Reviews for Friends and lovers

The average rating for Friends and lovers based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-07-07 00:00:00 Nathan Dirkmaat This is a book about gay families and what it means to be a homosexual in the context of non-biological kinship, exclusively in San Francisco, ‘Gay Mecca’, in the USA. It is about how they live their lives in the face of rejection or even being disowned by blood relatives, which has led many to build their own ‘families’ with their gay brothers and sisters, which has a new element now that there has been the lesbian baby boom which means that many can now choose to be parents. The misconception that an offspring’s future will be lonely with no stable relationships and no children has proved to be false, and gay people have shown that with their created, chosen families, not only are they more ‘normal’ than people would expect, but that they are quite capable of fostering long-term relationships (cf. Hunt, 2005:135-137; Giddens, 1992:15). Does the adage, ‘Straight is to gay as family is to no family’, have to be the case? The book is written by Kath Weston, herself a lesbian from the San Francisco scene, who says that her study would not be what it is if she had not been a lesbian. Perhaps this shows either subjective bias, or, more likely, an insider’s view into the culture which is invaluable to gain a proper understanding of the situation. Kath Weston is the associate professor of anthropology at Arizona State University West, Phoenix, and books she has written include Render me, Gender Me: Lesbians talk sex, class, color, nation, studmuffins..., and she co-edited The Lesbian Issue: Essays from Signs. She chose the subjects for her study by consulting her address book and finding friends of friends, using theoretic sampling and then conducting interviews. She states that it is not a statistical study, although they are at the back of the book. There are a modest number of fairly-long chapters. Chapter 1 describes how life is still hard for homosexuals despite how many people assume that times are better and that gay issues are no big deal. People are looking in from the outside with their taken-for-granted paradigms of family life. Chapter 2 discusses how the biological and procreative rules when it comes to defining family ties. In chapter 3, in coming out to parents, homosexuals risk losing everything and they handle it in different ways. Siblings tend to be more understanding than parents, and gay men often go out for a man-to-man with their fathers as a way of coming to terms with the revelation. Gays feel ostracised in their straight communities and society for the way it stands, for example with gay marriage. There is much discrimination that still abounds in the legal system, for example if a biological lesbian mother dies and her partner is not granted custody of the children. Homosexuals do not have the same recognition and legal rights as heterosexuals. Since some gays are denied and excluded from their natural family, they now have the option of choosing their own, where they all do each other favours and help each other out, for example, helping friends with AIDS. Chapter 4 tells ten different coming-out stories, how their loved ones reacted and the various ways the new homosexuals were treated by their biological kin. The very notion of what constitutes ‘kin’ is disputed among homosexuals. Being homosexual is now known as a part of somebody’s identity, not merely the sexual acts that they do. They find that they were homosexual all along but just did not know it. This is an extremely good tactic to use when coming out – they have always been ‘that way’. In chapter 5 the notion of community is brought forward and we examine whether chosen families are simply a substitute for the biological family that is familiar, and following those models. One lady said that her gay family made up for the love she had missed out on at home. The concept of narcissism is discussed in chapter 6. Homosexuality used to be represented as a pathological illness in a now debunked medical theory. Same-same relations constituted the ‘looking glass self’ and it was claimed that homosexuals were in a state of arrested development. Among homosexuals, ‘merging’ is a dreaded consequence of living so closely with somebody of the same sex. They suffer from too much intimacy and become dependent on one another, unable to differentiate themselves and carry on independent lives, unlike heterosexual couples. Females are more likely to suffer from this problem; although males have greater trouble achieving intimacy. Lesbian relationships can be seen as an extension of the mother-daughter bond. Gay men often have a mentor, an older male gay friend, when they first come out, to show them the ropes and introduce them to the gay scene. Chapter 7 explores parenting in the age of AIDS. ‘Alternative’ (not artificial – makes them feel that it is a statement against them as unnatural) insemination is an option, as well as adoption and old-fashioned heterosexual sexual intercourse. Many lesbians desire a gay male as the donor, as they are more likely to understand and can negotiate whether the father will be involved with the parenting or not. It is one big gay family. Homosexuals have different views on parenthood; whether it would be unfair or not to expose children to the stigma that they are bound to encounter, but most are actually extremely desirous to be parents. It raises a paradox about procreating in a non-procreative situation. Finally, chapter 8 concludes by talking about the politics of gay kinship and looks forward to the future. The book says that homosexual women are more alike to heterosexual women than they are to gay males, and the same stands the other way around for the men. Back in the 1940s, Kinsey put both homo- and heterosexual experience on a single continuum, which is a much more open-minded way of expressing differences than seeing gaydom as a ‘perversion’. This book is very relevant to the life course, as becoming homosexual is a kind of discontinuity and a part and parcel of living one’s everyday life as the minority. Many people do not find themselves until later in their lives and coming out has become possible since the 1960s and 1970s when people first defined themselves as ‘gay’ (ibid). The book finishes with the empirical data of Weston’s study. She used unstructured interviews and chose a wide cross-section of different gays across San Francisco, different ethnicities, age cohorts and classes. However, the sample cannot be said to be representative, least of all because she only tells the story of San Francisco, or at most, the United States. However, she does relate her research to different phases in the history of gay rights and freedom and distinguishes between young gays and older gays. Gays were thought of in stereotypes of white, middle class and wealthy. It was not unusual for a gay male to have ‘Here comes walking AIDS!’ shouted at him. People were blamed for the disease and adequate care and education not provided. Kath Weston had to think carefully over her choice of a cover for the book, thoughtful about how gay kinship was represented. In the end she went for the ‘Revlon Boys’ by Chantal Regnault (1989), an image of three black young men relaxing casually on each other’s shoulders, expressing a vulnerability that I felt went well with the book, as well as opening the subject matter to all possible groups. As a literary book, I must admit that I found it rather tedious and plodding in places; extremely wordy. But it has educated me into a greater understanding of gay culture and homosexual lifestyles, and I found the coming-out stories interesting and occasionally shocking. There was one story where after the teenage lesbian had been ejected from her home and shunted around different foster homes, she was removed from a girls’ home as it was thought to be unhealthy to have her there. In conclusion, I noted how it continues to be hard to live as a homosexual in our society, how ignorance and misunderstandings prevail, for example when seeing a pregnant lesbian mother, which can render one’s homosexuality invisible, and yet how the gay community provides rich kinship and surprisingly stable relationships where the future does not have to be such a lonely place. The study was very informative.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-10-15 00:00:00 Mohammed Sidhu Although most examples in the book are outdated (it first came out in 1991), Families We Choose is still incredibly relevant. At the time of publication issues such as same-sex marriage, non-biological parent adoptions, adoption in general, etc. were not yet legal as they are today in most countries in the western world (this book concentrates solely on the western perspective). Today the landscape of "gay families" (author's term; today I'd call them queer families) is a topic of much political debate and legislation reform. Many of the questions in this book have been answered, to an extent. The world has evolved in the past 25 years, for better or worse. There is much to be grateful for. (Like that anal sex is legal in Texas! Hurray!) Surprisingly though, some ideas that come up in this book have not been recognized. At the end of the book Weston questions whether the way we organize our families will evolve in the same direction as its heterosexual counterpart (i.e. parents, kids, nuclear family style, the parents just "happen" to be gay) or if the evolving recognition of gay families will include kinship in a broader sense: the essence of gay families that often consist of peers, friends, friend's spouses, their children and sometimes even their siblings/parents etc., older and younger queer people mixed in a variety of ways). Sadly, we have not come that far. I would also like to read a similar study done now. All in all, this book is an important, although isolated, reminder that families come about in all kinds of different ways.