1982, p.180) extensively: 99

We view psychoanalysis as a developmental psychology with therapeutic applications that enable the patient to learn to make life choices based upon self-understanding. We believe sexual orientation to be one of these learned decisions, a decision based on constitutional and experiential occurrences. It is often formed with a limited awareness on part of the individual as to the manner and cause. The psychoanalytic method can help any person to discover the development, purpose, and consequences of any and all sexual orientations.

In psychoanalysis, a discovery of unconscious material brings about insight and behaviour change. Rather than reorientation, psychodynamically-informed therapy now aims to integrate sexual orientation into a lifestyle free from homophobic bias.

Even though classical psychotherapeutic methods seem to be adapted to the gay populace, the advent of the practice known as gay-affirmative therapy finally transformed the once authoritarian treatment system into a collaborative relationship, respecting the personal integrity, diversity of lifestyles and cultures of gay persons (Davies, 1996b). A gay-affirmative approach is against homosexuality as pathology, instead addressing clients’ needs for conflict resolution and self-actualization. Gay-affirmative psychotherapy facilitates and values homoerotic leanings within a developmental model that acknowledges the oppression gay men face in a society where development has been contaminated by anti-homosexual conditions. Corrective experiences need to start personality formation anew (Davies, 1996b; Malyon, 1982). Unexamined values and attitudes associated with object choice are pathological, not the choice of love object (Malyon, 1982). The premise of gay-affirmative therapy is that a gay identity is an equally positive experience as its heterosexual counterpart, implying a respect both for sexual orientation and for variations on a sexual continuum. Thus, it reconsiders the notion of binary sexuality.

In gay-affirmative therapy, the therapist’s attitude shifts. The therapist has to respect the client’s alternative lifestyle and does not need to be educated about this lifestyle by the client. Consequently, the therapist needs to be aware of personal values and prejudices and refer to another practitioner when his own struggles might negatively influence the therapeutic process. The therapist assumes an educative role, that is, raising awareness, reassuring clients about normative experiences, pointing out developmental tasks, and inspiring hope (Davies, 1996b). Following these basic assumptions, Davies (1996b) has outlined guidelines for a gay-affirmative therapy practice: • Accepting and being at ease with homosexual feelings of the self; 100

• Carefully considering any attempt at the elimination of homosexual feelings in clients; • Bringing the subjective reality of oppression into consciousness of clients; • Identifying negative stereotypes and deprogramming of these beliefs; • Constructively channelling anger that results from suppressed emotions. Denied anger is related to self-abuse (alcohol abuse and suicidal tendencies); • Supporting appreciation of the body-self and body impulses through touching inspired by ‘ethical integrity’ (p.33). Because gay clients have been reared with negative self-images that their bodies are perverted or deviant, touching clients communicates trust and acceptance of bodily impulses; • Encouraging a support system of gay persons so care and affirmation occurs within a ‘chosen family’ (p.33); • Promoting access to gay groups and community activities that offer support and role models; • Developing a peer relationship with the client; • Challenging assumptions about being gay so that a personal value system (independent of heterosexually-defined pathways) gets created; • Desensitizing shame and guilt so that negativity of same-sex love is deconstructed; • Affirming homosexual feelings, thoughts and behaviours through professional authority.

Davies (1996b) stresses the educational role of the gay-affirmative therapist. Strategies for the educational role include using bibliotherapy (both fiction and non-fiction), and integrating HIV-awareness into the therapeutic process by addressing risks and facilitating skills to promote behavioural change (Davies, 1996b). Referring to Shernoff, Davies (1996b, p.37) advises therapists to explore issues of HIV-awareness responsibly, arguing against the notion that such advice may be unethical or threatens the integrity of the therapeutic alliance: There can be a number of positive outcomes from raising the issue. However, Shernoff warns that therapists need to be familiar with HIV transmission and prevention issues and be aware of the variety of human sexual practices, as well as confident in speaking explicitly about sexual matters, which may require further training. Misinformation, or the transmission of prejudiced ideas about sexual behaviours, will be more damaging than no work around these topics. 101

Malyon (1982) integrates a psychodynamic approach with gay-affirmative psychotherapy, describing often overlapping phases that represent issues in psychotherapy. The therapeutic alliance phase, in the client-centred vein, builds trust and rapport. This phase includes discussing values openly, a decision by the therapist to disclose his gay identity, assessment of developmental history and attitudes to sexuality, and information gathering. I contend that movie viewing can be particularly relevant to this phase. Movies present narratives and symbols that provide a springboard for conversations about attitudes, identification with characters and experiences, and fantasies. This is a dialoguous strategy to obtain a developmental history and assesses conflicts and coping skills of the (premorbid) personality.

Intervention follows in the second phase, the analytic phase, with its objectives of transference, conflict resolution, cognitive-restructuring and interpretation of repressed material. Homophobia is uncovered in the presenting symptoms, and the therapist has to unconditionally accept homoerotic leanings to counter early attitudes towards homosexuality. Thereafter, the self-concept is modified. In the gay therapist, who must have worked through homophobia himself, the gay client encounters a non-stereotypic model. With this, the third phase of identity consolidation is reached (Malyon, 1982). A more integrated and positive identity develops in the identity consolidation phase, a phase that is emotionally reminiscent of adolescence; therefore the therapist offers, ‘support … to soothe the internal chaos experienced at this stage; [and] astute interpretations give meaning and direction that attenuate the bewilderment’ (Malyon, 1982, p.67). Insight must occur at this stage. Establishing this positive identity should then allow mature intimacy. If the therapist is male and gay like the client, then this clinically advantageous situation enhances therapeutic gains, that is, distortions and conflicts get played out in similar ways as they would in an erotic and empathic relationship with a partner. This facilitates corrective gains and conflict resolution (Malyon, 1982).

The fourth phase, the existential phase, swings to promoting meaning and purpose. This does not ignore identity concerns because the challenge remains the finding of personal meaning and significance in a society that still stigmatises homosexual relations. This phase parallels the tasks of Erikson’s generativity versus despair stage. Malyon (1982, p.68) refers to issues in this stage as ‘post-narcissistic concerns’ addressing ‘productivity, creativity, 102

and social responsibility – with the search for personal meaning, dignity, and integrity’. Culture offers many guidelines and values for heterosexuals but those scripts do not neatly cross over into homosexual lifestyles. Heterosexually-inspired institutions like the nuclear family, orthodox religion, conservative morality and rigid role models do not apply to homosexual men, therefore the existential phase encourages new creative commitment. This implies that developmental concerns may have been addressed, but the existential dimensions still need exploration in a supportive space to discover individual, not collective, resolutions (Malyon, 1982). Such individual psychodynamic therapy is not the only useful therapeutic modality.

Frost (1997) argues that group therapy is the prioritised intervention for gay men because of difficulties with self-esteem, intimacy outlets and aging. It develops interpersonal skills that help establish and maintain emotional attachments. Group members have commonalities of needing to affirm personal value, of gaining meaning in their lives, of dealing with shame and internalised homophobia, of revisioning internalised negative images of aging and of developing gratifying social and sexual relationships. Even though this author is referring to older gay men, I believe that gay men face these challenges throughout their development, particularly in a youth-obsessed culture.

Frost (1997) explains the value of a group context. Gay men do not have positive experiences for conflict resolution and anxiety management during their development; and the group context allows them to practice this safely. The group thus becomes corrective, facilitating newer means of relating. Regarding stereotypes, a therapy group provides a safe space to identify and transform internalised stereotypes. Members must then re-own positive aspects that they have projected. The therapeutic group also allows gay men to experiment with alternative ways of relating, to challenge their prevailing destructive interactional patterns. Frost (1997) uses the concept of ‘play’ to encourage ways of relating beyond sex and competition, and also explains that being anxious in a therapeutic group allows men to deal with the learnt anxiety around commitment. Even though Frost (1997, p.276) refers to aging gay men, this applies to younger men too, given the socio-cultural conditions: A group [therapy] experience allows aging gay men to push beyond a history of too many brief experiences, and to begin to look more deeply into their loss of interest, felt loss of value, and increase in anxiety following the first date. Many gay men cannot escape these social patterns and are viewed by themselves and others as shallow as a result. Once 103

slowed down, these men can begin to look more closely at their social anxiety and the underlying shame and awkwardness associated with emotional intimacy.

Although group therapy and psychodynamic individual therapy have value, they may not serve as immediate interventions.

When a client enters therapy for a gay-related issue, this often follows a crisis, demanding an immediate or short-term intervention. Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) have conceptualized gay identity development within the framework of crisis theory. A crisis is an ‘acute situational disorder’ (p.41), lasting one to six weeks, which is both a danger and opportunity for growth, thus differing conceptually from the medical model’s view of a crisis as illness. In an Eriksonian vein of ego psychology, a crisis results when a developmental task is ‘disrupted, thwarted, or made excessively difficult’ (p.44). For gay men, a crisis such as coming out is developmental and situational. If conceptualised as a crisis, a gay person experiences loss, definably a state loss. This refers to a state of being or a state of mind that is lost, for example, loss of self image. For the growth opportunities to be realized in any crisis, loss has to be explored, expressed and incorporated. Besides the numerous psychological variables associated with loss, resolution of a crisis is related to taking risks to cope with the accompanying anxiety.

When a gay client enters therapy with a crisis, this crisis may be the phase of coming out. Clinicians must be able to distinguish the phenomenology of coming out from established ‘pathology’. According to Gonsiorek (1982), coming out may be accompanied by the florid symptoms of ‘psychopathology’, for example, borderline characteriological patterns may ensue. However, unlike the true borderline personality, the person who is coming out has previously operated from strong ego boundaries. In this psychodynamic viewpoint, coming out is ‘ego alien’ because gay men are accustomed to a higher level of functioning. This leads to panic reactions. In clinical practice, the practitioner needs to be able to differentiate between borderline personality disorder and the coming out crisis. There are also differential diagnosis problems with respect to the hypomania of mood disorders and the coming out crisis. Another difficulty in clinical practice occurs when a true case of schizophrenia becomes misdiagnosed as denial of being gay. Careful history taking may often help the clinician distinguish between pathology and a coming out crisis in gay men (Gonsiorek, 1982). In a heterosexist society where being gay involves isolation, oppression and marginalization, adjustments 104 are difficult. Without taking into consideration this societal context, the older medical model was able to blame difficulties on sexual behaviours and sexual preference per se.

Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) describe the poor coping responses that prevent resolution of crises, and these include mistrust, intense discharge of accumulated emotions and defence mechanisms. Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) reflect that their perspective of coming out as a crisis offers a novel model. Prior studies pointed out the distressing factors, but did not conceptualise coming out as a crisis. This crisis may also be construed as a ‘rebirthing experience’, aided by a significant other but also resulting in psychosocial vulnerability and regression. If the precipitant is specifically an AIDS- related crisis, Isaacs and McKendrick (1992) contend that crisis intervention should include addressing safer sex habits and clients’ attitudes and responses to such practices.

In therapy with gay clients, Davies (1996a) also warns that sexual orientation should not become the therapeutic issue if a client presents with another problem. Homophobia, however, still needs to be addressed through uncovering of self-oppressive strategies, making them conscious, to reveal that problems result directly from the dominant system’s attempts at constructing clients’ natural and healthy sexuality as pathological.

Psychotherapy must enable the gay client to attain the insight that partners have internalised many heterosexist messages and to also reframe losses as part of the exploration phase of adaptive gay development. Heterosexually-dominant boys were granted explorative opportunities during adolescence but their behaviours were possibly curtailed by a lack of freedom and concomitant limits imposed by parental restrictions. However, gay men, as single and independent adults, may fully participate in the exploration phase of development. They need to experience this typically adolescent psychosocial stage. And as adults, they ought to have obtained social, financial and political resources that favour a revisited emotional development, in contrast to their heterosexual teenage counterparts.

4.7 Turning Point

Multiple forces, in a network of both subtle and visible socio-cultural and psychological relations, impact on gay men and their sexualities. This not only complexifies therapeutic interventions (measurement of ‘outcomes’ is a matter of making meaning through 105 interpretation), but equally complicates research into sexualities. Values and a commitment to critical analysis and simultaneous care can carve a path through these complexities and complications. This perspective informs and even extends postmodern research. The next sequence discusses the design of the postmodern research approach in this study and pertinently elaborates on its underlying theoretical sources.

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