Is Sarah Silverman a Lesbian?
I have to admit, I love Sarah Silverman. I think she’s hysterical. On a recent episode of the Sarah Silverman Show, she explores her sexuality. Sarah meets a friend of her sister, Tig, who is a lesbian. After revisiting the ends of past relationships, Sarah decides that she is a lesbian. After raiding her sister’s closet for “lesbian clothing,” and performing an angry folk chick song wearing flannel and a mullet, Sarah has the opportuity to kiss Tig. However, right before contact is made, Sarah turns aside and makes a face (She did this same thing when she was about to kiss a man, so her actions here are not homophobic). At the end of the episode, Sarah concludes that she is not a homosexual or a heterosexual (noting that she has failed at both), but a ME-mosexual, someone who is in love with herself.
What I find most interesting at Sarah’s identity struggle is that she feels that she has “failed” at being homosexual and at being heterosexual. What does it mean to fail at a sexual identity? Is it that she doesn’t feel attracted to men or women? Or is it the acts themselves that she cannot perform?
Sarah’s struggles with her sexual identity reminds me of many of the discussions we have had in class about who is and who is not a lesbian. Sarah’s insistance that she is, in fact, a lesbian even though she has not kissed a woman begs me the question: can lesbians have close friendships/attractions towards women that they have not acted upon (I mean, here, never having been with a woman). If we can claim a lesbian identity as a political identity, then does it matter what we do in bed? If we claim a lesbian identity, as Andrea Dworkin did, and then have a relationship with a man, will it affect our political identity as a lesbian? Some of our classmates seemed to think that if a lesbian has sex with a man, she is no longer a lesbian, but, to me, that is policing an identity that we don’t need to police — someone else’s.
Then again, if we are not going to police identity, what does it mean when heterosexual men claim that they are “lesbians trapped in a man’s body?” Is that mocking and problemmatic or does it lend more support to gay and lesbian rights?
For more on The Sarah Silverman Show:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Silverman
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_sarah_silverman_program/index.jhtml
Sid Davis and 1950/60’s Anti-Homosexual Propaganda
Sid Davis’ film career was sparked by the 1949 murder of six year old Linda Joyce Glucoft. Urged by his desire to protect young childen (his daugher, Jill, was six at the time of Linda’s murder) from the dangers of strangers, Davis began to produce 10 – 30 minute ‘educational’ films for young people (150 in total). Boys Beware (1961), is a 10 minute film intended to educate young boys about the dangers of homosexuals.
Here’s what Boys Beware tells us about homosexuals:
Homosexual men prey on young boys.
Homosexuality is a sickness.
Homosexuals are criminals.
Homosexuals can engage in violence and murder.
This film clearly portrays homosexual men as child molesters (A similar film called Girls Beware sets out to inform girls to watch out for strange men, too). Of course, the 1950’s and 1960’s are a time in which homosexual men are portrayed as predators and dangerous to young boys, and homosexuality is still considered a mental illness (and is included in the 1963 verison of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Ok, we now know that children (both boys and girls) are more likely to be molested by men (pedophiles) in heterosexual marriages who consider themselves to be heterosexuals, however homosexual individuals (especially men) are villanized as predators even today.
This homosexual-as-pedophile rhetoric is seen in the literature of many anti-gay groups, most notably Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. Paul Cameron, the head of the Family Research Council, has published numerous ’statistically driven’ articles that support the hypothesis that homosexuals are more likely to be child molesters. The problem with Cameron’s research is that he classifies any man who has sexual relations with a boy as a homosexual, ignoring the context in which the molestation occurs. So a heterosexual man in a heterosexual marriage who molests a boy is, according to Cameron, a homosexual. Paul Cameron actually rejects the term pedophile for these men, preferring to classify them as homosexual. Research from the Family Research Council has been used in court cases deciding custody issues when homosexual individuals are involved. So, perhaps we are not too far away from the views put forth in Sid Davis’ videos.
What is even more disturbing is Sid Davis’ (and Paul Cameron’s) assertions that homosexuals are criminals, a topic that I will return to on a later date.
Some useful links:
Background on Boys Beware: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boys_Beware
Some information on Paul Cameron: http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_cameron.html
