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Chapter One Boys' Ow n Storie s an d New Spelling s o f M y Name : Coming Ou t an d Othe r Myths o f Quee r Positionalit y Myths o f Quee r Positionalit y In The Beautiful Room Is Empty, Edmun d White' s nameles s narrato r envisions a day when ga y people will claim the right to define themselves : "Then I caugh t mysel f foolishl y imaginin g tha t gay s migh t someda y constitute a community rathe r tha n a diagnosis" (226) . This exhilaratin g thought come s to White's protagonist a s he finds himsel f i n the middle of an uprising a t the Stonewal l Inn Bar in Greenwich Villag e on the night of June 27 , 1969. Drawing o n Civi l Right s rhetoric , th e protagonis t an d hi s friends reclai m an d repositio n thei r ow n experience s wit h chant s suc h a s "Gay is good" and "We're the Pink Panthers" (226).2 Although White' s accoun t i s fictional , th e riot s outsid e th e Stonewal l Inn are generally considered the beginning of the contemporary gay liberation movement . The y di d indee d ushe r i n a decad e o f redefinitio n b y lesbian an d ga y communities . Withi n weeks , th e Ga y Liberatio n Fron t (GLF) had formed, employin g the slogan "Ou t o f the Closet s and into th e Streets!" Within a year, the Radicalesbians, influenced b y both gay liberation an d th e women' s movement , ha d presente d feminist s wit h th e "woman-identified woman, " a positio n tha t the y hope d woul d facilitat e the formatio n o f challenging , politicize d coalition s amon g women . B y 1974, activists had successfully remove d homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's (APA's ) list of mental disorders. In short, the new names and identities embraced by White's protagonist and his friends wer e high on the agenda for early gay liberationists.2 These newl y availabl e ga y an d lesbia n identitie s wer e claime d an d 32 proclaimed through the act of "coming out/' This act provided lesbians and gay me n wit h position s tha t coul d serv e a s startin g point s fo r th e radica l political action the early gay liberationists believed was necessary to reconfigure th e system s o f capitalis m an d patriarch y responsibl e fo r ga y an d lesbian oppression . Indeed , th e ver y sloga n o f th e ga y liberationist s (an d the titl e o f a 197 2 essa y b y Alle n Young) , "Ou t o f th e Closets, int o th e Streets/' suggest s no t simpl y tha t on e claim s a positio n ("ou t o f th e closet") bu t tha t on e move s fro m tha t positio n t o effec t radica l socia l change. Youn g writes , "O f course , w e wan t t o 'com e out / . . . Bu t th e movement fo r a ne w definitio n o f sexualit y doe s not , an d cannot , en d there. . . . The revolutionary goal s of gay liberation, including the elimina tion of capitalism, imperialism and racism, are premised on the termination of the system of male supremacy" (10) . Similarly, "woman-identification, " according t o th e Radicalesbians , coul d b e " develop [ed] wit h referenc e t o ourselves, and not in relation to men. This consciousness is the revolution ary forc e fro m whic h al l els e will follow " (Radicalesbians , 176) . Lik e th e identity position s (pro)claime d b y al l the so-calle d ne w social movements , the identities into which ga y and lesbian activist s "cam e out" were collective identitie s mean t t o generat e radica l socia l chang e base d o n ne w an d different way s of understanding the world.3 Coming ou t generally doe s not hav e the sam e radical edge for th...

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