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Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences

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"You've got to be taught to hate and fear..." As the opening line of a song from the Broadway musical South Pacific clearly states, people do not automatically hate the "Other," but learn to hate from people around them. Within societies that promote homophobia, the initial and primary site of homophobic socialization is the family. In Ties That Bind, Sarah Schulman shines a focused and penetrating beam of light upon this most venerated yet under scrutinized social institution.

Schulman forthrightly and accurately argues that homophobia is pathological, a virus insinuating itself onto the body of the family and the body politic. With stunning clarity and insight, she exposes the ways in which systems of familial homophobia operate, and the consequences this has on all family members and on the larger society. She envisions a new world, a transformed society where homophobia is rejected and shunned, where third parties intervene to eradicate this virus of familial homophobia, and where gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are cherished and nurtured. This book is a must read for anyone desiring to unearth the very roots of a perennial and persistent, yet often invisible pathology.

To me, Sarah Schulman is up there with James Baldwin and Gore Vidal as a practitioner of the essay form, and Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences is a tight and focused master work. Her approach to talking about the painful family dynamics in her own life is unlike anyone else's, so unlike the calculated confessional approach of memoir and transgressive fiction that I hardly know how to describe it. It's cool, intellectual, self-controlled -- but perhaps like Perseus looking at the Gorgon only as a reflection in his shield. She looks at the worst emotions most gay and lesbian people have ever felt and never equivocates in naming them and calling them out. It's a brave and intense book, and I'm already thinking of the young gay people I know who ought to read this as soon as they can.

Sarah Schulman's new book is a powerful indictment of homophobia's deep reach into US culture. Schulman calls upon all of us, straight and gay, to call out marginalization and victimization and to confront homophobes rather than acceding to their demands for silence.

As one who was lucky enough not to know firsthand the heartbreak of rejection, shunning, sometimes outright hatred from family members, I found Ties That Bind to be a revelation. I know gay people, and have friends who are gay, and I have written about gay characters. So I flattered myself that I understood completely. I didn't, except up to a point. I not only don't understand how family members can turn against their own for something that's not their choice, I don't understand how the victim ever gets through it.

I highly recommend this book to everyone. A reader who is homophobic might just get some insight and question that attitude. A reader who is gay and has never been victimized will get insight into what it's like for those not so lucky. A reader who is on the receiving end of the hatred and rejection will realize s/he's not alone, and maybe have some hope of how to deal with it.

It's not a particularly optimistic book, because even though Schulman tells what should happen within a family to set things right, I don't get the feeling she's optimistic about the chances of its happening. It's a dark read because of its subject, and also because she shows, sadly, that the result of being shunned and treated badly by family can lead to the victim perpetuating the treatment on a partner.

The author "takes no prisoners." She's forthright and honest and compassionate.

It's not a fun, fast, fluffy read. I found myself stopping frequently, thinking, "But why...? How can they...?" and re-reading those parts.

It's an important book, and one that cries out to be read. Schulman shouldn't be left to preach to the choir. This book should be in every public library.

Schulman's book is a precise and powerful assault on the various forms of complicity which make familial homophobia much more than an issue faced by only some families. Familial homophobia, she argues, is a pervasive cultural formation supported by silences and complicity even among those who think they are free of it, when they refuse to confront those who abuse others. Her examples, often drawn from her own life, speak poignantly to the ability of seemingly normal family members to practice unexcusable psychic violence on those they are supposed to love and support. Additionally, she speaks to the multiple silences and shunning lesbians and lesbian cultural work is subjected to in the larger society. This may, for some readers, sound like a tangent (precisely the problem), but she tightly argues for the ability of cultural homophobia to divide and allow some voices (male, white, gay) to speak for all. I strongly regret that not having access to Schulman's larger range of work, particularly in the theater, has deprived me and others from hearing this (and other) important voice(s). This book deserves a wide, very wide audience for all who wish to understand the intimate, everyday nature of psychological violence against lesbians and gays and others--and for those who wish to liberate themselves from it.

Schulman's provocative reconceptualization of the way that society as a whole deals with cultural and familial homophobia has the power to change the way homophobia in our culture is perceived, and as a result, to change the whole tenor and strategy for achieving justice and equality for GLBTQ Americans. Schulman's vision is both unfrettingly, fearlessly optimistic, and practicle, rational, and achievable.

Shun: to keep away from; avoid scrupulously or consistently.

If nothing else, Schulman chooses her words carefully, precisely, and aptly. The gay family member is shunned within the family and the culture at large. For me, what is striking about the unethical conduct she describes is the way that it can be generalized to so many other moral crimes.

Murray Bowen wrote in 1976 that "[a]n average family situation in our society today is one in which people maintain a distant and formal relationship with the family of origin, returning home for duty visits at infrequent intervals." He thought it a process of separation, isolation, withdrawal, running away, or denying the importance of the parental family. Communication ceases. It manifests as denial and isolation of the self while living close to the parents; or by physically running away; or by a combination of emotional isolation and physical distance. And it is getting worse, amplifying into ever greater alienation, compounding with each generation. Unknown to those who would shun is the pain it invites.

Katherine Baker studied this process at the University of Moscow. There, many people of one generation had been killed in Stalin's 'purges.' When records in Russia were opened, many people showed a great deal of interest in finding out all they could about this, their (by now) grandparent generation. Predictably, those who knew most, or showed the most interest in finding out about their grandparent generation were also functioning the best; those who knew little, did poorly.

As Schulman says, people shun because they can. It seems to carry no price. However, people disregard the history they are making not only at their peril but that of their children and their children's children. This same theme recurs in Couze Venn's book, Occidentalism.