Gay Voluntary Associations in New York: Public Sharing and Private Lives by Moshe Shokeid (review)

In Gay Voluntary Associations in New York: Public Sharing and Private Lives, Moshe Shokeid examines the participation of gay urban men in a wide variety of social, sexual, and religious groups that meet at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in the West Village (the Center). These include a senior’s group, a support group for sexual compulsives, a bisexual social circle, an interracial gay men’s association, a group of “Gentle Men,” and a series of gay religious congregations. Drawing upon research conducted over more than two decades, Shokeid provides a focused ethnographic account of these intertwined individuals and groups within the Center and, in doing so, sheds new light on modern views of intimacy—especially the notion of affective solidarity and related phenomena surrounding the “spontaneous fraternity” (8) that is built when strangers share the private details of their inner lives with one another.

Shokeid is a British-trained Israeli anthropologist who is neither American-born nor gay. This “outsider” status allows him to examine events at the Center in a straightforward and critical manner. Although Shokeid is highly knowledgeable of American LGBT communities (as demonstrated by his previous monograph, A Gay Synagogue in New York [2002]), he is nonetheless, in many ways, a cultural foreigner. This only adds to the appeal of the book in that so much of what has been written about gay cultures in past decades has been from an insider’s perspective. Shokeid’s etic position is not only refreshing, it also allows him to notice behaviors and interactions that someone who has fully internalized gay culture might overlook.

Shokeid opens Chapter 1 with a brief review of the study of sexuality within anthropology in order to set the stage for his own encounters with various institutions, organizations, and individuals within New York’s gay communities. He focuses on issues surrounding the positionality of the ethnographer, especially in relation to the observation and analysis of sexuality within anthropology. He lays out the history of what he refers to as “hidden” and “active” observers (13–19) in a segue into an engaging discussion of the struggles surrounding the ethics of anthropologists participating in sexual activities while in the field. In relating his own experiences and the complex issues that he confronted in his study of gay communities, Shokeid reveals a vulnerability that many ethnographers are acquainted with, but of which few write. This intimate perspective continues into Chapter 2 with a discussion of the multiple relationships one builds during fieldwork, especially the deep friendships that are made possible by long-term immersion within a given community. Of particular interest here is the slippage among the subjectivities of ethnographer, participant, confidant, and friend that Shokeid experiences. Friendships are built, secrets are shared, deceptions occur, and disappointments are felt—leading to a number of personal and ethical dilemmas. This personal involvement and investment that Shokeid has in the communities he studies becomes evident and adds a much-welcomed humanity—missing from much contemporary ethnography—to his narrative.

The ethnographic portion of the text is composed of six substantive chapters covering several social and sexual associations that meet at the Center. Chapter 3 sketches a gay senior’s group—the description and discussion of which serves as a template for the groups presented in the chapters that follow. He describes the group’s weekly meetings as “oral diary sessions, filled out and expanded with the help of questions and comments raised by sympathetic listeners” (50) with a dominant theme of finding “Mr. Right.” Chapter 4 deals with meetings of Sexual Compulsives Anonymous (SCA)—a 12-step group designed to help those seeking respite from excessive sexual activity. In this chapter, Shokheid raises issues of ethics and methodology; because of the confidential nature of SCA meetings, he was unable to record or take notes on the proceedings and so had to reconstruct them from memory. Perhaps, more significantly, the issue of transparency arises when a...