Old words acquire new meanings. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, fifty years ago “woke” meant “well-informed, up-to-date.” Around 2010 “woke” began to mean “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.” “Woke” retains that meaning but is now used to criticize political extremes.
New words catch on faster. Think of “clickbait” and “crowd-sourcing.” But that is not always true. I first heard “prekend” in a 2018 episodes of Succession. Now I might see “prekend” sweatshirts for sale, but I never hear the word. People still ask what it means (i.e., late Thursday and Friday as times for pre-weekend drinking).
Another example is “homonormativity,” which appeared in 2002. In Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics, Lisa Duggan refers to “the new homonormativity” as part of “the sexual politics of neo-liberalism.” In a 2015 essay about “Heterosexism and Homophobia,” Jodi O’Brian defines “homonormativity” as a “culturally specific way of being gay that is enough in sync with existing gender, class, racial, and cultural norms as to be considered ‘acceptable’.”
“Homonormativity” is included in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies (2016) and appears in a 2020 essay on “Sexuality and Queer Geographies” by Kath Browne and Andrew McCartan. Although established in some corners of the woke canon, “homonormative” has yet to make its way into the OED (as of June 2023). “Heteronormative” first appeared there in 1991, meaning a worldview based on biological sexual difference and on “heterosexuality as the normal and preferred sexual orientation.”
I came across “homonormative” in Eric Anderson’s 2005 book, In the Game: Gay Athletes and the Cult of Masculinity, which explores the interaction of gay identity and team sports. Anderson doesn’t say where he got the term. He thinks that athletes are uniquely positioned to transform public understanding of homosexuality, but not if they are “homonormative”:
“[T]he stigma of homosexuality may be refuted in the athletic arena, as long as gay athletes do not bring with them an overtly homonormative gay identity. Most openly gay athletes studied [in his research] adhered to all the other mandates of hegemonic masculinity, including devaluing of femininity. This is highly problematic because it denies the transformative potential of gay athleticism to undermine patriarchy and it does not represent a genuine reversal of thinking on homosexuality.” (p. 108)
Anderson’s elaboration of “heteronormal” is a long way from the studied neutrality of O’Brian’s definition above. As part of his doctoral dissertation, Anderson analyzed published interviews with gay athletes and also conducted some interviews himself, mostly by phone. (For methodology, see his 2002 article, “Openly Gay Athletes,” in Gender and Society.) He did not do a statistical analysis but relied on stories told by the gay athletes he surveyed. He concluded that many of them manifested not only the “masculine capital” of dominance (see his book, pp. 23-26) but also “all the other mandates of hegemonic masculinity,” including homophobia and misogyny (p. 7). This constellation of offenses is what made these gay athletes “homonormative.”
Anderson has written many studies of gay athletics, so we might expect others in his field to adopt his use of “homonormative.” I have not found the word in more recent books with a similar focus, however, including Syd Zeigler’s Fair Play: How LGBT Athletes are Claiming their Rightful Place in Sports (2016), and a study by Andrew Billings and Leigh Moscowitz, Media and the Coming Out of Gay Male Athletes in American Team Sports (2018 ). The index for the latter book has no entry for “homonormative” or “homonormativity” but does include "heteronormativity,” which the authors define as an “invisible norm” that is similar to whiteness (pp. 16-17).
A Google search for “homonormativity” had 137,000 hits in June 2023. A search for “heteronormativity” had over 10 million hits. If “homonormative” has not caught on, there might be reasons. I suggest three.
1. “Homonormative” is a confusing neologism. Since most people understand “heteronormative” to mean “normal among straights,” we might expect “homonormative” to mean “normal among gays.” However, “homonormative” does not refer to what normal among gays but describes gays who follow norms about gender, class, and race that are seen as heterosexual.
We might ask how we are to know what is “normal” among heterosexuals, or among gays. The Pew Research Center (2019) found that 50% of male gays who married had college education, whereas 36% of straight men with a college educational were married. Of gay men with high school education, 24% were married; among straight men at that educational level, 33% were married. Highly educated gay men were twice as likely to marry as those with high school educations. Among straights, the difference between the highly educated and less educated was 3% (36% with college, 33% without college). Pew reported that gay men who marry have significantly higher incomes (average $132k) than their straight counterparts (average $90k).
This tells us that “norms” among straights and among gays conceal significant differences. Gay men with high school educations who marry would be seen as “homonormal” for their class (since more straight men in that group marry); however, highly educated gay men who marry would not be seen as “homonormal,” since they marry at a higher rate than straight men in the same class. The “norm,” whether marrying or not marrying, depends on social class. “Homonormative” does not express or even hint at this difference.
The bottom line? It is obvious that “homonormative” is based on broad generalizations about what is “normative.” As we see above, there are significant difference in how straight men of different classes support the institution of marriage. Which social class is it that the woke use to determine the “norms” of heterosexuals in this matter?
2. “Homonormativity” is allied with femininity. Anderson explains how it works among athletes:
“Because cultural stereotypes of homosexuality maintain that it is equated with femininity, these gay athletes (willingly or not) represent femininity at some level [“these gay athletes” are gay men who are out]. In this aspect, their athletic performance is measured against heterosexual performance in a contestation of masculinity versus femininity. Silencing their homosexuality enables heterosexuals to deny the feminized nature of their gay teammates and helps avoid risking the symbolic power of masculinity should they be outperformed by gay men.” (p. 117)
It is no doubt still true that some people think of homosexuality as a form of femininity. Anderson has chosen to elevate this simplistic, dated, and obviously misguided “cultural stereotype” to a mandate. “Willingly or not,” Anderson says, gay athletes “represent femininity at some level.”
As a gay male athlete, I reject this claim and hope others would do the same. It rests on the assumption that women are morally superior to men. It follows, for Anderson, an avowed feminist, that feminine identity is better than masculine identity, even for men.
Perhaps I am missing the finer points of Anderson’s reasoning, but it seems to me that gay men who express themselves as feminine are confirming a stereotype that is plainly detrimental to gay men. By doing so, they reinforce the stigma rather than “refute” it. Anderson thinks that unless gay male athletes become symbolic forms of femininity, they cannot challenge “the symbolic power of masculinity” that sits at the top of the gender hierarchy. Anderson is locked into the battle of the sexes. His innovation is to assert that female is better and that it is the gay male’s best option. His assertion takes an extraordinarily restrictive view of male sexual identity.
The bottom line? Anderson thinks that femininity is better than masculinity. If gay men want to be happy and accepted by people like Anderson, they should identify as feminine.
3. Anderson’s “homonormativity” is hostile to heterosexuality. In his work, “homonormative” is not just a label but also a hostile criticism of the way in which some gay men choose to live. His understanding of “homonormativity” is adversariaI. He sees it as a replication of the worst sides of heterosexual life, including not only sexual prejudice but racial and economic prejudice. The word “homonormative” tags gay people as those who subscribe to the prejudices—not the “norms,” which are, after all, nuanced and not easily reduced to a word, but the prejudices—of straight people. This is typical woke shaming and privileging difference for its own sake.
Why can’t some heterosexual norms be viewed positively or at least neutrally? Marriage? Adoption? Partnership? Parenting? Some gay people admire those norms. Anderson sees norms as defects of character among heterosexuals that homosexuals replicate. Gay people are supposed to be nonnormal, or without norms. They (we) must be progressive champions of resistance and disruption, standing for little but standing against much. Among woke-ists, the more usual term for this willed contrariness is transgressiveness, which refers to the systematic violation of limits observed by others.
The bottom line? For Anderson, some gay men are not gay enough. Being gay enough means using sexual preference to transgress, to offend, and to shame heterosexuals. “Heteronormative” and its attendant judgments, understood his way, create unnecessary divisions in the gay community. Why is this a constructive thing to promote? Who is Anderson to decide who is gay enough?
If we think of traditions instead of “norms,” we see many customs gays share with straights without shame. A leading authority and undoubtedly progressive, Anderson puts down gays who value the traditional heterosexual institutions he lumps together with various forms of prejudice. These institutions include family life. Anderson’s book is dedicated to “my partner.” He thanks both his parents and his “new parents” (his partner’s parents) and hails his partner as “perfect” (p. xiii). What is more heteronormative than the ideal couple and the happy family? Who is more “homonormative,” in a positive or at least neutral sense, than a man like Anderson, who, being gay, honors some of the most traditional heterosexual virtues? Is Anderson gay enough?
I am reminded of Barack Obama’s recent denigration of South Carolina US Senator Tim Scott. In June 2023 Obama mocked Scott’s optimism, saying that Scott had claimed that “everything’s great [in America], and we can all make it.” Those words are not far from Obama’s own aspirational rhetoric in 2008. But for Obama, now the scowling gray eminence of the Democratic Party, there is no hope for America.
Going after Scott is an opportunity for moral condescension, one of Obama’s most-practiced modes. Barack is always the smartest man in the room. A product of an exclusive Honolulu prep school, and Columbia, and Harvard Law, all hallmarks of white privilege, Obama has determined that Scott lacks credibility as a black man. Scott is not black enough.
Scott grew up in poverty. He failed courses in a public high school (not an elite prep academy). He graduated from Charleston Southern University (not Columbia). He worked for an insurance company (not Harvard). He also became the first black Republican elected to any state office in South Carolina since the nineteenth century. He was elected to the US House of Representatives in 2010. In 2012 he was appointed to replace Senator Jim DeMint. Scott won his own Senate seat in 2014 with 61% of the vote. Now he is seeking the Republican presidential nomination.
Before getting into government as an Illinois state senator, Obama held one job, ”community organizer.” He expanded an existing summer jobs project and arranged for the removal of asbestos from a housing project, his major accomplishments. His elite education no doubt prepared him well for these challenges, which took him three years. Who is this man to tell other black men what to do?
As a state senator, Obama was famous for voting “present” 129 times, his profile in courage. His subsequent record in the US Senate is memorable only because he missed dozens of votes when he was campaigning for president. Now, having nothing left to run for, he scores points by attacking Scott.
Like Obama, Anderson always has to have an uphill fight, even if he has to mess with language and definitions to pick it. Anderson was a track coach who helped gay athletes—those he did not stigmatize as heteronormatives, anyway—and who earned his right to speak out. I will give him this: unlike the novice Obama, he had experience relative to his claims on expertise and leadership.
Anderson seems to abhor team sports, a “bastion of hegemonic masculinity, homophobia, and misogyny” (p. 7). For him, individual sports are better because they reflect the “cultural value” of femininity (pp. 131-32). He reminds me of the writer in USA Today who thinks that gay men might be expected in “‘artistic’ men’s sports like gymnastics and diving” (Billings and Moskowicz, p. 139).
One has to wonder if Anderson considers cage fights, wrestling, and boxing to be individual sports. Boxing is seldom seen as “artistic.” Real fights are many things but they are seldom regarded as “artistic.” I don’t step into the ring because I want to dance or to challenge cultural stereotypes of homosexuality. I box because I love it and relish the challenge it poses and because I want to better than I did last time.
I don’t box to make a statement. If my coach told me that he represented masculinity and I represented femininity, I would go after him even harder than I already do. Our sparring is competition between two masculine men distinguished by age, experience, weight, and skill, for starters. Sexual preference is not relevant. We want to see who, on a given day, is the better boxer. I know that some of his younger boxers are not as challenging to him as I am. I don’t mind losing rounds to Coach, and once in a while I win one.
Speaking of counting, this is us after sparring round number 3,004. Do people think that gay men don’t box? They haven’t met me.