How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization - Cathy Crimmins [9]
But gay men are not, officially, an immigrant group (although they are finally being counted by the U.S. census). Male homosexuals do not come from a specific place. Unlike other immigrant groups, gay men discover their cultural heritage as they grow up and discover other gay men. Sometimes this requires emigrating to urban centers or vacation towns that provide a nonthreatening atmosphere. But just as often, today and in the past, gay men have been immigrants on their own, settling within obvious heterosexual populations and exerting subtle yet notable influence.
Defining Culture, Defining Civilization
In her famous essay about “camp” and the gay aesthetic, Susan Sontag points out that Jews and homosexuals have been the two major influences on modern American culture. I would say that it is now gay men who are the primary cultural catalysts. Their cultural power, and the enormous influence they’ve wielded on our American tastes, is now coming into view, finally.
What is civilization? In the strictly anthropological sense, of course, it means the particular characteristics of a community at a certain time and in a certain place. But when most of us speak of a place being “civilized,” we are thinking of what Webster’s calls “refinement of thought, manners, or taste.” More than any other minority group, gay men have contributed the civilized aspects of our modern lifestyle, and they’ve done it fueled by the transforming power of alienation.
When one is outside the mainstream culture, it seems more possible to concentrate on the finer things in life—literature, art, fashion, haute cuisine, and even perfection of the human body. Gay men have offered the straight world the enormous gift of aesthetic vision.
Pundits who analyze the diversity of American culture tend to use homey metaphors. We’re a melting pot of many different types of people making up the national stew, they say. We’re a tapestry of various cultures woven into one richly textured American fabric. If those metaphors hold, then homosexuals, as one of the most recent “ethnic” cultures affecting the mainstream, are the spices in the melting pot. Gay men are the flamboyant bright streaks of yarn in our American tapestry.
Chapter 2
Language: Gayspeak and Straight Shooters
I bitch-slapped the law, and the law won!
—Sean Hayes as Jack on Will & Grace
That’s Mr. Faggot to you!
—Slogan on a T-shirt sold in Greenwich Village
Movieline magazine: You’re a speed queen?
Courtney Cox Arquette: I’m heavy on the pedal, yeah.
—Interview in the January 2003 issue, in which the Friends star talked about loving her car
Straight people who want to seem hip tend to talk like gay guys. Of course, there’s no way we pathetic breeders can compete with the linguistic talents of homosexual men, but we try. Inevitably, the gayspeak that shows up in our dull, mainstream lives sounds as flat as a bottle of San Pellegrino that’s been left with its cap off for two days.
Sometimes, though, we don’t even know that the phrases we are suddenly so taken with have gay origins. I’m amazed by how often that happens in modern life—words and phrases get picked up and lose their original meaning or context. Just one example that is neither straight nor gay: A lawyer friend once got a goofy look on his face and said, “The dingo ate my baby!” I then commented about A Cry in the Dark, the campy Australian movie in which an ugly-wigged, falsely accused murderess Meryl Streep utters that line. “Huh?” said my friend. It seems that he had never heard of the movie. He just liked the way the phrase sounded. He might as well have been yodeling in an Australian accent.
This happens all the time with formerly gay-only terms and phrases. A young woman says that she’s a closet chocolate freak. What does she mean? “Oh, that I hide how much chocolate I eat.” Further discussion