Last call
This is in response to the ongoing dialogue generated by the article ( April 29 ) by Yasmin Nair, "Bar none: Gay clubs reject bachelorette parties," with comments from an unidentified source ( May 6 ) , and then those by Drs. Laura Stempel and Jennifer Brier ( May 13 ) .
With respect to Dr. Stempel's letter to the editor, "It's academic," I must respectfully disagree with her opinion that Dr. Brier meets the definition of a "gay academic." This in no way is meant to detract from Dr. Brier's numerous and significant accomplishments. Only to say that, in preparing her article, perhaps a more balanced perspective could have been achieved by author Nair, had she consulted a gay male academic source in addition to specifically seeking out a lesbian and feminist interpretation of the events, as Dr. Brier, herself, states as the author having sought, and she as having given. Also, I don't see where the anonymous writer of the May 6 issue attributed any sexual orientation to Dr. Brier in an effort to "attack her arguments" or in "accusing her of being straight," although Dr. Brier then goes on to assume he is a gay male. ( Admittedly, she's probably correct. )
Lastly, Dr. Brier brings up in her letter to the editor of May 6, "Setting the bar," the issue of the need to feel safely sexual in public. Maybe bachelorette parties gravitate to primarily gay venues, because they feel "safe" that gay men are not going to be "hitting on them" in a sexual manner. Note that these bachelorette parties don't seem to be heading out to the mostly lesbian bars ( e.g., The Closet, as opposed to Cocktail or Sidetrack ) . If the ladies in these bachelorette parties conducted themselves with some appropriate sense of deportment and decorum, it is difficult to believe they would not be welcome at a regular straight bar, and that straight men would show them due respect.
The vast majority of my own friends are women. Two, in particular ( both straight feminists and allies to the LGBTQ community ) , have contributed to my own education as a gay man. Neither will accompany me into an LGBTQ bar. What's their reasoning for going into an LGBTQ bar? They would not want to unintentionally "out" anyone they know by accidentally running into them in such a venue. Furthermore, they believe that no one should be "outed" until/unless they are ready to "come out." How very thoughtful. Maybe this is not an insight yet developed by the members of the bachelorette parties or, for that matter, the gay men who bring the straight females they know into LGBTQ bars ( a la Will & Grace ) ? One of these women friends I describe is an educator, and the other is a practicing psychiatrist. Believe me when I say they are highly accomplished, sincere, strong, kind and unusually insightful.
Thank you,
Leonard Pal, Psy.D.
Yasmin Nair responds: Leonard Pal conveniently neglects the fact that I interviewed two gay men for the piece. He feels that I should have interviewed a "gay male academic source" in addition to Dr. Jennifer Brier, implying that his issue is with the range of sources. Pal, who always reads Windy City Times from cover to cover, knows that I have written a number of articles where my source for expert analysis was a male academic like Dr. John D'Emilio. Yet, interestingly, he has had no complaints about my only having interviewed a single male academic source for any of those pieces.
Pal implies that he has caught me red-handed in having deliberately sought Dr. Brier. It's entirely within my purview as a journalist to seek sources who might shed an interesting light upon an issue. Yes, I sought her out because she is a lesbian and a feminist—that seemed relevant given that the topic concerned both queerness and female sexuality. By the time I came to write this short piece, it had been thoroughly discussed from the gay male point of view in the Tribune and on the web. It's an inevitable marker of social change/progress that gay issues are now discussed in mainstream media. I wanted to write a story that would not replicate the Tribune piece.
I asked Dr. Brier for her comments because she is a highly qualified female academic at a major urban university ( University of Illinois at Chicago ) ; a lesbian on the planning committee of Out at Chicago History Museum events; is respected in the queer community; and has a forthcoming book, Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis, on the AIDS epidemic. Her perspective on the complicated relationships of gay bars to their neighborhoods, with regard to race and gender, challenged the conventional history of gay bars. In that context, her take on the presence/incursion of straight women in the bars asked new questions about the relationships between straights and gays. Yet, despite knowing her qualifications, Pal has decided that she does not meet the definition of a gay academic. This is sexism, in its most elemental form. Pal and other gay men like him ( and here I am recklessly assuming that he is, in fact, a gay man ) need to recognize that we live in a world where the social lines between gay and straight are less clear, and that lesbians are also "gay academics."
Pal writes about his straight female friends who, apparently, will not go to bars for fear of outing anyone. This is 2009, and we live in a city that boasts two gay neighborhoods. Gays here are not likely to go to a gay bar if they fear being outed. Still, Pal is entirely within his rights to believe that his exceptional friends refuse to go to a gay bar because they're being considerate of gay people—and not, perhaps, because they fear lesbians as much as he does.
