Importancia de la música en Educación Primaria

Henning Bech is Professor of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Among his English language publications are When Men Meet: Homosexuality and Modernity (1997: Cambridge: Polity Press; and Chicago: University of Chicago Press) and “Report From A Rotten State: ‘Marriage’ and ‘Homosexuality’ in ‘Denmark”’, in K. Plummer (ed.), Modern Homosexualities: Fragments of Lesbian and Gay Experiences (1992: London and New York: Routledge).

Do lesbians and gays in Denmark view homosexuality as an ethnic identity as many do in America?

Until quite recently, Denmark was ethnically very homogeneous, so there is no tradition of establishing identities and groups in terms of ethnicity. Apart from that, you will find pretty much the same range of identity constructions in Denmark as in the rest of Western Europe, Australia, and North America. What is specifically interesting about Denmark is the trend towards the disappearance of all kinds of homosexual, gay, lesbian, and queer identities. Many people with strong same-sex sexual interests are beginning to think and speak of themselves in terms of taste. Thus, they do not see themselves as possessing a gay, lesbian, or queer identity. Instead, they speak of having a taste or a sexual preference, like someone may have a preference for classical music, football, or vegetarian food.

Is this development specific to Denmark?

In many parts of the Northwestern world (including, as usual, Australia and New Zealand), you will find trends towards the disappearance of identities associated with same-sex sexuality. Such identities tend to appear when the lives of homosexuals are really different from those of heterosexuals, especially if homosexuals are oppressed and struggle to claim a normal or natural identity. Homosexual identities would tend to disappear if there was no longer much need for legitimation, or if their lives no longer differed very much from other people’s. But the way in which disappearance takes place is different in different contexts.

In the US, there is a trend towards “normalization.” For many Americans with same- sex interests, their lives are not structured by the need to conceal, and are not dominated by shame, guilt, and fear. Instead, they have integrated their homosexuality into their conventional social worlds in ways that differentiate according to the level of openness they consider appropriate and desire. In some European countries, there are trends toward a somewhat different kind of “normalization.” Here, same-sex “sexual” desires and

practices are increasingly being considered socially and publicly legitimate, provided they are constructed in accordance with conventional norms of conduct. Sweden would be the exemplary case. In other European contexts, such as in Denmark, the “disappearance” of the homosexual involves a different pattern. Here, lifestyles, character traits, and outlooks among most Danes are increasingly looking like those that have been characteristic of the homosexual.

Could you explain this Danish “disappearance of the homosexual” in greater detail? Since the 1960s, there has been a comprehensive equalizing of the life conditions of “heterosexuals” and “homosexuals”. Both groups, and this is true for both women and men, have developed similar lifestyles. Thus heterosexuals, too, understand that marriage and the nuclear family are not necessarily the only choice; they, too, get divorced and establish different types of intimate arrangements and families. They, too, experience promiscuity and serial monogamy, and establish networks of friends as a supplement or an alternative to family networks. They, too, enjoy the pleasures of anal or oral sexuality – or enjoy watching them on public TV. They, too, experience gender as more of a choice or site of play rather than as natural and fixed. In short: any feature that you might consider to be specifically homosexual is becoming increasingly common among all Danes.

Thus, the homosexual disappears, but in a specific way. Not primarily by becoming like heterosexuals or “integrated” and “normalized.” Rather the opposite. What was specifically homosexual, or might be imagined to be so, disappears in the sense that all Danes, regardless of sexual preference, are adopting similar lifestyles and intimate arrangements. In this sense we may speak of a “homo-genizing” of ways of life. Consequently, in many regards it is perhaps more adequate to speak of the disappearance of the heterosexual as a specifically socio-cultural creature, rather than of the homosexual. What remains of the divide is merely a matter of sexual or erotic taste, and this is something entirely different from the idea of the homosexual as a separate human type or identity. Thus, we are witnessing the end of the homosexual.

Why is this development so prominent in Denmark?

One important factor is that women entered the labour market in vast numbers during the 1960s and continue to stay there now. Women’s participation in the labour force almost equals that of men – and notably, throughout their lives. Moreover, the vast majority of women who work hold full-time jobs. Thus, they are accustomed to earning their own money and having a life outside the home.

Further, the Danish welfare state plays an influential role. If people are guaranteed an acceptable level of financial and social security, they will not fear living outside the “traditional” family and experimenting with their lifestyle. In Denmark, the economic foundation for living outside traditional family and gender structures is established through the development of a relatively prosperous economy with high rates of employment, high salaries, as well as a high level of state-guaranteed support for those out of work: unemployment benefits, old age benefits, and other kinds of support. Importantly, these benefits are given to the individual, and not to the family (or to the

male “head” of the family). Moreover, there is a highly developed, publicly organized system of institutions for child-care. It is by now almost a commonplace among feminist researchers that the welfare state is “women-friendly.” It improves the conditions for women’s autonomy. Also, the Danish political culture is open to women’s participation. Obviously, there is no developed welfare state in the US.

A further factor is the strong cultural ideology of “frisind.” The term literally means “free mind” or “free spirit.” It does not simply denote permissiveness, but enlightened tolerance in matters of personal conduct, combined with a social commitment to establishing the material, social, and educational conditions for individuals to think and live as they prefer. Obviously, ideals do not always correspond to realities; however, it is an ideology that is widely supported by all major groups in Denmark. This national ideology encourages individuals and groups to think and live as they wish. It does not specify norms for how people should live.

Is there no suppression in Denmark?

Certainly there is suppression. Denmark is far from being an ideal society in relation to sexuality and gender. There are still homophobia and heterosexism. However, there is comparatively little of it. In the mass media, there is hardly any negative mention of homosexuals. A population survey in 1999 showed that only 7 percent of those surveyed indicated a strong aversion to homosexuals. This figure may already be outdated. Since then, a Minister of State has been invited to the Royal New Year Ball with his male partner; the Prime Minister of the “Conservative” government has publicly announced that he is personally in favour of church weddings for homosexual couples; and a Parliamentary spokeswoman for what many consider to be the most reactionary, almost “fascist,” party lives openly in a registered partnership.

Some might think that “registered partnership,” or homosexual marriage, means that gays are imitating straights. What’s your view?

I know this is how many Americans, and also some Europeans, think. They argue that lesbians and gay men may be tolerated, but only if they live in accordance with heteronormative standards. Gays that live differently are exposed to raging homophobia. However, registered partnership was introduced in Denmark in 1989 against the backdrop of changes in the social meaning of marriage and the family. For most Danes today, entering a marriage is no longer associated with convictions of lifelong duration, monogamy and the strict separation of tasks and authority along gender lines.

But aren’t there gay institutions like in the US?

People from abroad sometimes ask me, “Well, are there no gay bars left then?” Of course there are. Gays and lesbians (to use these terms as shorthand) still go to gay and lesbian bars, discos, parks, porn cinemas, bathhouses, restaurants, cafés and the like. However, the meaning of these places is changing as the homosexual disappears and is superseded by a culture of sexual taste. People come together for the sake of cultivating a taste, pursuing an erotic preference, or to enjoy the proximity and warmth of being together.

Indeed gay and lesbian life is still going on in its variety. Accordingly, we may conclude that the introduction of registered partnership has not led all gays and lesbians simply to imitate some middle-class straight model.

Some Americans have argued that allowing gays and lesbians to marry will cause the decline of or weaken the family because they will introduce promiscuous lifestyles and gender distress. What’s your view?

I realize that my own work on the introduction of registered partnerships in Denmark has in fact been invoked by the US right wing to support this argument – for instance by Stanley Kurtz of the influential conservative think tank “The Hoover Institution” at Stanford University. So let me be very clear on this: There is nothing in my work that would support this kind of argument. Homosexuals did not seduce heterosexuals to take over homosexual lifestyles. And homosexual marriage is not the cause of changes within the family – rather, such changes are part of the backdrop permitting the introduction of registered partnership. Besides, I do not agree with the association by US conservatives of homosexuality with the moral weakening of the family. Such a thing occurs when people stay together in marriages that do not work, transforming the home into hell for each other and the children; and where people are forced to live according to roles and rules that restrict them unnecessarily. Perhaps US conservatives should rather concentrate on the role of racism, poverty, and the lack of social security to understand real challenges to the wellbeing of US citizens.

Are there any major challenges facing lesbians and gay men in Denmark?

The influential National Organization for Gays and Lesbians (founded in 1948) has concentrated on combating legal discrimination. There are still a few discriminatory laws. For instance, doctors are not allowed to assist a woman at insemination, if she is not married to a man or lives in a “marriage-like” relation with a man. Yet this is not simply the result of homophobia or heterosexism. The support for this legislation has to do with fantasies about the importance of fathers; and in their contemporary Danish version, these fantasies are related to women’s wishes of living a life outside the home and their reluctance to give up power over it.

To fight legal discrimination is important work. However, there is reason to expect that what remains of discriminatory laws will disappear within a few years. Other agendas are coming to the fore.

Journalists often contact me and ask one of three questions. First: should we not introduce legislation on “hate crimes” like they have in the USA? I reply that this would not be wise. There are rather few assaults on homosexuals in Denmark, and of those many – perhaps most – of them are committed by immigrants with a Moslem cultural background. Moreover, violent assaults are punishable anyway. In the Danish context, introducing “hate crimes” may well help create an unnecessary atmosphere of fear that is hardly beneficial to those with same-sex sexual interests. And in a social climate where the Danes are rapidly developing ever less negative attitudes, what would be the political gain of depicting them as generally being liable to hate crimes?

Journalists will also ask: shouldn’t we demand the state to investigate if homosexuals are overrepresented among suicides as a result of homophobia? However, there is no reason to expect any overrepresentation – unless, as in Norway, all this lamentation about suicides conjures up so much anxiety for those “coming out” that they might as well commit suicide immediately.

Journalists and others will also ask: what about homophobia in the world of sport? But maybe what we are finding here is often something else: perhaps some version of what I have called “absent homosexuality” – where same-sex sexual wishes are conjured up and at the same time denied. Moreover, must all erotic and sexual interests among men, or among women, publicly declare themselves to be homosexual? Is some men’s reluctance to physical homosexuality perhaps a way of protecting intense, possibly also intensely erotic, male desires that are guarded in order to avoid a simplifying labelling as “homosexual”? And how often are we, in the telemediated world of sports and elsewhere, witnessing what I call the “post-homosexual sexualization” of men for men and of women for women – now that no shadow can fall over these relations from the vanishing homosexual? Perhaps it is worth investigating such relations in the world of sport empirically and without in advance locking oneself up within the optics of homophobia? So gay, lesbian and queer politics are irrelevant in Denmark?

From the viewpoint of my analyses, it would seem adequate and fruitful to develop a kind of politics (or non-politics) of disappearing homosexuality, disappearing homophobia, disappearing heteronormativity. This would imply maxims such as the following ones. 1 Say nothing. Example: You are invited to participate in a television programme

intended to debate the topic of homosexuality. As your opponent they have managed to excavate some fundamentalist priest from the depths of Jutland. So: say nothing, i.e. do not participate in the television programme. In a situation of an advanced trend towards the disappearance of the homosexual, old ideologies of homosexuality (including hostile ideologies) only survive by being revived through contradiction. 2 Praise the heterosexuals for being so nice, enlightened and welcoming. In a situation of

an advanced trend towards the disappearance of the homosexual there is no reason to use the whip. Progress is advanced by encouragement.

3 Don’t say the usual. Do not repeat the old narratives from the history of homosexual identity constructions. The arguments that gays and lesbians are inherently respectable or revolutionary lose credibility as the majority of the population is living in ways that are just as “alternative”, or at least would not reject the idea that they might come up with the idea of doing so. Above all, the argument that homosexuals are different by nature is problematic. First, no one knows whether homosexual preference comes from nature, childhood, heaven, or joy. Second, the argument on nature is a double- edged sword. It is adduced with the hope that the reference to nature would establish the right to practice same-sex pleasure and love. However, trying to identify a homosexual “nature” does not at all prevent science and society from wanting to change that nature and eradicate the homosexual – by way of brain surgery, castration, hormonal treatment, psychoanalysis, and so on.

4 Say something different. Invent new stories; search through the history of scholarship and science in order to wheedle elements of other truths out of it; create new horizons

for concrete investigations. Apart from stories, in themselves relieving, of vanishing disparities and with a happy end, one might envisage histories/herstories of

coquetterie, flirtation, and seduction; narratives of wonderful infatuations with hairy legs; and tales of erotic tastes, of jointly cultivating the esthetics connected with them and delighting in the very proximity and warmth of thus being together. In this respect it is certainly possible to gain inspiration also from those dimensions of American queer scholarship that point beyond the horizon of specific US circumstances.

Finally, I must emphasize that my considerations on politics were sketched from the perspective of the disappearance of the homosexual. In the everyday world we are still some distance away from this happy end – and that goes for Denmark too. Moreover, moralism has a way of always being poised, ready to jump in and condemn sexual pleasures as being “abnormal.” In this situation it is no doubt necessary to use a variety of political arguments and tools – those we know from the history of homosexual identity construction as well as the kind of “non-politics” I outlined above.

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The bisexual menace revisited: or, shaking