s “We *3“, \\ Good legal advice I can make all the difference. V I . Langrock Sperry & Wool offers the services of 22 lawyers with over 300 years combined experience in all areas of the law — including two lesbian attorneys with special expertise serving the legal needs of the g/l/b/t/q community. Navel Gazing Author Predicts the ‘End of Gay’ SUSAN MURRAY & BETH ROBINSON With offices in Middlebury and Burlington Middlebury (802) 388-6356 Burlington (802) 864-0217 smurray@langrock.com brobinson@langrock.com Langrock Sperry & Wool, LLP ATTORNEYS AT LAW Bike in France, hike in the Alps ~- or choose from over 20 other exciting, outdoor vactions. Shouldn't yggir next vacation 23, (.31 0.6770 wvWv.we.sternfengsh u 3. not Events Activities Advocacy Education - Networking Buyer's CO-Op Vermont People With AIDS Coalition P.O. Box 11 Montpelier‘, VT 05601-0011 in Vermont 800-698-8792 or 802-229-5754 Go W111; .211. the mountain biirting ’ capital of the . 01:: West. with a stunt}. friendly‘ gay and lesbian group. - BY Scorr SHERMAN arly in Bert Archer’s The End Eof Gay (and the death of het- erosexuality), the author explains that in late 1994 he started “reading and thinking an awful lot about sex and me and sexuality and identity and acceptability and social essentialism versus social construc- tionism. You know, the sorts of things you talk about with a good friend on a cool summer patio over a half dozen tequila and sevens.” I don’t know about you, but if I were on that (cliff-side) patio, I’d probably throw myself over the rail. Unfortunately, throughout most of The End of Gay I felt stuck on that patio, listening to a tipsy solipsist sloppily over-intellectualize. It’s not that Archer isn’t smart, but his narcissism, bizarre takes on pop culture, and lack of focus make it hard to discern his message. Archer has big goals for his book. “The End of Gay (and the death of heterosexuality),” he writes in his introduction, “is a tool to be used to redefine the role sex plays in ~ our lives and in our sense of our- selves.” He wants to tell us that there is no such thing as straight and gay. We’re all basically bisexual, and it’s only because of the particular place and time in which we live that we have this social construct of gayness around which we form a (false) iden- tity and community. At least this is what I think he’s saying — his fuzzy thinking is not always easy to follow. Archer uses his own expe- riences, historical research and refer- ences to movies and TV shows to make his case. However, his claims on sand, the living in which makes us, through omission rather than commission, more anxious, less happy people than we might other- wise be.” I don’t know about you, but my sexual identity doesn’t make - me particularly anxious or unhappy. Sweeping generalizations like these, however, make me nervous for the author, whom I worry is telling me more about himself than he might realize. Archer implies that we don’t need a gay community to fight for our civil rights anymore. After all, the gay rights movement is “a battle that was once against the threat of torture and death, and that is now mostly against things like insensitivi- ty and relatively mild social exclu- sion.” This will come as news to _ those who have lostjobs, housing, children, and, in some cases, even their lives because they were LGBT. Or, as Archer would posit, because they thought they were LGTB. Archer uses pop cultural references to make his case. But he starts out badly when the first analy- sis he conducts is between William ' Friedkin’s Cruising and James Burrow’s Partners, two bad movies whose “innate interconnectedness” he dissects in two pages that feel like 20. Other pop culture refer- ences throughout the book are simi- larly overwrought, reaching an apex for me during an unbelievable five- page discourse on —— of all things — Dawson is Creek. “Is it possible,” could be some of the most fulfilling, complex, and, if we like, lasting rela- tionships of our lives.” Crash! Sorry, I just jumped off the patio. ‘ Archer’s chapters on the historical development of the concept of gay are the most educational in the book. He’s well read, and he’s a good summarizer. Here too, though, things are somewhat jumbled. History is best told chronologically, but in his chapter on Nineteen-Thirty-Three, he verges off into discussing films like Cruising (again!) and Lookingfor Mn Goodbar. Archer’s last line of argu- ment is personal, sharing anecdotes from his own life to prove his points. While interesting, they are also the book’s biggest weaknesses. I don’t know what to make ofArcher’s contention that at one point in his twenties “fully halfthe men I’d had some form of sexual intercourse with identified as straight...” And while I enjoyed his ( titillating tale of seduction by his het- ‘ erosexual friend Josh, I don’t know that a few romps with playful straight boys truly portend “the death of het- erosexuality.” ’ Archer is so impressed with the universal truthfulness of his own experience that he decides that _ his few heterosexual impulses and actions somehow prove that everyone is bisexual. (Although, and I hate to ' sound catty — well, more catty — but the infrequency of his attractions to women would seem to prove the exact opposite.) “And although there are oodles of people out there ready to tell stories of an utter lack of interest in members of the opposite sex orthe it’s not that Archer isn't smart, but his narcissism, bizarre takes on pop culture, and lack of focus make it hard to discern his message. are often too broad to have any meaning, and the examples he gives are so specific to his own life that they prove nothing. For example, in the overly broad category, Archer compares the imminent “death” of gay to the mor- bidity of other “movements.” He happily proclaims Christianity not quite dead, but “mortally wounded.” “Only Christians could have defeated something as enormous, as all- encompassing, as Christianity. And they have, despite some rather noisy holdouts — one by one, family by family, generation by generation — by ‘noticing that it doesn’t make our lives better.” I certainly hope that no one shares this information with the Pope, or with the millions across the globe who follow him; it would ruin their day. Archer looks forward to the end of gay. “Unlike the death of most people. the death ofa movement. ofa way of thinking and being. is usually a good thing." He explains. “sexual identity is in the end a house built Archer wonders solemnly, “that Dawson’s dichotomy is a false one, that he shouldn’t feel the need to set up such solid divisions between his relationship with Jen and his relation- ship with Joey?” He goes on to say, in the overwritten style typical of his prose (he’s never met a run-on sentence he didn’t love), “By looking into that perceived gap between friendship and love and exploring the possibility that the best friends make the best lovers, as the show began to do in its second season when Dawson dumps Jen in favour of Joey, it also goes some way towards implying that there is no necessary boundary between the two, that there is no magic ineffable separating one from the other. that this particularje ne sais quoi is more ofapas de quoi, that in fact good relationships are good relationships. and all were doing by abnegating responsibility of will in the realm ofsexual attraction — saying ‘sorry. he/shejust doesn’t do it for me’ — is roadblocking what same sex from the delivery room onwards,” Archer asserts, “l’ll simply have to disagree with them; disagree with them on the basis of personal experience and introspection — which, since polls and statistics are utterly unreliable is, I am certain of it, the only way into such issues.” By then I went from being frustrated with Archer to actively dis- liking him. How arrogant is it to tell someone you "disagree" with his or her experience? Especially when you base it on nothing but your own navel-gazing? Archer’s final conclu- sions aren‘t much different from those of social conservatives who want to turn us straight. Like them. he presumes to know better what‘s in our hearts and souls than we do. By the end ofArcher’s book. I no longer wanted to throw myself over the patio. I wanted to throw him. V . Scot! She/‘man lives wit/2 /ifs parmel‘ and son in Ric/zmond.