 |
By Trevor |
I was nostalgically flipping through my Master's thesis this morning, when I stumbled upon this quote from "Tom" - a 20 year old San Franciscan who I interviewed about being gay and staying HIV-negative. He was struggling to develop his own gay community, and I will never forget the passion and intensity with which he said this to me in our interview (note: "Jake" is one of the other participants, who in our focus group together came out against monogamy):
I'm really sort of a romantic idealist, you know? I always have this image of gay guys being very hard and very like cold, you know, one-night-standish - shunning love. When Jake said... 'monogamy doesn't work' - like, for me, and seriously, my heart just broke into a million pieces for like the millionth time. I was sad. I was like, GOD! That's a terrible thing to say. It can totally work! I totally want to get married - I'm so into getting married. I want to go to IKEA, I want to pickup my fucking furniture, I want to have parties, I want to have a good group of gay husbands, you know have dinner parties, and have fun, and yeah. It's in my future, I hope it is. It's what I want. So when he said that, it just made me totally sad. I totally got totally sad. I don't want that suspicion confirmed.
You know, I think some of my colleagues would quick to pounce and critique Tom's vision of his gay future. His "gay American dream," as I called it in my thesis. But he really, truly wants this. And who are we to critique him for that? Critique the (hetero)normative system in which he lives, sure. But I just can't critique Tom.
|
Ah the classic 1950's style idealized gay lifestyle. I immediately think of that photo from the NYT article on gay marriages in Massachusetts some years ago, where two husbands were wearing bow-ties in the kitchen with what looked like brisket on the kitchen table.
Tom's ideal world isn't everyone's cup of tea, but if that is what the dude truly wants more power to him.
To your colleagues that would pounce on poor Tom tell them to leave him alone. So what if he has bought into a heteronormative view of the world. Why must, or should, he choose the alternative.
While the gay community as a whole should not forcibly tell every gay person that it is crucial that they settle down and start a family, telling them that 'monogamy doesn't work' isn't any better. We should embrace people making choices rather than lecturing them on what's wrong with "trying to act straight".
Gay people have more choices now and are not marginalized as much as we once were, as a result many would naturally identify with the mainstream as that's the world and environment they are most familiar with, just with a gay twist.
Plus, who the hell doesn't like dinner parties and Ikea. I'll tell you who...communist!