Hamish, don’t forget Whitman! Sometimes he’s oblique, but other times there is absolutely no mistaking what he’s talking about.
Sorry everybody… I’ve been very pressed for time. I am, however, interested in taking this to GD. I’ll try to get an OP crafted soonish and I"ll link to it in this thread. My apologies.
You’re saying there’s no historical lineage for gay culture? I have a few books from the 1940s you might want to read. And the 1960s. And the 1980s. I can deliniate Canadian and American gay culture on a superficial level, and I can talk at length about where gay perception and American detective novels intersect. To Hamish’s high brow list I’ll add the more low-brow collections of Anais Nin and Pulp Friction. Then there’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Venus Envy, which expose wealthy gay Southern culture. There’s all Victorian age of Romantic friendships stuff that’s popular in gay studies classes these days. (Yes! Classes! On gay culture! But not on how to lisp!)
I can also do this for “nerd culture,” and “Southern culture” while fully understanding that not everyone who has a talent with computers who was born in Alabama has to participate in what’s offered.
Fionn, I’ll join. “I’m here. I’m queer. I don’t want to go to your fabulous disco cook-out and frisbee Showtunes night.”
Yes, that is my contention. That we’re talking about sub-cultures (plural) and not one monolithic ‘gay culture’. But I’ll see you in GD to talk more about it.
You know, given the OP and the topic of discussion, I cannot resist the temptation to quote a snippet of song lyric:
:d :d :d
Hrm. Well, if this sort of thing moves North, there goes the Milton Academy Gang-Blowjob Club.
No! The MAGBJC will never die!
I don’t like the word “subculture.” I also am not sure what you mean by “monolithic.”
I already stated that there are lots of Queer cultures, or emanations of Queer culture, because different national cultures construct Queer identities differently, and different Queer communities are at different stages of evolution.
People scarcely ever are just Queer culturally, but people are scarcely ever just Canadian in culture, either. Everyone has different sets of cultural influences, and different cultural traits that could be attributed to different cultures.
And surely you’re not suggesting that just because individual Queers and communities of Queers have different tastes, interests, and priorities, means that the notion of Queer culture isn’t meaningful. I mean, the exact same thing could be said about Canadian culture.
I can’t agree with FinnAgain’s objection.
No culture is monolithic. All cultures are composed of overlapping subcultures. By FinnAgain’s definition, there is no ancient Greek culture, no Southern culture, no sci fi fan culture, no any kind of culture.
But we all know that it is meaningful to talk about these cultures as cultures (as opposed to, for example, ancient Roman culture, Yankee culture, or bullfighting aficionado culture), it is possible to study them, and it is perfectly normal and mundane for people who take part in them (as participants or -philes) to want to gather together socially.
It seems that it boils down to a question of semantics, so I’ve no real need to start another OP as it turns out. Matt, you are essentially, as far as I see it, describing subcultures without using that word.
I’m rather pressed for time with my studies currently, so I’ll simply bow out of this and we can agree to disagree? If you’ve any problems with this approach, lemme know and I’ll see if I can’t manage to squeeze in either an OP in GD or another few posts here.
I don’t think it warrants its own thread, but if you’ve got a moment, Finn, I’m curious how you differentiate between a “culture” and a “subculture.” What would be an example of the former? I don’t understand the difference between the two terms, except to identify one culture as a part of another, larger culture. And really, couldn’t any culture be defined as a subculture in this manner?
Okay, now I’ve said the word “culture” too many times, and it just sounds wierd to me. Culture culture culture culture. Bah.
I like Culture Club.
*Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon
You come and go, you come and go
Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dream
Red gold and green, red gold and green
*
And there you have it: queer Culture.
d&r
Why, what’s wrong with ‘the’ ? 
I think FinnAgain might be taking the stance that because different gay subcultures develop in different places and eras, they can’t be called the same thing: queer culture. We touched on this in a couple of my classes as one way to look at… constructivism? I can’t quite remember the terminology for it. For some reason Andrew Sullivan is coming to mind, but I don’t think he made that precise deliniation.
One could make the same argument for the Irish straw–that being Irish during the height of an unrest with Britain is not the same thing as being Irish-American in New York at the turn of the century. Perhaps there’s a way to connect A to B with for “Irish” that’s not as easy to connect between different evolutions of gay culture. Saying matt can use monolithic terms to identify his specific gay cultural identity does seem like the polite thing to do until everything’s settled.
Bingo.
Miller: truth be told, I’m not an anthro’ student, and I’m not well versed in this field. It seems to me that a culture has to be passed down by lineage, and bound by geographical limits. It also must have certain unifying characteristics. Being gay, however, has had many different constructions in societies through time. It would be wrong to say that the culture in, say, Lesbos was the same as it was in 1950’s America. As such, I believe all we can talk about are groups of gay people and how they’ve been treated in various societies, and thus, they’re sub-cultures.
But, of course, if this is somehow offensive to people who happen to be GLBT, I can refer to it by whatever terms they want (with some quiet mental reservations if it’s a term I think doesn’t accurately reflect reality). It’s not a huge deal to me all in all.
My question, though, is where you’re getting “monolithic” from. I can assert that there’s gay culture without saying that gay people everywhere and at all times have the same experience, just as I can assert that there’s Canadian culture without claiming that a défricheur in eighteenth-century Lower Canada and a recent Chinese immigrant to Vancouver experience it in the same way.
But properly you would talk about “Canadian Culture[sub]2005[/sub]” vs. “Canadian Culture [sub]1770[/sub]”
To my knoweldge, only France has a part of the government dedicated to keeping culture static.
Saying that there is a ‘gay culture’ ignores that fact that it may very well be different country to country, even city to city. I know that the gay ‘scene’ in Manhattan was quite different from Lawrence Kansas. Talking about gay culture as if it’s one thing is looking at it as a monolithic entity. When, intead, all we can really talk about are gay cultures, or rather sub-cultures in various places at various times.
So yes, if you’re talking about gay culture, but then not saying that it’s the same thing ‘entity’, you’re using a misnomer, and you should be talking about gay subcultures (plural). To be even more accurate, you should talk about gay subcultures in certain places at certain times.
I just wanted to make this totally clear: I’m approaching this from a position of respect and humanism. I have seen too many screaming idiots talking about “the Gays” as if it meant anything. (You’ll also notice that almost nobody would use caps when writing about straight people.)
As I see it, talking about gay culture allows other people to attach value judgements to the entire cluster concept. And if there is a gay culture, rather than many seperate gay subcultures, then you risk being painted with the same brush as anybody else who happens to be gay.