The Dictionary of Homophobia (102 page)

Outside of lyrics, musical styles and types of instruments can be used as markers of homosexuality or heterosexism. Repertoires as diverse as opera or techno are associated with gays, while sexism is often very present in classical orchestras, even more so in jazz or rock groups. In classical music, the gender split happens mainly between the feminine strings (chiefly the harp) and the masculine winds (particularly brasses). In jazz or rock, unless they are part of an all-female group, women are usually reduced to the role of singers: to play an instrument, such as sax, guitar, or drums, is already a transgression of the norms. Here again, the most traditional phenomena of construction of masculinity and femininity are at work.
—Raphaëlle Legrand (thanks to Philippe Blay, Théodora Psychoyou, Catherine Rudent, Alice Tacaille, and Louis-Georges Tin)

Bonnet, Marie-Jo.
Les Relations amoureuses entre les femmes
. Paris: Odile Jacob, 1995.

Brett, Philip, Gary C. Thomas, and Elizabeth Wood, eds.
Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology
. New York: Routledge, 1994. Brett, Philip. “Britten’s Dream.” In
Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship
. Edited by Ruth A. Solie. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1993.

———. “Musicality, Essentialism, and the Closet.” In
Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology
. New York: Routledge, 1994.

De Gaulle, Xavier.
Benjamin Britten ou l’impossible quiétude
. Arles, France: Actes Sud, 1996.

Duneton, Claude.
Histoire de la chanson française
. Vol. 1. Paris: Le Seuil, 1998.

Garber, Eric. “A Spectacle in Color: The Lesbian and Gay Subculture of Jazz Age Harlem.” In
Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past
. Edited by George Chauncey, Martin Duberman, and Martha Vicinus. New York: Meridian, 1990.

La Gorce, Jérôme de.
Jean-Baptiste Lully
. Paris: Fayard, 2002.

Lischke, André.
Piotr Ilyitch Tchaïkovski
. Paris: Fayard, 1993.

Thomas, Gary C. “Was George Frideric Handel Gay? On Closet Questions and Cultural Politics.” In
Queering the Pitch
. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Segrestaa, Jean-Noël. “L’Opéra des gais,”
Trangul’ère
, no. 2 (2001).

Solie, Ruth A., ed.
Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship
. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1993.

Wood, Elizabeth. “Lesbian Fugue: Ethel Smyth’s Contra-puntal Arts.” In
Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship
, edited by Ruth A. Solie. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1993.

———. “Sapphonic.” In
Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology
. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Discography

Baccardi, Pit, Disiz La Peste, ROHFF et al. “Rap de barbares,”
Mission suicide
(2001).

Britten, Benjamin.
Albert Herring
. DECC 421 849-2LH2.

———.
Billy Budd
. Erato 3984 21631-2.

———.
Peter Grimes
. Chorus and orchestra of Covent Garden. EMI 7 54832 2.

———.
The Turn of the Screw
. Philipps 446 325-2.

Cavalli, Francesco.
La Calisto
. HMC 901515.17.

Charpentier, Marc-Antoine.
David et Jonathas
. HMC 901289.90.

Eminem.
The Marshall Mathers LP
(2001), Aftermath Records 493 062-2.

Elton John. “American Triangle,”
Songs of the West Coast
. Mercury 586 330-2.

Lunatic. “Le Son qui met la pression,”
Mauvais oeil
(2000).

Passi. “7 société va mal,”
Genèse
(2000).

ROHFF. “Rap info,”
La Vie avant la mort
(2001).

Sardou, Michel.
Intégrale 1965–1995
. Vol. 2, 4. Tréma.

Smetana, Bedriich.
Dalibor
. Supraphon. SU 0077-2 632.

—Art; Comic Books; Bryant, Anita; Cinema; Dance; Gender Differences; Heterosexism; Literature; Rhetoric; Sappho; Song.

N

NATURE.
See
Against Nature

NORTH AMERICA

In order to understand the issue of homophobia in North America, it is necessary to analyze the sexual culture of its complex society, the result of migratory waves of people from other parts of the world, many whom were conservative and dominated by religious forces. As a result, it could be said that there is not one, but rather many homophobic attitudes in North America, each relating to cultural constructions that have little in common with each other and yet overlap and reinforce one another. This reality is particularly acute in the United States, the most popular destination for immigrants in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By contrast, Canada, with its smaller population dispersed over a wide area, and whose politics have long been influenced by its historical relationship to Britain, experienced a more “European” evolution in the sense that the issue of homosexuality did not provoke a multiplicity of opposing viewpoints. It is thus best to undertake a separate analysis of these two countries, while keeping in mind that the extraordinary political and economic power of the United States regularly holds sway over Canada, including its attitudes on various social issues.

United States
The seventeenth-century colonization of what became the United States gives us insight into the issues that became the founding basis of homophobic attitudes there. The first two colonies to be established in the territory can in fact be considered two opposing models of colonization, each having different consequences on the construction of the representation of sexuality. The first of the two, Virginia, is a model of economic colonization, founded on an agricultural crop hitherto unknown in Europe, namely, tobacco. This specialization led to an immigration flux made up primarily of young men, which resulted in a hyper-masculine colonial society that was both adventurous and violent. In this context, the low female population created the social conditions that not only allowed prostitution to flourish, but also for men to have sexual contact with each other, most often in hierarchical relationships similar to those in prisons and penitentiaries, with no particular ramifications on their “sexual orientation.” Under these circumstances, then, homosexual relations were possible. At the same time, however, issues in this nearly-all-male society regarding masculinity became greatly exacerbated, allowing for the development of machismo attitudes, which included the disrespect of the “passive” partner in sexual relationships, whether male or female. Thus, we see the appearance of seemingly paradoxical behaviors in which a man may seek a “passive” same-sex partner while at the same time is willing to exact
violence
against those whom he perceives as being anti-masculine; i.e. homosexual.

Conversely, New England, the second colony established in the territory, was chiefly populated by English Pilgrims fleeing the repression of the Anglican Church. The immigrants were primarily made up of families, and thus there was no significant gender imbalance as there was in Virginia. However, New England’s sexual culture was forged on radical Calvinist values, and the public sphere, while accepting distant supervision by England, was structured on a theocratic model. In this context, homosexuality was obviously a serious sin, all the more so as the logic of the return to the purity of the Holy Gospels, and more particularly the Old Testament, inherent to the constitution of Puritan Protestant sects, which considerably reinforces the Hebraic interdict of homosexuality written in Deuteronomy.

These two models—the violent machismo of a hyper-masculine culture and the religious fundamentalism of a Puritan society—serve as the basis for the construction of contemporary American homophobia; in fact, these models recur at regular intervals throughout the history of the Union. For example, in the late nineteenth century, new immigrants arriving from Ireland and Italy (the Virginia model: mostly male and immigrating primarily for economic reasons) as well as Orthodox Ashkenazi Jews (the New England model: usually families, in this case the result of the pogroms in Europe) brought with them their cultural biases against homosexuals.

Add to this matrix two important elements: firstly, the multi-ethnic factor. Unlike the Old World, the United States is made up of many different ethnicities and cultures. As in
Latin America
, North American colonizers encountered native populations already present on the continent. Also, because slavery was legal until the Lincoln presidency, there was a significant surge in people coming from sub-Saharan Africa, particularly concentrated in the southern states. Additionally, as a new economic force began as early as the nineteenth century, the United States was a constant center of attraction for immigrants from countries well beyond Old Europe, such as Asia and Latin America. Finally, the United States, in its imperialist and expansionist mode, took on territories belonging to other cultural spheres, such as Hawaii. In this sense, the construction of masculinity and sexuality is the result of multiple cultural shocks wherein each ethnic community possesses its own values, all the while being confronted with the representations and standards of other communities within the dynamics of economic and political domination. To cite one example, the homophobia present in the urban African- and Latin-American subcultures of today, as suggested in the homophobic lyrics of certain hip-hop and rap artists, can be interpreted as an of intensification of the values of virility of certain economically and culturally marginalized communities, reinforced by the dominant visibility of the “Anglo-Saxon” (i.e. white) gay community. This attitude has a doubly tragic consequence, intensifying the hatred toward “white fags” and possibly leading to physical violence or murder, while making it difficult for the African- or Latin-American individual discovering his attraction for a person of the same gender to construct his own identity, producing an increased risk of depression and self-destructive attitudes. Conversely, the multicultural experience of America has also had some positive effects on homosexuals: for example, Harlem in the 1920s became a safe harbor for gays at a time when African-American culture rarely stigmatized homosexuality; and the first attempt in the United States to recognize same-sex
marriage
occurred in Hawaii, linked at least in part to the customs of its peace-loving native population.

The other factor that has influenced the construction of American homophobia is political in nature. The world’s economic leader since 1914 and its most powerful political force following the end of World War II in 1945, the United States has often modeled itself as a fortress under siege. In this context, the population’s ethnic diversity at times has instigated a fear of the “enemy within.” For example, during World War II, Americans of Japanese descent were deported to internment camps for fear of their ties to Japan. This sentiment also manifested itself in anti-communist panic during the Cold War, and at the same time linked the fate of homosexuals to that of the “Reds.” The “pervert,” perceived as the nation’s weakest link and susceptible to blackmail because of his “immoral” activities, became the ideal target of communist agents who had infiltrated the country. Because of this, in the eyes of the government at all levels, homosexuals were incompatible with any public duty. This analysis, which is at the heart of gay history during McCarthyism in the 1950s, has since been constantly reinforced by the American religious right, which plays on supposed links among atheists, communists, and homosexuals. McCarthyism is also the phenomenon that has fostered the main obstacles hindering the acceptance of homosexuality in America; obstacles that, to this day, are still at the forefront of the battles being fought by the American gay and lesbian movement.

First, it is necessary to determine the make-up of the modern gay and lesbian identity. Certainly, the construction of the gay identity began well before the Cold War. However, it was grounded principally in the reality of the white middle-class in large urban centers. Conversely, the witch-hunts brought about by McCarthyism helped make tangible a unified homosexual “condition.” Each practicing homosexual, regardless of ethnic origin, social class, or location, became a “pervert” in the eyes of the federal government, and as such an “enemy within,” excluded from public service and a target of FBI surveillance. This treatment had the effect of unifying gays and lesbians across all cultures and classes who, from that point on, shared a common identity. Ironically, it is in this context of repression that the first “homophile” organizations, the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, formed; it is also in this context that San Francisco became the nation’s gay mecca, a role reinforced by the city’s position as the destination for military personnel dishonorably discharged from services because of their homosexuality. In this sense, in the construction of the gay and lesbian identity and the subsequent emergence of gay militancy in the United States, McCarthyism played a role similar to that played by nineteenth-century
psychiatry
in the history of homosexuality in Germany.

Less optimistically, the period of the 1950s also gave birth to conservative alliances that formed the basis of the powerful religious-based American right that helped to bring Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George W. Bush to power. It is not only the Republican Party that has benefited from such groups, however. In fact, since the American Civil War, many Puritan evangelical organizations have, in a way that seems paradoxical to European observers, supported the Democratic Party. By rejecting Republican President Abraham Lincoln because of his anti-slavery policies, and because of a mistrust in government in general, the most sectarian religious populations of the South and agricultural Center allied with the unionized working-class populations of the North around the Democratic Party; decades later, this alliance helped form the basis of President Franklin Roosevelt’s rise to power and subsequent re-elections. Yet, the Republican party line on questions of morality as generated by Joseph
McCarthy
in the 1950s, followed by President John F. Kennedy’s policies regarding racial segregation, marked the beginning of the end of this alliance’s support for the Democratic Party. Moreover, in the late 60s and early 70s, the Democrats were forced to strengthen their left-wing agenda or risk the alienation of those in the hippie and pacifist movements, a move that made alliances between religious conservatives and social democrats all the more distinct. It is solely the issue of morality that, in the 70s, allowed various conservatives groups to come together under the banner of the Republican Party.