What does it mean to be gayfriendly? Having gay friends, supporting gay marriage, remaining unfazed when one’s son or daughter comes out? Going to gay bars or questioning one’s own sexual orientation? There is no single model of ‘gayfriendliness’, but rather different attitudes which vary according to age, sex, country and life circumstance.
Acceptance of homosexuality has undeniably grown, and homosexuality is increasingly seen as one form of sexuality among others. But embedded in this liberal vision is a perspective that is more troubling. Based on interviews with gayfriendly straight people in the liberal neighbourhoods of Park Slope in New York and the Marais in Paris, Sylvie Tissot shows that stereotypes remain and control of gays and lesbians has not disappeared. Acceptance is directed towards those who are of the same socioeconomic background, who proclaim their wish to emulate traditional norms of family life, and who do not make any other demands.
Gays must be normal but not completely so, similar and at the same time different, in order to meet the not always conscious conditions of acceptability.
Gayfriendliness has managed to dispel violence and discrimination and has accompanied the invention of less conventional lives. But, as Tissot shows, it has not yet liberated itself from the clutches of heterosexual domination which still structures our society and our ways of thinking.
Acceptance of homosexuality has undeniably grown, and homosexuality is increasingly seen as one form of sexuality among others. But embedded in this liberal vision is a perspective that is more troubling. Based on interviews with gayfriendly straight people in the liberal neighbourhoods of Park Slope in New York and the Marais in Paris, Sylvie Tissot shows that stereotypes remain and control of gays and lesbians has not disappeared. Acceptance is directed towards those who are of the same socioeconomic background, who proclaim their wish to emulate traditional norms of family life, and who do not make any other demands.
Gays must be normal but not completely so, similar and at the same time different, in order to meet the not always conscious conditions of acceptability.
Gayfriendliness has managed to dispel violence and discrimination and has accompanied the invention of less conventional lives. But, as Tissot shows, it has not yet liberated itself from the clutches of heterosexual domination which still structures our society and our ways of thinking.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgementsIntroduction
Chapter 1. Becoming Gayfriendly
Reticence, recognition, indifference: three different generations
‘It simply didn’t exist’
‘It would be un-cool to be un-gayfriendly’
‘A non-issue’
The learning processes
Atypical heterosexuals
The ordeal of coming out
Chapter 2. Gay Respectability
The right to love each other American-style and sexual freedom in France
The Power of the Law
Sexual Liberalism
Gay marriage, heterosexual relief
Republican universalism and the difference between the sexes
Good neighbours, good husbands and wives, good parents
Appropriating an area in the name of diversity
Progressive synagogues and churches in Park Slope
A cause for gentrifiers
From lesbian enclave to gayfriendly district
Family integration, class integration
Gayfriendliness within the family
You shall be gayfriendly, my child
Integration and surveillance of same-sex families
You will (perhaps) be gay, my child
The guide for gayfriendly parents
From tomboy to invisible lesbian
Chapter 3. Heterosexuals as allies
Feminine Compassion
The division of moral labour
Male unease
The ‘Cruisers’ of the Parisian night scene
The ‘fag hag’ and her ‘gay best friend’
Disillusions, safe haven and substitute
The Prism of femininity
Gayfriendliness and lesbophobia
Women rebelling against marriage
(Re)-building your life when living alone
Sexual experiments
Chapter 4. The frontiers of gayfriendliness
A race and class norm
Homophobia as bad taste
Talking about space, not race
The Southern United States as a deterrent
Visibilities and invisibilities
Keeping the streets clean
My gay friends
The home of heterosexuality
Conclusion
Bibliography
Notes
