MARLBORO — When I moved to Brattleboro for school this past August, I became intrigued by how the gay scene compared to the one in my home in Chicago. The first result of a quick Google search came up with information for the Brattleboro Men's Program, an offshoot of the AIDS Project of Southern Vermont.
This was very telling, especially when the other results are taken into account; all of them were focused around the sex-based aspects of homosexuality. I couldn't find any sort of community center or group where gay men meet simply to talk about life as gay men in this area.
But I had a further opportunity to research the issue: I participated in a focus group that the Brattleboro Men's Program organized for younger gay men, from ages 20 to 35, to discuss how the program could better help them individually and as a members of the gay community.
The mediator of the focus group, Howie Peterson, is one of two AIDS Project staffers who coordinate the Men's Program. He started the conversation with a fairly simple question that got to the most pertinent issue concerning the gay community: What's life like for young [gay] guys around here?
One of the participants said that the first response that came to mind was the word “isolated.”
“When I moved here for grad school, I had heard a lot about how progressive and open Brattleboro was, but there isn't any visible gay culture,” he said. “I'm not calling for rainbow flags everywhere or anything, but, really, where is everyone?”
Others articulated a similar feeling.
Another responded: “I see all these guys in the area on Manhunt” (a website designed to connect gay men with one another). “But where are they?”
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Though problematic, this experience isn't a new one in the gay community. Issues of isolation stem from a long history of well-documented repression. Over the past decades, America has made steps toward equality through social movements and legal reform, but these measures have yet to spur a real sense of solidarity throughout the gay community in this country.
Vermont was one of the first states to pass a law legalizing same-sex marriage - and indeed the first civil union in the country took place right in Brattleboro - but there is still a sense that we are nonexistent.
And the Brattleboro Men's Project understands this phenomenon. The directors of the program hold events every so often to get gay men in the area together, but nothing has really taken off.
After hearing the responses to his questions, Howie looked concerned, yet understanding; he has lived this experience himself. He continued the conversation by asking “Why?”
“It seems to be an issue of geography,” another participant offered. “It goes back to how there are a lot of small towns, small communities, not many people to connect with.”
It appears that, though gay men in the area have much to say about the issue, outside of this focus group, there is still “nothing to see”; there aren't other gay men to talk about these issues with. So they are forced into silence by circumstance.
Another member of the group had a different take on the issue.
“The fist time I came here to see the town, I quickly realized how homophobic this place is,” he said. “And not in the sense of overt homophobia, but in the sense of institutional homophobia. For example, the fact that there is no gay bar here is homophobic. No gay club, anything.”
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The problematic issue of community seems to derive from the realities articulated by both comments. Due to the geography and population of the Brattleboro area, it is hard to connect with others. And this lack of connection and interaction at an everyday level exacerbates the problem.
Because gay men aren't interacting in casual, common ways, it is impossible to have a community. It is impossible to form a casual event for gay men in the area when they don't know one another.
There isn't the level of comfort between gay men in the area that is necessary to spur feelings of solidarity. And because there isn't a dialogue about these issues, there isn't the opportunity for a gay bar or community center to open.
The inevitable result of this lack of interaction has been an essentialization, a universal sameness, of gay male interaction. One response to the question “What is life like for gay guys in the area?” gets to exactly this issue. This respondent described how he often experienced “too many nights on Manhunt, looking for someone to date, but just getting hit on by much older men who are just looking to f- me.”
Both his response and his experience with the site he was using - the most popular one among gay men in the area -are problematic. It's not the Internet dating itself that is the problem; as any eHarmony commercial will tell you, people who meet online are getting married every day. But when taken in combination with the common sense of isolation among these men, this experience is troubling.
In short: the site isn't geared towards forming community or personal relationships.
The types of relationships Manhunt promotes thrive on the sense of isolation common among gay men in the Brattleboro area. From what I gathered in the focus group, Manhunt often results in one isolated person connecting with another outside of any real-life context.
There isn't reflection on how the relationship connects to the larger nature of gay culture in Brattleboro or America. The interaction is of a purely sexual nature, and when it is over, the people part ways. Due to the nature of Manhunt, the isolation of gay men is actually necessary for the site to survive.
Because there is not day-to-day interaction with a strong gay community, there is no need to consider the subjectivity of the other person. Manhunt interactions thrive on the moment and the superficial connection.
But after it is over, what is left? There is no stronger sense of a larger community, no discourse on the historical context of their relations. Often people are left right where they started.
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This experience of essentialized interaction can be traced historically.
French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault described how repression in the Victorian era “operated as a sentence to disappear, but also as an injunction of silence, an affirmation of non existence, and, by implication, an admission that there was nothing to say about such things, nothing to see and nothing to know.”
In the 1940s, Kevin McCarty undertook a photographic ethnography of the gay scene in Dayton, Ohio, focusing on The Chameleon Club, an underground gay club.
McCarty described how “[at The Chameleon Club], men forgot about the blue-collar oppressive city they called home and imagined a world where they could be free from shame and embarrassment.”
Part of this freedom came from the fact that it was so hidden. McCarty described how “one entered what would have been the sales floor and made one's way back through a single doorway to the storeroom, which had been converted into a club.”
The secretive nature of The Chameleon Club was part of its allure, but recalls the issues Foucault raised.
The mere fact that it was such a hidden culture was an “affirmation of non existence” for both the club-goers and the larger population of the city. The gay men had their own time and place to express themselves, but once it was over, they were to return to their lives, hidden within the larger society.
McCarty goes on to describe the club as full of “sweating bodies of intoxicated gay men crowding the dance floor, only to be revealed through the artificial fog by streaks of red, blue, and green lights circling above their heads.”
The Club was a perfect place for non-existence. All that was revealed to the participants were [one another's] bodies through a fog. The music and the smoke obscured everything else. Similar to Manhunt, The Chameleon Club offered a “curious combination of exploitation and liberation.”
At a time when many didn't feel comfortable even declaring their sexual identity, it was important and helpful to the gay community of Dayton to have this space of its own. But even as the laws and attitudes towards homosexuality have progressed, it appears that gay culture is stuck in the past.
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Toward the end of the focus group, Howie asked how the Men's Program could better serve the gay community of the Brattleboro area.
One participant responded: “It needs to be more accessible. I feel that, because of the huge connection you have with the AIDS Program of Southern Vermont, I am not exactly welcome here.”
Another: “I think more casual events would really help bring in a more relaxed group of people. At the dances that you've hosted, there was a large sense that we really had to have fun. It was a weird pressure. I was glad to meet people, but it didn't feel really natural.”
The issues they raised are the exact ones that have been troubling gay culture in America for decades. Because of the lack of visibility, there has been a need to hold big events that, if not public, help shine light on this culture, and give it focus and a sense of solidarity.
But often these events essentialize the gay experience down to an overly sexualized affair. It is true that they help form the groundwork for a gay community, but they often deny the more complex parts of human existence.
It appears that the members of the focus group and the Men's Program want a space where gay men can come together to discuss these other parts of their lives.
There is a long path ahead until the gay community of Brattleboro and America has the sense of solidarity it desires.
Foucault describes sexual repression as “so firmly anchored […] that more than one denunciation will be required in order to free ourselves from it; the job will be a long one.” In order to have a proper and effective denouncement of their repression, members of the gay community must first organize.
There is now a firm sense of gay identity, but it is still at an edge, needing transformation. The Brattleboro's Men's Program and similar organizations around the country are working to create strong communities for gay men to reach out to.
Through small steps like monthly focus groups and community events, a spreading sense of solidarity in the gay community is inevitable. All that is required are initiative and persistence.