Gayfriendly

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. Acknowledgements

Introduction


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

“As anti-gay and anti-trans sentiment surges, the illusion of a rainbow coloured world of queer inclusion is rendered ever more apparent and the need for critical and complex analysis becomes ever more pressing. Sylvie Tissot has given us just such an analysis. In this compelling comparative study of two ‘gayfriendly’ oases, she unpacks the often contradictory affects of both queers and straights as they imagine sexual identities in supposedly ‘tolerant’ urban spaces and, in so doing, offers a critical commentary on the limits of tolerance and the possibilities of radical inclusion in a world still governed by normative heterosexuality. A smart and nuanced addition to the burgeoning literature on queer spaces and the promises (and limits) of straight allyship.”
Suzanna Danuta Walters, author of The Tolerance Trap: How God, Genes, and Good Intentions Sabotaged Gay Equality

Sylvie Tissot is Professor of Political Science at University of Paris 8.