Labeling Theory - The "homosexual"

The "homosexual"

The application of labeling theory to homosexuality has been extremely controversial. It was Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues who pointed out the big discrepancy between the behavior and the role attached to it. They had observed the often negative consequences of labeling and repeatedly condemned labeling people as homosexual:

"It is amazing to observe how many psychologists and psychiatrists have accepted this sort of propaganda, and have come to believe that homosexual males and females are discretely different from persons who respond to natural stimuli. Instead of using these terms as substantives which stand for persons, or even as adjectives to describe persons, they may better be used to describe the nature of the overt sexual relations, or of the stimuli to which an individual erotically responds... It would clarify our thinking if the terms could be dropped completely out of our vocabulary....

"Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual... Only the human mind invents categories and tries to force facts into pigeonholes. The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects.

"The classification of sexual behavior as masturbatory, heterosexual, or homosexual, is, therefore, unfortunate if it suggests that only different types of persons seek out or accept each kind of sexual activity. There is nothing known in the anatomy or physiology of sexual response and orgasm which distinguishes masturbatory, heterosexual, or homosexual reactions....

"In regard to sexual behavior, it has been possible to maintain this dichotomy only by placing all persons who are exclusively heterosexual in a heterosexual category and all persons who have any amount of experience with their own sex, even including those with the slightest experience, in a homosexual category.... The attempt to maintain a simple dichotomy on these matters exposes the traditional biases which are likely to enter whenever the heterosexual or homosexual classification of an individual is involved"

Erving Goffman's Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity distinguished between the behavior and the role assigned to it. He wrote:

"The term 'homosexual' is generally used to refer to anyone who engages in overt sexual practices with a member of his own sex, the practice being called 'homosexuality.' This usage appears to be based on a medical and legal frame of reference and provides much too broad and heterogenous a categorization for use here. I refer only to individuals who participate in a special community of understanding wherein members of one's own sex are defined as the most desirable sexual objects, and sociability is energetically organized around the pursuit and entertainment of these objects."

Labeling theory was also applied to homosexuality by Evelyn Hooker and by Leznoff and Westley, who published the first sociological study of the gay community. Erving Goffman and Howard Becker used the lives of gay-identified persons in their theories of labeling and interactionism. Simon and Gagnon likewise wrote: "It is necessary to move away from the obsessive concern with the sexuality of the individual, and attempt to see the homosexual in terms of the broader attachments that he must make to live in the world around him."

British sociologist Mary McIntosh reflected the enthusiasm of Europeans for labeling theory in her 1968 study, "The Homosexual Role."

"The vantage-point of comparative sociology enables us to see that the conception of homosexuality as a condition is, itself, a possible object of study. This conception and the behavior it supports operate as a form of social control in a society in which homosexuality is condemned...

"It is interesting to notice that homosexuals themselves welcome and support the notion that homosexuality as a condition. For just as the rigid categorization deters people from drifting into deviancy, so it appears to foreclose on the possibility of drifting back into normalcy and thus removes the element of anxious choice. It appears to justify the deviant behavior of the homosexual as being appropriate for him as a member of the homosexual category. The deviancy can thus be seen as legitimate for him and he can continue in it without rejecting the norm of society."

Sara Fein and Elaine M. Nuehring were among the many who supported the application of labeling theory to homosexuality. They saw the gay role functioning as a "master status" around which other roles become organized. This brings a whole new set of problems and restrictions:

"Placement in a social category constituting a master status prohibits individuals from choosing the extent of their involvement in various categories. Members of the stigmatized group lose the opportunity to establish their own personal system of evaluation and group membership as well as the ability to arrive at their own ranking of each personal characteristic.... For example, newly self-acknowledged homosexual individuals cannot take for granted that they share the world with others who hold congruent interpretations and assumptions; their behavior and motives, both past and present, will be interpreted in light of their stigma."

Perhaps the strongest proponent of labeling theory was Edward Sagarin. In his book, Deviants and Deviance, he wrote, "There are no homosexuals, transvestites, chemical addicts, suicidogenics, delinquents, criminals, or other such entities, in the sense of people having such identities." Sagarin's position was roundly condemned by academics in the gay community. Sagarin had written some gay novels under the pseudonym of Donald Webster Cory. According to reports, he later abandoned his gay identity and began promoting an interactionist view of homosexuality.

A number of authors adopted a modified, non-deviant, labeling theory. They rejected the stigmatic function of the gay role, but found it useful in describing the process of coming out and reconciling one's homosexual experiences with the social role. Their works included:

• Colin J. Williams and Martin Weinberg, Homosexuals and the Military, 1971.
• Barry Dank, "Coming Out in the Gay World," 1971.
• Sue Hammersmith and Martin Weinberg, "Homosexual Identity: Commitment, Adjustment, and Significant Others," 1973.
• Martin Weinberg and Colin Williams, in "Male Homosexuals: Their Problems and Adaptations," 1974.
• Carol A. B. Warren, in Identity and Community in the Gay World, 1974.
• Michael Shively and John DeCecco, "Components of Sexual Identity," 1977.
• Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women, 1978.
• Thomas Weinberg, "On 'Doing' and 'Being' Gay: Sexual Behavior and Homosexual Male Self-Identity." 1978.
• Vivienne Cass, "Homosexual Identity Formation: A Theoretical Model," 1979.
• Richard Troiden, "Becoming Homosexual: A model of Gay Identity Acquisition," 1979.
• Alan Bell, Martin Weinberg, and Sue Kiefer Hammersmith, Sexual Preference: Its Development in Men and Women, 1981.
• Eli Coleman, "Developmental Stages of the Coming Out Process", 1982.

Barry Adam, in his Survival of Domination: Inferiorization of Everyday Life, took those authors to task for ignoring the force of the oppression in creating identities and their inferiorizing effects. Drawing upon the works of Albert Memmi, Adam showed how gay-identified persons, like Jews and blacks, internalize the hatred to justify their limitations of life choices. He saw the gravitation towards ghettos was evidence of the self-limitations. He wrote:

"A certain romantic liberalism runs through the literature, evident from attempts to paper over or discount the very real problems of inferiorization. Some researchers seem bent on 'rescuing' their subjects from 'defamation' by ignoring the problems of defeatism and complicit self-destruction. Avoidance of dispiriting reflection upon the day-to-day practice of dominated people appears to spring from a desire to 'enhance' the reputation of the dominated and magically relieve their plight. Careful observation has been sacrificed to the 'power of positive thinking.'"

Strong defense of labeling theory also arose within the gay community. Dan Slater of the Los Angeles Homosexual Information Center said, "There is no such thing as a homosexual lifestyle. There is no such thing as gay pride or anything like that. Homosexuality is simply based on the sex act. Gay consciousness and all the rest are separatist and defeatist attitudes going back to centuries-old and out-moded conceptions that homosexuals are, indeed, different from other people."

In a later article, Slater stated the gay movement was going in the wrong direction:

"Is it the purpose of the movement to try to assert sexual rights for everyone or create a political and social cult out of homosexuality?.... Persons who perform homosexual acts or other non-conforming acts are sexually free. They want others enlightened. They want hostile laws changed, but the resent the attempt to organize their lives around homosexuality just as much as they resent the centuries-old attempt to organize their lives around heterosexuality.

William DuBay, in Gay Identity: The Self Under Ban, describes gay identity as one strategy for dealing with society's oppression. It solves some problems but creates many more, replacing a closet of secrecy with one of gay identity. A better strategy, he suggests, is to reject the label and live as if the oppression did not exist. Quoting Goffman, he writes, "But of course what is a good adjustment for the individual can be an even better one for society."

DuBay contends that the attempt to define homosexuality as a class of persons to be protected against discrimination as defined in the statutes has not reduced the oppression. The goal of the movement instead should be to gain acceptance of homosexual relationships as useful and productive for both society and the family. The movement has lost the high moral ground by sponsoring the "flight from choice" and not taking up the moral issues. "Persons whom we confine to back rooms and bars other societies have honored as tenders of children, astrologers, dancers, chanters, minstrels, jesters, artists, shamans, sacred warriors and judges, seers, healers, weavers of tales and magic."

DuBay refers to the "gay trajectory," in which a person first wraps himself in the gay role, organizing his personality and his life around sexual behavior. He might flee from his family and home town to a large gay center. There, the bedeviling force of the stigma will introduce him to more excessive modes of deviance such as promiscuity, prostitution, alcoholism, and drugs. Many resist such temptations and try to normalize their life, but the fast lanes of gay society are littered with the casualties of gay identity. Some come to reject the label entirely. "Accomplishing the forbidden, they are neither gay nor straight. Again learning to choose, they develop the ability to make the ban ambiguous, taking responsibility and refusing explanations of their behaviors."

John Henry Mackay writes about a gay hustler in Berlin adopting such a solution: "What was self-evident, natural, and not the least sick did not require an excuse through an explanation.... It was love just like any other love. Whoever could not or would not accept it as love was mistaken."