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David Plummer
Associate Professor in Community and Public Health,
University of New England
The twentieth century has witnessed an epidemic of metaphors in our
attempt to make sense of sexuality and sexual health. This paper explores
some of those constructs in order to gain insights into how we think, and
ultimately how we practice. While many metaphors come from the wider
culture, our health care institutions are a product of that same culture
and we can't help but be influenced by them and use the metaphors
ourselves (Plummer 1995). In this paper I will specifically examine the
use of notions of contamination, transmission and contagion to describe
non-infectious social phenomena. In doing so I hope to expose some of the
foundations for the enormous symbolic importance of the AIDS epidemic -
where signification and biology appear to conspire - and just as
interestingly, shed light on why hepatitis C and carcinoma of the cervix
don't invoke such significance despite their many similarities.
Contamination and contagion
A prominent feature of many twentieth-century political discourses on
sexuality is that they are founded on deep-seated fears that sexual
difference is dangerous and transmissible. This is reflected in a rich
vocabulary used to describe and decry sexual difference. While not all of
the rhetoric is formulated as 'sophisticated' germ theory, it does carry
the implication that sexual difference is a progressively spreading,
consuming process: taint, decay, corrupt, contaminate, pollute, recruit,
convert, pervert, malignant, pestilence, open the floodgates, overwhelm,
disorder, chaos. Even restrained statements like 'choice' and 'lifestyle'
allude to the possibility that people's sexuality-orientation is arbitrary
and changeable, presumably under the influence of some adverse external
agent.
The belief that homosexuality is transmissible can be identified even
in academic works. In an interesting early example, Gunter Grau documents
doctoral research at the University of Marburg in Germany from 1936, which
purportedly maps an epidemic of homosexuality (Grau 1993: 226). But, while
it might be argued that Gunter Grau's example comes from Germany during
extraordinary times - the lead-up to the 2nd world war - bear in mind that
our own liberal democracies conducted sexual witch hunts well after the
war, most notably the McCarthy inquisitions, but there are numerous more
recent examples too.
In what appears to be an attempt to bring some order to the post-war
paranoia, the British eventually set up the Homosexuality and Prostitution
enquiry (better known in polite society as the 'Wolfenden Committee').
However, here too, we can see the custodians and statesmen and women of
our democracies succumbing to the same deep-seated fears. For example, in
their submission to the 'Wolfenden Committee', the British Law Society
stated that homosexual law reform would (1) discourage marriage; (2) be a
disincentive to have children; (3) may damage the state if 'they should
get too strong a hold' (4) contaminate others, particularly the young and
(5) spread venereal disease (Davenport-Hines 1991: 318). Even in modern
liberal democracies during peacetime, powerful fears that sexual
difference can become epidemic are prevalent.
In 1977 Countess Loudon articulated similar fears in the British
Parliament: 'are we to encourage the infectious growth of this filthy
disease by giving the authority of Parliament to the spreading of
corruption and perversion among a new generation of young men? ... you
cannot be a homosexual alone, which inevitably leads to the corruption and
perversion of others, which is a symptom of the disease' just like 'an
attack of cholera, such an outbreak must be contained and isolated'
(Davenport-Hines 1991: 329).
But there has to be some reason for people to become a victim of an
outbreak of homosexuality and to join the ranks of such a despised
minority. So when homosexuality is seen as a willful act rather than an
unavoidable outcome of contagion, it is often portrayed as deeply
seductive, even addictive, and homosexuals as uncontrollably predatory
(Davenport-Hines 1991: 319).
Sir Laurence Dunn (Chief Metropolitan Magistrate in London from 1948)
described male homosexuals as 'harpies' and the 'lowest of the low' and he
alludes to the seductive nature of homosexuality while simultaneously
using predatory, hunger and addiction metaphors when he says that
homosexuality is '... admitted by all, save addicts, to be an evil. To
countenance homosexual practices in private is playing with fire.
Appetites are progressive and a homosexual sated with practices with
adults, without hindrance, will be far more likely to tempt a jaded
appetite with youth... it would be disastrous to give further tacit
encouragement by altering the law' (Davenport-Hines 1991: 305). Notice too
how he manages to exploit the images of fire, evil, disaster, pedophilia,
and the dangers of doing nothing - of 'passivity'.
Lord Chief Justice, Goddard, reiterates these themes. If male
homosexuals 'are adults, they are, I believe, invariably addicts'… 'it
is such a horrible and revolting thing, and a practitioner is such a
depraved creature, that he ought, in my opinion, be put out of
circulation' (Davenport-Hines 1991: 316). And in apparent agreement with
Sydney's current Anglican and Catholic Archbishops, the Bishop of
Rochester (1957) maintained that a law is needed 'to protect men from
being made into homosexual addicts and then let loose on the world with
their predatory corruption'. (Davenport-Hines 1991: 320).
A key feature of these statements is the loss of control that a
homosexual is said to have - or rather the loss of control that young men
can anticipate once they experience homosexuality ('taste the forbidden
fruit'). So while homosexuality can be seen as disorderly, and as willful
and malicious, it is also portrayed as uncontrollable, predatory and
transmissible - an insatiable appetite, an addiction - and this justifies
intervention with legal restraints and social containment.
The unspoken - perhaps unspeakable - paradox of almost all of these
statements is that all men are vulnerable (presumably even the most
vehement opponent). Thus we find the concern for protecting young men, not
so much from sexual assault but from information that might be influential
on their sexual orientation: the homosexual 'lifestyle should not be
encouraged or promoted to those who are young or vulnerable' (Ray Bailey,
Tasmanian MLC, in Morris 1995: 97).
Traces of this deep belief that protecting young men from this scourge
is a very high priority, can be identified in the differential ages of
consent for homosexual versus heterosexual sex in some jurisdictions -
where there is an age difference, the homosexual age of consent is always
higher. Moreover, judging by some of the regulations of the Thatcher era,
which restricted the 'promotion' of homosexuality by public institutions,
fears of spread and recruitment remain potent in Britain too.
In the most recent Tasmanian debates, these themes are repeated with
subtle variations. John Loone, Tasmanian MLC, sees homosexuality as an
unnatural alternative which apparently comes naturally for all men unless
diverted by the law: 'Where will we draw the line if we begin to sanction
and to approve by silence, a practice which is patently unnatural,
debasing and unhealthy; where will it end? Men and rivers are alike: they
both become crooked by following the path of least resistance.' (Morris
1995: 93)
Being overwhelmed?
At a deeper level, these are not simply fears that homosexuality will
come out of the closet and pick up a couple of converts along the way -
they speak of a much more fundamental paranoia - about being overwhelmed
by 'dark' forces, chaos, evil, and disorder - which in turn demands a
harsh response.
For example, in 1954, the British Judge Sir Roland Oliver articulated
his concerns saying, 'once the [homosexual] vice got established, it
spread like a pestilence, and unless held in check, spread indefinitely'
(Davenport-Hines 1991: 308).
A few years later, in 1958, Bellenger, a member of the British House of
Commons, managed to succinctly combine revulsion, filth, abnormality,
disease, contagion, 'flaunting it', the occult, death, chaos, the fall of
civilisation, and the homosexual as an animal, when he described
homosexuals as 'a malignant canker in the community, and if this is
allowed to grow, it will eventually kill off what is known as normal life
... I believe that human life would eventually revert to an animal
existence if this cult were so allowed to spread that, as in ancient
Greece, it overwhelmed the community at large... I am repelled by the
dirtiness of some of those whose conduct is exposed to the public gaze.'
(Higgins 1993: 188)
Similar concerns echo around the world right up to the present. In
recent debates about decriminalization in Tasmania, John Loone (MLC) is
recorded in Hansard as saying that Tasmania's laws need 'a clear provision
that makes it a penalty to encourage and lead people into homosexual
activity, because at the moment these two clauses - 122 and 123 - are the
only barriers against further moral decline. That is why so many people
want them wiped out. If we remove them, if homosexual activity becomes
legal, all sorts of floodgates can open' (Morris 1995: 93).
Girl's germs
Recurring fears of contagious sexualities, which are virtually
unchanged across the twentieth century and earlier, seem to run very deep.
They do not appear simply to be the cynical rhetoric of manipulative
politicians - but even if they are, politicians obviously believe they
will strike a chord. An indication of how deep these constructs go, comes
from developmental studies of primary school children. Metaphors of
contamination and contagion can be shown to be regularly and powerfully
used in the school ground. Here are some examples from my own research
(Plummer 1999):
... by third grade… it became daggy to hang round with girls.
People always used to say 'Girls' germs, girls' germs, no returns'.
(Participant W23)
Girls were horrible... occasionally, you'd get a girl that comes
and kisses you, probably an outgoing, forward sort of a girl, I guess...
and all the boys go 'Oh yuk! You've got girls' germs'. (Participant Z26)
... we used to hate doing dancing when we were younger because
there was this boy/girl thing. Like you don't do girl things. You don't
touch girls - you get girls' germs. (Participant Z26)
By mid primary school boys' and girls' social worlds are clearly
differentiated and highly polarized, but segregation is not permanent. In
high school, the consolidation of boys and girls as 'opposites' becomes
the basis of resuming contact and for constructing new forms of
relationships that are not dependent on boys identifying with girls. For
boys, a pattern of increasing contact with the enemy emerges. Initially
this manifests as forays of boys into girls' territory, which looks more
like harassment. Notice the role of peer pressure in setting this dynamic
up:
It was only ever like pulling up dresses. It was nothing really involved
and I mean it was probably came from dares. They were dares, 'catch and
kiss', you know? I don't really know where that game comes from, but it's
in-between the 'girls are horrible' years and 'girls are nice' years.
(Z26)
In the contemporary Australian, British and American school grounds
misogyny and homophobia can be demonstrated to appear and quickly become
prevalent from mid primary school. For example, as Thorne observes:
'by fourth and fifth grades 'fag' had become a widespread and
serious term of insult' (Thorne 1993: 154).
Ironically, the key male dynamic, which maintains boy's relationships
with girls along certain lines by 'contaminating' any alternatives, shifts
its focus dramatically during these years too. In primary school, younger
boys are 'poofters' if they are too familiar with girls or, by secondary
school, if they are not close enough. Here, homophobia provides continuity
while boys' relationships with girls shift: boys who don't act in accord
with peer expectations are always poofters, initially because real boys
shouldn't want to mix with girls (compulsory homosociality) and later
because they must (compulsory heterosexuality) (Rich 1980).
Transmissible - Maturation, empowerment, potency
From the evidence so far it appears that germs, genes, gender and
perversions are all susceptible to being treated as if they are
transmissible and dangerous. Perhaps it is this deep fixation on
transmissibility, which partly explains why the broad disciplines which
constitute sexual health have been increasingly seen as the domain of
infectious disease practitioners - from grassroots clinics to the
Commonwealth - which seems determined to incorporate sexual health into a
communicable diseases framework. (You only have to look to the theme of
this conference for evidence) But it must be asked, are there dangers in
unwittingly collaborating with deep-seated widely-held fears? Do we feel
comfortable with sexual health being subsumed by a communicable diseases
framework? Have we explored and do we understand enough about the
fundamental social forces which are at work? Can governments be trusted to
'do sex' well? History suggests caution.
A conceptual link between intercourse and transmission is perhaps
understandable. After all, as my mentors once said: life is a sexually
transmitted condition - and uniformly fatal. And it is in those concerns
about the transmission of genes that the links between sex, eugenics,
regulating reproduction and that other troublesome prejudice - racism -
can be located.
Gender also seems to be portrayed as a transmissible entity. After all,
why would gender transgressions be policed so relentlessly, if gender
really is so fixed? In many cultures manhood is transmitted through
ritual. For example, Gilbert Herdt documents Melanesian beliefs that semen
is the source of masculine power, and that ritualised male-to-male
insemination was an obligatory rite of passage for all young men if they
were to achieve full manhood, including warrior status (Herdt 1993: 6-7
& 61-65). (No trace of homophobia here!) Significantly, while many
cultures have rites of passage that induct boys into manhood, there are
often complementary fears that they might fail to be recruited, fears of
feminisation and fears that boys can be polluted by femaleness. But in
contrast to the constant risk of being contaminated by femininity,
masculinity is often depicted as a difficult and tenuous achievement that
may not come naturally (although Joan of Arc found it pretty easy!). As
anthropologists like Gilmore have observed 'boys have to be encouraged,
sometimes actually forced, by social sanctions to undertake efforts toward
a culturally defined manhood, which by themselves they might not do'
(Gilmore 1990: 25).
As we have seen, homosexuality too, is portrayed as transmissible. Many
homophobic discourses focus on what would happen if social restraints on
homosexuality were surrendered - disorder, evil, chaos and death. Fears of
uncontrolled otherness are at the root of arguments against homosexuality,
and prominent in fears about deregulating homosexuality are concerns about
its capacity to have extensive, spreading effects: pollution, decay,
contagion, corruption, sabotage, predation, recruitment. The possibility
that homosexuality is transmissible feeds powerful fears of being
overwhelmed by perversity and of disrupting social and biological
continuity. It implies that all males are susceptible - that the allure of
masculinity threatens to overpower even the most heterosexual of men.
Goffman acknowledged similar fearful assumptions when he wrote 'the
tendency for stigma to spread from a stigmatised individual to his close
connections provides a reason why such relations tend to be either avoided
or to be terminated' (Goffman 1963: 30). Perhaps the polymorphous perverse
is too susceptible to becoming a focus for people's paranoid fears - after
all it is usually assumed that the polymorphous perverse is a reference to
a marauding 'other' and not to a former 'self' now mainly repressed.
But these fears must not be allowed to derail a central proposition of
this paper: it is homophobia which is dangerous, can erupt, spread quickly
and is a source of considerable social and personal harm. Homophobia is
the 'polymorphous prejudice'; it has chameleon rationales but its
intractable logic always derives from fearing and rejecting otherness.
Without homophobia there would be a shift in social and sexual
arrangements, but not chaos.
Containment
A further indication of the deep-seated belief that sexual difference
is transmissible is revealed in attempts to contain and control it.
Social and racial hygiene
Hygiene equates with purity and it is not surprising to find it used as
a counterpoint for the 'transmissibility' and 'filth' in discourses on
sexual difference. An inference of concerns about hygiene, is to
homosexuality and anal sex and this seems to be a potent concern. In the
popular mind, homosexuality is equated with, as Davenport-Hines puts it,
'the sexual use of the anus, usually filled with rotting excretory matter,
and evoking ... "the iridescence of decay" ' (Davenport-Hines
1991: 323). But equating homosexuality with anality relies on logical
'slippage'. As Davenport-Hines reminds us numerous surveys indicate that
anal sex is a regular feature of heterosexual sex too (p323) and a
substantial proportion of gay men do not engage in anal sex, but these
facts are conveniently overlooked (p294).
Hygiene is more than personal practices, it is a code for public health
and it is a statement of the health of a society or race. Sexual deviance
was frequently portrayed as a 'stain on the nation' and the regulation of
purity was the domain of the health sciences. In Australia, like most of
the English-speaking world until the 1960's, these concerns were made
explicit in family planning and sexually transmissible disease clinic
names. Until then, STD clinics were called 'sexual hygiene clinics' and
the Family Planning Association was the 'Racial Hygiene Association' (Siedlecky
& Wyndham 1990: 215).
The logical extension of discourses of disease and hygiene is that they
invite a quest for causes and remedies. This is a field that still
attracts considerable popular and professional interest and there are
regular reports in the literature concerning research into neurological,
genetic and hormonal 'causes' for homosexuality. Biomedical theories about
causation will inevitably lead to attempts at treatment as long as society
fears that sexual difference is dangerous and transmissible. Perhaps the
best known of these attempts was in the German concentration camps during
World War II (Grau 1993). But Davenport-Hines records similar practices in
Britain, and they were also not uncommon in Australia, and included the
injection of androgens, oestrogens, shock treatment, psychiatric
interventions and physical and chemical castration (Davenport-Hines 1991:
293). But homosexuality can only be conceptualized as a condition worthy
of treatment as long as it is perceived to be discontinuous from 'normal'
sexuality (as 'otherness') and has deeply negative connotations. The
resilience of homophobia is reflected in the nature versus nurture debate,
where homophobia positions itself to underwrite both outcomes. Regardless
of whether homosexuality is thought to be due to a biomedical event or the
result of upbringing, either case can imply abnormality and be an
invitation to attempt 'correction'. Homophobia injects causative
significance to a dichotomy that wouldn't be an issue if homosexuality
were seen as normal and therefore had no 'cause'.
Quarantine
In 1497 King James of Scotland ordered that all syphilitics be removed
from Edinburgh to the island of Inch Keith in the Firth of Forth and those
who failed to arrive at Inch Keith by dusk the following Monday should be
branded on their cheek with a marking iron.
Apart from incredible advances in modern technology, have we really
come very far? The similarity between this early event and calls even from
prominent medical authorities for quarantine and tattooing during the
first decade of AIDS is notable. Further, Gunter Grau's example about the
mapping of an outbreak of homosexuality has certain similarities to
'patient zero' where 'pathognomonic' life-patterns took center stage.
Similar constructs underpin some modern AIDS social research, for example
in so-called 'behavioral mapping' and 'surveillance' and the obsession
with classifying species of sexual practices almost like bacteriologists
classify organisms. Perhaps it isn't surprising then, that a common
concern of gay men in the early AIDS epidemic was about anonymity and HIV
testing, and how parallels were drawn with the use of census data by the
Nazi's in the 1930's. For them, the HIV test had the potential to be the
modern day 'mark of the devil' of the mediaeval witch hunts, and that
seemed to be exactly how many medical patriarchs were suggesting we use
it.
Sexual identities - to name is to imprison
But perhaps the most challenging view about the social quarantine of
otherness is in recent theoretical work about sexual identity. While many
of us take refuge in a gay identity as a defiant gesture of 'liberation'
and to find 'freedom', there are many academics, including gay ones, who
suggest that the rise of the rigid homosexual identity is a modern
phenomenon and is the ultimate outcome of social containment of sexual
difference. In Jeffrey Weeks' words:
'the homosexual identity as we know it is therefore a production
of social categorisation, whose fundamental aim and effect was
regulation and control. To name was to imprison.' (Weeks 93)
Similarly in Guy Hocquenghem's words:
homosexuality becomes 'artificially trapped within the grid of
"civilisation"' (Hocquenghem 1993: 35)
Is homophobia transmissible?
Ultimately, while it is relatively easy to explain why germs and genes
are understood in terms of transmission, it is a little more difficult to
understand the relevance of pollution and contagion to gender and sexual
identity. But, this may well be a moot point, because all of the evidence
presented so far concerns fears and not whether gender and sexual identity
are really transmissible at all. However, what has become clear is that
the fears and prejudices themselves are potentially contagious and highly
dangerous.
The modern world has seen homophobia exported to and embraced by
cultures, that previously had valued institutionalized homosexuality and
seemed at least in those instances not to be homophobic. For example, in a
work that chronicles the extensive history of homosexuality in traditional
Japanese institutions (priests and samurai warriors), Watanabe and Iwata
observe that Japan has since changed and they recount a prevalent modern
Japanese concern about:
'The Western vice that we Japanese have never known is invading
our country' (Watanabe & Iwata 1989: 121 & 12).
Indeed, from their account, it would appear that the Western vice that
has invaded all too successfully is homophobia!
We have also seen examples throughout the twentieth century of the
rapid appearance and spread of xenophobia among people who were thought to
be cohabiting fairly harmoniously. And in many of these cases, as well as
racism, homophobia and sexual assault are potent weapons. Moreover, the
twentieth century is studded with moral panics based on fears of sexual
difference. Indeed, the data indicates that the twentieth century was
probably the most homophobic one yet!
Conclusions
So while we think of ourselves as a modern progressive community and as
an expert profession, we should stop and think whether that view really
reflects the daily reality of:
- the lone boy in every class at every school, who is the class 'poofter'
and for whom we fail to provide safety
- the young people who have become severely isolated by homophobic
intimidation and who might contribute substantially to our suicide
statistics
- and for every other boy who puts a foot out of line and immediately
gets targeted with the words 'you poof!' but we fail to offer support
for his courageous, perhaps innovative, foray into difference
- the young man who has always thought of himself as a misfit, but
suddenly discovers his first chance for self-esteem in the potentially
risky sexual precincts of our inner cities
- where is the body of research which examines the extent of the
impact of homophobia on the shape of the AIDS epidemic
- where is the body of research which examines the extent of the
impact of misogyny on the patterns and impact of other STI
- one in four stranger murders in New South Wales over the past twenty
years, which has a homophobic basis and yet this fact rarely rates a
mention in our media
- and the impact of the moral panics triggered by Pauline Hansen and
Franca Arena, the reverberations of which are still front page news
In short, homophobia and misogyny are man-made pollutants, which make
large parts of the world uninhabitable for all but the most courageous men
and women (not just gay men and lesbians).
More dangerous than herpes, gonorrhoea or chlamydia, highly resistant
to therapy, attracting a pitiful level of research, virtually ignored by
the very professions who can help - homophobia and misogyny must be added
to the top of list of the millennium bugs we need to defeat.
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