“Oh to be Queer, Kinky, and Free”: Interrogating the Nature of Respect and Respectability Politics

Abstract

What lies at the true nature of respect? Is it something one feels, does, gives, earns, has? As it stands, the nature of respect is nebulous and, I argue, problematic. By considering the nature of respectability politics, where minority groups achieve surface level inclusion and acceptance through the performance of ‘respectable’ activities, I explore the limits and potential harms of the concept of respect through a lens of queer movement and intragroup politics. I argue that the nebulous nature of respect stands as a barrier to its effective support of the principles of acceptance and good human conduct. In order for respect to move from a mechanism of control for the dominant group to one that supports good human conduct it must transform as a concept and come to inform, rather than restrict, autonomy and diversity.

 

Introduction

We are often taught contradictory things about the nature of respect. At once, everyone deserves respect, and yet it is ‘earned’. It is inalienable, and yet it can be ‘lost’. We either do or do not ‘have’ respect for someone. It is also a descriptor of a behavior, to behave ‘respectfully’ or to show one’s ‘respect’, so it is not just something one has or holds for another but something which is performed in ways that are necessarily recognizable. I argue that these contradictory definitions are at the core of considering respect as an aspect of good human conduct and considering its relationship to acceptance. For some things to be respectable, some other things have necessarily been defined as not respectable. In some cases, this feels intuitive, such as being rude to someone, taking out anger inappropriately, or purposefully disrupting or upsetting others. However, I think this idea of respect relies on what interpreters of Gramsci’s work would consider ‘common sense’ (Crehan, 2016 p.8), meaning that it is at once knowable to all individuals, contradictory, and yet immune to criticism, and this is also what makes respect a powerful weapon of oppression. When not just respect, but respectability is used to define good human conduct and used as the bar for acceptance, those who are unrespectable become, in essence, inhuman.

I will examine this notion of respectability, especially through the concept of ‘respectability politics’ (Higginbotham, 1993) which explores how the concept of who is and who is not respectable comes to define notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’. In particular, I use the example of 2SLGBTQI+ movement and ingroup dynamics to show how the nature of respect can be used as a force of exclusion rather than as a principle for good human conduct. I then wish to return to the concepts of respect, acceptance, and good human conduct and reflect on how they be mobilized as tools of connection, support, and care rather than exclusion and oppression.

Respectability Politics and Queerness

The framework of respectability politics was first introduced by Higginbotham (1993) to explore and critique the dynamics of power that required that Black Americans seek the respect of the White majority in their political organizing and cultural expressions. Through respectability politics, many Black individuals came to perform aspects of professionalism, family, and culture in ways that simulated White norms, often marginalizing practices associated with Black culture. In this sense, respectability politics uses a sense of sameness as its mechanism for acceptance. More recent research has broadened this concept, focusing on the more general processes through which minority groups are expected to perform norms of dominant society to prove alignment with them and achieve acceptance (Strolovitch & Crowder, 2018), however most research has continued to examine respectability politics specifically within the realm of racialization (see Harris, 2014; Lopez Bunyasi & Smith, 2019). A smaller number of studies investigate respectability in other groups or at intersections of identity, such as being Black and queer (see Cohen, 1999; Tobin & Moon, 2020).

Research on respectability and the queer movement has focused primarily on the notion of respectability as a strategy to become palatable to heterosexual audiences (Brewer, 2003; Frank, 2017; Harrison & Michelson, 2017a; 2017b; Jones, 2021; Joshi, 2012). By engaging respectability as a movement strategy, queer movements create an idea that queer and heterosexual people are the same, relying on shared scripts to bridge gaps in understanding (Broockman & Kalla, 2016). By facilitating this, movements inspire identification between individuals, which can slowly result in acceptance of the larger group (Garretson, 2015).

Respectability, then, has a storied history in relation to queer movement politics and is key to both how the queer movement comes to define itself and how queer folks come to treat one another. Michael Warner (1999) argues that this was a core aspect of gay movement tension in the 1970s-1990s. During this time, queer movement goals were in a state of flux, with two clear directions in which efforts could be channeled. Up to this point queer movements had occupied a space of radical challenge to norms of sexual shame. Not only did queer movements challenge the idea that same-sex sex was in some way shameful, Warner (1999) argues that the queer movement’s stance was that there should be no shame for what many considered ‘deviant’ sexuality. In this sense the movement represented efforts to normalize kink, public sex[1], sexual freedom, polyamory, and other unaccepted practices rather than just ‘gay relationships’. However, the movement organizing efforts into the 80s and 90s were moving away from this approach. Instead, they defended the identity of ‘the homosexual’ – not a set of actions or freedoms but a type of person. Warner (1999) argues that the focus on queerness as an identity, and not as a set of sexual actions positioned as taboo within a larger system, resulted in a shift, where the goal instead became to frame this specific kind of person as ‘respectable’.

This mantle is taken up in the work of Lisa Duggan (2002) who coins the concept of ‘homonormativity’ (p.179). Duggan uses the term to explain the process employed by many 2SLGBTQI+ people, though primarily White gay men, to decenter queer identity. Through homonormativity sexual orientation, who one wants to have sex with, is distanced from sexual identity, a way of defining oneself in relation to a broader culture and system of connections – this process had previously been observed though not named (Forrest, 1994; Warner, 1999). By doing this, White gay men defuse the stigma of their queer identity by bringing into focus the aspects of themselves that align with existing power structures, namely being White and men (Duggan, 2002)

This contrast with theories of identity construction such as the work of Sedgewick (1990), who considers queer identity to be related to a specific epistemology, or way of seeing the world, and Halberstam (2005), who considers queerness a “way of life” (p.1). For these theorists, the experience of being queer shapes worldviews and brings queer individuals together through shared experiences as well as interactions with cultural spaces such as gay bars, bathhouses, activist spaces, and, more recently, queer online spaces. The divide in these works points towards the prevalence of two competing common senses for queer folks. One is rooted in the idea that queerness is not only normal but a part of normalcy, such as the homonormative, which is at its core respectable. The other is rooted in the original definition of queerness, which Sara Ahmed (2006) explores as rooted as the concept of difference and being ‘off’, as such queer identity is rooted through the process of belonging with those who do not belong, being respected by those considered unrespectable.

To return to Duggan’s (2002) work, through the concept of homonormativity she identifies a split that Warner (1999) is also cognizant of. With the desire to be seen as ‘normal’, there must also be a disavowal of the people outside of normalcy. In both cases, the orientation towards normalcy creates ‘good gays’ and ‘bad queers’ (Warner, 1999). Under homonormativity, Duggan (2002) argues, good gays are those who are straight in all but sex partner, and the bad queers are those who continue to embody notions of queerness as cultural and come to be considered ‘radical leftists’ – there is a normal, which is respectable, and a radical, with is unpalatable at best and considered damaging to the image of gayness at worst. These two works point towards one of the ramifications of respectability politics, what Cohen (1999) refers to as ‘secondary marginalization’, where the notions of respectability create more and less privileged members of the group that then simulate the imbalance of power between the minority and dominant society.

In a sense, the moment of shift that Warner (1999) describes for gay movements represented opportunities to challenge two claims central to the prevailing common sense. The first, higher burden common sense iteration is that ‘sex is between one man and one woman, and should be done in specific ways’, with the latter being ‘people who engage in same-sex sex should be penalized’. For the prior, one must challenge the nature of what good, respectable, sex is and why it is framed as respectable. For the latter one need only argue that it ought to become regular to treat a specific kind of person as equal, a notion that fits well within neoliberal norms and common sense. As Warner (1999) argues, this second less significant challenge is the one that was ultimately taken up and, as he warns, this has had consequences.

Who are the Unrespectable?

The process of establishing respectability has not only been confined to movement goals. The results of movements come to impact the lives of individuals, and with the establishment of a specific iteration of respectability, one which relies on a basic narrative of personhood and therefore similarity between queer folks and heterosexuals, come those who don’t fit in. One of the most prominent iterations of this can be seen in the ways that norms of masculinity and femininity are adjudicated among queer folks. For example, as Raewyn Connell (1992) finds in her landmark study, queer men often continue to iterate the norms of power inherent in existing systems of masculinity, favoring the masculine and marginalizing the feminine. In this sense, queer men often feel pressure to behave as masculine and be ‘not too gay’, to show that they are men before they are gay in a resistance to the totalizing nature of queer identity labels. That said, this is shifting. Ableson (2019) in her study of transmen living across the United States finds that they embody a ‘goldilocks masculinity’, where they attempt to actualize an idealized middle ground between an overt ‘toxic masculinity’ man and the undesirable ‘faggy man’. Winer (2022) finds that this trend holds for gay men, reiterating the findings of Clarke and Smith (2015) that queer men experience a balancing act between being ‘too gay’ on one hand and ‘not gay enough’ on the other.

This version of respectability is more complicated than it first appears, then. It isn’t simply that gay men have to be less gay in order to achieve the respect of heterosexuals and other gay men. Rather, they must perform their gayness in palatable ways that feed into existing scripts of what this ought to look like. They must embody what Bridges (2014) refers to as sexual aesthetics, the body of languages, behaviors, and interests to be read as queer, but also cannot become the embodiment of stereotypes lest they reinforce negative images of the community (Clarke and Smith, 2015). They cannot be too feminine, as this harkens back to misconceptions of gay men as women trapped in men’s bodies (Kinsman, 1987; Weiss, 2003). They cannot be too masculine, as this may indicate a lack of comfort with their sexuality and the presence of ‘internalized homophobia’, where a queer person rejects aspects of themselves and others that mark them as queer (Micthell, 2015; Ward, 1999).

It is within this that Warner’s (1999) critiques of normalization ring the truest. As is clear here, respectability is a faulty goal for many queer men, simply because the process of respectability politics creates a system in which queer people are to be respected, but queerness is not. As a result, the very act of self-expression presents the potential to tilt off kilter the tenuous balance of respectability, that one’s actions as a queer man may make queer men themselves unrespectable yet again. The very actions that define queerness as such become potential landmines. The result, expectedly, is not just internal tension, but the policing of others in a process Gieryn (1983) refers to as boundary work. Through boundary work, the lines of who does and does not belong become further defined and, most importantly, enforced.

So far, the iterations of respect I have discussed have been subtle. To be respectable, one must perform queerness in a specific way. With the rise of respectability and movement focus on normative goals such as gay marriage and military service, there has been a regression in the willingness of queer politics to adopt more radical groups challenging sexual norms. This is perhaps most visible in the ‘no kink at pride’ discourse.

From the onset of the queer liberation movement, kinksters, being those who engage in ‘deviant sex acts’ such as roleplay, group sex, BDSM (Bondage, Domination, and Sado-Masochism), pet play[2], and others have been aligned with queer communities (Mattson, 2015). However whereas they were previously closely associated with one another, and there are certainly queer kinksters, the equation and alignment of queerness with kink has been distinctly severed. As Warner (1999) argues, the language of sexual orientation positions it as an innate aspect of a person, rather than as a sexual behavior. As such, sexual orientation is uncoupled from sexual practices such as kink.

Today, this has created a divide, in which queerness is often seen as respectable whereas kink is still seen as a deviant or unrespectable form of sexual expression. In recent years, discourse around whether individuals practicing kink should be allowed to partake in Pride celebrations has become more common (see Abad-Santos, 2021). Research on this process is still broadly pending, with a call for proposals on the topic released by Gender, Work & Organization in 2023.

On one hand, Pride began first as protests for queer rights, and later became celebrations of the achievements of the movement to date, and kinksters have been concretely involved in both phases (Kinsman, 1987). Since kink is also quite common among queer folks and engrained in many of the communities’ cultural images, such as the leather daddies depicted in the works of Tom of Finland, representations of kink at pride have been very common. On the other hand, more recent Pride celebrations have increased in popularity and, with this, conceptions of kink as inappropriate for the public and potentially young audiences have risen. As such, there have been many calls for queer folks engaging in kink at Pride to not be allowed to attend or to be subject to certain standards. This may include not wearing kink related gear, such as leather or pup gear, or requiring that people remain completely clothed.

This, then, demonstrates the impact of respectability as a movement mechanism. When one lobbies for what is respectable, they leave behind what is not. It may be respectable to get gay married, but is it respectable to have multiple long-term partners or marriages simultaneously? It may be respectable to have gay sex, but is it respectable to attend public sex establishments such as bathhouses, or declare one’s kinks proudly? I would argue that for a great many considering themselves allies and accepting of queer folks, including many queer folks themselves, it is not. Yet, by claiming these as issues of behavior, and therefore respectability, rather than identity and culture these exclusions can be made permissible. Under the current queer rights framework, people are acceptable, but many actions related to the actualization of identities that individuals hold close to their sense of selves are considered lacking respectability. As such, what is an issue of identity to one group is made an issue of actions to another, resulting in conflicting aspects of common sense that stem from the turn to respectability outlined by Warner (1999).

I would like to explore one more example of this, one which is timely and felt deeply in Atlantic Canada. With the recent protests against inclusive education (see Cuthbertson et al., 2023), it has become clear just how deeply the impact of respectability runs. In Fall of 2023, efforts to remove mentions of queer identities, especially transgender identities, from elementary school curriculum came to a head with protests and counter protests held across Canada. With this came the usual assertions of ‘grooming’, that queer people were attempting to take advantage of or convert young people before they could ‘know better’. However, what I think is one of the most interesting framings coming from those opposed to inclusive education is the idea that children should not be educated on queer identities because of their sexual and explicit nature. In this sense, the very existence of queerness is equated with being pornographic, as too much for children.

This illustrates another issue with the framework of respectability. While queerness is most often thought of as an identity, it is an identity fundamentally based on culturally understood sets of actions equated with sex. When a man is gay, it is assumed it is because he has sex with other men. As a result, while a gay man may be respectable because he chooses to become a lawyer, or volunteers on the weekends, or takes his children to church, his identity is based on actions that are themselves unrespectable, rooted in the underlying culture of sexual shame (Warner, 1999). The nature of respectability politics is not one of change, but one of decentering. By centering his personhood, that he is just like everyone else, this gay man becomes respectable because he is a person. Yet, this method has done nothing to address the base assumption, that there is something unrespectable about having gay sex, something pornographic and shameful about a person’s identity being linked to sex at all. In this sense, respectability has not only been an imperfect bargaining mechanism, but it has also been one of the mechanisms for the continuation of queer oppression.

Finding a Place for Respect

I have, at length, said what is bad about respect. By defining what is respectable, we define what is not and so create classes of people, those who are worthy of respect and those who are not. This is a dynamic that wreaks havoc both within and between groups. What, then, should respect be?

At the risk of being overly simplistic, to not be destructive, respect must be inalienable. I argue that this requires that respect be better defined. As it is the concept of respect is both overwhelmingly powerful and incredibly malleable. For example, respect for those in positions of power is at its core deference, a willingness to allot value to the understood position that one occupies within a society or institution. Having ‘earned’ respect is a facet of recognition, a process where one’s contributions are appreciated and respected for their value. However, deference and recognition are much easier concepts to interrogate than the nebulous nature of respect. While deference is often supported by institutions, it can also be challenged through the norms of those institutions. Similarly, if one’s contributions are not being recognized, they can argue that they should be.

Conversely, when these same instances are framed under respect, they become equated with the cognate definition of respect which invokes an understanding of basic human dignity. With the use of respect, deference becomes not something someone has agreed to do, but the natural order which ought to be respected. The process of recognition changes from one of affirmation individuals’ contributions to an affirmation of their base personhood, the withholding of which can be stifling. Since one fundamental definition of respect is considered inalienable and absolute, the others take on its character despite their clear conditional natures. Yet, this same severity is not awarded in the battle of respectability politics. Instead, when respectability politics attempts to lobby for inclusion under the fundamental, inalienable framing of respectability, they are instead given conditions, such as behavior, to their acceptance and respect. As a result, this claim easily breaks down with actions that contradict notions of respectability and show difference.

The nature of respect as an aspect of good human conduct, then, must be unconditional. Respect as a mechanism must leave behind its equation with these broader, more malleable definitions and come to mean something akin to its most fundamental definition, that every person is worthy of fair treatment not because of who they are or what they have done but simply because they are a person. I argue that at the core of this definition of respect as inalienable lies a recognition of autonomy. Respect in this form identifies the difference between the decisions that two individuals make for themselves as informed by their different placements in life. While these individual actions may not, under the current definition of respect, be respectable, the right to make decisions and the process through which one constructs an informed decision must be respected. As such, respect can become one of the foundations of good human conduct, rather than one of its barriers. This also allows for respect to become a support for acceptance, which comes to stand in for many of the processes of respectability, though, I argue, as a process that is more appropriately calibrated.

While Warner (1999) and many other queer liberationists argue that the system requires fundamental shifts to its adjudication of sexual shame, with which I am inclined to agree, at the foundation of this is the nature of acceptance. I have heard many queer activists shudder at the invocation of phrases such as acceptance. To be accepted, one has to be ‘acceptable’ in a way that could be equated with being respectable, and it carries with it a recognition that something once stood outside of the norm. Yet, I argue that one can accept what they do not consider respectable. While respectability relies on an assumption of sameness, acceptance relies on an assumption of difference, and so within its framework is the adaptability necessary for the more radical facets of queer culture such as kink. Since when considered inalienable respect relies on principles of autonomy and individual understanding, it can support acceptance as a framework that understands the inevitability of difference and the history of exclusion while also recognizing, but not relying, on sameness.

As such, respect is at its best when it supports acceptance and good human conduct, rather than limiting their definitions. Attempts to use respect as a concept of control, as one that limits approaches to life as deserving or not deserving respect, rely on the severity of respect’s implications and the nebulous nature of it as an aspect of common sense. As part of a Gramscian common sense, respect is in its nature contradictory (Crehan, 2016), it relies on an assumption that it is the definition of good human conduct, and yet inspires conduct that considers some aspects of personhood as qualitatively superior to others.

Conclusion

As a concept, respect has relied on its common sense definition that is at once absolute, unquestionable, and contradictory (Crehan, 2016). Further, the nature of respectability and its implication for the categorization of individuals through their associations of identity and actions has shown that, when mobilized, respect is a concept that often prevents connections and enforces sameness through the restriction of difference. In this sense, for a theorist such as Michael Warner (1999) respect becomes one of the concepts used to define and enforce that which is normal, and therefore ‘good’, within dominant power systems while suppressing everything outside of itself. In order to change this and inspire good human conduct we must continue to define respect not by its malleability, but by its inalienability. By considering respect as inalienable, it becomes a concept primed to support the expansion of acceptance and good human conduct.

Under this iteration, there are not good and bad queers. There are iterations of queer identity and movement orientation that individuals disagree on, perhaps even believe are harmful to one another. These, however, can be left as matters of discourse, rather than qualitative adjudication of individuals themselves. Similarly, the flimsy nature of respectability as a form of movement organization can be replaced with calls that echo those of Warner (1999), Sedgewick (1990), and Halberstam (2005), a change that recognizes the faults in systems of sexual shame that limit queer identity. While there will always be conflict within and between groups, a decentering of respectability can make room for better challenges to systems of oppression and clearer alignment with goals that redefine common sense towards acceptance.

At the core of this approach to good human conduct is the recognition that what is shameful to one is empowering to another. While one may find it undesirable or even disgusting to dress up and perform like a dog for sex, no one is asking them to do that. Similarly, asking for space to celebrate the fact that one does enjoy doing this is not forcing their practices onto others. Acceptance often relies on being able to recognize that there may well be no links between your desires and experiences and those of others. Yet, until someone can look at that man in kink gear on all fours and acknowledge his right to do exactly that, I argue that there is no mutual respect between them.

 

 

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