TODAY’S GAY WISDOM
Facebook has redefined and re-contextualized the meaning of the word “friend”.
In issue #73 of White Crane: FRIENDS, we spoke with author Peter M. Nardi.
Nardi is the
author of a number of books including Gay Men’s Friendships: Invincible
Communities. He is a professor of sociology at Pitzer College/The
Claremont Colleges and is the special features coeditor of the journal
Sexualities and a member of the editorial board of five other academic
journals. We spoke to him about friendships and gay men.
Bo: what first brought you to study friends and friendships?
Peter Nardi:
My interest in studying friendship began both personally and
academically. In my own life, I noticed how much time I spent with
friends instead of family, how important my friendships were (especially
compared to many heterosexual men I knew), and how my friendship circle
often spoke of us as a family of support. Everyone would talk about how
important friends are to gays and lesbians.
But my academic
side, as a sociologist, wanted some evidence of this, some data, to show
what the role of friendship is in gay men's and lesbians' lives. Also, a
colleague of mine was writing an article on men's friendships, and he
asked me if I knew of any research on gay men and their friendships. I
looked and could find little but anecdotal material, personal
testimonials, fiction or poetry, etc., but little empirical research. It
seemed to me that while gays spoke of the importance of friendship in
their lives, little was done to document this systematically.
Yet, finding this
information out would possibly provide many interesting insights into
understanding gay communities, gay political movements, and gay
identity.
So, with this
colleague's help, we developed a survey and gave it out to hundreds of
gay men and lesbians. Although we published one article on the entire
sample, I took over the survey and expanded it to include interviews
with a smaller set of just the gay men. The results of that study were
published as a book.
Bo:
Well, I'm sure if you asked almost anyone they would tell you their
friends were important to them. Were gay people different? And if so
how?
Peter:
All people tell you that friends are important to them, and they are.
Friends provide support and contribute to all people's identity. Just
look at how popular the cyber-communities have become (My Space,
Friendster, etc.). But for gay people, friendship provides something
even more — an identity and a community that often cannot be found in
everyday life.
For many
heterosexual people, their identity and sense of community come from the
media, the neighborhood, their family of origin. For many gay people, a
sense of self can only be achieved through their friendship networks,
or in a gay neighborhood and community, and only peripherally through
the media, family of origin, workplace, etc. We need to construct
"families of choice" and create our own support in what sometimes is for
many, a non-supportive environment. Think of the young people in
school, those rejected by their families, those in workplaces where
coming out is not possible, etc.
Forming
friendships at work, in the neighborhood, and school is often more
difficult for gay people, so the need to find a network of friends
becomes mandatory for achieving a healthy identity (and maybe a strong
political movement), not optional as it is for many people who can
depend on their fellow workers/students, relatives, and spouses for
identity support.
Bo:
Gay people have been credited (or blamed, depending on your
perspective, I suppose) for reinventing relationships and, despite the
current campaign for marriage equality, have broadened the definition of
what constitutes an "intimate" or "primary relationship." Can they be
said to have done the same with "friendships"?
Peter:
Yes and No. Phrases like "partner" and "significant other" and the
legal changes that have occurred around those phrases — some states
recognizing health benefits for non-married partners, registering civil
unions, benefits on car insurance, or whatever — can partly be
attributed to gay people's work on reinventing romantic relationships.
These changes have even in many cases helped heterosexual non-married
couples.
But since there
are virtually no ceremonies, legal issues, public commemorations related
to friendships, etc., there does not appear to be such dramatic
equivalent changes in the meaning of friendship. Yet, how heterosexual
men publicly and privately express their same-sex friendships may have
had some shifts over time. Whether it's due to how gay people do
friendship cannot be easily determined. We have seen dramatic shifts in
what we allow heterosexual men to do with their friends.
Consider the
"metrosexual" idea of straight men being more open with their friends.
And look at other shifts in what is now allowable for men, like hugging
each other in public as Clinton and Gore did when they were elected,
sports figures crying over some event, Tony Soprano revealing his
vulnerabilities to a female therapist! Something has shifted in the
range of behaviors we now allow under the label "masculine" that just
weren't there before the visibility of gay people in popular culture and
public spaces. I'd like to think this is partly due to gay men pushing
the boundaries of what it means to be masculine and how this is played
out in families of friends.
Dan:
Many gay men retain deep friendships with former lovers. What did your
research uncover about this unique dynamic to gay friendships? And in a
related note, did you explore the possible sexual dynamics of
friendships among gay men, what some call, “friends with privileges?”
Peter:
One of our earlier surveys asked who gay men's and lesbians' best
friend were — as opposed to close friends or casual ones. Pick one best
friend and tell us about him or her. Interestingly, twice as many
lesbians (34%) said their best friend was an ex-lover compared to gay
men (17%). But we also asked how many had sex with their close or casual
friends. Gay men were much more likely to say they did. As people's
networks of friends expand, they are less likely to report having sex
with the majority of their friends, but in the earliest years of coming
out and becoming part of a community, many reported that sex or dating
situations were how they established a set of friends.
Some reported
that they continued to have sex with friends, but many said that once
they became good friends, the sex stopped. However, others reported
"fuck buddies" — people they had sex with regularly but were not
considered part of their friendship circle, while others occasionally
reported having sex with some of their friends — what today may be
termed "friends with privileges." In fact, I heard so many different
variations of this while interviewing the gay men in my book that I
needed to diagram it for myself. This visual aid was so helpful, I put
it in the book in an entire chapter about sex and friendship, and this
flowchart of sex and friendship has proven to be a fun and helpful
discussion item among gay men when talking about sex and friendship.
The conclusion is
that it is very difficult to make an overall statement about all gay
men when it comes to sex and friends — some continue to have sex with
friends, others don't; some say sex was the main introduction to most of
their friends; others say it was for only a few of their friends; many
say there is an incest taboo of sorts — sex would ruin their friendship,
so hands off once they invoke that dreaded phrase "let's just be
friends."
Dan:
This research calls to mind that lovely Whitman poem in which he speaks
of building the "city of friends" which speaks of a new democratic form
of camaraderie and egalitarianism. Do you think the way gay men "do
friendship" points to an ideal way of relating? Would you say there are
insights gay men have to offer to the culture around friendship?
Peter:
I always was moved by Whitman's Calamus poems from Leaves of Grass and
so subtitled my book with a Whitman-based phrase of "invincible
communities." He talks about a city of friends "invincible to the
attacks of the whole of the rest of the world." To me this period in
late 19th century U.S., before Freudian complexes were released, before
the psycho-pathologizing of homosexuality took root, men were allowed to
embrace in a "city of friends" and form an invincible community against
attacks — what a wonderful metaphor for gays and lesbians when the
dominant cultures attack us.
This poem is so
wonderful I end my book with it. We were forced to create our own
invincible communities and we did so with political movements, gay
neighborhoods and infrastructures, clubs and associations, etc. This is
when our friendships differ from others — ours are a necessity in order
to survive the attacks. Perhaps all attacked and marginalized groups
need friendships, so we are not unique with this. But we created them,
especially when AIDS became an issue. Imagine the response to this virus
if we didn't have communities of friends, organizations, etc.
Look at how
difficult it has been for people of color to organize against AIDS
without strong communities. We need them, they're not optional. We can't
have community without friendship. The person really becomes the
political through friendship. I'd like to think, in a somewhat romantic
way, that others can learn from us and what we have done with our
friendships. And as I said earlier, I'd like to think we have had some
impact on the media, on culture, on neighborhoods, on politics, in the
way "masculinity" is now defined and how it has changed for heterosexual
men as well.
Bo:
Well, I think it's been difficult for Black Gay communities to organize
around HIV because they have necessarily turned to the Black church,
that historically has an entirely different function in the
African-American community than it does in White America and is the
response is then necessarily freighted with the Judeo-Christian
morality. But you say "the person becomes political through
friendships"...can you elaborate?
Peter: The
personal becomes the political is an old statement from the 1970s
feminist movements but its roots can probably be traced back to the
great philosopher Aristotle, who wrote some important work on
friendship, and said that friendship consists in community and seems to
hold political states together. In developing a network of friends, gay
people learn about our collective history, achieve an intimacy with
others who share many of our experiences related to our identity, and
thus develop a positive gay identity and a strong sense of community.
The history of
the gay social movement is the history of people getting their friends
to attend meetings, participate in marches, organize for social change.
These are the sources of our friends as well. When this community is
attacked — symbolically, legally, maybe even physically — many of us
rally our friends and communities to take action. I'm not saying that
everyone is politicized through friendship — in fact, I wonder how many
really are today. Why aren't our friends rallying us now to fight the
continued discrimination, or to do something about problematic drug
abuse with crystal meth, or making noise about inequality?
But certainly,
just the act of being friends with gays and lesbians, achieving a gay
identity through them, and forming a sense of a gay community of shared
consciousness are the necessary building blocks needed for successful
social movements in the fight against inequality. Our personal
identities and lives have become politicized by politicians, but our
issues are about changing the dominant political structures as we change
our private consciousness to a more positive and accepting gay
identity.
Bo:
I think it's one thing to say "the personal is political" and friends
are 'personal' ergo political. It's another thing to say "a person
becomes political through their friends." Are you saying that it's the
same thing? It almost seems to be a chicken and egg issue....
Peter:
It's difficult to know which comes first, but just being open, coming
out, and developing a social network of gay friends is a political act
in itself, especially in certain parts of the country. But translating
those friendships networks into political action is not always a
guaranteed outcome. Many may just end up partying on the circuit or
settling into quiet relationships in some rural area, far from the
political scene.
Whether we see
these as political actions in and of themselves can be debated, but
certainly as a result of these contacts, many learn about social
movements, protest marches, gay organizations, and start to contribute
financially or in other ways to these groups. I can't tell you how many
become politicized in this sense. But certainly the potential is there
and only there as a result of gay friendship networks.
Bo:
And it sort of leads to another question...do gay and lesbian people
have more kinds of friendships than heterosexuals? It seems clear that
gay men, for example, are more able to cross social barriers and become
friends across those social and economic barriers through sex.
Peter:
In general, people's friends tend to look like one another, in terms of
gender, social class, age, religion, education, ethnicity/race, etc.
And my own research seemed to reinforce this. However, certain gay
spaces — neighborhoods, organizations, bars, baths, etc. — can attract a
wider range of people in terms of those social characteristics and the
potential for people meeting others different from themselves is greatly
increased for gay people. Yet so many of these gay spaces are
themselves often differentiated by these social barriers. Some bars are
more middle class, attending gay benefits costs money and attracts more
upper middle class gays, joining gay organizations may be more suited to
some educational levels than to others (gay lawyers, dentists, or
whatever).
Historically,
many bars discriminated against people of color, resulting in, say,
Latino bars or a more working class ones. Crossing social barriers might
occur in anonymous sexual encounters or public sex spaces, but when it
comes to friends and relationships, gay people tend to hang out with
others like themselves. This is a pattern, so it's not to be taken as
applying to everyone of course.
Bo:
I wonder if that is perhaps one of the, if not unintended, at least
unexpected consequences of being freer as gay people, more "out"? I
think back in the day when people had to meet more secretly, and there
were fewer places to meet, perhaps that idea of friendships crossing
social barriers might have been more true. What is the most surprising
or unexpected thing you've found in your work on friends and
friendships?
Peter:
Given all that I heard about how gay friends are like families, or
families of choice, I was surprised at how few people actually used
family terminology when describing their friends. Part of this may be
due to a greater openness among gay people and their integrating their
gay lives with their heterosexual friends and family. In earlier times,
gay people had to create surrogate families of friends to spend time
with during holidays or in everyday life, often because they were
ostracized from their families of origin.
While this is
still true for many young gay people, I was surprised at how many said
they would bring gay friends or partners to their blood families' homes,
or combine straight and gay friends in their activities. Some of this
may be due to my more middle class, urban, educated sample. I did not
have many rural or small town gay people completing the survey, or
people rejected by their families and relatives. But I really do think
it is reflective of a changing world for newer post-Stonewall
generations. Gay people's friends are "like" family, but maybe not truly
replacements for their actual families of origin and kin.
The other
surprising finding was how varied gay men were in telling stories about
sexuality and friendships. I think I talked about this earlier, but many
would refuse to have sex with friends, while others would continue to,
all raising issues of the complexity of the meanings about sex and
friendship. I didn't quite expect the diversity and range of stories
among a relatively similar group of men responding to my survey. The
variations resulted in a flowchart I created to make sense of all this.
Bo:
Harry Hay suggested that gay men had an inherently different form of
relating that he called "subject-Subject" in which he suggested,
briefly, that Gay men had a different capacity in our relationships
because we were relating to one another as "like beings" or equals as
opposed to an "other." Are you familiar with these ideas and would you
comment with respect to friendships?
Peter:
I met Harry a few times and heard his ideas about how gay men relate to
each other, although I couldn't specifically describe his
'subject-Subject' of 'like beings.' I suppose in some ways he is saying
what I have suggested about the invincible community of gay men, who
share the coming out process, perhaps experiencing what it means to pass
or to be assumed to be straight and the impact that has on us. We share
oppression, identity-confusion, and being different or 'other.' But I'm
not so sure it would be much different from what any racial or class
minority might experience, the bonding black men may feel for example —
after all they refer to each other as "brothers to brother" to use the
phrase from Tongues Untied and the great work of Essex Hemphill and
Marlon Riggs.
And there are
many differences among gay men that make me question whether all gay men
really share a 'like being' that has any real world effect — do upper
class, white Log Cabin gay Republicans really relate as "like beings" to
a poor, rural, gay Latino man, for example? I'm usually leery of
essentialist statements that suggest shared similarities that really
don't have visible impact on how daily lives are lived.
Bo: You speak of a "range of stories" about the complexity of meanings about sex and friendship. Can you elaborate? ?)
Peter:
I think I talked earlier about the different stories gay men talked
about sex and friendships. Many reported that sex or dating situations
were how they established a set of friends. They meet someone, are
attracted, and try to establish a dating or sexual relationship.
A few of these
continue on to become romantic partners, some end the sexual
relationship and the friendship continues, while for others, the
friendship ends when the sex does. A few said that they continued to
have sex with friends, but this is not a typical response I got.
However, others reported "fuck buddies" — people they had sex with
regularly but who were not considered part of their inner friendship
circle.
