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  • Layers of Homonormativity in Kevin Spacey’s Coming-Out Scandal
  • Shinsuke Eguchi (bio)

“Coming out of the closet” serves as the ultimate symbol and performance of (homo)sexual self-discovery and self-fulfillment in the contemporary age of queer liberalism—incorporating certain gays and lesbians into the mainstream public sphere.1 As Jeffery Q. McCune, Jr. has suggested, the closet is constructed as a space of shame, self-torture, dishonesty, and fear today.2 Thus, when celebrities such as actors, singers, athletes, and media personalities publicly come out of the closet, media and social media reactions to such performances are generally welcoming and celebratory. For example, former President Barack Obama issued positive statements when two black male athletes, Jason Collins and Michael Sam, came out of the closet during his presidency. Quite the opposite, however, Kevin Spacey’s recent coming out of the closet has invited negative reactions from the public.

On October 29, 2017, Spacey wrote on Twitter, “As those closest to me know, in my life I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man.” This statement may sound appealing to some audiences if they are not aware of the context in which Spacey announced his gay male identity. However, this coming out followed Spacey’s apologia for Anthony Rapp’s allegation that Spacey had made a nonconsensual sexual advancement toward Rapp when he was fourteen years old. Consequently, according to Daniel Victor writing for the New York Times, some people who might have previously supported Spacey when Rapp first made the accusation even “saw his coming out story as [End Page 98] an intentional distraction from the accusation and a damaging conflation of homosexuality and pedophilia.”3 Since then, more men have stepped forward to accuse Spacey of sexual harassment, assault, or misconduct toward them.4

After having observed such reports, I argue that Spacey’s coming out scandal displays layers of homonormativity intersecting whiteness and patriarchy. By homonormativity, I mean “a formation complicit with and invited into the bio-political valorization of life in its inhabitation and reproduction of heteronormative norms.”5 Homonormativity is always already heteronormative because, by coming out, gay men publicly and personally pursue a heterosexual standard life path. In particular, I argue that the homonormative politics of assimilation, which secure cisgender gay and lesbian identities into the heterosexually oriented lifespan, characterize Spacey as a “bad” kind of gay man who does not adhere to these norms. To be clear, however, to critique this assimilative timeline is not to support the conflation of homosexuality with pedophilia and/or sexual misconduct. Still, Spacey’s public relation strategy for coming out mirrors the politics of homonormative nationalism, or homonationalism. This paradigm offers an imperialist representation of the United States as the sexually exceptional nation-state compared to the rest of the world, particularly non-Western nations. By coming out, Spacey makes him appear that he wants to be honest with his same-sex desire as he is located in a nation of sexual freedom. At the same time, white male privileges are working for Spacey dealing with his scandal. I will now offer more thorough consideration of these themes: assimilation, homonationalism, and white male privilege.

Assimilation

Recent assimilations of gay and lesbian citizens into the American nation-state are rooted in the politics of respectability. Especially after same-sex marriage has been federally legalized, gays and lesbians are now expected to be just like heterosexuals. As Elizabeth Bell argues, marriage is a social and performative institution of patriarchy reconstituting the appropriateness of good sex as monogamous, coupled, and private.6 Such a hetero-patriarchal idea also has associations with expectations about same-generation relationships and procreation, as well as refraining from pornography and prostitution.7 In consequence, performing such good sexual norms becomes a key for gays and lesbians to get respected by heterosexuals. In this context, Spacey’s coming out brings allegedly unacceptable and undesirable sides of male homosexuality to the fore.

Cross-generational forms of male same-sex desire, attraction, and relationality have historically existed across cultures. For example, Mark J...

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