TALE OF A "STIGMAPHOBE": William Raspberry in the Washington Post

...[The Trouble with Normal author Michael] Warner, like other gay writers before him, divides the world into stigmaphiles and stigmaphobes -- those who embrace the very things that make the disrespected groups different and those who would suppress the difference in a mistaken search for group respectability.

He includes writer Andrew Sullivan, whose own book, "[Virtually] Normal," is a particular target of the "The Trouble with Normal," among the stigmaphobes. Sullivan's argument, he says, amounts to "We'd be accepted if only. . . ." ...

Two things struck me about Warner's thesis. The first is how completely I had embraced the Sullivan notion that gays and lesbians would be okay if only they behaved more respectably -- and that marriage might be a way of encouraging that better behavior.

The second was, for me, more startling: the degree to which stigmaphobe describes some of my own attitudes regarding racial acting out. Warner himself doesn't mention race in this regard. But is there any appreciable difference between Sullivan and others wishing that gays would behave more "normally"--at least in public--and my own wishing that black teenagers, for instance, would act more "respectfully"--toning down their swearing and loud conversations, muting their boomboxes or deferring to grownups?

And to make Warner's point: How much of my concern is for the teenagers, and how much is for myself? Isn't at least some of my desire for them to change their behavior based on the hope that if they do, maybe others will be less likely to view me and those close to me as members of a deviant group?

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posted by Eve at 8:27 PM VOTE

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