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Southern Voice/November 8, 1990
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Men & Intimacy
The second part of Al Cotton's two part interview **
about men, monogamy, sex and AIDS with author,
editor and psychotherapist Franklin Abbott
Southern Voice: From the vantage
point of a psychotherapist, are there any
specific issues that your clients tend to
bring to you right now?
Franklin Abbott: Yes. The two major
things I've heard from gay men over the
last five years are intricately connected.
One: Relationships. How do we get into a
relationship or keep our relationship
going or get out of an unhealthy one?
Two: Health. The AIDS crisis has put a
special charge on our relationships.
One problem we have is that the model
we have for intimacy comes from the
patriarchal tradition of monogamy and
romantic love. Webster defines
monogamy as "having one wife," which
doesn't describe too many of us.
Thousands of years ago, when we shifted
from a matriarchy to a patriarchy, a need
to know one's lineage through the father
developed—monogamy makes that more
possible. Since we don't breed, however,
lineage is a moot point for gay men.
To support monogamy, the notion of
romantic love was incorporated into patri
archal mythology—with one person and
only one person in the world for you. I
don't know that this is something all gay
men are suited for.
Also, we are working around a polarity
of monogamy and promiscuity, so that
promiscuity is connected to monogamy.
You're either being a good boy by being
monogamous, or deliberately a bad boy
by being promiscuous. You're either in
cahoots with the patriarchy or in rebellion
against it What we as gay men have to do
is to establish something outside of it. We
have to change our ways of thinking
about love and relationships. We have to
change our minds.
We especially need to change how we
deal with intimacy, since gay men are
really struggling to find ways of being
with each other that are emotionally and
sexually fulfilling. We have been pro
grammed in the romantic tradition, where
there is jealousy and turf-guarding and
"Leave my man alone" stuff. There's a
great deal of work to be done in that area.
SV: For the early gay movement,
promiscuity was practically a right worth
fighting for; now we've progressed far
enough to see it as counterproductive.
FA: It's not always a good thing to
become totally sexually vulnerable with
someone you have no previous knowl
edge of. Do you let strangers drive your
car? Or invite them into your house to
browse around? And yet we let them into
our bodies. That doesn't make sense. It is
a problem that results from the twin con
cepts of patriarchy and monogamy, and
we need to get away from it.
This problem is made worse by the
fact that relationships are of highlighted
importance for gay men because of the
reaction we get from our families. My
family, for instance, has sort of "de-fami-
lied" themselves, taking really no interest
in my life. I am not "familiar" to them
anymore. The reason our lovers and
friendships are so important to us is that
we find out who is willing to learn about
us.
SV: And AIDS complicates these
problems further by bringing death into
this mix of emotions.
FA: AIDS has put a real twist on rela
tionships, because again most of us were
raised with at least a modicum of reli
gious guilt; and most of us, somewhere
inside us, still believe our behavior can
explain why we are sick. Lots of gay men
come in and say "I hate condoms" or "I'm
scared to death to touch anybody." I think
this is a secondary effect that the health
crisis has brought to us, and it highlights
how difficult relationships are.
As young and middle aged men, we
are not prepared for death. What happens
in a normal situation around death is that
we see our grandparents die and see our
parents deal with that; then we see our
parents die and we deal with that; then we
deal with the death of people 10 years
older than us; finally, when we get up
there, there is some sense of readiness,
some knowing of the terrain. AIDS has
ripped that natural progression to pieces.
We are dealing with a shattering expe
rience of death coming to our own gener
ation, perhaps wondering why we were
spared. Many gay men have a stress syn
drome similar to what Vietnam vets felt in
coming back, except it's not post-traumat
ic stress because the trauma of the war is
not over. It's all a part of the baggage peo
ple bring to therapy. Fear, stress, vulnera
bility.
I also see people hardening themselves
to their grief, and that is a potential source
of substance abuse. Our primary way of
dealing with grief is to avoid if A lot of
gay men haven't learned how to grieve—
they lost a lot in coming out and haven't
grieved for that yet.
SV: You mentioned that we need to
change our minds, and I like that image a
lot. How do we start to do that?
FA : First of all, we have to move
beyond the definition heterosexual culture
has given to us—that homosexuality is all
about sex—and to recognize that there are
a good many other things that it is about.
One way we can do that is to work with
heterosexual men, so that we can learn
what we have in common with them and
what we don’t.
There is a burgeoning men's move
ment in this country, one that is beginning
to attract a lot of interest. The National
Conference on Men and Masculinity was
held here in June. There were about 400
men and women who participated in this
conference, which focused on the theme
of men's violence against women, which
is epidemic at this point.
One of the leaders of a more popular
ized men's movement is Robert Bly, a
poet who conducts workshops on men's
issues and recently had an interview on
PBS with Bill Moyers—A Gathering of
Men—it's rentable at some video stores.
Bly and his cohorts deal with the predica
ment of the heterosexual man caused indi
rectly by the women's movement.
Increasingly, educated, sensitive men liv
ing in cities are having to deal with
women wh<; have embraced feminism.
These women are not willing to play sec
ond fiddle to their man, to play wife and
mother. And since it's no longer possible
to support their lifestyle on one income,
when these women get home and say "I
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