FREE ESSAY ON HOMOGENIZING THE HOMOSEXUAL

HOMOGENIZING THE HOMOSEXUAL

On a hot June night in 1969 the sexual discourses of theology, law and psychology
encountered resistance so strong that millions of lives were changed. In a small gay bar
in New York, the regulars, an eclectic mix of drag queens, transexuals, effeminate men
and butch women, offered up the most visible resistance ever witnessed to the relentless
exercising of public power on their private lives. The three-day street riot, began by
Stonewall patrons, spilled onto the front pages and television screens of a nation. The
exposure placed the queen, queer and dyke in the living rooms, kitchens and supermarkets
of straight America. The resistance of gays to the external and internal subjectification
of themselves as sinners, sodomites and psychopaths began.
Before this seminal event, gays were known, but their lives operated in the back streets
and alleyways of urban life. They were invisible to mainstream North Americans and
expected to stay in the shadows where their deviant bodies belonged. The patrons of the
Stonewall bar lived at the precipice of gay life. Their adoption of cross dressing was an
affront to prevailing sexual norms. Women in suits and men in scarves and chiffon were
the most identifiable of deviants and they 
relished their disobedience. Strutting through urban nights they gleefully thumbed their
noses at 
the heterosexual world. They embraced every stereotype and took the constitution of the
gay subject to extremes.
The visibility of these men and women made them easy targets for random displays of force
by police. Haphazard attacks on gay bars and clubs instilled fear of the unknown. The
visible cared little about the repercussions of these raids for they had nothing to lose.
For this they were shunned by their gay brethren who viewed them as circus sideshow
freaks. These queens, queers and dykes were dangerous. Their openness put 'average' gays
at risk. The physical and verbal abuse by police, abandonment by families and lack of
social opportunity experience by the most identifiable queers kept most of North
America's gays firmly underground.
Under the guises of religion, law and science, power was being exercised to keep gays 
marginalized and hidden. Most happily acquiesced. With the fear of verbal, physical or
social reprisals looming large, they became prisoners of their own making in Michel
Foucault's vision of panoptic power. Invisible gays continually surveyed themselves for
any outward signs of their sin that would lead to public detection. With only the images
and words of repressive discourses to 
constitute themselves, the invisible queers, internalized disgust and spent their lives
under constant self-surveillance.
These stifling conditions ignited the need for the relation of power between straights
and gays to shift focus. Near domination and the excessive uses of force were producing
an entropic 
situation in need of diversion to a more productive state. Stonewall provided the
necessary response. Three nights of fighting, shouting and revelry that confounded police
commanded the immediate attention of heterosexuals everywhere. More importantly it
garnered the 'freaks' the respect and admiration of the millions of silent women and men
across North America. For gays, a movement was being born and a new, more productive
power structure was emerging.
In the aftermath of Stonewall, many gays felt empowered to go public and change the 
repressive statutes that governed their lives. Collectively, the truth that they were not
deviants to be beaten, souls to be saved or in need of psychiatry materialized. Nothing
was wrong with their 
psychological or spiritual states. Claims of normalcy were becoming self evident through
the eyes of the new scientific discourse of biology. No blame was to be laid nor pity
bestowed, nature had made them. The prescience of this biological discourse laid the
fertile ground for the exercising of Foucault's bio power upon the gay subject.
The reduction of fear and militancy generated by the rioters helped to usher in the
ascent of bio power. By giving gays the courage, legitimacy and collective will to move
out of the shadows, Stonewall's riots gave bio power access to the private lives of gays.
If their sexual nature was blameless then remaining cloaked kept them from participating
as productive social beings. Out in the open bio power could classify, subjectify, survey
and normalize the modern gay.
To produce new subjects every possible sexual variation was catalogued: homosexual, fag,
dyke, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transexual, transvestite, trisexual and intra-gendered. A
hierarchy of acceptable identities began to emerge. A gay norm was espoused through
magazines, television, movies and popular culture that was palatable to heterosexuals. To
don the makeup of the lipstick or chic lesbian, master the macho stance of the butch fag
or buy penny loafers and live in suburbia. These were the accoutrements of the new
normal, non-threatening gay.
The successful fights for judicial changes and the massive attention received by
mainstream mass media has shown gays the power of the normalcy claim. There are now
substantive benefits to self identification as a 'normal' gay. The promise and
availability of certain social advantages has given people cause to actively internalize
the identity of this new gay subject. In the fight to attain marriage, spousal benefits
and parental rights they have become the principals of their own subjection.
Normalcy has unearthed the lives of many men and women. Gay power as a political and
economic force can now be tracked through the electronic footprints left by magazine
subscriptions, credit cards purchases, insurance forms and wills. The number of gay
associations, bars and clubs informs society of the sheer number of self identified gays
in their midst. All this coming out of the closet is necessary to extend the external
surveillance of bio power to more and more members of society.
But, external surveillance is limited in scope and an inefficient way for bio power to
exercise itself on subjects. The concessions won by gays were hard fought and many are
afraid of a reversal of their social fortunes. Much of the battles won have worked
through the presentation of gays as normal, desexualized, non-threatening, socially
responsible and conforming adults. The stereotypes of leather wearers, S/M perverts, drag
queens and diesel dykes are the gay community's dirty little secret. They are the focus
of the proper gays 'normalizing judgement'. Too much negative exposure may erode the
gains.
This judgement has gays internalizing their own surveillance and placing others of
similar orientation under a watchful eye. Pressure to homogenize the homosexual is borne
from within the ranks. The character of these gay deviates is suspect and normalized gays
display a pseudo sense of shock and disgust. They supervise themselves and others for
deviation. The state no longer requires harsh laws and punitive punishments to control
the behavior of the gay subject, they do the deed themselves.
The Stonewall riots were the culmination of years of a micro-resistance by societies most

marginalized gays. Society's ability to reach into the lives of closeted gays and
classify them was waning and bio power needed visible subjects to define. The discourse
of biology was and is in ascendency and its normalizing effect on homosexuality has
provided gays a key to mainstream 
culture. In return they have been forced into renewed self surveillance and exposed to
private 
intrusions. Gays have so thoroughly internalized their new identity that they believe
they have wrested power from an oppressive heterosexual world and are nearing freedom.
For Foucault, gays have simply been duped into a new relation of power that has
normalized, catalogued, subjectified and desexualized their lives.