For McGreevey’s coming out to intersect with his crony-isms and corruptions? I’d call it a car wreck but I’m trying not to rubber neck too much. I thought Time’s coverage put the various elements of this event into thoughtful scope and understanding the complexities of coming out may, in fact, have contributed to an initial boost in McGreevey’s job approval rating. Hey, I certainly felt positive about his coming out — that despite agreeing that he should resign over the misuse of his power. Still do.
For a snarky look at the McGreevey coming out, how about a little Michael Musto? Biting but it made me take notice of a couple of not-so-subtle cultural subtleties. First, Musto’s gusto in seeing McGreevey’s marriage as a sham:
What’s it gonna take to break up this arrangement? The whole point of a fake marriage, people, is to keep it going only until people find out it’s fake. And you certainly wrap it up when the wife finds out it’s fake!
Um, so the gay ghetto is the only option for McGreevey? Care to consider another option? And then there’s this little gem:
Conversely, author-Barneys creative director Simon Doonan feels McGreevey was too forthcoming. “With his wife standing there,” Doonan told me, “he could have at least said, ‘I’m bisexual.’ It really elbowed her out of the picture big time, which made him seem a bit less than charitable. Gay people are usually a little sweeter than that.”
No doubt McGreevey wasn’t as sweet and bisexual as sweet and bisexual as can be. But I think another mechanism is at work here. I think mainstream America has become accommodating enough to accept gay American or lesbian American* but I’m of the mind that it isn’t ready to hear the words queer American yet. Perhaps that’s why, should McGreevey actually be bisexual, he couldn’t openly claim it. Most of mainstream American knows the G and the L but they’re rather ignorant about the GLBT (and beyond).
(* Which reminds me: Anyone catch Candice Gingrich on the news stations during all this? Ain’t she looking exceptionally butch these days?)
Amazing, though, that in the same week in which McGreevey goes public, Salon looks at the Down Low among African-Americans. I found fascinating the fact that African-American men seeing gay as a white thing and might need their own identifier. That author J.L. King gets criticized for bringing panic to the women’s table has some merit, but let’s face it: Much activism in the African-American community originates with women and if fear can give way to less stigma and workable cultural solutions, then I’m willing to wait and see how this unfolds.
But I’m also patient because the white world blamed bisexuals when AIDS leapt from the gay community in the ’80s and ’90s. We’ve been through this already. I can’t say that we necessarily solved the problem all that well ourselves. Sure, we gained more legitimacy from the queer community because we actively shared some of their woes and worked as activists ourselves, but I think the white straight world has forgotten the whole “bisexuals are to blame” thing. They’ve moved on to the next best crisis.
Pockets of “watch out for bisexuals” still exist. I know that more than one women’s shelter/abuse program still list male bisexual behavior as a form of abuse. And I know that discrimination against male bisexuality exists within swingers’ groups is more common than not. But bisexual, for many of us, means choosing ethical slut practices and not being afraid to get tested when our current choices warrant it.
That said, if Spike Lee should make a movie about the Down Low, I hope he asks the white bisexual community how it weathered its blame years and whether a satisfactory conclusion was had.
And speaking of Spike Lee, congrats to Rachel. If you didn’t notice, Salon’s She Hate Me article takes most of its attributions from her NY Blade article which I pointed to recently. Nicely done, Rachel!
