It will surprise exactly no one to learn that Southern segregationist Senator Robert Byrd—he of the bad old variety of racist Democrat, who modulated his views somewhat over the course of his career but nonetheless, it is worth recalling, helped filibuster key civil rights legislation, and began his political life as a member of the KKK—was also, when the issue arose in the early days of the Clinton administration, a fierce opponent of allowing gay men to serve in the military. (One form of bigotry oft begets another.) What is surprising, however, is the particular angle he adopted for his line of attack.
In a record of conversations between himself and the president while in office—published as The Clinton Tapes—historian Taylor Branch details a rather striking conversation Clinton held with a group of elderly Democratic senators. The topic was that of whether or not out gay men should be able to serve in the armed forces. Lo, Robert Byrd was against it. And while he eventually got around to quoting the tenets of his fire-and-brimstone religion to justify his stance, the Bible was not the first authority he chose to cite in his favor. Instead, and rather unexpectedly, he turned to the reports of the scurrilous Roman historian Suetonius.
Byrd referred specifically to a passage from the first of the twelve lives of the Caesars that Suetonius penned—that of Julius Caesar—in which the historian asserts that the first Caesar was dogged throughout his career by ribald mockery, due to claims that he once had a liaison with an older man (King Nicomedes of Bithynia). One of the homophobic japes along these lines, which Byrd quoted to the new president, was that the philandering Caesar was "every woman's man and every man's woman." In Clinton's telling—as transmitted through Branch—"Byrd told his colleagues [...] that for one senator, at least, this homosexual seed had something to do with the fall of the world's greatest military empire."
What strikes one upon recalling this episode in Branch's book is first of all the precision and exoticism of Byrd's reference. Why this emperor? Why this book? One feels even more strongly the oddness of Byrd's choice of historical precedent after a reading of Suetonius himself. After all—and this seems to be the point that first came to mind for most of the other assembled senators during the meeting in the Oval Office as well—a single gay affair in one's youth—even on the most fundamentalist scheme of sexual morality—is very small potatoes compared to the actions Suetonius attributes to practically every other emperor in his book. (Did Byrd not get as far as the chapter on Tiberius? Or Caligula?)
It becomes even harder to understand Byrd's choice of passage when we consider that the target of the ancient homophobic banter in question was none other than Julius Caesar, Imperator, himself. Whatever his merits or crimes in other domains, he was undoubtedly one of the most successful soldiers and military commanders in human history. If one were looking for reasons why gay men could not be effective in the military, pointing to the alleged homosexual dalliances of someone who conquered much of the known world would not seem to strengthen one's argument.
The mystery starts to resolve itself when we peer more closely at the particular instance of raillery that stuck in Byrd's craw. He cites the anecdote, one observes, in which Julius Caesar was specifically compared to a woman. Thus, the reference seems to be not just to Caesar having sex with other men (if that were the charge the ancient jokesters deplored, then—once again—the later emperors were, in Suetonius's telling, far more prolific fornicators in the Uranian domain). Rather, what appears to have been shameful in the eyes of Caesar's belittlers (and, it seems, in Byrd's too) was the fact that he specifically took the passive role in a sexual encounter.
And so we see that, once again, homophobia against gay men is really a kind of extension of misogyny—the real underlying prejudice in both cases being the fear and hatred of women, the fear of being oneself contaminated by womanliness. What horrified the Byrds of the world is the thought of men being penetrated in the act of sex, thereby allegedly placing themselves in the woman's archetypal sexual position. Throughout history, however "masculine" gay men may have actually presented or been, they have been accused by others of effeminacy. The peoples of the ancient world—including the Romans—were no exception. When the historian Tacitus refers to men "disgracing their bodies," (Mattingly/Rives trans.) for instance, his objection appears to be not to gay sex per se, but specifically to a man being in the receiving role.
The question that ultimately confutes homophobia, therefore, is the same one that confutes misogyny: why, we ask, should taking the woman's part be a bad thing? What is objectionable about being womanly; what does being a woman prevent one from achieving that one otherwise could? Lurking behind Byrd's objection to gay men serving in the military is an even larger question that the U.S. military still has not entirely sorted out, all these years later—namely, that of women serving in combat roles. Byrd's concern about what "womanly men" are capable of doing is at heart a concern about what women can do; and if we can rid ourselves of the misogynistic assumptions that undergird one, we will simultaneously defeat the other.
One would think, once again, that the example of Caesar's own life and career—particularly in Suetonius's generally favorable telling—would be refutation enough of the notion that an allegedly "womanly man" cannot make an excellent soldier. But we can go further and look to Caesar's own words on the subject. We discover in Suetonius's chapter on the great general that Caesar himself addressed this particular argument head-on, and even uncovered its misogynistic core.
The historian describes in his character sketch of Caesar how, after receiving a military appointment and thrusting it under the noses of some of his adversaries and critics in the Senate, the latter replied with homophobic ridicule. "[S]omeone interjected with a sneer," Suetonius relates, "that a woman would not find this an easy feat[.]" Caesar, notably, does not counter this remark in Suetonius' telling by trying to deny the accusation. Rather, he embraces it. "Why not?" Caesar is reported to have replied. "Semiramis was supreme in Syria, and the Amazons once ruled over a large part of Asia." (Graves/Rives trans.) In other words, women have been rulers and soldiers throughout history.
It is the riposte that is owing to the Robert Byrds of the world, as well as all their present-day successors. There was a recent Tweet that went viral, I recall, from a right-wing commentator (one of the nasty millennial bro variety), that denounced the use of emoticons in online communications, using arguments that would have found a home among Caesar's senatorial detractors. "Emojis are for [...] women," he said, and no "grown man" should ever be caught using them.
To him and his ilk, we reply as Caesar did: "Why not?" Why should the fact that women use emojis be any reason for men not to? Have not women, and men, and womanly men, and manly women, all alike—at various times—conquered the world?
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