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CHAPTER 1

The Anthropologist in the Field of Sexuality

The study of gay people inevitably involves a consideration of the ethnographer’s engagement with issues of sexuality, the major indicator of his/her subjects’ social identity. Moreover, it calls attention to the observer’s own comportment in this field of behavior. That topic naturally reminds us of the turmoil raised among anthropologists with the discovery of Malinowski’s diaries (1967). His confessions touched on various sensitive issues. Particularly embarrassing seemed the revelation of his sexual frustration during his work among the Trobrianders. Nevertheless, it took another twenty-five years for that issue to arouse more serious interest in professional forums.¹ The discourse of reflexivity in ethnographic texts, which has continuously expanded in recent decades, has finally penetrated the most intimate sphere of the ethnographer’s life during fieldwork: his/her own sexuality.

Since the early 1990s, conference sessions, articles, ethnographies, and edited volumes have removed the veil of secrecy² and the taboo that surrounded the sexual demeanor of anthropologists (e.g., Newton 1993; Wade 1993; Kulick and Willson 1995; Bolton 1995, 1996; Carrier 1995; Lewin and Leap 1996; Markowitz and Ashkenazi 1999; Haller 2001; Goode 2002). While gay and lesbian anthropologists seemed to be more aware and open about that dimension in their professional life, heterosexual anthropologists gradually shared revelations similar to those of their homosexual colleagues.

By and large, the ethnographers mentioned above contested the old code that desexualized anthropologists during fieldwork and taught them to hide any sexual involvement with their informants. The reformist ethnographers considered these implanted guidelines seriously wrong, both professionally and ethically. The lone anthropologist, they argued, whether a man or a woman, is “a human being” also during fieldwork, and as such, not devoid of a sexual drive or of a sexual persona. By abstaining from sex, ethnographers are apparently observed by their informants as strange, if not deficient, people. Consequently, this behavior has shut them out of a major dimension of their subjects’ lives.

Not surprisingly, for many decades anthropologists have studied “family and kinship” but only rarely dealt with the sexual lives of the people they studied (e.g., Vance 1991; Tuzin 1991; Friedl 1994). The pioneers, Malinowski and Mead, proved to be far less prudent (and prudish) than later generations of anthropologists who left the field of sexual behavior to the monopoly of other academic disciplines and the mercy of therapists. This narrowing of the ethnographer’s domain of competence also legitimized the ethos that taught older and younger practitioners to refrain from any breach of morality engaging them in a sexual alliance with their informants.

Not only were anthropologists careful to refrain from studying sexuality and concerned about any sexual distraction in the field, they were also anxious to keep their distance from activities and groups defined by a stigmatized sexuality. In particular, they avoided any association that might mark them with the stigma of homosexuality. Observations of homoerotic interaction were rarely reported in ethnographic texts since the anthropologist’s reputation was at stake (e.g., Read 1980: 184–85; Shokeid 2003, 1995: 22–27; Markowitz and Ashkenazi 1999). Read’s confession is particularly illuminating. In Other Voices (1980: 184), he returned to his New Guinea ethnography of 1955: “The gaps in my record of the Gahuku cannot be retrieved now and I advise skepticism in accepting my statement that homosexual practices did not exist…. As a ‘legitimate’ study, homosexuality remained the ‘vice without a name’.”

More radical, and still largely controversial, has been the claim by a few “maverick” anthropologists, both heterosexuals and homosexuals, that having sex with one’s informants is beneficial for fieldwork. Anthropologists who are sexually involved with their informants, they argue, are better integrated into the community they wish to study.

Heterosexual Anthropologists Reveal Sexual Secrets

Peter Wade (1993), Fran Markowitz (1999), and Erich Goode (2002), all heterosexuals, described the path that had led them to have sex with close informants. Wade, who studied black Colombians, had two romantic/sexual affairs during his two fieldwork projects, the first in a small village and the second in Medellin (one of the largest cities in Colombia). He claims that his intimate affairs affected his standing with both men and women: “My position in both Unguia and Medellin was consolidated and legitimized by virtue of my relationships with Marcela and Roberta…. As a result, many people saw me as part of the community: the relationship implied some commitment to Colombian, especially black, society” (208).

In her study of Soviet immigrants in New York, Markowitz describes an encounter with a male informant to whom she said that her professional ethics inhibited her from having sex with men she interviewed. “‘What?!’ he exclaimed with incredulity ‘Aren’t you a human being?!’” Eventually, as she dropped her celibacy, it “brought with it a great deal of advantages that last into the present” (168). She claims also that her female informants expected and supported her sexual involvement with Soviet men. Nevertheless, Markowitz ponders her standing within the conventions of the discipline: “My biggest problem, however, remained the nagging thought that I was doing something wrong that went against the ethical foundations of the discipline” (168).

Goode, who conducted research on the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance (NAAFA), recounted a number of sexual liaisons, including one that resulted in the birth of a daughter. Although his research was not a story of great success, he nevertheless assumes that sex between social scientists and their informants cannot be avoided in certain circumstances: “And pretending that it doesn’t take place and that it isn’t a fit topic for discussion, strikes me as a variety of collective insanity” (2002: 529).

Gay Men’s Sexuality and Gay Anthropologists

The Hidden Observer

The ethnographic work available on sexual behavior in Western society has been mostly carried out in the field of anonymous gay sex. However, for many years, the ethnographers who conducted that research performed their task as unidentified observers (e.g., Humphreys 1970; Delph 1978; Style 1979; Leap 1999). Such studies have been relatively easy to conduct without developing close relationships with the “natives.” That trend won methodological and theoretical support from the school of symbolic interaction (as represented by Goffman in particular).

Laud Humphreys was probably the first researcher who conducted intensive ethnographic work among gay men. His Tearoom Trade (1970) remains a landmark not only for its methodological innovation and sociological revelation, but also for its ensuing scandal. Humphreys observed men having sex in public restrooms in the parks of an American city. He conducted his observations by adopting the role of a “watch queen,” warning the participants of the approach of the police and unidentified visitors. Humphreys could take notes about the participants’ visible, though silent, sexual communication, but he had almost no additional knowledge about their lives outside these meeting sites. The men were quick to depart and had no wish to carry on conversations that might have revealed their identity. They would have certainly left immediately had they suspected the presence of a researcher on the premises.

In order to obtain additional information about his subjects, Humphreys employed another unconventional method. He wrote down the registration numbers of the cars of his subjects parked nearby; he then used his connections at the relevant license administration offices to track down their addresses. He visited them at their homes about a year later, somewhat disguised and under the pretext of another survey. This was obviously a most serious breach of privacy, as well as a violation of professional ethics.

Against the fierce wave of criticism about the flawed ethics of his work, Humphreys defended his methods. He claimed, first, that he took all the measures necessary to protect the confidentiality of the men he observed. Second, he argued that his research proved that men who participate in this stigmatized activity were good citizens who might happen to be the readers’ next-door neighbors or close relatives. He believed he contributed to the obliteration of the myth and prejudice about the apparently deviant characters who associate in the sites of sleazy anonymous sex. He did not regret the first part of his observations but admitted he would not have repeated the second stage of his research, in which he interviewed his unsuspecting subjects at their homes. He believed, however, that no other alternative method could produce equivalent reliable data (1975: 223–32).

Since Humphreys published his pioneering research, many studies of close observations have been carried out in the field of anonymous sex, including in saunas, bars, public parks, and parking areas (e.g., Leap 1999). Most observers, who remained incognito at the sites of their research, employed the ideas and tools of symbolic interaction. This was long the method adopted to describe the “discourse” that maintains the intimate communication between silent bodies, as well as the strategies practiced by the participants to conceal their use of public spaces for “forbidden” behavior. Observers suggested contrasting opinions about the pros and cons of public “anonymous” sex. Were these sites the crucible for the development of gay supportive communities (e.g., Altman 1986), or were they the scene of brutal competition and depressing alienation (e.g., Bersani 1998)?

The Active Observer

In recent years, however, the methodology in the field of gay men’s sexuality took a new direction, propagated by openly gay anthropologists. This generation of scholars conducted their research equipped with a new professional conviction, which was combined with the urgency of a social mission. Their work was stimulated by their efforts to prevent the spread of AIDS.

Ralph Bolton, an American anthropologist, worked in rural Peru for many years. Only later in his career, in the 1980s, did he come out as a gay man and become one of the most active medical anthropologists engaged in gay issues. He undertook research on anonymous sex as part of a project that sought to reveal habits that might facilitate or curtail the spread of AIDS. His method of studying anonymous sex abandoned the old tradition of participant observation, which left the researcher in the safe position of a detached voyeur. Instead, he claimed, it was an advantage for the researcher to take full part in the activity under study. Employing this strategy in his research of gay saunas in Brussels, Bolton believed he could thus obtain more reliable information, far superior to that obtained through the “voyeuristic” tradition or through the methods of survey and interview.

Bolton’s active participation raised doubts and sometimes disdain in professional circles. He noted his mainstream colleagues’ ambivalent reception of his method and sadly concluded: “Real ethnography was not to be tolerated; distance must be replaced through the use of data-collecting techniques that keep informants at bay” (1996: 162).

That method was also reported in ethnographic work done elsewhere, such as that of Carrier (1995) in his many years among gay men in Mexico. Carrier reported extensively on his observations at sites of anonymous sex, his experiences of long-standing intimate friendships with individuals, and his continuing association with networks of Mexican gay men. His ethnography probably presents the most uninhibited report on the sex life of an anthropologist in the field. However, his conclusions raised some doubts among other gay anthropologists, though not for ethical reasons.

Murray’s (1996) critique of Carrier’s observations, supported by his own work in South America, is of particular importance. Although Murray also admitted he had sex with local men, he argued that the anthropologist who believes he uncovered “true” evidence because he had sex with his subjects may end up with information invented for the researcher. For example, an American ethnographer in a Latin American country might truly believe that local men indeed willingly take part as “passive” partners in anal and oral sex, despite their ethos that “manly men” would never do that. But Murray suggested that men in Guatemala might consent to adopt the recipient role in anal or oral sex with the American visitor, who is a privileged outsider, something they would not countenance with their compatriots. Therefore, Murray concluded, the anthropologist might be seriously wrong assuming that his shared gay identity and engagement in sex with his informants endowed him with inside knowledge and with an important lesson to teach the personnel involved in AIDS prevention: “The relationship between such data and native intra-cultural behavior and thought is far from obvious. Having sex with the natives is not the royal road to insight about alien sexualities” (1996: 250).

The fully participatory research strategy took an even more controversial turn when it was adopted for a project in Sweden. Benny Henriksson (1995) studied porno video clubs in Stockholm catering to a gay men clientele. He identified these establishments as substitute commercial sites for the gay baths, which had been banned in 1987 as part of the official battle against AIDS. However, an article in a local newspaper revealed that Henriksson did not conduct the observations himself. Instead he employed five assistants, who were not discouraged from having sex with the men they observed. They were told to avoid unsafe sex but otherwise were expected to report in detail on the verbal negotiations and actual erotic activities they observed or joined in.

A public scandal soon erupted. The sites studied by Henriksson’s assistants were raided by the police, and the institutions that funded the research were severely criticized. In the final report, Henriksson rejected the accusations leveled at his work by officials, professional groups, and gay organizations. He contended that his unorthodox use of participant observers was legitimate (relying on Bolton’s arguments in particular) and caused no harm to his research assistants, who had engaged in these activities prior to their recruitment to the project. He promised that the identity of anyone observed in the clubs would remain strictly confidential. Moreover, he believed that the participants’ ignorance of being observed was justified in terms already stated in previous studies of anonymous sex: “The use of participant observation gave me an in-depth understanding, of what “the devil was going on” in different erotic oases, to paraphrase Geertz” (1995: 78).

In defense of his work, Henriksson advocated his research findings in particular. He claimed that gay men cruising these video clubs for anonymous sex had mostly abstained from unsafe sex. The latter, he concluded, was more likely to take place in the sanctity of private homes of both homosexuals and heterosexuals. It was through the intimate relationships and participant observations conducted by his assistants in these stigmatized territories, he insisted, that his team was able to discover these were not hotbed sites for the spread of AIDS. Thus, Henriksson’s view was similar to that expressed long before by Humphreys. In sum, a method considered unethical by colleagues and other observers seemed, in the eyes of its practitioners, to be redeemed by findings that offered a new understanding of a publicly condemned behavior.³

Bolton’s strategy was also employed by Lunsing (1999), in a study of gay men in Japan. Lunsing admitted he had sex with ten informants. However, a warning about uncritical celebrations of the advantages of the openly gay researcher engaging in intimate relationships with his gay subjects was raised again by Haller (2001) who studied homosexuals in Seville: “Insiders can become berufsblind: they miss out on phenomena obvious to outsiders because they interpret the world from a similar perspective as the people they study” (125).

My review of the history of research in anonymous male sex thus reached the same conclusions regarding the behavior observed and produced the same legitimization suggested by those criticized for their breach of ethical norms, as well as for their full participation in the “natives’” culture. From Tearoom Trade in 1970 to Henriksson’s 1995 report, the claim was made that gay and bisexual men who participate in anonymous sex activities are not a minority of deviants—sick, isolated, and dangerous men who might propagate disease into mainstream society. This finding seems to override all hesitations about the violation of both the participants’ privacy and the professional ethos of “don’t touch me” observations.

The Ethnography of Lesbian Sexuality

My review of the literature has been dedicated primarily to the study of gay men’s sexuality, leaving one to wonder if this again is a case of a male bias. However, as documented in Kennedy and Davis’s ethnography (1993) on the lesbian community in Buffalo, New York, until very recently women had not developed their own institutions, particularly bars, nor could they use public spaces for an open search of female partners for sex and love. The whole phenomenon of cruising, so basic to the life experiences of gay men, is almost absent in lesbian history. Baths, bars, and parks, for example, have been available for gay men in New York and other metropolitan cities for at least a century (e.g., Chauncey 1994). In those decades women could never stroll alone in public spaces, such as parks, without immediate risk to lives and reputation. Moreover, they lacked the money or freedom to entertain on their own outside their homes.

Only since World War II have women been able to claim their own space in certain bars. On the whole, therefore, the sexual life of lesbians has been less visible and has not attracted the interest of professional observers. Karla Jay, editor of a volume on lesbian erotic life, made an opening statement that seems most relevant: “As we come to the end of the twentieth century, the question of whether or not lesbians have sex is still a hotly contested issue” (1995: 1). I assume that a cultural ethos concerning the “sanctity” of women’s sexuality also inhibited the study of lesbians’ sexuality. That avoidance on the part of researchers was also evident in other domains of lesbian lives unrelated to the display of sexuality. Lewin (1996b) reported the pressures imposed on her by research funding agencies to change the outline of her research project and cloak her interest in the lives of lesbian mothers. Blackwood, a pioneering researcher in gay studies, pointed out the lesser position afforded to research on lesbian practices during the formative years of the anthropology of homosexuality in the 1970s, following the rise of the gay rights movement (2002: 77).

But there are signs of a new trend. A few among the leading cohort of anthropologists engaged in gay and lesbian studies have in recent years conducted research on some of the formerly invisible facets of lesbians’ sexuality. I refer here to Newton (1996) and Kennedy Lapovsky (1996), who offered their descriptions of the lives of major informants and of their own relationships with them. Amory reported on a lesbian dance club in San Francisco that survived for about three years, until 1992: “An important part of the celebration of sexuality involved cruising for girls, cruising other women’s bodies and striking a pose while others cruised you” (1996: 153). The author claims Club Q catered to a new generation of lesbians, whose sexual boldness could be intimidating for other women. Thus, cruising is no longer the exclusive domain of males’ behavior and observation.

Away from the United States, however, Sinnott presented a different perspective on female same-sex sexuality regarding the use of space in the formation of identity, sexual relationships, and community. Reporting from Thailand, she claimed that “masculinist or ‘western’ discursive patterns impose the linkage between ‘public’ spaces, cultural norms regarding men’s use of space, and the ‘liberating’ practice of same-sex sexuality” (2009: 228). For example, same-sex dormitory spaces (at school, college, factory, etc.) were found as one of the most productive sites for networks and sexual liaisons of same-sex relationships among women.

Observing Gay Institutions in New York

In the following presentation I will describe the experiences I went through when I came to study communities of gay men and was directly confronted with some of the issues discussed above. The field situations, the strategies I adopted as an observer, and my response to unexpected circumstances demonstrate the complexity of the issues involved in the research of sexual behavior beyond the dilemma of “partaking or not” in sexual activities.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, I carried out research at two gay institutions in Greenwich Village. I first studied Congregation Beth Simchat Torah (the gay and lesbian synagogue), and later the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center. These are very different organizations. I will not expand here on the characteristics that distinguish them but mention only one major feature that also affected my position and my work. CBST, a lay-led congregation at the time of my fieldwork,⁴ offered its members an opportunity to get together during the weekly (Friday) and festival services. The congregants could also meet and socialize at various committee meetings and other activities. I could attend most events, observe, and be observed in a community of people who were not an anonymous crowd, the growing number of participants notwithstanding. The Center, in contrast, was led by professionals, and its activities catered to numerous special interests and social groups. The 1995–1996 annual report presented a list of 120 organizations and groups associated with the Center. I could regularly attend only a small number of the activities and engage with but a few of the groups that met on its premises. Only rarely did I meet participants who regularly attended the activities of more than one or two groups. Naturally, in the synagogue my network of friends and acquaintances was wider and my relationships with them were closer.

I tackle now my own response as I confronted two major problems that emerged in my review of previous works in the field of sexual minorities:

(1) The ethnographer’s unannounced presence at the site of his research.

(2) The ethnographer’s sexual comportment during fieldwork.

I emphasize: I was not guided beforehand by an ideological or professional conviction as to the pros and cons of the anthropologist’s mode of active participation in erotic activities. Nor had I endured during fieldwork a personal crisis of any sort. I believe, however, that reporting the hesitations, decisions, moral dilemmas, and mistakes I made might add a more balanced perspective to issues of fieldwork that cannot be dismissed any longer.

In my previous ethnographic projects I often engaged in the subjects of family, kinship, and gender, but I did not initiate research in the field of sexuality. Moreover, I was careful to avoid any erotic entanglement with informants. For example, in my study of Moroccan immigrants in an Israeli village, I dealt with the changing division of labor between men and women (particularly in consequence of the engagement of women in farming). But that interest did not lead me to study issues of sexuality.

An exception was my work among Muslims in a mixed-population Israeli town. In a discussion of the Arab code of honor, a subject that seemed to dominate my informants’ worldview, I introduced the discourse of masculinity. My observations revealed the growing consumption of opium as a strategy by some men to prolong erection. I interpreted the recourse of young men to artificially strengthened sexual potency as a response to a prevalent notion of social insecurity that affected their sense of manhood (Shokeid 1980). My Arab friends often complained about conflicts with their wives, who seemed to imitate their far more emancipated female Jewish neighbors. However, in particular, their gossip about adulterous women made me aware of that issue. Nevertheless, I was not engaged in a direct study of sexuality.

Conducting Fieldwork in a Gay Synagogue

I was studying Israeli emigrants in New York (1982–1984) when a colleague at a local university asked me to help him supervise a student who was struggling with a Ph.D. dissertation based on his work at CBST. Never before had I heard of that type of institution. However, since the manuscript the student handed me lacked a clear description of the synagogue and its crowd, I suggested (in a telephone conversation) that I visit the synagogue to get a feeling for the place.

I had to make a decision about how to comport myself before setting foot in this “unconventional” field. How does one dress for a Friday night service in a gay synagogue? Need I wear a jacket and tie, as one often does in a mainstream synagogue? Or should I choose more casual attire, as fitting for a synagogue of radical Jews? I decided to take the middle ground and put on corduroys and a casual jacket, similar to what I would wear on campus. I was on time for the meeting with my student-guide at a bookstore on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. However, I saw no one waiting there who looked “gay.” Actually, I noticed somebody standing nearby, but I thought he “couldn’t be gay,” since he was too conservative looking. Eventually, I approached him and asked if he had seen anyone else waiting. He was embarrassed to discover it was me he was waiting for. It became evident he expected me to come in somber (professorial) attire, just as I expected a more radical looking young man. In retrospect, it was partly an inability to disappear in the crowd that probably handicapped my guide’s own work.

I was greatly surprised when we got to the synagogue to find a big crowd of many men and a smaller number of women who seemed to me so … ordinary! They looked very different from what I had expected. My encounter with the gay synagogue raised my doubts about the frequent portrayal of gay male society in the anthropological literature. Why only, or mostly, was their depiction in the field of anonymous sex? I thought that anthropologists who for many years refrained altogether from the study of a group that might have affected their own status in mainstream professional life had by default helped direct the belated interest in gay people to the restricted issues around sexual demeanor. They thereby also called public attention to a further stigmatizing type of behavior. The outbreak of AIDS undoubtedly strengthened the trend of research on issues of men’s sexual behavior. However, I do not blame anthropologists. I assume I would not have dared engage myself and “compromise” my reputation with the study of gay people had I been at an earlier stage of my career.

On my return to New York in 1989, planning to conduct research at CBST, I did not intend to concentrate on issues of sexuality. Nevertheless, I expected some difficulties on entering the field of gay society. A dilemma I immediately confronted was, how do I go about introducing myself? I have already discussed this issue in my ethnography (2003 [1995]: 7–10); however, I should emphasize that the dilemma of the anthropologist’s role during fieldwork—the information he or she offers the subjects about the researcher’s identity and the goals of research—are not unique to fieldwork with sexual minorities. These issues are equally relevant to most other fields of study that are no longer conducted among “other” people, those who are visibly different from the researcher’s ethnic and social identity.

I had faced a similar problem during my study of Israeli immigrants in New York (Shokeid 1988b). For many years they have been disparaged by their compatriots and nicknamed Yordim. Since I was not studying my fellow Israelis through the more formal techniques of survey and interviews, was I supposed, according to professional ethics, to inform any Israeli I spoke to that I was not a Yored and that I was planning to write about the Israelis in America? Actually, a previous research project initiated at Queens College to study the various immigrant groups in the Borough of Queens had failed with the Israelis. They refused to cooperate with the interviewers. Similarly, was I supposed to inform my new acquaintances at the gay synagogue, on first meeting each man and woman, of my sexual identity and that I might write about them?

For nearly a hundred years, the position of Euro/American fieldworkers has been mostly visible and clear. They usually came from another continent or racial/ethnic group and retained the status of guests who only rarely could and did “go native.” But when an Israeli citizen comes to study other Israelis in America, or when an Israeli-Jewish anthropologist shows up at a gay synagogue, he/she is not immediately categorized in the role of alien observer. The “otherness,” a major characteristic of the anthropologist’s social encounter during fieldwork, as well as a theoretical mainstay in the ethnographic text, is thus immediately lost. The anthropologist’s own “otherness” is now far more subtle and a matter for gradual revelation and negotiation—for example, the “true” national identity of the Israeli ethnographer on a sabbatical stay in New York versus that of the Israeli immigrants (Yordim) in his study. Similarly, the assessment of the “true” sexual identity of the Israeli anthropologist, versus that of his gay American coreligionist congregants, is now a matter of gradual discovery rather than a clearly marked characteristic identified immediately on the ethnographer’s arrival.⁵

Attending Sexual Activities

I soon discovered that the gay synagogue was not a cruising site. Obviously, I had no need to consider Bolton’s strategy. I might even suggest that my unannounced sexual orientation was somewhat advantageous. I learned to be “physical” with friends, men and women, something foreign to the culture of Israelis of my generation, who do not habitually kiss and hug, a common habit in the United States and in gay society in particular. Still, I never had sex with a congregant. On one embarrassing occasion I learned how easily one can lose one’s position of sexual “otherness.” I decided to visit a gay sauna that was mentioned to me as one of the last surviving institutions of this type in Manhattan. I assumed that in the early afternoon hours I would not meet any of my acquaintances there. I was naturally embarrassed when one of the few attendees at this slow business hour told me I was familiar to him from his visits to services at CBST. It now became clear that I had not considered the possibility I was not the only academic in town free of a strict work schedule. In any case, it was not the problem of being discovered at that place but the anxiety of how to decline his advances without incurring personal offense.

Later I learned that one could observe a site of sexual activity without necessarily engaging in the activity and without violating the participants’ privacy. Jeff, who was among my close friends at CBST (see Chapters 2 and 10), felt secure enough to share with me some details of his sexual adventures. The mutual exchange of feelings and information sustained our intimate relationship. He once told me that he was a member of the GSA (Golden Shower Association). I must admit, I was puzzled about the “obscene” pleasure he found in getting soaked in urine. What I had in mind was a very surrealistic image of that phenomenon. In a casual manner I told Jeff I was “curious” about that activity. As I later realized, my expression of curiosity left him with the impression I would like to see the scene for myself. I had forgotten all about it when, a few months later, Jeff suggested I join him at the next GSA monthly meeting. For a long time, he told me, he had hesitated to invite me, mostly because of the embarrassment of having me watch him during a sexual activity. But eventually, he concluded that at most, he would not enjoy for once the complete freedom to “do his thing.” He considered this a minor sacrifice.

It was now my turn to hesitate and consider my forthcoming voyeuristic role in a notorious sexual activity. I decided to go along, and to my great relief, I soon discovered my presence was not as embarrassing as I had thought it would be. I was not obliged to strip but remained in jeans. Nor was I obliged to participate in the ongoing activities. Benefiting from the introduction by Jeff, I could stroll around and talk to friendly members. Also, contrary to my worry, the place did not smell of urine.⁶ Most important, I did not feel I was violating the privacy of the participants. I came as Jeff’s friend. Jeff could rely on my code of confidentiality and feel assured that my observations, if ever published, would not harm his friends.

My visit to the Golden Shower event seemed to cement our friendship. As we all exited, relieved that all had gone well, Jeff told me that when the lights went out for a few seconds, he thought it was a police raid and was worried about my being caught in an embarrassing situation. He then told me another reason that had initially made him unwilling to take me along to the event: he did not wish to feel like an “organism under a microscope.” But since then he had read my CBST book and had no worries about my way of portraying the people I observed. He liked his own presentation in my narrative, although his identity remained disguised to anyone else.

As for my mood about this event and my evaluation of my own behavior as “participant observer,” I felt that I had undergone one of the most daring experiences in my career. Not because I witnessed a Bruegel picture—a chaotic, fantastic, and in some way forbidden scene—but because I did not shy away from a social setting, one that prior to my participation seemed somewhat obscene and threatening to my reputation.

I again experienced the difficult choices that confront the observer in this field when I was encouraged to join a group of men for the annual Bear Pride Convention in Chicago. This time I was fully aware that once I decided to participate it would be far more difficult to retreat into the “don’t touch me” position. I assumed that being away from my home territory might make it more difficult to leave the scene before I got entangled in an embarrassing situation. I felt the same hesitations that had beset me when Jeff invited me to attend the Golden Shower event. Yet I thought that not participating would be cowardly on my part and another lost research opportunity. I had avoided attending all previous annual and regional conventions and weekend retreats that were advertised by the groups I studied. I knew these were opportunities for more intense social activities and for the experience of communitas that nourished these groups for a long time afterward; nevertheless, I worried about the implications of that intensified engagement with my subjects.

The Bear Pride convention took place at a major Chicago hotel. While there, I was supposed to share a room with three other occupants. I decided to go along and let myself be immersed in the event with no preconditions. I was only slightly acquainted with a few of the participants, who were vaguely aware of my professional interests (see Chapter 8).

It was a lively event, with many activities in the hotel (receptions, lectures parties) and in other locations (the major bars in town in particular). An estimated 1,400 men attended the convention. The participants were constantly meeting old buddies and making new friends. My roommates expressed much mutual affection with each other and showed no inhibition about sex play with either old or new acquaintances or in the presence of others. I let go once and joined a sexual activity with a roommate. I was shocked at first at my own loss of “guard” and its possible implications for my research position, reputation, and self-perception. Had I, at last, “gone native”? But I soon dismissed that notion of guilt and adopted instead a sort of fatalistic approach to these “bourgeois-mainstream” conventions and worries. Was it my “advanced age” that made me develop a more opportunistic approach? I will save the reader my own self-analysis and other defenses. But more important for the subject of my presentation: had I gained, due to that intensified participation, a deeper inner understanding of the phenomenon observed?

Although somewhat disappointingly, I must admit, my “active” participation did not endow me with any special hermeneutic revelation. That conclusion reminds me of Murray’s and Haller’s critiques about the privileged knowledge the anthropologist must gain through participating in sex with informants. At the same time, however, I felt afterward—or perhaps only consoled myself—that I had gained some better credibility with my roommates and their friends. At last I was “normal.” Recalling Markowitz’s report (1999: 167), I proved to the people I wished to observe that I was “a sexual human being.” It allowed me, I believe, to observe later instances of sexual encounters in an unobtrusive manner, as much as to excuse myself without offense when invited to participate. Nevertheless, I have no proof that I might have been treated differently had I not shared in a sexual activity. In any case, I wish to emphasize, I had not consciously employed at that event the strategy suggested by Bolton. I reacted to the circumstances of the event I attended and to a sensual excitement surrounding me. I cannot claim that I was responding to an ideological or a professional conviction.

The Unannounced Observer

Although unrelated to sexual behavior, a more distressing situation arose during my observations of another group at the gay community center in Greenwich Village. I regularly attended the weekly meetings of a few SCA (Sexual Compulsives Anonymous) social groups (see Chapter 4). These meetings, similar in structure to those of Alcoholics Anonymous, are open to everybody, although the discussions are presumed to be confidential (e.g., Plummer 1995: 103–4). I never concealed my professional identity, but as at most other activities I attended at the Center I did not publicly announce my research interests. The presentation of my “true” identity, sexual and professional, seemed a difficult task at the Center. The lack of a single main focus of activity there (in contrast to the gay synagogue) made my persona far more obscure among its visitors.

Actually, I was not concerned at that time about the way I would ever use my field notes from the SCA meetings. For the time being, it was a natural extension of my work at the Center, since for my research I tried to attend as many group meetings there as possible. The issues the participants raised at the SCA meetings seemed particularly relevant to the work and literature dealing with anonymous sex and, in retrospect, to the issue of gay men’s subjectivity (Halperin 2007). Many of the male participants described painful experiences caused by their attraction to the various “oases” of anonymous sex. Never satisfied sexually and emotionally, they could not stop going back to these sites, which by their account seemed to ruin their lives. I became familiar with a few participants of one particular SCA group.

One participant, also engaged in the social sciences, was especially friendly to me. I believed that our mutual sympathy was stimulated by our professional kinship. However, to my great surprise (I assumed he was acquainted with my CBST ethnography), it took him a few months to comprehend that I was doing research. One day, as he saw me inquiring about a particular issue, he burst out in a tone of dismay: “Are you doing research?” To my matter-of-fact response he reacted with words I cannot forget: “I feel violated.” I believe he was offended, in particular, because his late revelation of my professional interest shattered the notion of a shared struggle that had sustained our relationship. He must have assumed that I experienced the same existential predicament that seemed to ruin his life.⁷ I was shocked and deeply moved by this expression of painful revelation and never went back to meetings at that particular group or to other SCA gatherings.

Could I justify my SCA observations in terms suggested, for example, by Humphreys (1975) and Henriksson (1995)? Would my findings redeem these people, as much as the other presumably “unethical” studies had done before? But as I was pondering that dilemma, I considered a more heretical quandary: had not anthropologists, all along, employed an ethically flawed method? After all, the “natives” in most conventional field sites, although they welcomed the foreign anthropologists, nevertheless rarely maintained a clear idea of the anthropologists’ craft or their forthcoming writings. Why privilege Western people, heterosexuals or homosexuals, when they happen to inhabit the ethnographer’s field? These, I assume, are partly naive and probably unanswerable questions.

Responding to Circumstances

Returning to the two major queries I posed earlier, what can I suggest from my own experience?

First, I gradually made my role and identity known to a growing number of congregants at the gay synagogue.⁸ In contrast, my role and identity remained far more obscure at the Community Center. The research situation and the constraints I experienced at the two different gay institutions (albeit in the same neighborhood) have underwritten the strategy of my presentation of self in each.

Second, I remained totally “chaste” during my fieldwork at the synagogue. I also remained uninvolved in the apparently “wild” Golden Shower party. But I did engage in sexual activity at a social event initiated by one of the organizations associated with the Center. However, it was neither a change of methodology motivated by new professional convictions nor an ideological transformation that made me adopt a more active type of participant observation at the Chicago convention. Again, I reacted to specific situational provocations and personal incitement.

Certainly, two anthropologists may be affected differently under similar conditions and make other choices. In real life, “circumstances” are not objectively defined and perceived as indicated by the term. Also, the same individual, when confronting similar circumstances, may adopt different modes of accommodation conditioned, for example, by changes of his/her personal status (as a younger or an older person, etc.).

I believe there is no prerequisite to be gay or lesbian in order to study gay people. Anthropologists have usually studied “other” societies. Gay and lesbian anthropologists can offer an insider’s perspective, but that is true for “native anthropologists” in all other fields. However, neither the insider nor the outsider anthropologist is privileged with the one definitive perspective. There are advantages and disadvantages to both practitioners.⁹

Anthropologists may find themselves becoming engaged with their subjects in intimate relationships that are unorthodox in terms taught at school or unexpected before departure for the field. I opened my discussion by presenting the experiences and conclusions volunteered by both heterosexual and homosexual ethnographers. My own experience suggests a more pragmatic approach than that advocated in some recent works presented earlier. The method of conducting my observations and my response to specific trials during fieldwork represent the consequences of sound or poor acts of judgment taken at a particular moment. The ethnographic project is dependent on the instant decisions made by anthropologists engaged in various sensitive domains of behavior and relates to both the researcher and his/her subjects. The history of ethnographic work proves that we mostly rely on the wisdom of its practitioners and that we have no way of scrutinizing the outcome of their actions. I can now better comprehend the old Jewish saying “Don’t judge your friend until you share his position.”