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Beyond the Binaries: Depolarizing the Categories of
Sex, Sexuality, and Gender*
Judith Lorber, City University of New York
Most sociological research designs assume that’each person has one sex, one sexuality, and one gender, congruent with each other and fixed for life. Postmodern feminists
and queer theorists have been interrogating bodies, desires, and genders, but sociology
has not. Deconstructing sex, sexuality, and gender reveals many possible categories embedded in social experiences and social practices. As researchers, as theorists, and as activists, sociologists have to go beyond paying lip service to the diversity of bodies,
. sexualities, genders. The sociologist’s task should be to deconstruct the conventional categories of sex, sexuality, and gender and build new complex, cross-cutting constructs
into research designs. There are revolutionary possibilities inherent in rethinking the categories of gender, sexuality, and physiological sex. Sociological data that challenge conventional knowledge by rcframing the questions could provide legitimacy for new ways
of thinking. Data that undermine the supposed natural dichotomies on which the social
orders of most modern societies are still based could radically alter political discourses
that valorize biological causes, essential heterosexuality, and traditional gender roles in
families and workplaces.
“Being situated within several mental fields at the same time, intermediate identities necessarily defy the either/or logic underlying perceived mutual exclusivity of categories, thereby questioning the very viability of the boundaries separating them from one another”
—(Zerubavel 1991, p. 35)
In the fall of 1994, there was a production oi As You Like It played by all
men, as it was in Shakespeare’s day.’ This comedy is full of witty comments on
gender shifts—men play women characters who masquerade as young men, and
other women characters played by men act out falling in love with them, and the
men playing women masquerading as men act out pining for the love of men
characters, played by “real” men. Or are they? Shakespeare comments on manliness:
We’ll have a swashing and a martial outside.
As many other mannish cowards have
That do outface it with their semblances. (I, iii, 122-124)
Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 66, No. 2, May 1996, 143-159
©1996 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819
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JUDITH LORBER
At the end of As You Like It, the phrase “if there be truth in sight” supposedly
restores the masquerader, Rosalind, to her rightful shape—a woman (played by a
man, of course). But there has been no truth in sight throughout the play, for Rosalind’s lover, Orlando, sees her (him) only as a young man when she (he) is
dressed so, even though she (he) tells him to think of her (him) as Rosalind while
they play out a mock courtship. Throughout, believing is seeing (Lorber 1993).
Recent movies, such as The Crying Game, Farewell My Concubine, and M
Butterfly, as well as older ones—Tootsie, Victor/Victoria, Some Like It Hot—
have depicted transvestic sexual and gender ambiguities that also destabilize what
we think we see. These ambiguities upend conventional notions of the differences
between femaleness and maleness, heterosexuality and homosexuality, womanhood and manhood, masculinity and femininity. The concept of androgyny is not
adequate to encompass these ambiguities because androgyny assumes fairly clear
masculine and feminine attributes that can be amalgamated—without changing
them. Today’s gender ambiguities are much more complex (Bolin 1994; Callender and Kochems 1985; Connell 1992; Fuss 1991; Garber 1992, 1995; Herdt
1994; Money 1988). It is these complexities and their implications for sociological research that this article addresses. It expands epistemological and methodological issues raised in Paradoxes of Gender (Lorber 1994).
Limitations of Conventional Gender Categories
Most research designs in sociology assume that each person has one sex,
one sexuality, and one gender, which are congruent with each other and fixed for
life. Sex and gender are used interchangeably, and sex sometimes means sexuality, sometimes physiology or biology, and sometimes social status. The social
construction of bodies is examined only when the focus is medicine, sports, or
procreation (Butler 1993). Variations in gender displays are ignored: A woman is
assumed to be a feminine female; a man a masculine male. Heterosexuality is the
uninterrogated norm against which variations are deviance (Ingraham 1994).
These research variables—”sex” polarized as “females” and “males,” “sexuality” polarized as “homosexuals” and “heterosexuals,” and “gender” polarized as “women” and “men”—reflect unnuanced series that conventionalize
bodies, sexuality, and social location (Young 1994). Such designs cannot include
the experiences of hermaphrodites, pseudohermaphrodites, transsexuals, transvestites, bisexuals, third genders, and gender rebels as lovers, friends, parents,
workers, and sports participants. Even if the research sample is restricted to putative “normals,” the use of unexamined categories of sex, sexuality, and gender
will miss complex combinations of status and identity, as well as differently gendered sexual continuities and discontinuities (Chodorow 1994, 1995).
Postmodern feminists and queer theorists have been interrogating bodies,
desires, and genders, but sociologists have not, despite the availability of con-
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145
cepts from labeling theory and symbolic interaction: “The idea that sexuality is
socially constructed was promoted by interpretive sociologists and feminist theorists at least two decades before queer theory emerged on the intellectual scene”
(Stein and Plummer 1994, p. 183).^ Current debates over the global assumptions
of only two gender categories have led to the insistence that they must be nuanced
to include race and class, but they have not gone much beyond that (Collins 1990;
Spelman 1988; Staples 1982). Similarly, the addition of sexual orientation has
expanded gendered sexual statuses only to four: heterosexual women and men,
gays, and lesbians.
Deconstructing sex, sexuality, and gender reveals many possible categories
embedded in social experiences and social practices, as does the deconstruction
of race and class. As queer theorists have found, multiple categories disturb the
neat polarity of familiar opposites that assume one dominant and one subordinate
group, one normal and one deviant identity, one hegemonic status and one
“other” (Martin 1994; Namaste 1994). But in sociology, as Barrie Thorne
(1993) comments in her work on children.
The literature moves in a circle, carting in cultural assumptions about the nature of masculinity
(bonded, hierarchical, competitive, “tough”), then highlighting behavior that fits those parameters and obscuring the varied styles and range of interactions among boys as a whole, (p. 100)
Behavior that is gender-appropriate is considered normal; anything else (girls insulting, threatening, and physically fighting boys and other girls) is considered
“gender deviance” (Thorne 1993, pp. 101-103). The juxtaposition both assumes
and reproduces seemingly clear and stable contrasts. Deconstructing those contrasts reveals that the “normal” and the “deviant” are both the product of deliberate social practices and cultural discourses. Of all the social sciences,
sociology is in the best position to analyze those practices and discourses, rather
than taking their outcome for granted.
But as long as sociological research uses only the conventional dichotomies
of females and males, homosexuals and heterosexuals, women and men, it will
take the “normal” for granted by masking the extent of subversive characteristics and behavior. Treating deviant cases as markers of the boundaries of the
“normal” implies that the “normal” (e.g., heterosexuality) does not have to be
explained as equally the result of processes of socialization and social control
(Ingraham 1994). Such research colludes in the muffling and suppressing of behavior that may be widespread, such as heterosexual men who frequently crossdress, which, if not bracketed off as “deviant,” could subvert conventional
discourses on gender and sexuality (Stein and Plummer 1994).
Our commonsense knowledge of the real world tells us that behavior is situational and that sexual and gender statuses combined with race and social class
produce many identities in one individual (West and Fenstermaker 1995). This
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JUDITH LORBER
individual heterogeneity is nonetheless overridden by the major constructs (race,
class, gender) that order and stratify informal groups, formal organizations, social
institutions, and social interaction. By accepting these constructs as given, by not
unpacking them, sociologists collude in the relations of ruling (Smith 1990a,
1990b).
As researchers, as theorists, and as activists, sociologists have to go beyond
paying lip service to the diversity of bodies, sexualities, genders, and racialethnic and class positions. We have to think not only about how these characteristics variously intermingle in individuals and therefore in groups but what the
extent of variation is within these categories. For example, using conventional
categories, where would we place the competitive runner in woman’s competitions who has XY chromosomes and normal female genitalia (Grady 1992)? Or
the lesbian transsexual (Bolin 1988)? Or the woman or man who has long-term
relationships with both women and men (Weinberg, Williams, and Pryor 1994)?
Or the wealthy female husband in an African society and her wife (Amadiume
1987)? These are not odd cases that can be bracketed off in a footnote (Terry
1991). As did the concept of conflicting latent statuses (e.g., black woman surgeon), they call our attention to the rich data about social processes and their outcomes that lie beneath neat comparisons of male and female, heterosexual and
homosexual, men and women.
Deconstructing Sex, Sexuality, and Gender
In rethinking gender categories, it is important to split what is usually conflated as sex/gender or sex/sexuality/gender into three conceptually distinct categories: sex (or biology, physiology), sexuality (desire, sexual preference, sexual
orientation), and gender (a social status, sometimes with sexual identity). Each is
socially constructed but in different ways. Gender is an overarching category—a
major social status that organizes almost all areas of social life. Therefore bodies
and sexuality are gendered; biology, physiology, and sexuality, in contrast, do not
add up to gender, which is a social institution that establishes patterns of expectations for individuals, orders the social processes of everyday life, is built into
the major social organizations of society, such as the economy, ideology, the family, and politics, and is also an entity in and of itself (Lorber 1994).
For an individual, the components of gender are the sex category assigned at
birth on the basis of the appearance of the genitalia; gender identity; gendered
sexual orientation; marital and procreative status; a gendered personality structure; gender beliefs and attitudes; gender displays; and work and family roles. All
these social components are supposed to be consistent and congruent with perceived physiology. The actual combination of genes and genitalia; prenatal, adolescent, and adult hormonal input; and procreative capacity may or may not be
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147
congruous with each other and with the components of gender and sexuality, and
the components may also not line up neatly on only one side of the binary divide.
Deconstructing Sex
Anne Fausto-Sterling (1993) says that “no classification scheme could more
than suggest the variety of sexual anatomy encountered in clinical practice” (p.
22), or seen on a nudists’ beach. Male and female genitalia develop from the
same fetal tissue, and so, because of various genetic and hormonal inputs, at least
1 in 1,000 infants are born with ambiguous genitalia, and perhaps more (FaustoSterling 1993). The “mix” varies; there are
the so-called true hermaphrodites. . . , who possess one testis and one ovary. . . ; the male
pseudohermaphrodites . . . , who have testes and some aspects of the female genitalia but no
ovaries; and the female pseudohermaphrodites. . . , who have ovaries and some aspects of the
male genitalia but lack testes. Each of these categories is in itself complex; the percentage of
male and female characteristics . . . can vary enormously among members of the same subgroup. (Fausto-Sterling 1993, p. 21)
Because of the need for official categorization in bureaucratically organized
societies, these infants must legally be labeled “boy” or “girl” soon after birth,
yet they are subject to rather arbitrary sex assignment (Epstein 1990). Suzanne
Kessler (1990) interviewed six medical specialists in pediatric intersexuality and
found that whether an infant with XY chromosomes and anomalous genitalia was
categorized as a boy or a girl depended on the size of the penis. If the penis was
very small, the child was categorized as a girl, and sex-change surgery was used
to make an artificial vagina.
An anomaly common enough to be found in several feminine-looking
women at every major international sports competition is the existence of XY
chromosomes that have not produced male anatomy or physiology because of
other genetic input (Grady 1992). Now that hormones have proved unreliable,
sports authorities nonetheless continue to find ways of separating “women”
from “men.” From the point of view of the sociological researcher, the interesting questions are why certain sports competitions are gender-neutral and others
are not, how different kinds of sports construct different kinds of women’s and
men’s bodies, and how varieties of masculinities and femininities are constructed
through sports competitions (Hargreaves 1986; Messner 1992; Messner and Sabo
1994).
As for hormones, recent research suggests that testosterone and other androgens are as important to normal development in females as in males, and that in
both, testosterone is converted to estrogen in the brain.^ Paradoxically, maximum
androgen levels seem to coincide with high estrogen levels and ovulation, leading
one researcher to comment: “The borders between classic maleness and female-
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ness are much grayer than people realized. . . . We’re mixed bags, all of us”
(quoted in Angier 1994).
From a societal point of view, the variety of combinations of genes, genitalia, and hormonal input can be rendered invisible by the surgical and hormonal
construction of maleness and femaleness (Epstein 1990). But this variety, this
continuum of physiological sex cannot be ignored. Sociologists may not want to
explore the varieties of biological and physiological sexes or the psychology of
the hermaphrodite, pseudohermaphrodite, or transsexual, but the rationales given
for the categorization of the ambiguous as either female or male shed a great deal
of light on the practices that maintain the illusion of clear-cut sex differences.
Without such critical exploration, sex differences are easily invoked as the “natural causes” of what is actually socially constructed.
Deconstructing Sexuality
Categories of sexuality—conventionally, homosexual and heterosexual—
also mask diversity that can be crucial for generating accurate data. Sexuality is
physically sexed because female and male anatomies and orgasmic experiences
differ. It is gendered because sexual scripts differ for women and for men whether
they are heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, or transvestite. Linking
the experience of physical sex and gendered social prescriptions for sexual feelings, fantasies, and actions are individual bodies, desires, and patterns of sexual
behavior, which coalesce into gendered sexual identities. These identities, however various and individualized, are categorized and socially patterned into gendered sexual statuses. There are certainly more than two gendered sexual
statuses: “If one uses the criteria of linguistic markers alone, it suggests that
people in most English-speaking countries . . . recognize four genders: woman,
lesbian (or gay female), man and gay male” (Jacobs and Roberts 1989, p. 439).
But there is not the variety we might find if we looked at what is actually out
there.”
Studies of bisexuality have shown that the conventional sexual categories
are hard to document empirically. At what point does sexual desire become
sexual preference, and what turns sexual preference into a sexual identity or social status? What sexual behavior identifies a “pure” heterosexual or a “pure”
homosexual? Additionally, a sexual preference involves desired and actual sexual
attraction, emotions, and fantasies, not just behavior. A sexual identity involves
self-identification, a life-style, and social recognition of the status (Klein, Sepekoff, and Wolf 1985).
Sexual identities (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual) are responses not just
to psychic constructs but also to social and cultural strictures and pressures from
family and friends. Because Western culture constructs sexuality dichotomously,
many people whose sexual experiences are bisexual are forced to choose between
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149
a heterosexual and homosexual identity as their “real” identity (Blumstein and
Schwartz 1976a, 1976b; Garber 1995; Rust 1992, 1993, forthcoming; Valverde
1985, pp. 109-120). Rust’s research on bisexual and lesbian sexual identity
found that 90 percent of the 323 self-identified lesbians who answered her ques-‘
tionnaire had had heterosexual experiences, 43 percent after coming out as lesbians (1992, 1993). They discounted these experiences, however; what counted
for these lesbians was their current relationships. The forty-two women who
identified themselves as bisexual, in contrast, put more emphasis on their sexual
attraction to both women and men. Assuming that all self-identified homosexual
men and lesbians have exclusively same-sex partners not only renders invisible
the complexities of sexuality but can also have disastrous health outcomes, as has
been found in the spread of HIV and AIDS among women (Goldstein 1995).
The interplay of gender and sexuality needs to be explored as well. One
study found that heterosexual men labeled sexual provocativeness toward them
by gay men sexual harassment, but heterosexual women did not feel the same
about lesbians’ coming on to them (Giuffre and Williams 1994). The straight men
felt their masculinity was threatened by the gay men’s overtures; the straight
women did not feel that a lesbian’s interest in them impugned their heterosexuality.
Weinberg, Williams, and Pryor (1994) found five types of bisexuals among
the 49 men; 44 women, and 11 transsexuals they interviewed in 1983 (pp.
46-48). In their research, gender was as salient a factor as sexuality. On the basis
of sexual feelings, sexual behaviors, and romantic feelings, they estimated that
only 2 percent of the self-identified bisexual men in their research and 17 percent
of the self-identified bisexual women were equally sexually and romantically attracted to and involved with women and men, but about a third of both genders
were around the midpoint of their scale. About 45 percent of the men and 20
percent of the women leaned toward heterosexuality, and 15 percent of each gender leaned toward homosexuality. About 10 percent of each were varied in their
feelings and behavior.
Weinberg, Williams, and Pryor (1994) found that although gender was irrelevant to choice of partner among bisexuals, sexual scripting was not only gendered, but quite conventional, with both women and men saying that women
partners were more emotionally attuned and men partners were more physically
sexual (pp. 49-58). Paradoxically, they say.
In a group that often sets itself against societal norms, we were surprised to discover that bisexual respondents organized their sexual preferences along the lines of traditional gender stereotypes. As with heterosexuals and homosexuals, gender is the building material from which
they put together their sexuality. Unlike these groups, however, the edifice built is not restricted
to one gender, (p. 57)
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The meaning of gender and sexuality to self-identified homosexuals cannot
be taken for granted by researchers. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick notes that some
homosexuals want to cross into the other gender’s social space (e.g., gay drag
queens and butch lesbians), whereas for others (e.g., macho gay men and lesbian
separatists) ” . . . it is instead the most natural thing in the world that people of the
same gender, people grouped under the single most determinative diacritical
mark of social organization, people whose economic, institutional, emotional,
physical needs and knowledges may have so much in common, should bond together also on the axis of sexual desire” (1990, p. 87).
Paula Rust (forthcoming), in her research on varieties of sexuality, found
that her respondents spoke of being attracted to another person because of particular personality characteristics, ways of behaving, interests, intellect, looks,
style. What heterosexuals do—choose among many possible members of the opposite sex—is true of gays and lesbians for same-sex partners, and bisexuals for
either sex. The physical sex, sexual orientation, masculinity, femininity, and gender markers are just the beginning set of parameters, and they might differ for a
quick sexual encounter, a romantic liaison, a long-term relationship. Rather than
compare on categories of gender or sexuality, researchers might want to compare
on types of relationships.
Deconstructing Gender
Gendered behavior is constantly normalized by processes that minimize or
counteract contradictions to the expected. Competitive women body-builders
downplay their size, use makeup, wear their hair long and blond, and emphasize
femininity in posing by using “dance, grace and creativity”; otherwise, they
don’t win competitions (Mansfield and McGinn, 1993):
There are a wide variety of styles of dress and personal presentation available to Western
women of the late twentieth century to the extent that the notion of female-to-male cross-dressing has become almost meaningless. However, in the same way as it is necessary for the extreme gender markers of the hyper-feminine to be adopted by the male cross-dressers in order
to make it clear that they wish to be recognized as “women,” so too is it necessary for women
bodybuilders. . . . It seems that the female muscled body is so dangerous that the proclamation
of gender must be made very loudly indeed, (p. 64)
Iris Marion Young (1994) argues that gender, race, and class are series—
comparatively passive social collectives grouped by their similar tasks, ends, or
social conditioning. These locations in social structures may or may not become
sources of self-identification, significant action by others, or political action. When
and how they do is an area for research. For example, U.S. lesbians first identified
with homosexual men in their resistance to sexual discrimination, but after experiencing the same gender discrimination as did women in the civil rights and
draft-resistance movements, they turned to the feminist movement, where, unhap-
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151
pily, they experienced hostility to their sexuality from many heterosexual women.
Subsequently, some lesbian feminists have created an oppositional, woman-identified, separatist movement that identifies heterosexuality as the main source of
the oppression of women (Taylor and Rupp 1993).
David Collinson and JefFHearn (1994) argue that men in management exhibit multiple masculinities: aggressive authoritarianism, benevolent paternalism,
competitive entrepreneurialism, buddy-buddy informalism, and individualistic
careerism. These multiple masculinities among men managers have different effects on relationships with men colleagues, women colleagues, as well as on
sponsor-protege interactions. Collinson and Hearn call for a simultaneous emphasis on unities and differences among men. Cynthia Cockburn similarly says
about women, “We can be both the same as you and different from you, at various times and in various ways” (1991, p. 10).
Igor Kopytoff (1990), raising the question of why it seems to be easier for
women in traditional societies than in Westernized societies to claim positions of
political power and rule as heads of state, uses a concept of core or existential
gender identities. He argues that in Africa and many other traditional societies
the core of womanhood (or immanent or existential being as a woman) is
childbearing—but all the rest is praxis and negotiable, transferable. Because
women do not have to bring up their children to be women in traditional societies,
just birth them, he argues that they are free to take on other time-consuming roles.
In the West, in contrast, since the nineteenth century, being a “real” woman
means one must be married with children, and must bring them up personally,
while also keeping an impeccable house and attractive appearance, and looking
after a husband’s sexual and emotional needs. “Once existentially complete, she
can then turn to other occupations,” but will rarely have the time to assume a
position of leadership (p. 93).
The crucial question . . . is this: granted that most and perhaps all societies posit that being a
woman is an existential identity with a set of features immanent in it, how many such immanent
features are there and what are they? Or, to put it most simply, the problem of women’s roles is
not whether a society recognizes women as being different from men (they invariably do) but
how it organizes other things around the difference, (p. 91)
Useful Methodologies
The sociologists’ task should be to deconstruct the conventional categories
of sex, sexuality, and gender and build new complex, cross-cutting constructs into
research designs. There are several ways to rethink the conventional “manageable units” that laypeople construct (Rodkin 1993, p. 635). We can deconstruct
the commonly used categories to tease out components; we can add categories;
we can also reconstruct categories entirely. That is, we can take a critical stance
towards the conventional categories without abandoning them entirely, examin-
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ing the social construction and meanings of sex, sexuality, and gender, as has already been done for race, ethnicity, and social class. We can adapt categories to
particular research questions, cross-cutting sex, sexuality, and gender the way
race, ethnicity, and social class have been used as cross-cutting categories. Or, we
can do research that predicts behavior from processes and social location without
the overlay of status categories, examining what people do to and with whom and
how these processes construct, maintain, or subvert statuses, identities, and institutional rules and social structures. None of these new approaches discards familiar sociological tools, but all of them demand thoughtful examination of the
familiar binaries.
Sociology has several methodologies that do not rely on polarized categories. Among them are analysis of positions in a social network (Knoke and Kuklinski 1982), examination of the clustering of attitudinal perspectives through
Q-sorting (Stephenson 1953), letting patterns emerge from the data as recommended by grounded theory (Glaser, 1992; Straus and Corbin, 1990), and the
critical deconstruction of social texts (Reinharz 1992, pp. 145-163). The familiar
categories can be used in the next level of analysis to see whether the emergent
network positions, attitude clusters, typical behavior, and subtexts are characteristic of those of different genders, races, ethnic groups, and classes, and they can
be taken to a third level describing how they relate to power and resource control.
Or they can be dropped entirely in favor of category names more descriptive of
empirical content. Using grounded theory to analyze the varieties of behavior of
male cross-dressers, Richard Ekins (1993) distinguished patterns related to sex
(“body femaling”), sexuality (“erotic femaling”), and role behavior (“gender
femaling”).
Letting patterns emerge from the data, the methodology long recommended
by ethnomethodologists and other qualitative researchers, permits the analysis of
processes within structures (West and Fenstermaker 1995; West and Zimmerman
1987). As Marilyn Frye notes, “Pattern discovery and invention requires encounters with difference, with variety. . . . Discovering patterns requires novel acts of
attention” (1990, p. 180). These patterns can also be used for quantitative comparisons, as Mary Clare Lennon and Sarah Rosenfeld (1994) did in their statistical analysis built on Arlie Hochschild’s (1989) interview data on the extent of
housework done by husbands and wives where the woman was the greater earner.
Organizing data without reliance on the conventional dichotomous categories
does not confine researchers to single-case analysis or a limited number of indepth interviews; quantitative methods will still be applicable.
The common practice of comparing females and males, women and men, or
homosexuals and heterosexuals frequently produces data that are so mixed that it
takes another level of analysis to sort out meaningfiil categories for comparison.
It would be better to start with categories derived from data analysis of all sub-
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jects and see the extent to which they attach to the conventional global categories
of sex, sexuality, and gender, or better yet, to one or more of the components.
However, in order to do this second level of analysis, the sample groups have to
be heterogenous on the conventional categories in the first place. Thus, the familiar categories do not have to be dispensed with entirely, but their use in analysis can be bracketed until after other differentiating variables are revealed. These
differentiating variables are likely to break up and recombine the familiar categories in new ways that go beyond the conventional dichotomies but do not remove
the category from our lexicon. As Linda Nicholson (1994) says in “Interpreting
Gender,”
Thus I am advocating that we think abotit the meaning of woman as illustrating a map of intersecting similarities and differences. Within such a map the body does not disappear but
rather becomes a historically specific variable whose meaning and import are recognized as
potentially different in different historical contexts. Such a suggestion . . . [assumes] that meaning is found rather than presupposed, (pp. 101-102)
Challenge Categories, Challenge Power
Tony Kushner, in Angels in America, deconstructs the term homosexual in a
way that a sociologist could emulate. Roy Cohn, a notoriously arrogant Washington lawyer, is a historical character in Kushner’s epic drama. In one scene between Cohn and his physician, Cohn refuses to admit that he has AIDS and insists
that he has liver cancer. When his physician tells him that his illness is the result
of his sexual behavior, Cohn says.
Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean
what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell
you who someone sleeps with but they don’t tell you that. . . . Like all labels they tell you one
thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the
peeking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler; clout. Not who I
fuck or who fiicks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me favors. That
is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I
am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep
with other men. . . . Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who
have zero clout. . . . I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is
true, I bring the guy I’m screwing to the White House and President Reagan shakes his hand.
Because what 1 am is defined entirely by who I am. Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn
is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fiicks around with guys. (1993, pp. 45-46, emphasis in
original)
What Kushner has done here is to transform the commonly used term homosexual from a person with an identity, essential core, and major status to behavior
that may or may not be practiced continuously, that docs not characterize the person, that does not necessarily s
