RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL POLITICS TODAY: A Legacy of the Seventies Craig Johnston In 1969 a Homosexual Law Reform Group usefulness of the concepts developed within was set up in Canberra. In 1970 an the movement, as a contribution towards the Australian chapter of the US lesbian continuance into the 1980s of the (arrested organization, the Daughters of Bilitis, was and unfinished) project of ‘sexual set up in Melbourne as the Australasian revolution’. Lesbian Movement; later that year, two homosexuals in Sydney came out and T h e Social Construction of the publicly launched the Campaign Against Homosexual Moral Persecution. Thus the homosexual rights movement was launched in Australia. Homosexuality refers to a behaviour These first steps were very tentative: the pattern, the enactment jof sexual intercourse ACT law reform group was not specifically a with a member of one’s own biological sex. homosexual group, the Australasian This is natural in the sense that all humans Lesbian Movement had a heterosexual have a homosexual and heterosexual spokesperson, CAMP admitted potential at birth, that is, we are born with a heterosexuals to membership. But they non-formed sexuality. But it is not ‘normal’ initiated the process of the development of a in the sense that all societies (perhaps with movement of homosexual for homosexuals, rare and debatable exceptions) have up till which exists in a stronger form today, in now socialized their children into a numbers and diversity. This movement has heterosexual norm because of the historic, also had some sort of impact on Australian animal-derived equation between sexuality society generally — in terms of contributing and procreation linked with the need to to the mellowing of attitudes towards perpetuate the species. However, homosexuality in some circles and, at the homosexuality can be found in most formal level, of majority public support for societies.(l) equality before the law, and in terms of a It can take different forms, depending on new, more positive, self-identity among the social relations of production dominant many homosexuals themselves. in a particular social formation, but the This article looks at aspects of the new ‘gay immediate placing of homosexuality in the consciousness’ as it evolved throughout the totality of social relations appears to be 1970s and attempts an assessment of the related to ideological and political relations. RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL POLITICS 19 primarily the ideological. In particular, there behaviour. Prior to the rise of capitalism, in has been some early connection between Europe homosexuality was institutionalized homosexuality, the vocations of priests and only in certain closed communities, healers, tendencies towards magic, and nunneries and monasteries, knightly orders, initiation ceremonies for women andmen.(2) royal courts.<5) But as early as the mid-1500s, That is, there seems to be a definite male homosexual beats existed in Paris(6), relationship between the form it takes and and male homosexual brothels existed in France and England early in the eighteenth religious ideology in particular. century. But then urbanization was not With this in mind, the concept of a sufficient. Industrialization accelerated the homosexual can be introduced. A process of urbanization and caused havoc to homosexual, as distinct from someone who traditional kinship structures releasing commits a homosexual act, is someone homosexuals from many of the social bonds whose mental structures have aB a common of less complex societies. This enabled the feature the choice of a sex-object of one’s own transition of the homosexual as subordinate, biological sex; this relation could exist in the unconscious, in fantasy or in the act. (3) As deviant and individual to homosexuals as Freud put it: subordinate, deviant and mass. Following Weeks, we can discern three What decides whether we describe aspects of the development of the someone as an invert is not his actual homosexual under capitalism. behaviour, but his emotional attitude.(4) A distinctly homosexual role, For this to be the case, there must be conceptualizing homosexuality as a something in the social formation to enable condition which characterizes certain the transition from homosexuality as individuals and not others, was a relatively activity to homosexuality as a social role. It late development, being fairly generally is here that the link begins with the situation recognized in Britain by the late nineteenth o f women. Whether consistent century. (8) There is some evidence that a homosexuality {among men, that among male homosexual role emerged from the late women having less chance of social seventeenth century — associated with an tolerance on an historic, world scale) is embryonic sub-culture, a particular mode of tolerated or not is related to the particular behaviour (often transvestite) and slang. But mechanisms for social control of women in the critical formative period was the late each society (male-bonding as socialization nineteenth century; the term in the case of the pederasty of the Ancient ‘homosexuality’ itself was not coined till Greeks, quasi-women in the case of the 1869 and entered into English currency only Amerindian berdaches). in the 1890s.(9) The increasingly complex With the development of capitalism, this male homosexual sub-culture in cities like emergence of the distinctiveness of the London and Dublin was paralleled by homosexual took a higher form. While some developments in cities like Berlin. Although content of the oppression of homosexuals is lesbian organisations are reported to not specific to capitalism (especially related have existed in France in the late eighteenth to patriarchal and Christian ideologies), the century, lesbian sub-cultures did not form it takes is quite specific and is bound up generally emerge till the turn of the twentieth with capitalism’s past, present and future century, in Paris and Berlin.(lO) development. A medical m odel of homosexuality The phenomenon of the homosexual with a emerged at the same time, though its roots distinctive identity and sub-culture were earlier. This idea of homosexuality as a integrated into the mainstream of the society ‘disease’ both supplanted and supplemented and subsidiary to the dominant culture was the earlier notion of it as a ‘sin’(ll), made possible historically by urbanization, according with the bourgeoisie’s rational which drew large numbers of people and ‘scientific’ ideologies more than the together, decreasing the isolation and sense feudal-religious conception. of deviance evident in pre-class societies. There was a development of homosexual Urbanization enabled new patterns of self-im age and identity. Fitting in with family life, sex roles, courting and sexual the demands of British capital in the 1880s as 20 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 74 it confronted its twin threats, imperialist complex interactions between the concepts of rivals and the working class, the family was homosexual as one who is sexually and elevated as a buttress to social stability, emotionally attracted to her own biological corresponding to the class needs of both the sex and one whose identity is a deviant. This bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy.(12) is manifest in the confusion in attitudes to The anti-male homosexual Labouchere homosexuals and is fired by repressed latent amendment to the British Criminal Law homosexuality among heterosexuals. Amendment Act was made in 1895. In this social climate, the commitment necessary to H om ophobia has been used to describe homosexuality was much more demanding; fear of and hostility to homosexuality and conversely, male homosexual consciousness homosexuals, like all ideologies operating in was more sharply defined in the wake of an unconscious as well as a conscious way. possible 'exposure and blackmail.(13) The As a concept to explain homosexual self-identity of most homosexuals was oppression its value is limited because it is composed of a sense of ‘differentness’ caused based on the primacy of the homo/hetero by social isolation and persecution and distinction, i.e. that distinction is seen as reinforced by internalization of the religious central to the problem of homosexual and pseudo-scientific ideologies of guilt and oppression. The political solution then sickness. As an expression of this new becomes the liberal one of ‘education’. identity, organizations for homosexual The hegemony of heterosexual gender role rights were established; in England, the stereotypes maintained and reproduced in Order of Chaeronea in the 1890s; in the USA, the ideological apparatuses has been called the Cercle Hermaphroditus in 1895; and the heterosexism . According to whether one is most important, the Scientific female or male one is expected to have Humanitarian Committee in Germany in ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ attributes, i.e. 1897. gender roles corresponding to biological sex. While homosexual identity and This is, of course, ideological mystification of subculture developed, the attitude of the a male supremacy based on the sexual state — feudal, absolutist and capitalist — division of labor. was overwhelmingly hostile. The Napoleonic Code of 1810 made consenting Heterosexism operates against homosexual acts legal but homosexuals in homosexuals because by not conforming to countries covered by the code were not the ‘normal’ processes of sexual object- exempt from state persecution and choice, lesbians and male homosexuals are harassment. Nevertheless, the revolutionary assumed also to want to be the opposite sex — spread of democracy in Europe in the threatening the stability of determination of nineteenth and twentieth centuries, would the dominant sex by simple biology. Whether seem to confirm that “ ...the explicitly an individual lesbian or male homosexual political dimension of liberalism is actually conforms to the gender roles of her essential for a homosexual world to or his sex is irrelevant; heterosexism flourish” .(14) involves the belief that homosexuals as a group do not. In a male-dominated society With respect to the post-capitalist societies this assumed masculinity of lesbians and the more advanced, Czechoslovakia, effeminacy of male homosexuals appears to Democratic Germany and the Soviet Union, subvert the dominant gender roles and hence have embryonic homosexual sub-cultures the underlying male supremacy. but the repressive political environment retards their development. Though some of The Australian homosexual movement them, like the G.D.R., have liberal does not use the term ‘heterosexism’ in the legislation, clearly bourgeois ideologies of sense defined here. The Perth Gay Liberation sexual repression persist in these societies. newsletter Gay Images, for example, defines it as basically “the pervasive assumption by The Social and Political Significance of anyone that everybody is heterosexual” .(15) Homosexuality That is, the concept is seen to rest on the distinction homosexual/heterosexual The oppression of homosexuals today (again, this has definite political takes a number of forms involving the implications). But I have defined it in terms RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL POLITICS 21 of the distinction feminine/masculine. As between the oppression of women and the such heterosexist relations affect oppression of homosexuals: homosexual homosexuals as well as heterosexuals; they oppression is structurally tied to the correspond to the basic male supremacy of a oppression of women. Indeed, the primary capitalist social formation. site of homosexual oppression is not in the homo/hetero distinction but in the relations This basic male supremacy has been called sexism. This term itself is the source between women and men.(20) of a theoretical confusion. It is usually used It has often been stated that the sexual as an analogy to racism to denote oppression division of labor in the capitalist mode of on the basis of sex. With sexism, divisions production is not historically specific to it. are made between people on the basis of Such a division predates the division based chromosomes or genitalia and these on class and continues to be reproduced in divisions are supposed to determine a the post-capitalist societies. However, under person’s personality, ability and behaviour. capitalism the sexual division of labor has At a societal level, the supposed differences acquired particular forms which are are embodied within the total culture, economically, politically and ideologically connected with either sex’s ability to get and specific to it. These specific aspects can be hold power and ideological justifications for seen with reference to two broad areas within the sexual status quo .(16) the production process: commodity production and the domestic unit. A A sexist society, then, is not necessarily woman’s position is by no means the same patriarchal. Sexism is necessary but not within these two areas; her subordination sufficient for patriarchy; patriarchy is not and exploitation on the factory floor do not necessary for sexism.(12) Theoretically, a necessarily correspond with her m atriarchal society might be j ust as sexist as subordination within the family. However, a patriarchal one.(18) Historically, there is there is a tendency for a women’s no conclusive proof that there have been subordination within the family and matriarchal societies preceding patriarchy, workforce to reinforce and maintain one despite the strong tradition that this view another. A women’s ideological subjection, has had in the socialist movement following her relative political and economic isolation Engels. as a house worker, follow her into the In recognition of the confusion over the workforce to facilitate the reproduction of her word ‘sexism’ , and to stress the immediate subordinate position within the larger area problem of patriarchal-sexism, many of socialized production. feminists and radical homosexuals use patriarchy in preference. The separation of material production between its socialized form and private If one takes patriarchal government to labor performed mainly by women within be the institution whereby that half of the home, institutionalized patriarchy as a the populace which is female is part of the capitalist mode of production. controlled by that half which is male, the Part of the consequence of this was the principles of patriarchy appear to be perception of the family as separate from the twofold: male shall dominate female, economy and personal life as a separate elder male shall dominate younger.( 19) sphere of life divorced from the larger Patriarchy is marked by its ubiquity society. For socialists, the consequent throughout all social relations; tendency was to see personal life as an differentiation within each sex along the entirely subjective phenomenon, having meaning only for the individual.(21) One of lines of more masculine/less masculine; its the features of the feminist and radical foundation on the sexual division of labor; its homosexual analyses of society has been to maintenance and reproduction through kinship structures, ideological apparatuses stress the role of the individual (‘the personal and the state; and by the attribution of is political’), and thereby contribute to the gender roles according to biological sex. It is development of a fuller understanding of the with this latter feature that we see the workings of ideology and power. juncture of patriarchy and Important here has been the examination heterosexism. Here is the interconnection of familial ideology, and the connection 22 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 74 between the role of the capitalist nuclear movement, probably the only movement of family and the oppression of homosexuals. the left where this question comes to the fore, These questions have been taken up and which has provided the impetus for a elsewhere. One aspect which needs repeating significant section of radical male is the reproduction in the family of homosexuals to support feminism as the heterosexual gender roles, the potential resolution to the contradiction (and, at the subversion of which is at the core of the same time, explains the assertion of an ultra­ oppression of homosexuals. Homosexuals masculinity by many male homosexuals). are oppressed to protect the ideology that The subversive potential of male justifies the oppression of women. Millett homosexuality is in its potential to says: divorce sexuality from power (its But as she minces along a street in the repressive potential is psycho-sexual Village, the storm of outrage an misogyny on an organised level). (25) insouciant queen in drag may call down It is this internalization of the ideology of the is dm to the fact that she is both oppressors that distinguishes the masculine and feminine at once — or generalized social discrimination against male, but feminine. She has made gender women, blacks and homosexuals from identity more than frighteningly easy to discrimination against socially lose, she has questioned its reality at a disadvantaged groups such as pensioners time when it has attained the status of a or tertiary students, and defines only the moral absolute and a social imperative. situation of the former as oppression. She has defied it and actually suggested Movements of the socially oppressed have its negation. She has dared obloquy, and expressed the need to “reclaim our history in doing so has challenged more than the and our identity from what must be called taboo on homosexuality, she has cultural terrorism ”(27) with slogans like uncovered what the source of this sisterhood is powerful, black is beautiful, gay contempt implies — the fact that sex role is good. is sex rank. (22)

Above all, this exposure of the arbitrary Towards a Response: Freud and the nature of gender roles, of the irrelevance of Left biology to ‘destiny’, is evident in the act of sex. For women, any sexuality independent One of the questions that has concerned of men is repressed, and for men, the bourgeois pseudo-scientific study of possibility of sexual ‘passivity’ is seen as a homosexuality has been ‘why?’. Given that break in the solidarity of men as the dominant sex.(23) Each sexual act between this is asked by ideologues of sexual orthodoxy and social conformity, radical homosexuals questions the pairs homosexuals have denied the hegitimacy of feminine/female, masculine/male. It is this the question. No one asks this question of which perhaps explains why male heterosexuals. And the question is motivated homosexuals are more overtly oppressed as homosexuals than lesbians: we threaten not by ‘scientific impartiality1 but by a desire “men, who psychologically must retain the to stamp out homosexuality (‘therapy’ or initiative of force or action, in order to be ‘treatment’). In effect, the answer of the ‘men’” .(24) homosexual movement to the theoretical question has been to assert that gay is good, While the oppression of male homosexuals and brook no discussion.(28) shares a similarity with lesbians at the level But the question hasn’t gone away. An of gender roles, it is clear that the situation is understanding of the formation of in fact more complex. Lesbians are doubly homosexuality is part of a total oppressed, as women and as homosexuals. understanding of sexuality. If the questions As a man, the male homosexual is an ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ are directed at sexuality oppressor of women; as a homosexual, the generally, including heterosexuality, then male homosexual is oppressed by answers should be sought. Thus for Freud: patriarchy. It is this contradiction which heightens the difference between lesbians ...the exclusive sexual interest felt by and male homosexuals in the homosexual men for women is also a problem that RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL POLITICS 23 needs elucidating and it is not a self- pressures ensure that heterosexuality is the evident fact based upon an attraction choice of the great majority. that is ultimately of a chemical Theories that people were born nature. (29) homosexual were discredited by Freud’s This involves the need to look at the discovery of infantile sexuality. This ‘sociology’ of heterosexuality; if everybody discovery itself opened up the arena for the can make a homosexual object-choice at discovery of the initial acquisition of gender some stage as Freud suggests, then why does roles. From the fact that each individual the majority suppress this? effectively possesses traces of the genital There have been various theories offered to organs of the other sex, Freud concluded that explain homosexuality: a form of vice, a each individual carried the psychological genetic aberration due to inherited or characteristics of the other sex.(33) This was constitutional factors, a glandular disease, a a biological reductionist view whereby psychological disorder, or some combination femininity and masculinity are equated with of these. Of them, those based on psychology passivity and activity in the psychology of have had the most durability, most of the people.(34) In fact, ‘bisexuality’ in terms of views being based on prejudice and feminine or masculine gender roles depends speculation. It is probable that on cultural and social factors, which homosexuality is determined by a number of explains the different manifestations it takes variables: psychological, and cultural and in different social formations. For a situational, the form it takes being explained capitalist society, the central site of primarily by the latter. Even in the socialization (and of immersion into psychological explanation that Freud patriarchy) is the Oedipus complex: if all offered, he said that the particular process he goes well, the ‘bisexually’ disposed child will singled out was only one among many. So emerge from this phase in her/his sexual any reductionism would not aid but hinder development as a properly constituted understanding. Unfortunately many of the female or male, and with appropriate old myths, including crude distortions of cultural and social values.(35) That heterosexuals learn their gender roles at this Freud’s theories, linger on. early stage is to add to the understanding of Many socialists have accepted the hegemony of patriarchal ideology, psychoanalysis as a science, but in so doing through its operation in the unconscious. have noted that there are many aspects of Freud which are “decidedly culturally and With both of these contributions to a socially specific, and thus in the last critique of heterosexism, I have simply instance, ideological” .(30) For radical asserted the position. In the former area, a homosexuals, psychoanalysis can make two fair amount of work has been done by bourgeois sex researchers; in the latter area, contributions to a critique of heterosexism: the refutation of a biological basis for there is much still to be done since the exclusive heterosexuality, and a fuller question of the value of psychoanalysis for understanding of the acquisition of the left was raised by Juliet Mitchell’s gender roles. Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Freud says that in all of us throughout life, Towards a Response: Gay Liberation the libido normally oscillates between female and male objects.(3l) From their studies of At the end of 197l a Gay Liberation group human sexual behaviour, Kinsey and his split off from the CAMP in Sydney and associates concluded that the capacity of an quickly established itself as the dominant individual to respond erotically to any sort of and most vital homosexual group. A group stimulus is basic in our species. One of the with that name now only exists in Perth (and most basic distinctions between humans and it was not established until 1976), those in other animals is the human capacity to Adelaide, Canberra, Newcastle, Melbourne, choose our own sexuality. Humans can Brisbane, and Sydney having folded, but dispense with the equation, sexuality = Gay Liberation gave its name to the whole procreation.(32) Patterns of homosexuality homosexual movement, as well as a certain and heterosexuality represent learned militancy, structure, analysis and behaviour. Nevertheless, all sorts of ‘image’.(3B) Gay Liberation attracted the 24 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 74

imagination of the homosexual youth on the oppression and were the first major fringes of and identified with the counter­ differentiation inside Gay Liberation culture and the Left, developed an enmity between the reform-minded majority and a with established homosexual groupings and minority who wanted to develop a the bar-beat-sauna scene, grabbed media revolutionary perspective. Effeminism attention, and defined for most people what found some support in polemics of socialist homosexual radicalism meant. male homosexuals against gay liberation politics.(40) Gay Liberation ideology had a number of features. From the US black movement were From within the homosexual movement, adopted the concepts of pride and redefining the dominant gay liberation ideology began one’s identity, including an analysis of the to be criticized by socialists, though the politics of language (hence, ‘gay’). This notions that the oppressed from their involved refusal to remain hidden (coming experiences know best how to end their out), and analysis of the politics of oppression, that respect for autonomy of experience (‘the personal is political’). movements of the oppressed meant no Sexuality was discussed as an important criticism, and that the revolution consisted theoretical question, and gender confusion of each of the protest movements battering (‘radical drag’) was used as a tactic to the system on their own (‘poly- challenge gender roles. Liberal conceptions vanguardism’) were accepted by most of the of tolerance o f homosexuality were rejected, left. From 1974, as Gay Liberation lost its in favour of support for ‘liberation’, in momentum, voices emerged among male alliance with other oppressed groups homosexuals decrying its disarray, pointing (particularly womenX37). The pull between to the political weaknesses of individualism, die maximum program of liberation and the sexism, reformism, anti-intellectualism and minimum program of democratic rights on structurelessness. In patriarchal terms, the one hand, and the political activism and campaigns by male homosexuals for gay the personal ‘revolution’ on the other, by rights were seen as male rights unless linked 1974 had led to the hegemony of liberalism in to a feminist perspective. Moreover, the the movement: among the women, lesbian struggle for women’s liberation took separatism; among the men, reformism. programmatic precedence: 1973 was the first peak in the history of the ...in the unity movement, with large demonstrations in of struggle, ...some struggles will play a Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney in more crucial role than others. The September. It was also a watershed in that it struggle for women’s liberation is such a was the last time that there was any struggle and that of male homosexuals is significant contact on campaigns between not: just as the struggle for workers’ power is primary in the last instance, militant lesbians and male homosexuals until the Gay Solidarity campaign of mid because it is decisiue.(41) 1978.(38) And this recognition opened up for discussion the question of whether lesbians The increasing criticism and exit of most lesbians from Gay Liberation was and male homosexuals could work together accompanied by some support for for homosexual rights, something most lesbian-feminists denied or questioned. effeminism among radical male homosexuals. The effeminist reaction to A feature of the development of a left feminism was to accept (radical) feminist opposition inside the gay liberation group analysis, to commit oneself to fighting one’s wets to also point to the need for a class own masculinity, to “ realise that the analysis of homosexual oppression and of feminist revolution is an all-embracing the homosexual movement, for alliances phenomenon without which there is no with the socialist left and for an orientation revolution but a series of male coups” , and to to the working class. This latter point was refrain from defining a women’s slow to develop, but at the Second National revolution.(39) This uncritical acceptance of Homosexual Conference (Sydney, 1976) the radical feminism did not last long, but Socialist Homosexuals Caucus proposed effeminist ideas added to the radical that the topic “homosexuals at work and in homosexual understanding of homosexuals’ their unions” be a major item for discussion RADICAL HOMOSEXUAL POLITICS 25

at the Third Conference, and at the Third upset the process of production unlike National Homosexual Conference (Adelaide, lesbians, since the sexual division of labor is 1977) socialists successfully proposed kernel to the operations of capitalism ... and “homosexuals at work” as the theme for the male homosexuals do not have the same Fourth Conference (Sydney, 1978). importance as lesbians regarding reproduction of children since they are By the end of the decade the post-Gay physically unable to bear children.(43) Liberation phase of the movement featured a certain style of politics. From its origins in The latter point seems to place too much Gay Liberation it retains a definite militancy importance on the fact that homosexuals do (gay pride and coming out) but the general not reproduce in explaining our oppression. radical rhetoric is less evident as is any While the need for reproduction of the attempt to theorize or analyse homosexual species, within prescribed kinship oppression. Instead the movement is structures, was and is an important factor in fragmented into a number of different types enforcing universal heterosexuality, a role of organisation and institutions appealing to for deviants has been provided in a number different types of homosexual. All of these of societies historically, and the connection constitute what is now called the ‘gay between sexuality and procreation has community’. Within this ‘community’, the become less relevant under late capitalism. activist movement is a distinct minority. Moreover, it has always been and still is the Reflecting the diversity of the social and case that both sexes are needed equally for political composition of homosexuals, most conception. of the activist groups — though this is more The former point corresponds to the applicable to Sydney and Melbourne rather statement by du Beauvoir that than other cities —focus on particular areas or campaigns: Gay Teachers, Lesbian what gives homosexual women a ' Mothers, Gay Trade Unionists, Law Reform masculine cast is ... the whole group of Coalition, etc. The effect of this is to focus on responsibilities they are formed to ‘discrimination’ and act as pressure groups assume because they dispense with rather than as sexual radicals. Not that it is men. (44) not important to fight any manifestation of De Beauvoir uses this to deny the gender homosexual oppression wherever it sheds its subversion in the sexual activities of customary everydayness, but that such lesbians. Walsh commits the Bame mistake. battles inevitably remain holding She says: operations. Lesbians are oppressed because we are Towards a Response: Socialist- women. (45) Feminism Heterosexual women in their sexual activity do not generally subvert heterosexual gender Despite the important role played by identity. If lesbians are only oppressed as lesbians in the women’s liberation women, and not doubly oppressed as women movement there has been little clear analysis and homosexuals, then what is the point of of lesbian oppression. The analysis of talking about them as lesbians? If all that’s lesbianism by socialist feminists has at issue is the role in the production process, approached the question primarily from a then any ‘masculine’ woman might well be feminist angle, not a class angle(42). This is (and often is) subversive, irrespective of especially true of the special lesbian issue of whether she is heterosexual or homosexual. Scarlet Woman in July 1976. In attempting to minimize what lesbians and This primacy of a feminist analysis over a male homosexuals have in common, the socialist one can also be seen in the socialist- apparent challenge to gender roles in the sex feminist contributions to the discussion in act (albeit in different ways), Walsh obscures the homosexual movement on the working the difference between lesbians and relations between women and men. heterosexual women. Walsh argued that lesbians are a greater The argument about the relation of threat to capitalism than male lesbians and male homosexuals to homosexuals: male homosexuals do not patriarchy has been more forcefully put by 26 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW No. 74

Bebbington and Lyons.(46) They too argued ‘counter-culture’ has added a unifying factor that lesbians have a greater stake in at the level of lifestyles. The most significant revolution. This is partly based on the breakthrough was in the Australian Union recognition that male homosexuals are men of Students in 1975 which saw the adoption and thereby enjoy all the power benefits of of a homosexual rights policy and delivered being male in a patriarchy, whereas resources, both human and material, lesbians, as women, cannot, unless they towards the revitalization of the homosexual become ‘like men’. Where their analysis movement (including the first national becomes confused is their linking of the conference in 1975). The limitation of this oppression of lesbians and male was the relative isolation from the left in the homosexuals to coming out: trade unions, but even this is slowly beginning to break down. The first contact Men are only potentially victims of oppression; they can, and often do, was with the then CPA-led Builders’ Laborers’ Federation in Sydney in 1973, choose to pass as straight... As lesbian women we can choose to hide our and subsequently in the three teachers’ lesbianism, but we can’t hide our unions in Victoria, At the Fourth National womanhood. Homosexual Conference (Sydney, 1978), a public forum on homosexuals at work was That male homosexuals may be victimized addressed by prominent trade union on coming out does not mean they are only officials; the Australian Council of Salaried oppressed when something happens: that and Professional Associations sponsored a this could be so is in fact symptomatic of national meeting on homosexual unionists their oppression. That lesbians cannot hide in Melbourne on August 10,1979. Gay Trade their womanhood points to their double Unionist Groups operate in Melbourne and oppression, but does not invalidate their Sydney and there are a number of oppression as homosexuals. homosexual caucuses in various industries What Walsh and Bebbington and Lyons and unions. were talking around is the contradictory The main problem with the support of position of male homosexuals in a patriarchy socialists to the homosexual movement at a of the type we live in. Many patriarchies theoretical level is the reduction of the have accorded male homosexuality a role in question to one of‘gay rights’. Quite clearly initiation of boyB into adult society — homosexuals are subject to everyday Hittites, ancient Greeks, etc; others have oppression, often revealing itself in given it a special place in religion. None has individual cases of injustice: a number of allowed it to question the basic relations cases have moved the homosexual between women and men. The idea that male movement into protest since it began: Peter homosexuality might be the ‘ultimate Bonsall-Boone, George Duncan, Jeremy manifestation’ of patriarchy ,(47) however, is Fisher, Penny Short, Mike Clohesy, Sandra based on only one aspect of the contradiction Wilson, Greg Weir, Tony Collins, Terry and has no relevance to capitalist societies. Stokes.(48) But, as I have argued, the liberal analysis of the situation of homosexuals in Towards a Response: the Socialist Left terms of discrimination 's inadequate, and consequently so is the political response that Since the rise of the homosexual focuses on gay rights. The early effeminist movement, there has been fairly general argument about gay rights being male rights support for it from the left, though little in a patriarchy is relevant here, but to leave