Bathroom Stall Semiotics and Identity Politics

This is old news. So old that blogging about it feels like beating a dead horse, except that it simply refuses to die. The story has totally jumped the shark, but they keep signing contracts for another season.

I've been hearing quite a bit about the recent Larry Craig scandal, which has become such a train wreck that even NPR can't leave it alone. There are a couple things in particular that I've been noticing about the coverage, from a vaguely linguistic angle.

The first thing concerns the use of code. NPR hasn't been reporting on the details, and I was curious, so I looked up some of the relevant facts: Person 1 taps his foot in a manner that is visible to Person 2 in the next stall. Person 2 taps his foot in response, and inches his foot closer to the divider. Person 1 reciprocates by moving his foot a little closer. This process repeats in some manner, until their feet touch. Person 1 swipes his hand under the stall, and Person 2 either a) crouches in such a way as to show his genitals or posterior beneath the divider, or b) swipes his hand in return to indicate that Person 1 should show his first. This concludes the elaborate ritual.

Since this particular code is getting a lot of media attention, it's about to go out of fashion very quickly. Codes like this have been around for ages, especially within the GLBT community, and the entire purpose is to communicate a certain message exclusively to initiated members of a group. Outside of a cruising context, there are terminological hedges -- "I think he's Family" or "He's into musical theater" (which was used in a recent episode of Doctor Who) -- and even covert symbols like the Human Rights Campaign's logo.

I have no idea whether the Hanky Code is used in cruising contexts, but I'm frequently amused to see its accidental use among fashionable hipsters in the college town where I live -- I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the young woman I saw at the farmers' market the other weekend was not actually seeking outdoor scat play with a member of the military. My point is that these codes become useless when they are either a) common knowledge among those outside the intended group, or b) overwhelmed by incidental uses brought about by out-of-context fashion trends. They are no longer good ways to covertly communicate a message.

So how will conservative Family Values politicians solicit anonymous sex in airport men's rooms now that foot tapping has been outed? Who knows.

The second thing I want to write about is this: Larry Craig insists he's not gay. It's overwhelmingly obvious to me that he's being dishonest, but I want to at least entertain the possibility that he's not actually lying. This may seem like an underhanded exploitation of semantic ambiguity, but I think it does actually touch on something fairly important about identity labels and how we apply them.

This all hinges on how we define the word 'gay'. Much of the newsmedia and the blogosphere seems to be accepting the word as an objective truth, to be arrived at by applying a set of criteria based on extrinsic behavior. By this definition, any man who has sex with (or even just attempts to solicit sex with) other men is gay.

Homosexual activity is an ancient practice, transcending cultural context and even species (apparently one of New York's gay penguins shares my first name). But the use of homosexuality as a category of identity is arguably a very modern, Western phenomenon. Under this understanding of the word 'gay', a person can only be described as such by intrinsic criteria of self-identification.

If we accept this definition, the ancient Greeks were not gay; their social hierarchy determined their sexual practices, so acceptable consorts for powerful men included women, young boys, and slaves, which meant that they sometimes engaged in homosexual activity. This definition also means that a man who never has sex with another man (a celibate member of a religious order, for example) can be gay regardless of sexual history or practices.

There's a rather apt monologue in Angels in America concerning this distinction, spoken by a fictionalized Roy Cohn:

Like all labels they tell you one thing, and one thing only: Where does an individual so identified fit into the food chain, the pecking order? Not ideology or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will come to the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, a homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men, but really this is wrong. A homosexual is somebody who, in 15 years of trying cannot get a pissant anit-discrimination bill through the city council. A homosexual is somebody who knows nobody and who nobody knows. Who has zero clout. Does this sound like me Henry?

So under the intrinsic, identity-based definition of 'gay', Larry Craig may in fact be technically telling the truth. There are two problems with this. First of all, we don't know how Larry Craig thinks of himself, and he may in fact just be lying about how he identifies. It happens. Secondly, Mr. Craig knows that the commonly accepted definition of 'gay' involves extrinsic sexual practices, and by claiming that he is not gay and never has been, he is making a strong implication that he does not have sex with men and never has. This is probably false.

Finally, to end on a humorous note, one of the best lolX macros I've seen recently (from lolgay.com):