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ОглавлениеCHAPTER 2
Concealments and Revelations in Ethnographic Research
I wrote this chapter in a state of emotional anxiety, but also one of great relief. It relates to the relationship with one of my closest informants/friends, Jeff, whom I had met at CBST twenty years earlier. He assumed the role of a dedicated guide and taught me about the inner life of gay men and their popular sex venues. Although in a very different ethnographic world, I could compare him with Mochuna, Victor Turner’s admirable teacher of Ndembu society and culture (1967b). Jeff’s personal history, his demeanor, and his ideas about gay life are presented in other chapters (Chapters 1 and 10 in particular). The following quotes suggest the complexity of research engagements in what seems to be a common phenomenon of secrets and revelations that anthropologists confront in their work:
This is the inner life of the individual with whom we interact. He may, intentionally either reveal the truth about himself to us, or deceive us by lie and concealment. (Simmel 1969 [1908]: 310)
In much ethnographical writing, the treatment of secrets constitutes a criterion for how the text and the ethnographic work behind it will be evaluated. The ethnographer’s ability to penetrate the secrets of his or her objects becomes a major stake in the ethnographic quest. (Lovell 2007: 57)
Secrets and silences operate, and are made, through all relational contexts and interactions. How is one to write about them, then, if they are so ubiquitous and of the ordinary? (Nast 2008: 395)
Anthropologists: Decoders of Secrets
From a young age we learn the art of keeping and sharing personal, family, and communal secrets. That skill is among the elementary assets of sociability that children acquire in most societies (Taussig 1999: 267–71). Since anthropologists try to penetrate the lives and culture of their subjects in societies both far and near, one might define ethnographic fieldwork as the art of secret-decoding.
Anthropologists long ago studied cultures of secrecy, men’s secret societies in particular (Morgan 1851). I mention Herdt’s more recent studies (1981, 2003) of male secret initiation rituals in precolonial New Guinea. Pitt-Rivers, in his study of the Sierra people, represented a different category of a cultural ethos of secrecy and deception: “Andalusians are the most accomplished liars I have ever encountered” (1971: xvi). But as suggested above by Lovell, beyond gaining entry into institutionalized secret societies or cracking the cultural codes of deception, anthropologists believe it is their special skill and privilege to penetrate the personal inner-life territory of the individuals they study and breach their sealed areas of behavior, beliefs, and sentiments. This assertion certainly calls for a measure of caution lest mainstream anthropologists be seen as stepping into the role of psychotherapists.
Particularly famous are the practitioners whose ethnographies revealed sensitive intimate details of sexual, spiritual, or mental health conditions. Examples include Oscar Lewis’s (1967) portrayal of the life of Fernanda, a Puerto Rican prostitute, and her close family members, as well as Crapanzano’s (1980) rendering of Tuhami, a Moroccan tilemaker who believed himself married to a camel-footed she-demon. We know, however, of a few cases of mutual antipathy that tainted the relationship of ethnographers with their subjects, the latter resentful of the researcher’s intrusion or offended by the manner in which the published text revealed their private lives (e.g., Turnbull 1973; Scheper-Hughes 2000).
I usually considered myself lucky to enjoy the collaboration and often the liking of my subjects at the various field sites of my research. My conviction about that advantage was reinforced in particular during my study of gay people, who shared with me many intimate details of their personal lives. Actually, I came to believe that gay people were exceptionally open in exposing intimate life experiences not only in the company of close friends, but also when participating in groups wherein they engaged with many strangers, as evinced in the chapters of this book.
My present discourse does not relate to the more usual situation of first entry into a new field site, when the ethnographer might confront subjects’ objections to efforts to infiltrate their public and private spaces and their withholding of sensitive information from his intrusive gaze (e.g., Geertz 1973; Godelier 1999; Kalir 2006). I intend in this context to expose the gray areas in our endeavor, the “shadow side of fieldwork,”1 when we may not comprehend the reluctance of the apparently welcoming subjects to share with us some confidential information. The observer might reach this embarrassing realization long after assuming he/she had won the confidence of close informants who surely considered the ethnographer a safe haven for their happy or painful secrets.
Just recently the belief about my privileged position as ethnographer, one who could confidently rely on his subjects’ true reports about their life experiences, was shaken. This embarrassing discovery involved an informant whom I considered open to me and trustworthy beyond doubt. As the story of deception unraveled before me over a period of several months, I also learned the reason for and feeling behind the concealment of some sensitive information and the conditions under which secrecy is maintained even among intimates, the ethnographer included. My discussion, which seems to highlight a major issue of ethnographic methodology, is deeply interwoven with the existential conditions and predicaments of gay life. However, the ethnographer is not immune to the pains and stigma that affect his gay informants or invulnerable to the strategies of concealment they employ in their relationships with other people.
The question and professional dilemma I tackle stir up a broader issue than this specific ethnographer’s “trauma”: whatever the excuses for particular concealments, how does the discovery of a close informant’s hiding a major piece of personal information reflect on the quality of the ethnographer’s work? I remind the reader of Lovell’s assessment quoted above: “The ethnographer’s ability to penetrate the secrets of his or her objects becomes a major stake in the ethnographic quest.” Are anthropologists nowadays expected to prove a level of “truthfulness” in their fieldwork journey and their later reporting on their subjects’ lives, comparable, for example, to the thorough documentation of a lawsuit? A similar quandary concerning the ethnographer’s authority at presenting her data from the field, assumed by her readers to be guided by certain rules of evidence, was raised by Wolf (1992) comparing the construction of ethnographic portrayals with the writer of fiction, who is in total control of the “information” presented.
Except for a few famous cases, such as the Redfield-Lewis and Mead-Freeman debates or the Yanomami controversy, the issue of truthfulness or the reliability of ethnographic accounts has rarely been addressed in ordinary professional public discourse.2 It has become a nonissue, particularly since anthropologists have given up the positivist framework of earlier generations. True, one occasionally hears rumors about the shallow or dubious fieldwork venture conducted by colleagues or their students, but only under exceptional circumstances might a controversial ethnographic report necessitate official scrutiny. However, the lone anthropologist is usually the single witness to report to readers on his/her performance in the field, ascribing full authority to the accumulated field notes and the published text. Although the position of the subjects as readers and commentators has been enhanced in recent years (as expressed in writings on reflexivity in anthropology), they have not yet assumed the role of public critics in the real sense of the term (see, for example, Brettel 1993). Moreover, the subjects are not necessarily in a better position to know about sensitive issues related to all individuals in their own community. But whatever the lesson learned for ethnographic work, that particular case offered me a deeper comprehension of the existential conditions of gay life under the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
Jeffrey—The Ethnographer’s Informant/Friend
Jeffrey remained my close friend from the early days of my 1989–1990 observations at CBST. I had a few other intimate CBST friends (whom anthropologists usually define as informants); however, many of that cohort of congregants died of AIDS.3 Other close acquaintances moved away from New York. With some, I lost interest in their affairs or the contact faded, as often happens with acquaintances and friends in daily life. But I never returned to New York, even for a short visit, without meeting Jeff for dinner and a long schmooze at a Village restaurant. We kept up that close bond even after he retired and moved from Manhattan to a new residence on Long Island.
My relationship with Jeff was cemented years ago when he invited me to join him at a monthly meeting of the Golden Shower Association, a group of gay men who shared erotic experiences together (see Chapter 1). It was a sign he considered me an intimate friend from whom he had no need to hide his most private sexual preferences. During the many years of our acquaintance, Jeff told me numerous details about his life—his early childhood, parents, introduction to gay life, employment history, past boyfriends, and continuing search for mates for love and sex (see Chapter 10). Jeff was acquainted with my writings, and we had many a good laugh about my use of the invented name for him, Jeffrey, as presented in my texts, when I called him or when I left a message on his machine. This was one of our shared secrets.
A Secret Revealed
In June 2008 I arrived in New York for a few days’ stay to participate in a professional meeting at New York University. I called Jeff and suggested that we meet when he got to Manhattan. Jeff responded enthusiastically and told me he planned to combine that visit with some other engagements he had in town. When he asked to stay at my place for one night, I willingly agreed to host him at the apartment I rented in Chelsea. Jeff showed up in the late afternoon and we enjoyed our dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant. He told me about his recent affairs, starting a new part-time job, and getting involved in a promising romantic relationship, a man he had met at a party in the company of local affluent gay neighbors.
I had to leave the apartment early the next day, scheduled to present a paper at a morning conference session. However, by around 5:30 a.m. Jeff was already awake, complaining of acute stomach or kidney pains. He could hardly stand up. I realized I must take him immediately to an emergency room. I helped him get dressed, stopped a cab, and headed to St. Vincent’s Hospital, nearby on Seventh Avenue.
I stood close to Jeff as he answered the questions needed for registration and reporting on his medical status. He was listing his past treatments and medications as he extracted from his bag a large container of pills. Suddenly, Jeff raised his eyes to me and said, “You’ll not like this,” and continued his report: “I’m HIV.” I was stunned but remained impassive. I knew that in recent years Jeff had suffered a series of medical problems. He had also gone through a period of depression. But I never suspected he was infected with HIV. I remembered a story he told me years before about a moment when his late mother’s voice had stopped him on the way to the Mineshaft, a sex club later identified as a major site of HIV transmission.
I was in no way uncomfortable with the discovery of having been in close social contact with a man infected with the dreadful virus. I was not embarrassed thinking that the paramedic who took notes of Jeff’s medical history might assume I was the cheated-upon partner in a gay relationship. But I felt betrayed at not being informed by a friend I strongly believed had no secrets hidden from me. I was conscious of the deep disappointment and the notion of failure of the mutual relationship we both experienced before the seemingly disinterested stranger. In Goffman’s terms, one might suggest that shame was not only Jeff’s share (1967: 106): “by the standards of the little social system maintained through the interaction, the discreditor is just as guilty as the person he discredits [through the unexpected revelation in our case].”
I refrained from any verbal comment and busied myself looking around as if curious about the hectic commotion in the crowded emergency room. In the meantime, however, Jeff managed to contact his family doctor on his cell phone and inform him of the situation. As soon as Jeff was put in a bed to await further examination, I left for the apartment to prepare for my long day at the conference. I managed to get to my session at NYU on time. I called Jeff a few hours later and discovered he was on the bus going home after being treated for his pains and discharged; he had been informed it was a nerve infection of some sort with no further complication. I called him again before my departure the next day, and he seemed to have returned to his normal affairs.
I soon got over my surprise, disappointment, and feeling of being deceived by a close friend. When I called Jeff a few weeks later from Tel Aviv, he told me the details of his infection, tracing it back to the late 1990s or even earlier. I did not probe his lack of disclosure about that misfortune, leaving it to be discussed on a future occasion. I came to believe anthropologists sometimes develop a distorted perception of reality, assuming their close informants are uniquely open to them, with no untold stories intentionally left hidden behind.
However, as it soon turned out, another chapter was waiting for me to complete my story. In late November 2008, I returned to New York for a few days en route to the American Anthropological Association meeting in San Francisco. I called Jeff sometime before my departure and made a date to meet him for dinner on my last evening in New York. Looking forward to seeing him, I thought I must find a way to access that untold story, which had left me wary of a relationship I had considered so trustworthy. How could I rely on Jeff’s other stories which I believed truthful? I called him soon after my arrival in New York to confirm our meeting. He told me he would come to my place accompanied by his boyfriend. As much as I wanted to meet Jeff’s new partner, I was disappointed since I assumed that in his presence I would not be able to return to the last disturbing incident of his collapse in my apartment and the HIV revelation.
I was surprised beyond all expectations. Martin, the boyfriend, a young-looking blond man in his late forties (though not a Latino—Jeff’s preferred type), seemed eager to meet me. The two arrived in good spirits, and even before they had seated themselves on the sofa, Jeff announced, “You see here two survivors!” Clearly, he was referring to the last embarrassing story that had taken place in the same apartment. Actually, I already knew that Martin, who had been with a partner for the prior twenty-five years, was also HIV positive. He seemed very relaxed and open and soon became the dominant participant in our long conversation.
In that cozy atmosphere I made my move, asking Jeff directly why he had kept his HIV infection situation secret from me. He and Martin responded almost in unison, claiming that gay men normally keep that information secret even among themselves. Martin was angry in his reaction as he expressed his dismay over the way gay men handle the disclosure of another gay man’s HIV status. He first experienced this disturbing response when he witnessed the enthusiastic reception of a good-looking man who entered a gay bar in their Long Island neighborhood. The man was immediately swamped by admirers. But then somebody must have whispered that the guy was HIV positive; he was abruptly left on his own. At that moment Martin realized what his own position might be in this company. He regretted divulging his medical condition without reservation.
Consequently, when he met Jeff he was too scared to tell him he was HIV positive. He was afraid he might lose a man he loved more than anyone in the previous twenty years (his relationship with his domestic partner was no longer one of loving companionship). He waited a few months before deciding he could no longer deceive Jeff and took the risk of revealing his status. Jeff did not desert him, but to Martin’s surprise, he resisted Martin’s insistence on having protected sex. It took a few more months until one day, Jeff went down on his knees in a dramatic gesture and told Martin he had something important to tell him. Martin could never understand why Jeff had clung to his own secret long after he himself had disclosed his condition.
It was now my turn to ask Jeff why he had kept that secret from Martin, to which he responded: “I was afraid to be left alone!” At that moment he revealed that he had been “afraid” that I would also stay away from him after learning his medical condition. He had been so relieved when I called him from Tel Aviv. It was a moment of relief also on my part. What could better indicate the anxiety and the concealment strategy employed by gay men than what was exposed in the relationship of this pair of lovers? Shame, fear of loneliness and secrecy, among the fundamental existential experiences of gay life (e.g., Love 2007), seem to have shaped Jeff’s treatment of both his lover and his close friend the ethnographer.
As made evident by Jeff and Martin, the individual gay man cannot unconditionally rely on the empathy of the men who share his erotic lifestyle. When the stigmatizing misfortune befalls the unprepared gay man, he is left alone, segregated by his own people. As suggested by Simmel: “The purpose of secrecy is, above all, protection” (1969 [1908]: 345).
Martin continued to complain about the habits of gay men who also conceal their specific sexual preferences. In particular, they would not admit they were “bottoms” (in the sexual act). Instead, they would usually claim they were “flexible” on the ladder of sexual orientation between the extremes (from full bottoms to full tops), depending on the partner they met. Martin was somewhat unusual in his openness, admitting he was a “100% bottom” despite originating from a masculine, macho, small-town in Texas. However, he stressed, it was stigmatizing to admit being a bottom, even though it was so much a part of gay sexuality. The stigma of HIV, he claimed, was also associated with the assumption that its victims were mostly bottoms.
At this moment of intimate revelations, Jeff repeated in detail the history of his health condition and the side effects of the medication regime he had experienced in the foregoing ten years. I could now comprehend the source of the ailments I knew already, the periods of depression, and the role of the therapist Jeff so admired.
Martin could not stay for dinner, which allowed Jeff and me to discuss other personal issues. I also learned, as in past meetings, the story of his current relationship with Martin, which had started as a wild sexual encounter at a party in the country residence Martin shared with his partner of many years. It developed into a complex though difficult threesome. For a long time, Martin had had no sexual relations with his partner who continued to dominate him due to his superior financial position in their comfortable home economics. Jeff, who was afraid of remaining alone, expressed his wish to work out a full conjugal relationship with Martin. But for Martin, to separate from his partner would entail a severe loss of his affluent lifestyle. So we were back at our usual intimate communication, as I also contributed from my own life and work experiences.
On my next visit to New York a few months later, in April 2009, we returned to the same subject, which bonded us more than ever before. As suggested by Lynd, “The very fact that shame is an isolating experience also means that if one can find ways of sharing and communicating it, this communication can bring about particular closeness with other persons and with other groups” (1958: 66). Jeff again planned to stay overnight at my place, an opportunity that also allowed him to meet with Martin (at his nearby town residence) for a few hours on the days of arrival and departure. During our phone conversation I commented jokingly that I hoped he was not planning to drag me again in the early morning to the nearby emergency room.
He arrived at my place in the late afternoon in the company of Martin. They were visibly cheerful, having already spent together a few hours at Martin’s apartment enjoying the absence of his partner. Martin soon left for home, and Jeff complained to me about their situation. He felt he was lonely. Martin appeared unable to terminate his unhappy lifelong partnership with his abusive mate, and Jeff had no other close relatives to rely on. Sadly, he realized he could not depend on close friends either (as related in Chapter 10, Jeff and Martin later moved to Florida together).
That comment, however, reopened a wound of painful memories related to the discovery of his HIV status. Jeff reminisced about the time in 1995 when he volunteered to participate in an epidemiological research project on health conditions affecting gay men; it was then that he was identified as carrying HIV. It was a terrible day. He felt the ground trembling under his feet. He tried to find out how it had happened: who had infected him with that disastrous disease?
Jeff soon discovered the heavy social price of HIV. He started a romantic relationship with a man to whom he felt he should be open about the virus. They had dinner at a Village restaurant when he told him about his medical condition. Without uttering a word the man stood up and left the table. Jeff remained totally devastated and ashamed, feeling he was “a piece of dirt.” He often asked himself, “What have I done to be punished so cruelly? I didn’t drink alcohol, didn’t take drugs—I just wanted to enjoy good ordinary sex!”
Still, only in 1998 was his immune system seriously weakened. He was ordered by his doctor to start a rigorous medication regime. He then endured another unexpected humiliation as he approached a close gay friend, a scientist employed at a pharmaceutical company. In a phone conversation he asked him about the side effects of the medication prescribed to him. Instead of a friendly, soothing piece of advice, he received an irate response: “‘Get used to it!’ he yelled at me.” As Jeff repeated the response that left him shattered, his face was flushed with anger. I was acquainted with this friend and his partner, whom I had met at CBST many years before. It was at their home at a Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) dinner breaking the fast that I had first met Jeff. This couple was often mentioned in our conversations. Yet despite that friend’s heartless reaction, when Jeff moved to Long Island he looked for an apartment in a neighborhood close to their residence. But since that episode Jeff had avoided mentioning his medical state in their presence, aware it was not a welcome subject in their exclusive Long Island neighborhood.
However, another blow awaited him from the same couple a few years later. They were planning to register for domestic partnership, a status granted to gay couples by the state. The medical expert’s partner indicated to Jeff that he would be invited as one of the two witnesses needed for the event at the mayor’s office. Jeff responded enthusiastically to the prospective invitation, which symbolized close friendship as well as a major political achievement for gay people. But as the scheduled date of the event approached, the partner tried to dissuade Jeff from attending, assuming it might oblige him to set out for the occasion too early in the morning. Jeff responded he would stay awake the night before to be on time for that great moment in his friends’ lives.
On the day of the happy occasion, Jeff arrived in good time, wearing his best suit, and waited in the corridor outside the mayor’s office. He now recognized two other acquaintances ready to attend the ceremony. Then, waiting to be called as a witness, he realized to his embarrassment that he was not one of the two witnesses invited to sign for his friends to confirm the legal procedure. Deeply hurt, he spent a few days in bed depressed and humiliated as never before. He felt he was not respectable enough for his “decent” affluent friends. They must have considered him a lower-class, sleazy, irresponsible, HIV-polluting gay man. As he tried to understand why he had not been told about the change of the appointed witnesses, the partner grew angry and asked him to stop nagging him on the subject. With no excuse forthcoming on their part, Jeff abandoned that friendship of many years. It was now a year since he had seen them last.
Jeff now returned to our own story. With tears in his eyes, he told me about the predicament he experienced whenever we got together: “I thought, here is my friend, an anthropologist who writes about the life of gay men. I should have told him about the suffering I go through and that of many others.” But he could not bring himself to confront another loss, which seemed inevitable in view of his observations of the frightened and brutal reactions of many gay men. Naturally, he was relieved when I accepted the embarrassing revelation with no overt sign of panic or disappointment. Moreover, he now suggested helping me connect to other HIV patients among his acquaintances, who might share with me their stories of infection and the ways they had accommodated their unhappy circumstances.
Obviously, I was relieved I had no need to employ my own devices to dig up what seemed to be the full story of Jeff’s HIV affliction and the reasons he had hidden it from his anthropologist friend. But would I have ever gotten to know that story if Jeff had not suffered a health crisis in my presence? Does this impromptu “happy ending” to my story diminish my own uncertainty about the accuracy of ethnographic reports? Have I to reconsider other descriptions and quotes related to Jeff? More generally, how much deception and naïve assumptions about the truth of our informants’ reports enter our scientific writings? On the other hand, are ethnographers as open and honest with their subjects as they expect them to be in return? Do we, in our “non-professional” daily life, always encounter 100 percent truth as presented to us by our family, colleagues, and friends? Simmel warned us long ago about that basic element in social relationships.
The Ethnographer’s Own Gray Behavior
I now turn my introspective observation onto my own assumed trustworthy treatment of my informants. I remember the long period I kept secret from another close informant the fact that I knew his ex-boyfriend. I met Nigel, a black engineer, at a lecture we both attended in 2003 at the LGBT Center in Greenwich Village. We developed a friendship that continues to this day (see Chapter 10). Early in our acquaintance he told me in detail about the painful separation from his boyfriend, a relationship that had lasted some two years. However, about a year later I got together with Peter, a black academic I had met a few years earlier at another Center group, SAGE (see Chapter 3), that I observed for a few months. When we first met in 1999, we developed a strong mutual interest and thereafter met regularly at the Center and other places. However, in spite of my deep empathy with Peter’s position on various issues under discussion, I felt I was unable to accommodate his expectation for a more intimate relationship, which might have eliminated the researcher-informant distance separating us. Not having seen him for a long time, I told Peter about the sites of my present observation engagement. He immediately suggested that I might be familiar with Nigel, his ex-boyfriend. I was amazed by the coincidence of my close acquaintance with these two separated lovers. I answered that I did know him but then made an unwise promise, at Peter’s emphatic request, not to tell Nigel about that discovery.
Peter was still infatuated with Nigel, and at our renewed association, he spoke endlessly about their life together and expressed his longing for his lost love. I soon realized that Peter needed my company as a link to Nigel and as a sort of pseudo-therapeutic treatment. At this stage, it was not my close friendship he wished to regain, although he went out of his way to spark my interest and often invited me to join him at meetings of various social groups. What started as part of my role as ethnographer turned into my new task of analyst of sorts. To my embarrassment, I found myself telling Peter he should forget Nigel, free himself from a hopeless love obsession, and look forward to meeting new partners for a gratifying relationship.
Nigel likewise had often related to me the story of his life with Peter and the reasons that made him give up that relationship. I believed there was no hope of Nigel resuming his relationship with Peter. In fact, he made every effort to avoid any contact with him. I was careful not to divulge to Peter any sensitive information about Nigel. Nevertheless, I deeply regretted my promise to Peter not to tell Nigel about our acquaintance. This was not the common situation of ethnographers avoiding passing any information among subjects they communicate with in the field. Instead, I felt that I was playing the part of a double agent, dividing loyalties and betraying a close friend, talking about him behind his back.
Moreover, I was worried that eventually Nigel might discover my secret anyway, and would accuse me of treachery. I was afraid of losing Nigel’s friendship and trust, particularly as he had become a major link for me to an organization that I was observing at that time. But it seemed too late to inform Nigel about my close acquaintance with Peter. I often imagined Nigel’s angry reaction and my sordid disgrace once he discovered my hidden friendship with Peter.
I wrestled with that discomfort for a few more months. But gradually the idea of maintaining the secret became easier to endure as I was meeting with Peter less frequently. The timing and the trigger of its revelation came unexpectedly, just before I exited a train that Nigel and I had taken back from a Sunday afternoon stroll through a street market. I do not remember the exact reason he mentioned Peter, but I admitted in a neutral tone that I had met him some time earlier at another group meeting. Since Nigel was staying on the train while I was getting off at the next stop, there was no time to discuss my sudden announcement. To my surprise and relief, he did not mention my sudden confession when we met a week later.
I did not delve any deeper into Nigel’s unexpected lack of interest in my acquaintance with Peter. I told him much later that I was pleased he was not concerned about my omission of that piece of information. I assume that he considered my silence part of my discreet manner of avoiding gossip about my local acquaintances. I consoled myself for my poor ethics with a comment made by the late Rachel Eytan, an Israeli writer of whom I am fond. Her major, moving novel, The Fifth Heaven, tells the story of a girl abandoned in orphanages by her divorced parents. At a public lecture, intimating the autobiographical elements in her book, she said, “The author is a traitor who trades in his family secrets.” Without prior planning I had become an invisible partner in, and betrayer of, Nigel’s and Peter’s most intimate life experiences and romantic fantasies.
Discussion
Ethnographers and their subjects, like all human beings, have secrets hidden from close relatives and friends. On occasion they also experience unexpected revelations that their interlocutors and close partners inspire. Our informants might conceal personal or other sensitive information not necessarily because of manipulative calculations or for gain of any kind. As the cases I have presented above tell us, these concealments often result from fear of damaging social relationships and losing the respect, affection, and love of significant others.
I find support for my observations in the work of scholars from various disciplines; an example is Helen Lewis, a psychologist, who in her work focused on shame and analyzed transcripts of psychotherapy sessions (1971). Lewis proposed that shame arises when there is a threat to the social bond. Every person, she argued, fears social disconnection from others. Jeff’s reluctance to expose his HIV status had its roots in his painful experience with close friends. He described his feelings of degradation and fear of being perceived “like dirt.” Jeff’s memories of the traumatic experiences of revealing his medical condition to close friends remind us of the sociologist Lynd’s terms on the circumstances of shame: “Finding oneself in a position of incongruity, not being accepted as the person one thought one was” (1958: 37).
Like many others of his generation of gay men afflicted with HIV and its later development into full-blown AIDS, Jeff was totally unprepared for the physical and social devastation that threatened to ravage his life. It was not in the category of the well-known and somewhat “legitimized” medical epidemics and life-threatening diseases, such as cancer. It was not among the embarrassing but easily treated sexually transmitted diseases that are also shared by heterosexual men and women. It was a shocking realization that one is struck with an incurable, debilitating, and stigmatizing infection. No empathy was in store for HIV/AIDS victims, in contrast to victims of cancer or other life-threatening diseases (e.g., Altman 1986; Bersani 1988).
Jeff recalled that he once visited a medical clinic for treatment of an STD (a syphilis infection). He was struck by the number of good-looking men who must have shared the symptoms. They were treated with penicillin, a simple medical procedure, making the STD seem like a sort of a flu infection. But now he felt he was all alone, treated by the media, the gay community, and even close friends as if stricken by a defiling disease. In his agony he believed that he was seen even in gay society as a sex addict who must have satisfied his erotic drive in sleazy venues and turned himself into a receptacle of tainted fluids. In common with other writers at the peak of the epidemic, Bateson and Goldsby argued that “Homosexuality, extramarital sex, and IV drugs are still stigmatized as antisocial or sinful behavior by many, and the health problems that accompany them are sometimes seen as divine punishment. Moreover, internalized homophobia and low self-esteem make individuals value their own lives and health less, leave them with less hope for the future” (1994: 128).
During the early years of the epidemic many patients developed AIDS-associated Kaposi’s sarcoma, with ugly skin lesions. They made efforts to hide these marks of the disease and often avoided going out in public. The reaction of mainstream and many gay men to the victims of HIV/AIDS was reminiscent of the treatment of lepers, the outcasts of earlier generations. Ralph Bolton, a leading ethnographer of gay life, made a compelling defense of the gay society lifestyle, blamed by both heterosexuals and homosexuals for the spread of AIDS. He commented that “AIDS is about promiscuity. In the voluminous material on this epidemic, promiscuity stands out as the key concept, dominating and linking together diverse genres of thought and discourse about AIDS” (1992: 145). A similar position was taken a few years later by Murray: “Blaming victims is a leitmotif of public discussion of AIDS, derived directly from the view that “promiscuity” is an invariant, defining characteristic of gay men” (1996: 108). He also highlighted “the predisposition to equate the outbreak of unexpected diseases among gay men with anal transmission” (106). This statement implies the guilt of the receptive role (“bottoms”) in gay sexual intercourse, a theme angrily raised during my first meeting with Martin.
The situation of both HIV-positive men and those with full-blown AIDS has greatly changed since the discovery of new drugs that prolong life and erase the visible physical marks of the disease. This has not diminished the binary position and the worries of stigmatization between HIV-positive and HIV-negative men (Munoz 2009: 46–47). Jeff, a survivor of an earlier generation, was still experiencing the trauma of devastation and social stigma that its victims endured. I remember the public excitement caused by the late Mel Rosen, president of CBST, who revealed in Jewish Week (February 3, 1989) his medical condition as an AIDS patient. About the same time, he also announced his disease at a public event at B’nai Jeshurun, a major mainstream Conservative synagogue in New York. It needed a leading figure in the New York State health administration and a man of considerable personal charisma to come out with that stigmatizing secret. Mel Rosen was also endowed with a robust masculine appearance (he was the tallest man at any gathering), which made his appearance contradict popular stereotypes about the looks and demeanor of gay men. His statements, both written and spoken and to both homosexual and heterosexual audiences, displayed a forceful protest, as expressed by Bolton, against the “fact that people do lie about their sexual histories, about their drug habits, and about their HIV status” (1992: 177).
Jeff admired Mel Rosen, but he could not imitate his heroic example. Jeff was masculine in appearance and demeanor, presenting himself as a “top” in the sexual act. His somewhat macho clothing style and his comportment projected the image of an easily identifiable type of gay New Yorker. However, he lacked the extraordinary personal and social capital that made Mel Rosen a quintessential advocate of gay rights and helped him publicly admit his medical condition. Rosen was virtually fearless in that sphere of his personal life. Jeff, however, was afraid of losing my friendship and respect, as well as jeopardizing Martin’s love.
Albeit in a different social situation, I too had my fears. I was afraid of losing Nigel’s friendship, which would have also positioned my work in a new fieldwork site at risk. Without doubt, Jeff’s worries and my own were exaggerated or even completely misguided. But we had no way to predict the reaction of our buddies and mates once they discovered the secrets that threatened to expose us to shame and stigma. Certainly, the comparison covers two very different personal circumstances. Jeff’s revelation about his medical situation came about by default. In contrast, I volunteered the information about my deception. But the pain and the risk of the revelation must have been far more severe for Jeff.
“True Reports”
In retrospect, the unexpected circumstances that prompted the discovery of Jeff’s medical situation offered me a better understanding of the painful existential condition of a close friend and “informant” in the professional terminology. However, it presented an example of the exceptional experiences in daily life that might engage “ordinary” people—researchers and their subjects included (Shokeid 1992). Jeff’s case exposed the risk and the discomfort entailed in concealing sensitive personal information from one’s significant others. It also displayed the emotions and the calculation that might compel the individual to continue concealing his/her secrets. That suppression of personal information appears less threatening and less painful than the potential consequences of confronting close relatives and friends with damaging revelations. The study of sexuality and of the life of a sexual minority presents the ethnographer with additional difficulties. Few other subjects in social life exhibit similar issues of shame and secrecy.
I believe my report reflects on an old tradition in ethnographic writing: narrating a captivating account from the field and its interpretation in terms relevant to broader issues in the anthropological repertoire. My discussion is not intended to introduce yet another convincing proof of the faults of the positivist approach in ethnographic research. We have long since lost the “innocence” of the founders of anthropology. “Have your data right … shut your mouth and open your ears”—these were the farewell warnings and blessings my supervisor, the late Max Gluckman, offered novices on their way to the field. These methodological prescriptions have become part of our professional folklore and the stuff of nostalgia for a lost golden age and its promise of “reliable” ethnographic testimonies. We are convinced there is no “true report” from the field in the legal or scientific meanings of the term.
The case that instigated this thesis serves as a mirror image of the constraints that might hinder the efforts to gain “true” observations and “valid” reports in research conducted by ethnographers who are committed to a rigorous fieldwork methodology.4 However, unlike earlier critiques of the theoretically misconstrued, ethnocentric, or distorted colonialist perception of the native’s behavior, my discourse exposes the human condition of the subjects of the research, and sometimes of the researchers themselves, which might handicap the ethnographer’s mission designed to realize the Malinowskian vision.
In this light, a symposium I attended at the packed annual AAA meeting grand ballroom session, in the late 1980s, dedicated to the Mead-Freeman controversy, seems now a grotesque show. It needed a dead tribal chief and a vengeful maverick to expose the poor quality of field research and the lack of good supervision that might have forestalled a presumably shabby ethnographic work. My supervisors at Manchester, avowed fieldworkers and propagators of the “extended case-method,” never inquired about my field experiences or asked to see my field notes. They were ignorant about my field site, the language, and the local culture, as Franz Boas was equally nescient about Samoa half a century earlier. Yet they could evince some unkind reactions when they felt that the novice anthropologist was displaying personal weaknesses adjusting to his/her designated field site. The “human condition” in its various manifestations was not part of the constraints condoned by the propagators of that research project.
For better or worse, we continue to rely on the anthropologist’s personal integrity, dedication, and creative ethnographic imagination. Despite the doubts often expressed about the quintessential position of fieldwork in the craft of anthropology,5 I assume that the method will stay with us as a major identifying disciplinary marker for many years to come.6 A growing awareness of our subjects’ sensitivities, as well as of our own role in their social and moral world, might enhance the authority of ethnographic work—more particularly when anthropologists move away from the “classic” field sites in Third World countries.
In conclusion, I gained this “educational” revelation through the agency of a close friend who also took on the role of a master teacher in my entry into the field of gay life. As mentioned earlier, Jeff and Martin moved to Florida in 2010; although we call each other occasionally, we may never meet again. I feel like Victor Turner, among my models for ethnographic writings, on the day he parted from Mochuna. We anthropologists owe so much of our professional gains and our emotional well-being to the natives, in an African village or in metropolitan New York, who open their hearts and unlock the gates to let us penetrate their personal and social worlds.
