Halperin's book is a tour de force. He's making an important contribution to new ways of thinking about what it means to be gay in America. In this book, Halperin works from the premise that there is a recognizable gay male culture (e.g., Broadway, drag, camp, love of certain female icons, architectural restoration) that was created initially to provide a means of self-expression when no explicit representations, at least no stigmatizing ones, were available. Although the details change over time, and post-Stonewall liberation has afforded a bevvy of positive gay male cultural objects, Halperin argues this practice of appropriating straight cultural objects still continues. His question is: if this practice continues, then why? What might it say about the experience of being gay in a society that is still culturally straight (i.e., heteronormative), no matter what political or legislative inroads have been made? He also wants to know how we can describe and account for the way it feels to be gay without resorting to psychology or essentialist ideas (i.e., that we are "born this way."). Halperin isn't interested in whether or not people are born this way, or how they get gay, but how they engage with gay culture (which may be to not engage it) and why. Some gays aren't very gay, to say it differently.
Halperin is clear that the gay culture he describes in this book is American, white gay male culture. Beyond the scope of this book, he encourages others to pick up this project, if they are so inclined, and use it for other aspects of gay culture (e.g., while he uses a scene from _Mildred Pierce_, and discusses the cult of Joan Crawford, he acknowledges that examining the interest gay men have of Bette Davis may produce different insights) and with other gay populations (e.g., gay men of color, non-American gays, lesbians, trans people). He is not making totalizing claims about gay experience--or positing that gay men have some kind of inherently superior experience or existence. In fact, he notes that many gay men, or men who are attracted to other men, don't "do" gay as well as some straight men and women. Gay, in the way Halperin discusses it, is a cultural practice, not a sex-object choice, and so anybody can do or not do gay, regardless of their sexuality.
Halperin asserts that, if it's true that being gay in a straight dominated world produces a certain kind of subjectivity,then gay people do themselves a disservice by denying and underplaying that difference. Gay culture makes a contribution--understanding the world differently, gay-ly (whether one is homosexual or heterosexual), provides a way of undoing limiting and harmful norms that will stay in place (and are still in place) no matter how many equality gains are made on a political or legal level. Understanding gay subjectivity through cultural appropriation may open up freedoms not available through the lens of identity.
I find this work masterful and a necessary intervention in queer studies. As a gay man (and a gay nerd), I find it compelling and a welcome response to modern gay identity politics. This is an inventive, rigorous piece of academic work, although Halperin's language is very accessible. Readers will benefit, however, from some familiarity with lesbigay or queer studies, particularly Michael Warner's _The Trouble with Normal_. I strongly recommend this to anyone who has ever felt queer, or different (regardless of your sexuality), from the rest of society. Halperin's methodology doesn't have to be limited to gay men, but following his lead, one can think differently about the cultural objects one picks up and what they might say about how you feel to be queer.
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