The short history of being gay
CommentsSince I published my “Phantom Gay Past” essay arguing that being gay is a recent innovation that doesn’t go back more that 150 years, I have been accused of stretching the truth and misrepresenting the scholarship. So I did a little survey and found that more than 85% of gay historians and anthropologists (n=28) disagreed with the following statement, which I believe is widely shared in the gay and lesbian community. I call it the Essentialist Credo:
Being gay is pretty much a naturally occurring sexual orientation that has existed throughout history. Every society and culture has always had a minority of gay and lesbian members, whether they come out or not.
I will be writing about the implications of this consensus among gay historians this April in a Jerusalem Post column entitled “God didn’t make me gay.” But for now I thought I would share some comments from these historians, in a page above entitled “Nine Scholars.” My conclusion from the idea that being gay is a recent, not a timeless, state of being is that God didn’t make me gay and therefore I have to reject the following gay-Jewish attitude: “God made me gay, so of course He expects me to express it, no matter what His laws say.”
I believe people have and develop all kinds of sexual impulses and attractions. As we grow, we organize them in our minds and our public lives, almost always in ways consistent with the sexual matrix of the society we live in. In ancient Greece, I probably would have had sex with a younger male lover and a wife (if I was a citizen). If I was a Native American a few centuries ago, I might have cross-dressed and had sex with both men and women. In contemporary Morocco, I probably would be married and maybe would have sex occassionally with younger men, although always playing the dominant role. Today, I organize my sexuality in a way that can be fairly called “gay,” although in my case I’m celibate.
Since I realize that this way of organizing my sexual impulses, desires, attractions, and fantasies is so contingent on living in the modern West, I can’t accept that this way is “true” and “essential” and “eternal” and all other people who had same-sex love, sex, and relationships were “ignorant” of their true selves or could not “come out.”
The concept of “sexual orientation” isn’t rocket science. It’s not like the fact that 5th-century people didn’t understand that electrons orbit the nucleus of the atom. They could have come to the conclusion that some people were oriented toward men and others toward women and others toward both. But they didn’t, because that wasn’t true to their own experiences, not because they were too primitive to understand it.
There’s a couple of issues here. First there’s the issue of whether being gay is a recent invention, and as I’ve said when you’ve gone on about this before, it depends on what your and your audience and your cited historians think “gay” means because there are wildly different definitions in play. Some people (especially but by no means only conservative Christians) use “gay” and “homosexual” and even “sexual orientation” to refer to behaviour: the behaviour of having primarily same-sex sex. Some people use the words to refer to identity - being “gay” is a club involving same-sex sex and pride parades and rainbow stickers that you have to join and think of yourself a member of, and that other people may have to recognize you as a member of. And if “gay” is either of these things or a mix, then I’m prepared to believe that it’s largely a modern invention. In fact I’d go further and say that being “gay” in those senses is almost entirely dependent on the invention of the washing machine and other labour-saving devices. When keeping house was a full-time job in which only women were trained, a stereotypical modern same-sex household (not to mention a stereotypical modern opposite-sex household) would have been impractical.
But I wouldn’t say that “being gay is a modern invention”, and I won’t cooperate with it being put like that. The prevailing usage in the gay community and among straight allies is neither of the above, but purely in terms of attraction: being gay is being attracted sexually more or less exclusively to others of the same sex. Worse, the dispute over meanings is sowing serious confusion, so I’m determined to help kill off all but the most common and the most convenient.
And in the majority sense of gay, the claim is almost certainly false, and your citations do nothing to prove it because all but one make clear that they’re talking about something else. In fact the bits that you’ve highlighted are generally exactly the bits that make it obvious that they’re talking about behaviour or identity, not attraction, e.g., “That’s perhaps what’s so ironic (at least to anthropologists) about assuming there’s a biological basis to something as complicated as human sexual behavior and identity.”/”But a person who engaged in it wasn’t demonstrating a specific ’sexual orientation’, they were just sinning. “/”If, by gay, you mean expressions of same sex sexuality, or same sex love, the idea that it happened in “nature” is a retrospective view, and not something that was attendant to most of human history.”/… At the same time, the last one comes close to denying the claim for the majority sense: “What I think is that people have had same-sex sexual desire since the beginning of time, but that at different moments this desire has been manifest in ways that would be somewhat, but not entirely, recognizable to us in the early 21st century.”
Now we’ve hashed this out before and it’s getting boring, except that it matters to your point about the gay-Jewish claim, which you’re almost certainly misreading as a statement about behaviour or identity when it’s not. Very likely behaviours and identities were different 50 years ago and even as an atheist I’m happy to agree that it would seem out of character for God to suddenly change policy on this, but who cares when no one’s claiming that God gave them an identity, much less a behaviour? The claim is that God gave them a more or less exclusive pattern of same-sex attraction. Possibly it’s still dubious Jewish theology when correctly interpreted but it’s certainly not dubious for the reason you give.
Mark said: “I’m determined to help kill off all but the most common and the most convenient.”
Common and convenient to the “gay community”, which is your reference to gay identity politics and so cannot be divided from gay identity. That is reinforced by your reference to allies.
Mark said: “The prevailing usage in the gay community and among straight allies is [...] purely in terms of attraction: being gay is being attracted sexually more or less exclusively to others of the same sex.”
Not purely, Mark, as your own comment demonstrated.
Also, you hedged by referring to same-sex sexual attraction that is “more or less” exlcusive. If it is exclusive it is exclusive. It would exclude opposite-sex sexual attraction. It would be manifestly incompatable with sexual attraction to the other sex.
Not more or less so. That would be something different.
Likewise with same-sex sexual behavior.
Going by your preferred political meaning, David can support the observation that even your notion of exclusivity “is a recent innovation that doesn’t go back more that 150 years”.
If more or less is vital to your common and convenient meaning, then, David and the sources he cited couild invoke the same “more or less” vagueness of your own comment.
David, you state: ‘In contemporary Morocco, I probably would be married and maybe would have sex occassionally with younger men, although always playing the dominant role. ‘
OHH PUHLEASE, Miss “Fabulously Observant” with the chorus of my male friends in the background: “You go Queen Mary.” Dominant?
But back to the serious question about gay history and its recent innovation. Let me begin with the parallel history of women and the respression the feminine side of humanity has been subjected to. . . And then please consider women and their: The right to vote, the right to play an equal role in major religions including Judaism, the right to own property, the right to have control over their own bodies. Pretty innovated thinking there.
Yes, Women’s rights have shifted over the centuries, with reincarnated innovations that allowed some women to hold positions of power. As of this past fall both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were praised for breaking the glass ceiling. But there were and have always been serious setbacks. Take for example the pressure on women to renounce their status in AMerican workforce following WWII.
The Nuclear Family was created. and thus the ongoing actions of Separating women from their family units and their support. (Although it is just getting out, Revolutionary Road is a wonderful glimpse.)
So, how does this all tie to gay history. Well, one needs to really look at the repression of the ‘feminine’, and with the repression of women, came the repression and it’s ugliness to oppress the Femininity (also called womanliness) of men who didn’t truly express all the tenants of masculinity. Yes FAGs and PANSYs were persecuted, oppressed and often times killed/mutilated.
Many have compared the rise of the GAY culture to Feminism, and in tandem, both have taken not only a strong hold here in America but also across the world. And with the increase of connectivity (the internet and the growing Global Village) and the social connections formed through gay pride events, gay folk are findng solidarity and creating a real viable history, one that is being documented and is becoming shared both formally in educational instutions, in the MEDIA (my favorites Brokeback and MILK), and in the hallowed halls of churches and synagogues and other religious institutions. and informally around family tables in many homes.
Although I am not currently clear on the writings on Gay History, I do know that you have presented info that gay and lesbian relationships have been documented for ‘a long time’ and such writings come from the four corners of the world. But there is also the history of the repression of the feminine, both women and men. And to the other side of it, women who took on roles of men, were at times revered and reviled.
From Brokeback Mountain. . .
Ennis Del Mar: Bottom line is… we’re around each other an’… this thing, it grabs hold of us again… at the wrong place… at the wrong time… and we’re dead.
David, consider the intertwined messages of the repression that face (and still face) GLBT folk and the internalized homophobia that is generated, then possibly one can look at why GAY history has been a recent innovation coupled with cognitive dissonance for many.
But rusty, the female sex is not a recent innovation. Nor is womanhood.
Who would disagree with the following?
The female sex has existed throughout human history. Every society and culture has always had women, whether or not they voted, were among the leaders of major religions, owned property, or exercised free will. The influence of sex differentiation does not arise from a recent innovation. Neither does the nuclear family (although the term is modern the fact of the nucleaus of the family and the fact of its recognition is not).
Chairm, not sure how you want me to respond. Yes, in humans, we have females and males, and with the proper conditions, they conjoin to mate and reproduce. And today, we have the process of fertilization outside male-female intercourse, and women can carry there own fertilized egg or the fertilized egg of complete strangers. Men can even have a child without having intercourse. (But in America, ED drugs get primetime commercial time during the family hour-these meds are usually prescribed to men who have no desire for further procreation- and yet, birth control products are relegated to the cable networks for now.)
But in addition to male and female, there are also intersexed folk.
and then in terms of sexual orientation, folk have come to acknowledge bisexuality, heterosexuality and homosexuality along with asexuality and pansexuality.
but having been a sexual health educator, I do agree that orientation is fluid.
In regards to your comment ‘every society and culture having women’ is very true. What you seem to be avoiding is the treatment women have received in those cultures. Some have done very well, some did very poorly and many are working towards making improvements.
In that same line of thinking, LGBT folk are seeing similar changes.
According to some sociologists, “[The nuclear family] no longer seems adequate to cover the wide diversity of household arrangements we see today.” (Edwards 1991; Stacey 1996). A new term has been introduced, postmodern family, which is meant to describe the great variablity in family forms, including single-parent families and child-free couples.” wikipedia
yes, there are families that can be categorized as ‘nuclear’ as far back as prehistoric Central Europe, with graves with genetically linked folk including male, female and offspring. But there are also many other instances of family arrangements that include many variations, and could be linked matrilinerally, patrilinerally, and so on, and so on.
During 17th and 18th century, the nuclear family became a pronounced feature in Western Europe. With the emergence of Proto-industrialisation and early capitalism, the nuclear family became a financially viable social unit.[Traditions and Encounters: A Brief Global History]
After the Second World War the United States experienced a renewed interest in ‘the home’ and building family units. The family unit became a symbol of security and a return to traditional gender roles. Distinct from the wartime period in which women held jobs conventional for men, the postwar era encouraged the notion that men should be the primary wage earners and women should spend their time cultivating the home and exerting their energy towards raising children.[Elaine Tyler May Pushing the Limits: American Women]
An extended family group is immediate family members living together with extra-nuclear family members such as grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and nieces and nephews.
With the increasing numbers of Seniors needing support, more and more families are looking at the extended family model again. (Many folk who live outside the US have commented to me about how we outsource the care of elders and move our loved ones to sterile residential facilities, only to visit them on holidays and personal celebrations)
It has been interesting to me to see similar stories arise from GLBT friends and acquaintences that these families with aging Seniors are turing to the gay and lesbian offspring to support aging parents. I have three G/L couples who have grandparents living with them to help with the raising of their children.
With the current economic turn of events, we will probably see more people turning to living in blended family situations, just to make ends meet. But with the possiblity of more folk staying at home, less children may end up at home rather than in daycares.
In my current professional role, I am the primary caretaker of two 1 year olds, with the four parents working. These two hetero couples are connected through the mothers, both lawyers and are the primary ‘breadwinners’ while the fathers are the cooks, cleaners and candlestick makers.
ciao
CO: Common and convenient to the “gay community”, which is your reference to gay identity politics and so cannot be divided from gay identity.
Of course it can. In standard usage, gay means more or less exclusively same-sex attracted, period. It doesn’t depend on whether you’re aware that you’re same-sex attracted, or whether you’re dimly aware and in denial about it, or whether you’re aware that gay in standard usage is the word for your situation, or whether gay is a word you’d apply to yourself, or whether you have same-sex sex, or whether you have opposite-sex sex, or whether you think you _should_ have same- or opposite-sex sex, or whether you do/feel/think anything else supposedly stereotypical of gay people, or whether you associate with other gay people, or would like to, or whether you consider yourself a member of the “gay community”.
CO: Not purely, Mark, as your own comment demonstrated.
I don’t believe anything I’ve said has been inconsistent with the usage I’ve described. The motivation for the standard definition may be partly political, but the content of the definition is not at all political.
CO: Also, you hedged by referring to same-sex sexual attraction that is “more or less” exlcusive. If it is exclusive it is exclusive. It would exclude opposite-sex sexual attraction. It would be manifestly incompatable with sexual attraction to the other sex.
Yes. So? First, people who are, without any approximations, exclusively same-sex attracted exist and are not even particular rare, especially among men. I’m one of them. Second, people who are only very rarely opposite-sex attracted are in a similar position practically and are spoken of in the same breath.
CO: Likewise with same-sex sexual behavior.
Sure, but who cares?
CO: Going by your preferred political meaning, David can support the observation that even your notion of exclusivity “is a recent innovation that doesn’t go back more that 150 years”.
Maybe he could - I doubt it - but so far neither he nor his sources have said a word about it - they’ve been talking about behaviour and/or identity.
CO: If more or less is vital to your common and convenient meaning, then, David and the sources he cited couild invoke the same “more or less” vagueness of your own comment.
No. First, David and his sources are talking about behaviour and identity rather than sexual attraction, and in fact I’ll bet you that David _can’t_ be induced to talk coherently about sexual attraction because it has uncomfortable implications for his position that he will instinctively go to comical lengths to avoid thinking about. Second, the usage I was describing has a bit of wiggle room but it doesn’t have much, and it’s not interesting wiggle room. Two classes of people are included: people who are never attracted to the opposite sex, and people who are attracted to the opposite sex so seldom that if you find them in an opposite-sex relationship it’s still a fair bet that they’re not actually attracted to the person they’re with but have been pressured into the relationship by other forces. What’s not included is actual bisexuals - people who are attracted to either sex comparably often. And this is the natural place to draw the line because the reason both sides are talking about this in the first place is that gay people are at pains to emphasize and many moderate conservatives are at pains to deny or avoid thinking about the fact that traditional homophobia isn’t a free lunch - it actually leaves many people seriously worse off. If everyone really _was_ bisexual (in the attraction sense), then change in mores from say Greek-style to strict opposite-sex only system wouldn’t amount to much more than a fashion change. But in fact everyone _isn’t_ bisexual - there are_ gay people in the more-or-less-exclusively-same-sex-attracted sense, and they get left out in the cold.
Rusty,
You said: “there are also many other instances of family arrangements that include many variations, and could be linked matrilinerally, patrilinerally, and so on, and so on.”
1. Matrilineral or paterileral, there is the common nucleus.
Gay identity (like “gay community”) is a recent innovation or social-construct. Its success (or failure) for a subgroup of society is uproven both in terms of the well-being of the individual adults and for the outcomes of children raised in such arrangements.
Pointing to an increase in blended families (arising from the current decline in the social institution of marriage) does not contradict the social-scientific consensus that these arrangements (in their varied structures — mostly both-sexed) are not as good, in terms of outcomes for children, as the intact married mom-dad arrangement.
One migh speculate, as some do, that the decline of marriage will adversely infuence the social expectations and the non-coercive power of the social institution such that married homes will drift down to the lower level of effectiveness that has been found in the other arrangements. The social institution is not a fortress. Its shared public meaning can be eroded both from within and without.
2. No socio-political identity is inborn, anyway. Treatment based on gayness is not an apt analogy with the two-sexed basis of human generativity and human community; nor with the fact of the female sex and the influence of sex differentiation (whatever its origination).
Even your own anecdotal examples do not contradict these two basic points.
Mark, I don’t think you comment is a coherent response but I’ll put that aside and note the following interesting points in your line of reasoning.
You said: “people who are [...] exclusively same-sex attracted exist and are not even particular rare, especially among men”
The objective evidence does not support your compound assertion.
A) the existence of exclusive same-sex sexual attraction;
B) if it exists, its prevalence such that it might objectively be described as other than rare;
C) and if A and B, the “especially” higher rate among men.
Maybe there is a blood test or a genetic test or some other means by which to objectively determine A? And a representative sampling of the popluation has been tested to give a reliable estimate of B and C?
Your “more or less” vagueness defines the compound assertion, and the available evidence, and circles back to David’s contention.
Sexual attraction, sexual behavior, and gay identity are indeed distinct from one another. Yet your convenient usage, such at it is, is a conflation.
You said your talking about sexual attraction but just now you said that it is manifested in behavior and identity as expressed in relationships: “if you find them in an opposite-sex relationship it’s still a fair bet that they’re not actually attracted to the person they’re with but have been pressured into the relationship by other forces.”
Your more or less has become a fair bet.
Societies throughout human history have made accomodations based on non-normative variations in sexual (and asexual) inclinations — some more generous and some more onerous. Gay identity politics basically conflates sexual attraction and sexual behavior into a socio-political identity. And this is motivated, surely, by the notion (and the fact) that people do “get left out in the cold” in one way or another.
CO: “Mark, I don’t think you comment is a coherent response but I’ll put that aside and note the following interesting points in your line of reasoning.”
Thus saith one of the great exponents of the art of word salad.
CO: “The objective evidence does not support your compound assertion.” [that exclusively same-sex attracted people are not especially rare]
Why would anyone hold out for objective evidence in this particular case? Since this is a matter of people’s subjective experience, surely it would be enough to ask a bunch of them? I’ve done that, and most guys who self-identify as gay report that in fact that they have never been sexually attracted to a woman. I certainly never have been.
CO: Your “more or less” vagueness defines the compound assertion, and the available evidence, and circles back to David’s contention.
Like I said, I doubt David can be induced to say anything coherent about sexual attraction, and as I did not say but thought, I doubted that you can either. Sure enough, you seamlessly revert to talking about David’s claims about behaviour and identity despite that they have absolutely nothing to do with sexual attraction. You can’t keep them straight because you don’t _want_ to keep them straight.
CO: “Sexual attraction, sexual behavior, and gay identity are indeed distinct from one another. Yet your convenient usage, such at it is, is a conflation.”
On the contrary, it’s an effort to keep them separate.
CO: ‘You said your talking about sexual attraction but just now you said that it is manifested in behavior and identity as expressed in relationships: “if you find them in an opposite-sex relationship it’s still a fair bet that they’re not actually attracted to the person they’re with but have been pressured into the relationship by other forces.”’
Well, duh, of course sexual attraction tends to be expressed in relationship and identity. It’s precisely because the cause and effect works that way around that the mainstream meaning of “gay” has come to be in terms of sexual attraction not behaviour or identity.
CO: “Societies throughout human history have made accomodations based on non-normative variations in sexual (and asexual) inclinations — some more generous and some more onerous.”
Yes.
CO: “Gay identity politics basically conflates sexual attraction and sexual behavior into a socio-political identity.”
No, conservative identity politics does that. The conceit of a certain very common and very obnoxious sort of conservatism of which you are the prime example is that none of the minorities that conservatives oppress actually have any legitimate complaints or any legitimate common cause, but that rather all their problems are self-inflicted through the mere fact of thinking of themselves as a minority. And that’s bullshit.
Mark: “behaviour and identity [...] have absolutely nothing to do with sexual attraction [...] sexual attraction tends to be expressed in relationship and identity.”
Earlier: “The prevailing usage in the gay community and among straight allies is neither [same-sex sexual behavior nor the socio-political identity], but purely in terms of attraction”
So this is a “more or less” exclusivity that is not expressed in exclusive behavior or exclusive socio-political identity, but in subjective experience.
One wonders how you selected the sample of people you say have confirmed your “fair bet”.
* * *
I’m not an example, much less a prime example, of what you imagined in the closing part of your previous comment.
I’ve not denied legitiamte complaints nor legitimate common cause. I think you made that false assertion due to a reflexive adherence to your identity politics.
I did not make you do that. You did that based on a mischaracterization of your own making.
Anyway, contention in the blogpost at the top was illustrated by the consensus of gay historians in disagreement with a statement about sexual orientation.
He also described the context without depending on behavior and identity, while you have done the opposite when you cited relationships and “the gay community”.
Above, David said: “sexual impulses, desires, attractions, and fantasies”.
In his previous blogpost he said: “That doesn’t mean there wasn’t same-sex sex, love, and relationships. Everybody agrees about that.”
As one of the scholars said: “It was more something that they DID, it did not define who they WERE.”
And another: The proposition that ‘sexual orientation’ is natural is somewhat oxymoronic. ‘Orientation’ takes place within culture, so it’s already ‘social/cultural’ rather than ‘natural.’
Even if gay identity is derived from same-sex sexual attraction and/or same-sex sexual behavior, no socio-political identity is inborn. Gay is not one and the same as attraction nor behavior. You’ve conceded that these are distinct.
Obviously, you would rather relabel the “subjective experience” as “gay”; or redefine the socio-political construct of “gay” to be purely same-sex sexual attraction. Therein lies the conflation of distinct things — as described by David, the cited scholars, and even yourself.
With due respect, I’ll step off now and leave the last word to you, Mark.
CO: “So this is a “more or less” exclusivity that is not expressed in exclusive behavior or exclusive socio-political identity, but in subjective experience.”
No. Even if my initial phrase “more or less exclusively gay” didn’t get my meaning across to you, I’ve been explicit enough by now that you’re just being willfully obtuse at this point. The situation is very simple: there are some exclusively gay (same-sex attracted) people and there are some nearly exclusively gay people. (There are also bisexuals etc, etc.) Now as it happens, these two classes are spoken of with the same word, but it doesn’t matter. If it’s too much of a bright shiny object to you, pretend I never mentioned the second group. Any point I wanted to make can be made perfectly well from the fact that exclusively gay (same-sex attracted) people exist (and are not uncommon).
CO: ‘One wonders how you selected the sample of people you say have confirmed your “fair bet”.’
A convenience sample from among out gay guys. It doesn’t actually matter because I’m not making a claim about exact percentages, I’m making an existence claim: exclusively gay (same-sex attracted) people exist (and are not uncommon).
CO: “I’ve not denied legitiamte complaints nor legitimate common cause. I think you made that false assertion due to a reflexive adherence to your identity politics.”
You just did: being same-sex attracted is the substantive common cause that gay people have, and you’ve been invoking gay people’s supposed identity politics to change the subject to a heap of blather about behaviour and identity and avoid talking about it.
CO: “Anyway, contention in the blogpost at the top was illustrated by the consensus of gay historians in disagreement with a statement about sexual orientation. [//] He also described the context without depending on behavior and identity, while you have done the opposite when you cited relationships and “the gay community”.”
That’s the problem. The whole exercise was fatally flawed because there wasn’t a single unambiguous word in it - even “sexual orientation” is now interpreted by some factions to refer to behaviour and/or identity, even though it was coined in part specifically to cut through the ambiguity in words like homosexual and refer to sexual attraction: ( http://www.apahelpcenter.org/articles/article.php?id=31 , http://www.pamf.org/teen/sex/orientation.html ) The 85%/15% split that David discovered tells us nothing but how the people he asked read the question, except perhaps that largely discredited 60’s Social Constructionist ideas are still influential in our history departments.
CO: ‘Above, David said: “sexual impulses, desires, attractions, and fantasies”.’
What he said was ‘Today, I organize my sexuality in a way that can be fairly called “gay,” although in my case I’m celibate. [//] Since I realize that this way of organizing [the above things] is so contingent on living in the modern West, …’. So he clearly presupposes a difference between being gay and being same-sex attracted - being gay to him apparently requires some “organizing”, which I’m afraid I can’t make sense of at all.
CO: “As one of the scholars said: “It was more something that they DID, it did not define who they WERE.””
My point exactly - “sexual orientation” has become ambiguous even though it was specifically coined to refer to attraction, not behaviour or anything else. Yet many of them almost certainly WERE exclusively same-sex attracted, i.e., exclusively gay in the mainstream sense, whether or not there was a handy word in their language for that, or whether they would have used it of themselves.
CO: “And another: The proposition that ‘sexual orientation’ is natural is somewhat oxymoronic. ‘Orientation’ takes place within culture, so it’s already ‘social/cultural’ rather than ‘natural.’”
Ditto.
CO: Even if gay identity is derived from same-sex sexual attraction and/or same-sex sexual behavior, no socio-political identity is inborn. Gay is not one and the same as attraction nor behavior. You’ve conceded that these are distinct.”
Attraction is indeed not the same thing as behaviour (duh) but as I’ve been trying again and again to tell you, gay, in standard usage _is_ the same thing as (more-or-less exclusive same-sex) attraction. I really have no idea what this separate “gay identity” thing is that you keep going on about. It would make sense as a term for knowing that gay (same-sex attracted) is the word for your situation and that there are other people in the same situation, but somehow I doubt that that’s what you have in mind. In fact I doubt you have _anything_ coherent in mind by it. Rather I suspect it’s just a substanceless, contentless bogeyman that figures in your identity politics.