Hitting
Hard also contains several essays
criticizing the Pope and the Catholic Church regarding their
hypocrisy towards gays and their own infamous child sex abuse
crises. I appreciate that Signorile, noting how his own teenage
sexual experience with a member of the clergy was actually a
mutually consensual encounter, also points out there are other
sides to the issue.
As
a queer youth, I also had consensual sex with a catholic clergyman
when I was only an adolescent. I was not abused and I knew exactly
what I was doing at the time. I can testify that the issue is
more complex, and deserves deeper consideration, than the typical,
knee-jerk, homophobic “child-abuse” reportage it’s
gotten in the popular press.
Of
course, no Michelangelo Signorile “greatest hits”
collection would be complete without his most notable claim
to fame--his advocacy of outing closeted public figures--getting
some special mention. And that it does. In several chapters,
Signorile revisits and rehashes the last 15 years of the “outing”
phenomena in American public, political and media life.
Few
social issues, among both straights and gays, are as heated
as outing. There are many different and conflicting opinions
on the ethics of this subject from all sides. In the chapter
“Outings Triumphant Return”, Signorile claims “Like
it or not, the increased acceptance of 'outing' is a measure
of our success”.
Considering
the beating GLBT culture is currently taking in American politics,
and how outing fell flat on its face in the recent Vice Presidential
debates, it may be best to pause and let future posterity be
the judge of just how accepted outing is, and just what it is
a measure of.
Harboring
conflicts of my own on the issue, part of my general gut feeling
on outing found immediate solidarity with writer Fran Lebowitz’s
visceral reaction, as Signorile quotes her in Hitting Hard,
“It’s damaging, it’s immoral, it’s McCarthyism,
it’s terrorism, it’s cannibalism, it’s beneath
contempt… To me this is a bunch of Jews lining up other
Jews to go to the concentration camps.”
I
also found myself sympathetic to Rosie O’Donnell’s
feelings, also repeated here from a quote of hers in Hitting
Hard, “A lot of gay boys don’t play on sports
teams, so they don’t know that when somebody’s sitting
on the bench, in uniform, they’re still on your team,
even though they’re not scoring the points. So don’t
hurt them.”
Signorile
deserves credit for being fair-minded enough to give space to
opposing views in his book.
This
reader senses in Hitting Hard a certain defensive attitude
from the much-criticized Signorile regarding his convictions
on outing, gay activism, the various terminologies he prefers
to describe queer life, and other self-defining gay issues.
The book’s front-cover photo of him displaying a somewhat
rigid, cross-armed posture further punctuates this feeling of
entrenchment.
I
suppose this is to be expected, since in addition to documenting
his “hard hitting” style of social critiquing, much
of the book is devoted to Signorile protecting and justifying
his own 25 years-in-the-making legacy of thoughts and proscriptions
regarding gays and their gayness. Rather than “Hitting
Hard”, this book might have been titled “Holding
On Hard”, since a publication like this is clearly geared
towards helping Signorile maintain the relevancy of his own
opinions in the ever-changing world of gay culture and politics.
After
reading Signorile’s thought-provoking articles,
each a little battle unto itself within the larger war for GLBT
“outness”, one’s socio-political imaginative
juices certainly get to flowing. It made own thoughts turn towards
wondering about the bigger picture in all this. What is the
end-game of all our queer strivings towards being “out”
in this world?
As
the times are a-changing, gay culture will be redefining and
re-evaluating itself in light of new opportunities, challenges
and threats. It is only natural that new ideas about ourselves
will rise up from within our own ranks. We may need more than
just a strong democratic leader to protect us in our current
mind-set. Strategies and self-conceptions that worked for us
in the youthful, heady days of 1980’s styled act-up activism
may need upgrading as we engage the future.
Hitting
Hard gives us one man's take on how far we've come, where
we're at, and where we're headed.
Get
Hitting Hard
Page
1 / 2 - Home
