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blog atsign iansie.com
Signorile vs Sullivan: "no such thing as too hairy"
Andrew Sullivan, sometime editor of the right-wing magazine New Republic, has established himself as a high-profile commentator on gay issues. A long-term critic of gay men for their "libidinal pathology," Sullivan advocates gay marriage as the only dignified route to homosexual liberation.
Gay radical Michelangelo Signorile, best known for his "outing" activities, has a long-standing feud with Sullivan. Last month, Signorile published a 5000-word piece in LGNY, a Manhattan queer weekly, about how Sullivan has been advertising on the net for unprotected gay sex.
Sullivan has responded with a piece on his own web-site (subtitled 'an article no-one should have to write'), justifying his position and accusing Signorile of Sexual McCarthyism.
As queer gossip, this is enthralling stuff. But are there any serious moral isues in play here? To my mind there are three intertwined issues at stake here: internet sex, barebacking and outing.
If and when this story reaches the mainstream press, a lot of ordinary people are going to be repelled simply by the idea that people choose to use the internet to find sexual partners. In a lot of cases, that repulsion will be tinged with tabloid overtones, memories of paedophile sex clubs, Thai child brides, and so forth.
Arguing with people about what they should or shouldn't find repellent is a pretty lost cause, I find. But it's perhaps worth pointing out that what at first seems to be a moral stance is, more often than not, mere pudeur: just because you can't imagine yourself doing it, you shouldn't condemn those who have the courage (or, sure, the need) to do so.
I've had some great erotic encounters on the Net, without even meeting people in the flesh. And yes, in some cases, it's all been a bit desperate. But in others, many others, it's proved to be a thoroughly win-win relationship: beyond the immediate sexual release, both parties have gone away with their sense of humanity enhanced and enlarged by the experience.
(Certainly, it's not as fulfilling as a decent date. But nobody turns up their nose at the idea of dating because its not as fulfilling as a long-term relationship, just as nobody turns their nose up at the idea of a solitary wank - and a net-sex encounter has to be 'better' than a wank, if only because the latter has a real human being in it, however mediated by the technology.)
In the first of two recent Salon pieces on the affair, Cliff Rothman makes an even more explicit claim: "I defend my right to sexual experimentation - though, until recently, I never dreamed of defending it publicly. I remember, years ago, going to a leather bar in New York, and first making the connection that the most creative, interesting, edgy guys were often attracted to fringe sex.
"The emotions that touch highs and lows, the acting out of issues of control or power, the intensity of need, the creative acting out that spilled over into sex: no one should have to apologize for wanting to explore all that."
So can we condemn Andrew Sullivan for using the net for sex? No, I don't think so.
Penetrative anal sex where both parties specifically agree not to use condoms is known as 'barebacking' and it has a whole little sub-culture of its own. (A sub-culture that made British headlines last year with an article in the Pink Paper by Nigel Wrench.)
Intriguingly enough, Signorile's original article condemns barebacking without any discussion of just who is barebacking whom. But it seems to me to be vital to distinguish between three classes of wilfully unprotected sexual encounter.
Although I think I can understand what drives two HIV-negative men to agree to have unprotected sex, I myself find it rather scarey (though, it must be said, less scarey than it was before effective combination therapies were developed.)
Unprotected sex between an HIV positive man and an HIV negative man I find scarier still. It seems that, more often than not, there are deep psychological issues in play, issues that it would undoubtedly be healthier to examine on the couch than in the bed.
Signorile's LGNY piece quotes the page on Barebackcity.com where, as 'RawMuscleGlutes' Sullivan ticks boxes to indicate that: "I take loads in my ass. I take loads in my mouth. I give loads in asses. I give loads in mouths. My HIV status: Poz. I prefer you to be: Poz."
When two HIV positive men agree to have sex without condoms, the issue is clearer. Superficially, given that both men are already positive, there seems nothing to lose.
There is, however, considerable controversy about the possibilities of 'superinfection' - the chance of catching a different strain of the virus.
In 1990, Sullivan himself wrote: "Even an HIV-positive man can be made sicker by re-infection with the virus, whether from his own lover or from someone else."
This week, ten years on, he wrote: "I have discussed the issue with my doctors, and my current boyfriend and my last boyfriend, both of whom are HIV-positive. Again, there is space for disagreement about this question, but to me, the evidence seems weak and hypothetical." Clearly, he has changed his mind.
I don't know enough about this issue to take a position but, given the degree of controversy involved, it seems to me that this is an issue that involves only the two men involved. Provided both parties believe that they are not putting each other at risk, I would not seek to condemn them for doing so.
So should we condemn Andrew Sullivan, an HIV positive man, for using the internet to find other HIV positive partners? I don't think so.
But was Signorile right to 'out' Sullivan for doing so?
Signorile has made a name for himself as a loud proponent of 'outing' - a term coined by Time magazine in 1990 to describe the practise of revealing that a public figure was gay or lesbian. In an article at the Advocate's website out.com, Signorile writes: "I advocated that the media honestly report on gay public figures' lives in the same way they report on straight public figures' lives. As far as I was concerned, this was 'reporting' - or, as some of my colleagues described it, 'equalizing.'" (Here as elsewhere, he fails to point out the much simpler rationale: sex sells.)
Sullivan (whose own naming of names led Ed Koch to describe him as being like "the Jew-catcher of Nazi Germany") has observed the "gleam of the authoritarian" in the eye of the outers. Opponents of outing (not all of them gay by any means) take the position that sexuality is a complex issue and that what one does in one's own bed (or out of it) should remain an entirely private matter.
Proponents of outing also argue that being gay should be no big deal, and that what appears to be a discreet policy of "don't ask, don't tell" is actually homophobia pure and simple - treating homosexuality as a secret shame.
This is disingenuous at best. In a perfect world, sure, it should be no big deal - but this is not a perfect world. It's easy enough for me, as a self-employed metropolitan, to write here as an out gay man - but I'd think twice before hanging a rainbow flag outside my door on my council estate. If bricks come through my windows, it will be my property that gets damaged, not the gay community's.
Signorile, of course, has not outed Sullivan as a gay man; it's way too late for that. With his frequent television appearances and his columns in the New York Times Magazine, Sullivan is arguably the most prominent gay spokesman in America. But as he reveals details of Sullivan's sex-life, Signorile flourishes the only cogent argument for outing: hypocrisy.
Certainly, when a high-profile public figure's statements or actions have a negative impact on the gay community, the community has the right to fight back by revealing the hypocrisy of the outee's position.
Outing J Edgar Hoover would have been permissable (had anyone dared) because, as Director General of the FBI, he was responsible for the hounding of hundreds of gay men.
A case for outing other, equally famous, gay figures can be made by reference to the long-term effects of their work: when Armistead Maupin outed Rock Hudson it was said to be permissable because Rock Hudson's movies were rarely anything less than pure heterosexual propaganda.
But what purpose, beyond pure entertainment, was served by Signorile writing a cover-story "The Secret Gay Life of Malcolm Forbes" a month after the magazine publisher's death in February, 1990? Beyond the fact that Forbes threw great parties, I'm not aware of his making any significant impact on the gay community.
And what about the current campaign to out Ricky Martin? To decide on the justice of that, you would presumably need to check out his entire back-catalogue (not something I'm keen to do.)
Sullivan has consistently espoused positions hostile to the prevailing gay orthodoxy, not least by maintaining that the AIDS epidemic is no longer an issue. And Signorile has consistently criticised him for this: "In his famous "End of AIDS" piece in The New York Times Magazine in 1996, Andrew Sullivan told us that, since the drugs are working for him, AIDS is over, and that it is we who are the ones in denial. (Earth to Andrew: Come in, please.)"
It's easy enough to find Sullivan guilty of inconsistency, not least because of the huge volume of work he has produced over the years.
He has described marriage as the only way for gay men to remove "the hideous historic option of choosing between their joy and their dignity." He has accused gay male sexual culture of having "constructed and defended and glorified the abattoirs of the epidemic." He has complained about the "sexual pathologies that plague homosexuals."
He has also described himself (but not in print) as "DC Male 35 5'9" 198 32w 45c 17a 19neck big hairy thighs; squatting 8 plates. solid bodybuilder, 10 percent body-fat; huge shoulders, strong, hairy b*tt; semi-bearded. into: hairy, endowed, masculine men. always 4.20. vers/top brothers welcome. uncut a plus. Hiv+ here. Healthy undetectable. chem-unfriendly; no such thing as too hairy."
Is that hypocrisy? I don't think so. I think we call that human.
Until and unless Signorile can quote specific examples of Sullivan getting on his high horse about net-based promiscuity, his charges of hypocrisy must remain not proven.
Should the article have remained unwritten? Despite Signorile's clearly murky motives, and his questionable journalistic ethics, it would be hypocritical of me to deny that I've had a great deal of cheap pleasure from reading the story, and all the commentary that it has inspired.
Will Sullivan's reputation suffer? With his "big hairy thighs,10 percent body-fat, huge shoulders, strong, hairy b*tt"? I hardly think so...