outness

Sorry I've been AWOL for so long. I missed a day and then I felt like I should do something extra interesting to make up for it and then I just built it up too much and I felt like I couldn't post until I had something real to say. I don't have something super exciting to say today, I just thought I should get off my butt and post anyways.

I've been obsessed with the Associates song Party Fears Two lately and got a copy of Sulk as a birthday gift from my sister. So I've been reading up about them and collecting fun facts like the story that Billy MacKenzie was the subject of the Smiths song William, It Was Really Nothing (which seems to be fairly accepted although explanations--a romantic relationship with Morrissey, a close friendship with him, or just a fan-crush he had on Billy--vary widely). Anyways, I could say more about the Associates but I brought them up because today while I was googling around for references to Morrissey and MacKenzie I came across this blog entry about Mika's unwillingness to go on the record about his sexuality. (Someone had brought MacKenzie up in the comments .)

There are some really interesting points being brought up here, points which I started to bump up against in an entry I wrote a while back. I really don't know what I think about musicians and issues of coming out, or the ethics of talking about musicians' sexualities. Some musicians wear their sexuality on their sleeve. But others are less overt, and obviously that's ok. Still, you hear things. But how do you know if you can trust the things you hear? Even if you could, is it ok to talk about it in a public space like a blog? Obviously I am not the only person who feels weird about this stuff, because when I do web searches for references to musicians' possible queerness their biographies are usually conspicuously low on detail when it comes to their love lives. Just discussing this right now, I keep finding myself being tempted to give examples and then stopping myself, because even bringing up a given artist involves making assertions I'm not sure are ok.

The issues here are pretty much the obvious ones we all associate with coming out. On the one hand, it seems more politically responsible for musicians to be out. Hiding your queerness certainly doesn't seem helpful. But is it really fair for us to expect this? How much can we expect--how out is out? If you don't hide it but don't go out of your way to proclaim it, then unless you are pretty famous a lot of people may just not notice. It seems unfair that this burden of self-disclosure falls on queer artists and not on straight ones. This is a particularly loaded issue for women musicians, who sometimes struggle to be taken seriously as good songwriters, skilled players, etc. instead of being defined in terms of their personalities and personal lives alone.

These are all tough questions and the whole issue is complicated by them. In the meantime there seems to be a sort of informal consensus on how we do things. If a performer seems to be banking on some sort of queer persona (almost always a campy male) we are allowed to discuss his sexuality a bit. If they have obvious lyrical references or other clear statements it can be discussed. Otherwise, there seems to be a pretty strong taboo against naming the queer sexualities of musicians. If you can find references they are often from queer web spaces, on lists of gay/lesbian/bi artists sort of like those lists of vegan celebrities you find on sites about vegetarianism. It seems as though it's more ok to talk about it if you are queer (and out) than if you're straight, but just a bit more. Despite this reluctance to talk about the issue, when the subject of an alleged closeted queer comes up, most people seem a bit pissed off at the person for not being out. But if someone seemed to imply queerness and then goes on the record as straight (or gives some sort of watered down Brett Anderson answer like "I'm kind of bi but I've never done anything about it") or pulls an Ani DiFranco and settles down into a straight marriage after building a queer audience based on clear or implied statements of homo- or at least bi-sexuality, these things piss off the public as well.

It does seem as though having a certain kind of queer identity as a musician could be constricting in a way that coming out as a private individual is not. I mean, it could be constricting when it comes to the way you make music and present that music to the public. Though as in the case of a Brett Anderson or an Ani DiFranco, hinting at or explicitly identifying with some degree of queerness could also be a way of marketing yourself, or to use a less loaded term, presenting yourself to potential audiences.

As usual I seem to be raising more questions than I am answering and bringing up new topics before I feel like I've fully addressed earlier ones. Mostly I'm just really torn about the whole thing. As someone who cares about the representation of people with different sexual orientations in music, it would be nice to know where different musicians stand and to be able to talk about it publicly. But for the same reason I don't want to see people get pigeonholed or ghettoized, and even if maximum outness were undoubtedly for the best, I don't think I have the right to demand it of anybody. I don't know, I'm still thinking about all of this, but I would love to hear anything people have to say on the subject.