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Some otherpeople at the memorial service disagreed with Larry about who
killed Vito. As several hundred of Vito's friendsand admirers arrived at the
service, we were handed a xeroxed fliersigned "Three Anonymous Queers."
"On the same nightlast month,"it began,
VitoRusso died fromAIDS and JesseHelms was reelectedto anothersix
yearsofpower.. . . I believewithall myheartthatJesseHelmskilledVito
Russo. And I believe withoutquestionthatwhen I was queer-bashed,
thewounds
Helmswas as responsibleformyinjuriesas ifhe had inflicted
withhis own hands.I fullyimaginein a meetingwithHelms,he would
have theblood and fleshof dead dykesand fagsdrippingfromhis hands
and mouth.And I hatehimand I believe he is a threatto myveryexis-
tence and I have every rightto defendmyselfagainst him with any
amountof forceI choose.
The flierclosed with two questions: "If I am ever brave enough to murder
Jesse Helms, will you hand me the gun to carryout the deed? Will you hide me
fromthe law once it is done?"
Most queers will recognize, in these two rhetoricalanswers to the question,
ABSOLUTELY
QUEER
WINNER.
OSCAR GRADUATE.
YALE EX-DISNEY
MOPPET.
DYKL
You Look, "We decided to milk this for all it was worth,in termsof a female
bonding experience."
Again in Epistemology of the Closet, Sedgwick writes:
I taketheprecious,devaluedartsof gossip,immemorially associatedin
Europeanthoughtwithservants,witheffeminate and gay men,withall
women,to have to do noteven so muchwiththetransmission of neces-
sarynews as withtherefinement of necessaryskillsformaking,testing,
and usingunrationalized and provisionalhypothesesaboutwhatkindsof
people thereareto be foundin one's world.... I don'tassumethatall gay
menor all womenare veryskilledat thenon-taxonomic workrepresented
by gossip,butitdoes makesenseto supposethatourdistinctive needsare
peculiarlydisservedby itsdevaluation.19
The most fundamentalneed gossip has served for queers is that of the con-
struction-and reconstruction-of our identities.Most of us can rememberthe
firsttime we heard someone called a queer, or a fag or a dyke, and-that some-
one not being ourselves-nevertheless responding, within,"So that's what I
am." Because the name-calling is most oftena derogation,our identifications
are also self-derogations.We painstakinglyemerge fromthese self-derogations
throughnew identifications,a process thatoftendepends on gossip among our-
selves: "Really, he's gay? She's a dyke?" "Jodie's a dyke? Then maybe I'm
fabulous, too." From this,we go on to deduce the role-model defense. "If little
tomboys growing up today knew about Jodie, they'd be spared the self-dero-
gation." But the deduction misses two crucial points: first,what Sedgwick
means by "an already institutionalizedignorance," and second, our conception
of identity.
Little tomboys won't be told about an openly lesbian actress, whose career
will in any case probably be cut short the moment she comes out. As Vito
Russo famouslyquipped about coming out, "The truthwill set you free ... but
firstit will make you miserable." The eradication of the homophobia thatcon-
structs the celebrity's closet does not depend on the individual celebrity's
avowal, the limitationsof which we have seen again and again: Did the exem-
plary midshipman's confession of his homosexuality change the rules at
Annapolis or the Pentagon? Did the Olympic medal winner's foundingof the
Gay Olympics persuade the U.S. Olympics Committee or the Supreme Court
to let us use thatrubric? No, the eradication of homophobia-of this already
institutionalizedignorance-depends on our collective political struggle,on
our identitypolitics.
Identitypolitics has most oftenbeen understood,and is now denigrated,as
essentialist (denigrated in certain quarters,in fact, as essentially essentialist;
this is what Diana Fuss recognizes as the essentialism of anti-essentialism).20
We were gay, and upon our gayness we built a political movement.But is this
really what happened? Wasn't it an emergingpolitical movementthatenabled
the enunciation of a gay-rather than homosexual or homophile-identity?
Notes
1. Arnie Kantrowitz,"Milestones: Vito Russo," Outweek73 (21 November 1990), 37.
2. Several monthslater,however,Dinkins took a courageous stand against antigayand
antilesbianprejudice by marchingwiththe Irish Gay and Lesbian Organization(IGLO) in
New York's St. Patrick'sDay parade. He did thisin orderto brokera compromisebetween
IGLO and the AncientOrderof Hibernians,the parade organizerswho had refusedIGLO's
application to participate.The resultwas thatDinkins was subjected to torrentsof abuse
fromthe crowd and a cold shoulderfromCardinal O'Connor, whichled the mayorto com-
pare his experienceto civil rightsmarchesin the South in the 1960s. See Duncan Osborne,
"The Cardinal,the Mayor,and the Balance of Power," Outweek92 (3 April 1990), 30-37.
3. LarryKramer,"Who Killed Vito Russo?" Outweek86 (20 February1990), 26.
4. See Douglas Crimp,with Adam Rolston,AIDS Demo Graphics (Seattle: Bay Press,
1990), 53-69.
5. Quoted in theNew YorkTimes,27 September1991, A12.
6. For a detailed account of outing,includinghistoricalbackgroundand analysis of the
contemporary debates as well as an appendixof essential articlesfromthe media, see Larry
Gross, The ContestedCloset: The Politics and Ethics of Outing(Minneapolis: Universityof
MinnesotaPress, forthcoming1993).
7. It's not thatJeffand I are so butch as to be unreadable as gay; indeed manypeople
mightpresumethatwe are gay,but our not behaving"overtly"allows themto act precisely
as if the operativepresumptionis thateveryoneis straightunless openly declaring them-
selves not to be.
8. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemologyof the Closet (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1990), 81.
9. William Henry III, "Forcing Gays Out of the Closet," Time, 29 January1990, 67;
David Gelman,"'Outing': An UnexpectedAssault on Sexual Privacy,"Newsweek,30 April
1990, 66.
10. This was not always the case. It took intense pressure from queers and AIDS
activiststo force the Times to list survivinglovers of gay men. Even now, the Times only
mentionsa "companion" in the course of an obituarystory,not as one of the survivors,who
are stilllimitedto blood relativesand legal spouses.
11. See RichardMeyer,"Rock Hudson's Body," in Diana Fuss, ed., Inside/Out:Lesbian
Theories,Gay Theories (New York and London: Routledge, 1991), 259-88.
12. See, forexample, RobertSherrill,"King Cohn," The Nation, 21 May 1988, 719-25.
Beginningwiththesentence,"Cohn was a particularlynastyhomosexual," Sherrillrecounts
stories of Cohn's extremepromiscuityand his supposed relations with otherduplicitous
right-winghomosexuals, then ends his account with the followingparagraph:"Typically
disloyal, Cohn gave no supportto homosexuals who were tryingto win public acceptance.
He called them'fags,' did all he could to make theirlives miserable,lecturedagainstthem,
berated politicians for any display of tolerance toward homosexuals and urged laws to
restricttheirfreedom.To his death he denied thathe was homosexual,but the Dorian Gray
scene of his dyingof AIDS said it all: 'Roy ... lay in bed, unheeding,his fleshcracking
open, sores on his body,his facultieswaning' and with a one-inch 'slit-likewound above
[his] anus.'" The finalquotations,indicativeforSherrillnot of disease but of homosexual-
ity(or perhapsthe two are not to be differentiated),are uncredited,but are takenfromone
of the two books underreview in the article,Citizen Cohn by Nicholas von Hoffman.
13. Sedgwick, Epistemology,78.
14. Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexualityin theMovies (New York: Harper
& Row, 1987), xi.
15. In thenovel, Dr. Danielson of JohnsHopkins reportsto JackCrawford:"The Harris-
burg police were after[Gumb] for two assaults on homosexual men. The last one nearly
died" (Thomas Harris,The Silence of theLambs [New York: St. Martin's,1989], 312). And
Crawfordreportsto Clarice Starlingabout Gumb: "He's a fag-basher"(322). This is not to
say thatHarris's portrayalof Gumb is freeof homophobicstereotyping. Most of thedetails
of Gumb's characterizationin the filmare takendirectlyfromthenovel. Demme added one
(the nipple ring)and omittedone (Gumb's obsession withhis mother).But it is importantto
add thatstereotyping functionsdifferentlyin the two mediumsand thattheirrespectivehis-
toriesof homophobicportrayalsdiffereven moresignificantly.
16. I have in mind,of course, Laura Mulvey's classic and often-reprinted essay "Visual
Pleasure and NarrativeCinema" (1975), now in her collected essays, Visual and Other
Pleasures (Bloomingtonand Indianapolis: Indiana UniversityPress, 1989), 14-26.
17. B. Ruby Rich, contribution to "Writerson theLamb: SortingOut the Sexual Politics
of a ControversialFilm," Village Voice,5 March 1991, 59. This series of shortpieces on the
filmwas partiallyin responseto questions raised about the film'shomophobicstereotyping
and the threatof "outing"JodieFosterby Michelangelo Signorile in Outweek.
18. Teresa de Lauretis, "Film and the Visible," in How Do I Look? Queer Film and
Video, ed. Bad Object Choices (Seattle: Bay Press, 1991), 232.
19. Sedgwick, Epistemology,23.
20. See Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature, and Difference(New
York: Routledge, 1989).
21. See JohnGallagher, "Protest Threats Raise Visibility at Academy Awards," The
Advocate, 5 May 1992, 15. In thissame issue of The Advocate, the "etcetera"column con-
tains a photoof JodieFosterwhose captionreads, "A first-rate actresswitha third-ratecon-
sciousness we hope is straight"(88).