Newswise — The polemics surrounding the politics of sexuality in the United States have become so well polished and scripted that they are almost completely inert, according to Colin Johnson, assistant professor of gender studies and adjunct assistant professor in American studies and history at Indiana University Bloomington. The right continues to talk about the sanctity of the family and attacks on traditional institutions, while the left argues, often fruitlessly, for equality, fundamental fairness, and social and cultural diversity. Johnson said, "What we've heard less about in recent years, and what we haven't really seen at all, are the complicated negotiations that people undertake every single day in order to maintain a relationship to intimacy and pleasure, or to a sense of optimism about the possibility of having a 'life' that actually qualifies as such. I think it's exhilarating to watch those negotiations take place, and I think depicting them is part of what "Brokeback Mountain" aspires to do. At the same time, watching Ennis' and Jack's relationship unfold on screen is also nerve-wracking in a way. After all, intimacy, pleasure and optimism are all things that are fiercely felt, but extremely fragile." Johnson's research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in non-metropolitan areas. He is also interested in film and media studies. He is currently completing a book manuscript on the history of homosexuality in rural America.
Many gay Western men living in the rural Northwest identify much more with their "cowboy values" than with their sexuality, according to research by Indiana University Bloomington sociology graduate student Gregory Hughes. Critics of the movie "Brokeback Mountain" sometimes claim that the existence of gay cowboys is cinematic fiction. Hughes said the gay men involved in his study -- typically ranchers and truckers -- appeared no different than their neighbors and rural townsfolk. "These men wouldn't deny they are gay," Hughes said. "But nobody ever asks or even thinks to look for them. They're sort of invisible in their communities because nobody would think to look for them." Hughes studied gay rural men while spending a summer working on a ranch owned by a gay couple near a town of less than 2,000 people in a Northwestern state. Amidst his chores, he was able to observe the couple's day-to-day lives and how they kept in touch with other gay men in their region, often using the Internet. His research took him to four states and two Canadian provinces as he attended a gay rodeo, a large camp-out and other social gatherings. On a weekly basis friends in the couple's social network would drop by, often to take a break from their trucking routes. Hughes said the men with whom he spoke identified much more with "cowboy" and traditional rural values such as the importance of hard work -- and good work. They valued working outdoors. Their relationships with other men were viewed in the same context as heterosexual relationships in terms of the importance of being committed. They were political about economic and land issues. "They would say, 'Your private life is private,'" Hughes said. Many of the men even disliked the word "gay." "They would say, 'I use the word gay because I have to, but I'm a guy who likes guys.'"
Many pop culture references frame lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and questioning youth (LGBTQ) as "out of place" when living beyond the city lights. But rural places are not endemically hostile to these kids any more than cities are inherently safe havens for them, said Mary L. Gray, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University Bloomington. "The hardships these youth experience today are rooted in systemic and institutional practices of marginalization and less a function of where they live," she said. What matters most for LGBTQ youth, Gray explains, is whether they have peers, adults, school systems and support services advocating for and defending their ability to organize and express themselves freely. Those who stay in small rural towns have a "far more interesting and dynamic sense of their rural communities," she said. "They point out how their realities are far more public, complicated and, well, pleasurable than the realities on display in 'Brokeback Mountain.'" What recent films such as "Boys Don't Cry" and "Capote" haven't given us -- and what "Brokeback Mountain" only touches upon -- is how queerness is organized differently in rural places than it is in cities, she said. "We've only scratched the surface in studying the differences in any grounded way." Gray is the author of "In Your Face: Stories from the Lives of Queer Youth" (Haworth Press, 1999), a collection of first-person accounts of the lives of sexual minority youth. Her ethnographic research focuses on modern sexuality and gender issues concerning youth living in non-urban settings and how those youth fashion their identities through media engagement.
Lamenting what could have been -- a unifying theme. Indiana University Bloomington Sociology Professor Brian Powell has been surprised by a conversation he keeps finding himself in concerning the movie "Brokeback Mountain." It involves heterosexual men who say they saw the movie only because their wives or girlfriends insisted. "They go to the movie. The last 45 minutes are very emotional. Some of them cry," said Powell, whose research interests include the sociology of gender, family and education. "One of my colleagues said, 'I just started bawling,' and this isn't someone who cries." Powell said the movie involves gay issues but more broadly illustrates compromises and sacrifices people make, which could explain its effect on his heterosexual acquaintances. This reaction, Powell said, relates to some findings in a national survey he conducted on family issues. The survey included questions related to homosexual relationships. In the survey, women were more likely to report having a gay or lesbian relative or friend. Such a relationship usually is linked to more liberal beliefs regarding gay issues. Powell said such relationships have a bigger impact on men, who are more likely to change their attitudes about gay issues when exposed to them, according to the survey. Powell is the Allen D. and Polly S. Grimshaw Professor of Sociology.
The conspicuous absence of talk about sexuality in the film "Brokeback Mountain" may be seen by some as a lamentable manifestation of Ennis' and Jack's "closetedness" or "repression." But it would be a mistake to assume that any ambivalence toward or disaffection from modern notions of gay identity is a symptom of mere ignorance, provincialism or self-loathing, said Colin Johnson, assistant professor of gender studies and adjunct assistant professor in American studies and history at Indiana University Bloomington. "As important as courageous outspokenness and the rejection of shame have been for many lesbians and gay men over the past four decades, the emergence of a supposedly progressive mandate to 'come out' as a newer, truer, fully liberated you has actually had the strange effect of doubly victimizing some Americans. Whereas people with the desire and means to live in urban LGBT communities have been able, on some level, to bask in their own hard-won sense of empowerment, others who have neither the desire nor the means to do so have been left to contend with a nationally pervasive culture of homophobia that has only intensified in recent years," Johnson said. At the same time, many of these people also experience a sense of alienation from the larger LGBT community, Johnson adds, "a community that often seems unwilling to represent their non-metropolitan lives as anything other than a pitiable tragedy or the premise of a joke." Johnson's research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in non-metropolitan areas. He is also interested in film and media studies. He is currently completing a book manuscript on the history of homosexuality in rural America.
RSS