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An Ethos of Lesbian and Gay Existence

POLITICS INVOLVES A "PROBLEMATIZATION" or a calling into question of power relations in society by a social movement, through transformation of techniques that are used to govern people -exercising and submitting to power relations, and a production of knowledge (writing, reflection, scientific or other statements that make claims to truth) about the meaning of this phenomenon as political.1 In this essay, I primarily analyze one aspect of this "political problematization," the production of knowledge, by the contemporary lesbian and gay movement. However, the analysis will deal by implication with the other components of politicization, for the political knowledge that the movement is producing is both constitutive of and an expression of what I call an ethos of lesbian and gay existence. Thus the knowledge produced through this ethos at once gives meaning to lesbian and gay existence as political and is a form and site of resistance within hegemonic relationships of power of contemporary society; as such, it influences them. I begin by arguing that lesbian and gay existence should be conceived as an ethos rather than as a sexual preference or orientation, as a life-style, or primarily in collectivist terms, as a subculture, or even as a community. While lesbian and gay existence may include some elements of these conceptualizations, "ethos" is a more encompassing formulation, better suited for understanding lesbian and gay existence politically. I argue that the key to understanding ethos is through the lesbian and gay conceptualization of "coming out," understood as a process of becoming in which the individual enters into a field of relationships that constitute the lesbian and gay commu-