Looking Back on NEM and Identity

By Matthew Clark

Long post… bear with me…

The week of action began this Sunday, Nov. 1st and lasts for the week, as part of a national effort born from the March on Washington and Equality Across America, to fight for LGBT equality. Members of the Queer Activist Coalition here in Gainesville (QAC) (disclosure: I’m a member of the group) has different things lined up. I’ll try to keep abreast on any developments across the country.

Besides grassroots activities, there’s been a lot of developments since the NEM to suggest that activists weren’t pressuring merely the ground. Firstly, the anti-hate act I discuss in my previous post quickly passed through the legislature, and Obama wasted no time giving it his John Handcock. Then, Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter came out in repeal of DOMA on the Huff Post. In Gainesville, members of QAC marched with the student-farm worker alliance in solidarity of human rights issues. In a recent phone conference with the ISO, who really brought it out for the NEM, I learned about what people are doing all across the U.S. to push for equality.

This march is having a larger and larger impact. The Week of Action will be a rest test of what can be done on a grassroots basis, and I’ve seen nothing about it in the gay-blogosphere.

In other news, last week’s “That’s Gay” segment of Infomania was pretty funny, and got me thinking about the social constructions of sexuality. Those familiar with John D’Emilio’s scholarship will probably tell you that the conversion therapy argument warrants some debate. There’s an extreme difference between gay identity and gay behavior, and gay identity is a strictly modern phenomenon. While “gay desires” cannot be averted, identity is self-proclaimed. So any closeted frat guy with a girlfriend, looking for other “str8 actin” men for a sexual encounter on Criagslist is free to consider themselves straight insofar as their behavior remains private, and they can disassociate it from their identity without psychological repercussions.

Those that can’t, may seek some form of therapy. In a free world, people can repress whatever feelings or desires they like and call themselves what they will. The reason why this stuff scares the hell out of me isn’t just because of how fucked up it is that someone would seek therapy, but how sexual identity is socially constructed. It has a two-fold effect: 1) affirming that homosexuality is an innate desire, but 2) relegating behavior to reshape identity. It depoliticizes the issues of identity and has an effect on sexuality in our society.

This is why issues like DOMA are so important. The government’s laissez-faire approach to sexuality would not only be more accepting, but would open the door for people to publicly take sexuality outside of the gay-straight binary that it has been cast it.