I woke up this morning to the radio announcing that Jodie Foster had (finally) come out of the closet. As with most news stories involving a celebritys sexuality that dont involve the existence of a sex tape, I could have cared less. What got me hooked on this story was how Mike Finnerty of CBC Montreal described her coming out as cryptic despite having occurred while she delivered a speech at the Golden Globes. This was followed up by a congratulatory exchange of we already knew between Finnerty and another host. Much of the media speculated on the speech in the same incomprehensible way: they accused her of not being clear enough, implied she was a hypocrite for asking for privacy while alluding to her private life at televised awards show, and then affirmed that none of this was even necessary because everyone knew that she was lesbian anyways. An article in the Guardian called the admission opaque. This afternoon, a radio personality from Radio Canada asked why Foster wasnt more clear before affirming that her sexuality had always been assez evident.
Two questions follow naturally from the media reaction to Fosters speech: 1) how could her speech be so totally unclear while also leaving no doubt in anyones mind that it was a coming out speech? and 2) why would she come out in such a public manner while also making a claim for the right to privacy?
The second question is a no brainer for anyone who has ever come out. Indeed, why should I have to tell you anything about myself in order to claim any rights, including a right to privacy? This is a question that all queer people have struggled with, and I am sure quite a few straight celebrities who have suffered speculation about their sexuality have felt similarly. The question should be turned on its head: why have straight people never had to affirm any particular fact about their sexuality? Answer: we are all presumed straight until proven otherwise.
The first question is the more interesting one, because the language of and contradictions in the medias reaction reveal what I have suspected all along: the coming out of the closet narrative is and always has been about straight people. Whether you come out or not, somebody always knows something about your sexuality. Scattered among the media reaction runs a thread of we already knew. Reactions like this presuppose a perpetual epistemic superiority of Fosters sexual identity. What exactly is it that we know? How do we come to know it? The regime of the closet is so powerful that we never even bother to ask these questions. We simply know. And Foster, she is trapped, obliged to acknowledge our knowledge about her, never in a position to pose similar questions about us, lacking a vocabulary to propose an alternative version of who she might be. Except that her coming out speech aimed to do precisely that, and that is why it was so brilliant.
By being allusive, opaque, and referring obliquely to a former partner of twenty years without the ritual confession of I am a lesbian, Foster unsettled the conventions of the coming out narrative. She admitted to being single, a mother, a daughter, an actress and, yes, a lover of another woman. Foster nodded to the loud and proud tropes that typically characterize such public admissions, but refused to honor their substance. Instead, she said I am single, which for someone who just emerged from a twenty year relationship is probably a more authentic admission than claiming membership to any kind of LGBTQ community. Nevertheless, everyone (and this is really interesting) knew what she was trying to get across. The language theyve used to describe the event, however, reveals their discomfort when someone refuses to play the game on their terms. Nothing more than a declaration of identity will suffice to satisfy the straight media types who tripped through their thesauruses looking for synonyms for unclear. Fosters speech was perfectly clear, but it denied straight people the right to easy classification.
The gays, on the other hand, couldnt have been more enthusiastic. Mike Signorele, one of the anointed gay voices for the Huffington Post, tweeted that we won big. This attitude alludes to another, perhaps more mordant and disturbing question raised by the medias reaction.
For some time now, mainstream homos have been telling us that the key to public acceptance (defined narrowly by how much network television time we take up) is coming out of the closet. Foucault has written about the strange project of sexuality and the delusions of sexual liberation more eloquently than I can, and I need only refer you to his work if you still have doubts that claiming a sexual identity can be anything other than liberatory. But even more pressing, we should critically assess what the real effects of coming out and increased visibility actually are. As many scholars have noted, particularly Joseph Massad , the current discourse of gay rights trumpeted by international rights organizations in such mythical constructions as the Middle East functions to imply the barbarism of others by assessing their stance on gay rights. The West used to judge the rest of the world by how they treated their women, and now they judge them by how they treat their gays. In the West itself, we now judge gays by how much theyve acceded to the stereotypes of gayness, first and foremost among them being the coming out narrative. The most prominent, well-funded gay voices seem to be the most adamant on this point.
The problem of these activists who want to ride the international LGBTQ rights civilizing mission across the world, the same people whove built successful public carers by promoting their version of liberation, is their utter insensitivity to the practical effects of coming out - effects which are not in any way alleviated by having a critical mass of coming out stories. In some contexts, coming out results in banishment from the family, bullying at school, and sometimes corporeal violence. Shallow claims of publicity = liberation belie one of the basic truths to emerge from any study of gay identities: anti-gay sentiment rises in proportion to visibility. The gay panic defense is the classic example of how one persons coming out excuses a violent reaction.
None of this is to say we shouldnt be able to walk any way we want, wear whatever we want, fuck whomever want, etc. Im simply trying to show that the equation of coming out with personal and social liberation is a lie. There are far more difficult questions to be asked about why people are homophobic, and we shouldnt seek the resolution of these by demanding all gays publicly confess their membership to the gay club. Just because straight people cant help but ask the question and the gay voices crowd is anxious to expand their audience does not mean that coming out is the right option for you.
I was just trying to scream " Hey, I am here!!" but words didn't come out.
