What do you think?
Rate this book
Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences
Although acceptance of difference is on the rise in America, it’s the rare gay or lesbian person who has not been demeaned because of his or her sexual orientation, and this experience usually starts at home, among family members.
Whether they are excluded from family love and approval, expected to accept second-class status for life, ignored by mainstream arts and entertainment, or abandoned when intervention would make all the difference, gay people are routinely subjected to forms of psychological and physical abuse unknown to many straight Americans.
“Familial homophobia,” as prizewinning writer and professor Sarah Schulman calls it, is a phenomenon that until now has not had a name but that is very much a part of life for the LGBT community. In the same way that Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will transformed our understanding of rape by moving the stigma from the victim to the perpetrator, Schulman’s Ties That Bind calls on us to recognize familial homophobia. She invites us to understand it not as a personal problem but a widespread cultural crisis. She challenges us to take up our responsibilities to intervene without violating families, community, and the state. With devastating examples, Schulman clarifies how abusive treatment of homosexuals at home enables abusive treatment of homosexuals in other relationships as well as in society at large.
Ambitious, original, and deeply important, Schulman’s book draws on her own experiences, her research, and her activism to probe this complex issue—still very much with us at the start of the twenty-first century—and to articulate a vision for a more accepting world.
Whether they are excluded from family love and approval, expected to accept second-class status for life, ignored by mainstream arts and entertainment, or abandoned when intervention would make all the difference, gay people are routinely subjected to forms of psychological and physical abuse unknown to many straight Americans.
“Familial homophobia,” as prizewinning writer and professor Sarah Schulman calls it, is a phenomenon that until now has not had a name but that is very much a part of life for the LGBT community. In the same way that Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will transformed our understanding of rape by moving the stigma from the victim to the perpetrator, Schulman’s Ties That Bind calls on us to recognize familial homophobia. She invites us to understand it not as a personal problem but a widespread cultural crisis. She challenges us to take up our responsibilities to intervene without violating families, community, and the state. With devastating examples, Schulman clarifies how abusive treatment of homosexuals at home enables abusive treatment of homosexuals in other relationships as well as in society at large.
Ambitious, original, and deeply important, Schulman’s book draws on her own experiences, her research, and her activism to probe this complex issue—still very much with us at the start of the twenty-first century—and to articulate a vision for a more accepting world.
171 pages, Hardcover
First published September 15, 2009
28 people are currently reading
2025 people want to read
About the author
Sarah Schulman
58 books784 followersSarah Schulman is a longtime AIDS and queer activist, and a cofounder of the MIX Festival and the ACT UP Oral History Project. She is a playwright and the author of seventeen books, including the novels The Mere Future, Shimmer, Rat Bohemia, After Delores, and People in Trouble, as well as nonfiction works such as The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life during the Reagan/Bush Years, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, and Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America. She is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at The City University of New York, College of Staten Island.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
January 22, 2025
I really wanted to like this book. As a lesbian with a complicated relationship to my own often homophobic family, I was hoping that this would be a book with actual sociological research backed up by facts about familial homophobia, it's causes and effects. Instead, this book is about 170 pages of anecdotal psychoanalysis about the author's own confusing relationship to her family, therapists, and the publishing world. I found many of her generalizations overblown and flat out false. I took much exception to the ways that she described gay parents as acquiring children to foster social acceptance. And I found her discussion of the concept of "no" and it's connection to sexual power to be confusing and very nearly supportive of rape and sexual assault. I don't think this was her intention, or at least I hope it wasn't. I'm very disappointed, because once in a while Schulman said something that really spoke to my own experience, like this:
"Are homophobic family members evil? Well, not if you believe that evil does not have a human face. Yes, the people who won't take responsibility for their dying gay son, won't invite their lesbian sister to their wedding, won't allow their gay cousin to hold their child, won't praise their gay co-worker, won't send their gay son a birthday card, vote for anti-gay politicians, give money to a homophobic church, love films that diminish gay people- those people may have all kinds of great attributes. you may love them. They may have taken you fishing when you were six or made you a quilt for Christmas or had a great sense of humor or looked just like you. That is what evil looks like. Evil knows great old songs, can be weak and vulnerable, can love you, can feed the hungry, can pick out a book because they were thinking of you. Evil can have Alzheimer's. Familial homophobia is deeply human, as all evil is the product of human imagination." -page 59
And then it goes nowhere, and makes me angry because it goes nowhere. Schulman ends the book in her conclusion with a list of bullet points describing criticism of her book that she finds unfair. I feel that if you must end a book that way, it is a testimony to the weakness of your own writing. It's funny, because earlier she remarks that a homophobic and sexist publisher once told her that she can't write. She holds this up as an example of unchecked homophobia. I hate to say that I think that publisher may have actually just been honest. I don't think she's a good writer. I hope that's the case. Otherwise she is making a series of points that I fundamentally disagree with, using no actual research or references to back up her argument. And in this case, where those points somehow end up reinforcing dominant discourse supporting rape culture, I think that is more dangerous than bad writing.
"Are homophobic family members evil? Well, not if you believe that evil does not have a human face. Yes, the people who won't take responsibility for their dying gay son, won't invite their lesbian sister to their wedding, won't allow their gay cousin to hold their child, won't praise their gay co-worker, won't send their gay son a birthday card, vote for anti-gay politicians, give money to a homophobic church, love films that diminish gay people- those people may have all kinds of great attributes. you may love them. They may have taken you fishing when you were six or made you a quilt for Christmas or had a great sense of humor or looked just like you. That is what evil looks like. Evil knows great old songs, can be weak and vulnerable, can love you, can feed the hungry, can pick out a book because they were thinking of you. Evil can have Alzheimer's. Familial homophobia is deeply human, as all evil is the product of human imagination." -page 59
And then it goes nowhere, and makes me angry because it goes nowhere. Schulman ends the book in her conclusion with a list of bullet points describing criticism of her book that she finds unfair. I feel that if you must end a book that way, it is a testimony to the weakness of your own writing. It's funny, because earlier she remarks that a homophobic and sexist publisher once told her that she can't write. She holds this up as an example of unchecked homophobia. I hate to say that I think that publisher may have actually just been honest. I don't think she's a good writer. I hope that's the case. Otherwise she is making a series of points that I fundamentally disagree with, using no actual research or references to back up her argument. And in this case, where those points somehow end up reinforcing dominant discourse supporting rape culture, I think that is more dangerous than bad writing.
February 10, 2015
This whole book is simultaneously so personal and so vague that, while it presented ideas in new ways and made me think (even while frustrating me entirely), I was ultimately left dissatisfied. Part of that is because I expected something different than I got, but part of it is just judging on what was really there. I wanted to like this, but after a while it got to be so frustrating that I decided to start taking notes for my eventual Goodreads review as I went. So what follows will probably be disjointed and repetitive. And long.
So, I have long thought that people who cannot embrace the fact that their kid might very well be queer should not be having kids.
People get to choose who they associate with, however. Familial shunning based on sexual orientation is wrong. Societal shunning based on race/gender/sexuality/etc, also wrong. But while these things should be regulated at the macro level, at the individual level there will always be reasons why one person and another person need to separate from one another. And sometimes they will not be exactly pretty. Some of these things should be dealt with legally (such as allowing visitation/custody rights to non-biological lesbian parents, so long as they're not abusive). But at various points when Shulman is listing her grievances, it seems like she has unreasonable expectations of others in her life. Her therapists don't sound great. But even if they were, I'm not sure they could have gotten through to a family as entrenched in homophobia as hers. I guess maybe it seems to me that she's trying to grab at things that were never really there?
That's not to say that the "create your own family" 'solution' IS a solution, because it isn't. I don't know if that's homophobia's fault, though, or if that's our generally greedy society, or if that's human nature. But I mostly agree there. I also agree about the nature of generational trauma.
The "third party mediator"--that I partially agree with. I think in a "shunning" situation, yes, third parties can be helpful to gather around the person being "shunned" by one specific other person and let them know they are not alone. But often the one doing the shunning is in just as much pain as the shunner. Unless they're actually deriving sadistic pleasure, what is the point in forcing them to be in contact with someone they really don't want to see? Maybe it is a bit violent, sometimes. Especially considering that DV is underreported and emotional/psychological abuse (basically any type that isn't physical) is often hidden in public. Dangerous territory there.
(And I can throw the pathos on too: as someone whose "friends" tried to make me listen to my abusive first boyfriend's side and sympathize with him after I dumped him, I find a lot of this writing highly uncomfortable.)
And then she directly mentions feminists and rape, conflating a whole bunch of unrelated concepts, making everything about her (again), and concluding with "just because someone says no doesn't mean we have to listen." And I AGREE that equating other things with rape is unhelpful! But she finds this counterargument that is based in anti-rape activism, and then twists everything around so much so that by the end of it she might as well be advocating coercive intercourse. She already said that it wasn't okay to call someone a stalker. (But some people ARE stalkers. Is it just that my fiancé and I and some of our friends have all had really bad past relationships? Am I working off a skewed sample set?) She offers some reasons why this wouldn't have to be the case in the following paragraphs, but it's all so subjective. No one's going to say "I am avoiding her because she makes me confront uncomfortable truths about myself," they'll either stonewall or say that the other person is vaguely dangerous. And now someone has to be engaged in criminal activity for it to be okay to avoid them? Nooooo.
Which brings up another point: I expected a lot more scholarly research to be cited, backing up Schulman's points. Psychology, sociology, ethnographies of other people who have homophobic families, whatever. But...no. Probably a bad assumption on my part. I guess I wanted to read some actual studies about the effects of familial homophobia, rather than just...emotions.
She also sometimes drags really random stuff into the conversation: the theater world, for example, which I know is the world she works in, but I also don't get the connection? Maybe because she speaks about it so vaguely. She very rarely says other people's names, even aliases. So she refers to her negative experiences being shut out as a lesbian playwright, but never talks about when, where, which play, who shut her out...it's not that I don't believe her, because I do, because of course. It's just that it does a disservice to her writing to be so constantly listing entities and things without actually saying what happened. She also mentions St. Patrick's Day parades, of all things--well, what of the Catholic church as a whole? The entire institution is homophobic (though not all of its people are), why focus on that parade and the Hibernians? Is there a story there? Maybe? She paints the beginnings of one in broad strokes but she never really uses it to its best effect. What's the connection there?
I agree with the points she makes about homophobia, although I find them convoluted and tied into places where they don't fit. Is the woman on the street Homophobic Society or an acquaintance? And why does Schulman always bring up stealing money to buy drugs as the perfect answer for shunning? Because: a. There are people who would find that too harsh on drug addicts, and even I question why her theory about shunning applies across the board to queer people--even queer people who have harmed other queer people, as seems to be the case--but not to people in the throes of addiction?
b. She says that terms for reconciliation are necessary? Okay, fine. In most cases my terms are "I'll forgive you if I outlive you," to quote a Jenny and Johnny song. Or, as I put into a poem in 2010 addressed to my rapist, I'll reconcile when he donates every penny from every job he ever works to rape crisis foundations, keeping nothing for himself, until he dies of starvation or exposure to the elements. How's that?
P. 129 when she discusses other people's frightening marriages--ugh. Yes, I've had the boring, not fun, repetitive relationship. (And then I left it and refused to talk to the other person again! What would she make of that?! Double bind!) So I get that it can be bad both inside and outside. But I'm not sure about the other categories. You could say my fiancé is more "limited" than me because he's chronically ill. But our relationship isn't "built around me." (Though for the time being where we live depends on where I work.) She's highly judgmental in a way that makes me think she is once again talking about specific people without naming names.
I'm also totally unsure how she thinks we could create a world where other people's marriages and breakups were up for discussion by the general public. Sorry, but I do not want to be with someone who does not want me. And sometimes there are certain people I don't want to be around, period. People break up for all sorts of reasons but one of the main ones is that they just weren't right for each other.
She says a lot of good things about equality in the media, equality in death, equality in relationship status, equality in families. But tying everything to shunning muddles it all up in an infuriating way.
"To Be Real," with its focus on her problems with the prejudiced theater scene, the ways in which heterosexual actresses misportray lesbian characters, and the ways in which she finds support from Black colleagues, was actually fascinating. I could have read an entire book about that (and maybe I'll check out Stagestruck.) I also like that Schulman calls out her erstwhile collaborators' "dumb hicks in Iowa" defense against proper lesbian representation--especially since Iowa actually legalized marriage equality the year this was published, two years before New York did.
P. 162: How common is it really for white people to read books by Black authors? This statement feel like oppression Olympics, because work by people of color is frequently excluded from the canon as well....
In the final chapter she asks readers not to misrepresent her and I don't believe I am. I do agree that familial, societal, and cultural homophobias are unjustified, and I do not think that she said what she said she did not say on page 167. But I do think she said some other things which I disagree with.
I think this book could have been more effective if it either:
a. Embraced the personal nature completely. If Shulman wrote a memoir, included her grandparents' stories, her parents and siblings, and most importantly, her friends and lovers with similar experiences.
b. Embraced academia. Touched briefly on her personal history but mostly trawled the depths of scholarly writing about the effects of familial homophobia, including one-on- one interviews with experts and survivors.
So, I have long thought that people who cannot embrace the fact that their kid might very well be queer should not be having kids.
People get to choose who they associate with, however. Familial shunning based on sexual orientation is wrong. Societal shunning based on race/gender/sexuality/etc, also wrong. But while these things should be regulated at the macro level, at the individual level there will always be reasons why one person and another person need to separate from one another. And sometimes they will not be exactly pretty. Some of these things should be dealt with legally (such as allowing visitation/custody rights to non-biological lesbian parents, so long as they're not abusive). But at various points when Shulman is listing her grievances, it seems like she has unreasonable expectations of others in her life. Her therapists don't sound great. But even if they were, I'm not sure they could have gotten through to a family as entrenched in homophobia as hers. I guess maybe it seems to me that she's trying to grab at things that were never really there?
That's not to say that the "create your own family" 'solution' IS a solution, because it isn't. I don't know if that's homophobia's fault, though, or if that's our generally greedy society, or if that's human nature. But I mostly agree there. I also agree about the nature of generational trauma.
The "third party mediator"--that I partially agree with. I think in a "shunning" situation, yes, third parties can be helpful to gather around the person being "shunned" by one specific other person and let them know they are not alone. But often the one doing the shunning is in just as much pain as the shunner. Unless they're actually deriving sadistic pleasure, what is the point in forcing them to be in contact with someone they really don't want to see? Maybe it is a bit violent, sometimes. Especially considering that DV is underreported and emotional/psychological abuse (basically any type that isn't physical) is often hidden in public. Dangerous territory there.
(And I can throw the pathos on too: as someone whose "friends" tried to make me listen to my abusive first boyfriend's side and sympathize with him after I dumped him, I find a lot of this writing highly uncomfortable.)
And then she directly mentions feminists and rape, conflating a whole bunch of unrelated concepts, making everything about her (again), and concluding with "just because someone says no doesn't mean we have to listen." And I AGREE that equating other things with rape is unhelpful! But she finds this counterargument that is based in anti-rape activism, and then twists everything around so much so that by the end of it she might as well be advocating coercive intercourse. She already said that it wasn't okay to call someone a stalker. (But some people ARE stalkers. Is it just that my fiancé and I and some of our friends have all had really bad past relationships? Am I working off a skewed sample set?) She offers some reasons why this wouldn't have to be the case in the following paragraphs, but it's all so subjective. No one's going to say "I am avoiding her because she makes me confront uncomfortable truths about myself," they'll either stonewall or say that the other person is vaguely dangerous. And now someone has to be engaged in criminal activity for it to be okay to avoid them? Nooooo.
Which brings up another point: I expected a lot more scholarly research to be cited, backing up Schulman's points. Psychology, sociology, ethnographies of other people who have homophobic families, whatever. But...no. Probably a bad assumption on my part. I guess I wanted to read some actual studies about the effects of familial homophobia, rather than just...emotions.
She also sometimes drags really random stuff into the conversation: the theater world, for example, which I know is the world she works in, but I also don't get the connection? Maybe because she speaks about it so vaguely. She very rarely says other people's names, even aliases. So she refers to her negative experiences being shut out as a lesbian playwright, but never talks about when, where, which play, who shut her out...it's not that I don't believe her, because I do, because of course. It's just that it does a disservice to her writing to be so constantly listing entities and things without actually saying what happened. She also mentions St. Patrick's Day parades, of all things--well, what of the Catholic church as a whole? The entire institution is homophobic (though not all of its people are), why focus on that parade and the Hibernians? Is there a story there? Maybe? She paints the beginnings of one in broad strokes but she never really uses it to its best effect. What's the connection there?
I agree with the points she makes about homophobia, although I find them convoluted and tied into places where they don't fit. Is the woman on the street Homophobic Society or an acquaintance? And why does Schulman always bring up stealing money to buy drugs as the perfect answer for shunning? Because: a. There are people who would find that too harsh on drug addicts, and even I question why her theory about shunning applies across the board to queer people--even queer people who have harmed other queer people, as seems to be the case--but not to people in the throes of addiction?
b. She says that terms for reconciliation are necessary? Okay, fine. In most cases my terms are "I'll forgive you if I outlive you," to quote a Jenny and Johnny song. Or, as I put into a poem in 2010 addressed to my rapist, I'll reconcile when he donates every penny from every job he ever works to rape crisis foundations, keeping nothing for himself, until he dies of starvation or exposure to the elements. How's that?
P. 129 when she discusses other people's frightening marriages--ugh. Yes, I've had the boring, not fun, repetitive relationship. (And then I left it and refused to talk to the other person again! What would she make of that?! Double bind!) So I get that it can be bad both inside and outside. But I'm not sure about the other categories. You could say my fiancé is more "limited" than me because he's chronically ill. But our relationship isn't "built around me." (Though for the time being where we live depends on where I work.) She's highly judgmental in a way that makes me think she is once again talking about specific people without naming names.
I'm also totally unsure how she thinks we could create a world where other people's marriages and breakups were up for discussion by the general public. Sorry, but I do not want to be with someone who does not want me. And sometimes there are certain people I don't want to be around, period. People break up for all sorts of reasons but one of the main ones is that they just weren't right for each other.
She says a lot of good things about equality in the media, equality in death, equality in relationship status, equality in families. But tying everything to shunning muddles it all up in an infuriating way.
"To Be Real," with its focus on her problems with the prejudiced theater scene, the ways in which heterosexual actresses misportray lesbian characters, and the ways in which she finds support from Black colleagues, was actually fascinating. I could have read an entire book about that (and maybe I'll check out Stagestruck.) I also like that Schulman calls out her erstwhile collaborators' "dumb hicks in Iowa" defense against proper lesbian representation--especially since Iowa actually legalized marriage equality the year this was published, two years before New York did.
P. 162: How common is it really for white people to read books by Black authors? This statement feel like oppression Olympics, because work by people of color is frequently excluded from the canon as well....
In the final chapter she asks readers not to misrepresent her and I don't believe I am. I do agree that familial, societal, and cultural homophobias are unjustified, and I do not think that she said what she said she did not say on page 167. But I do think she said some other things which I disagree with.
I think this book could have been more effective if it either:
a. Embraced the personal nature completely. If Shulman wrote a memoir, included her grandparents' stories, her parents and siblings, and most importantly, her friends and lovers with similar experiences.
b. Embraced academia. Touched briefly on her personal history but mostly trawled the depths of scholarly writing about the effects of familial homophobia, including one-on- one interviews with experts and survivors.
November 22, 2009
This book is a totally vital read. Sarah Schulman's insights are so penetrating you will find yourself reevaluating your whole life in the light of it.
I do wonder since she points out that homophobia is not actually fear, rather it's a pleasure system, that perhaps it might be more accurate to talk about it as heterosexual supremacy rather than as homophobia, but I guess the term is more familiar and easier to use.
It would be great if therapists would read this book and incorporate its ideas into their practice.
It would also be great if the mainstream media paid some attention and gave Sarah Schulman the opportunity to talk to the general public about her ideas, which could make the world better for everyone if queers were enabled to make more contributions to society instead of being marginalized.
I do wonder since she points out that homophobia is not actually fear, rather it's a pleasure system, that perhaps it might be more accurate to talk about it as heterosexual supremacy rather than as homophobia, but I guess the term is more familiar and easier to use.
It would be great if therapists would read this book and incorporate its ideas into their practice.
It would also be great if the mainstream media paid some attention and gave Sarah Schulman the opportunity to talk to the general public about her ideas, which could make the world better for everyone if queers were enabled to make more contributions to society instead of being marginalized.
July 12, 2017
A solid book with compelling arguments, but I had two issues with it:
Schulman spends a lot of time talking about her own experiences which, while they do serve as examples of homophobia, made the book read more like an airing of her own personal grievances rather than the academic read it's billed as. This is not the main problem I had with this book, though. A lesbian talking about her own experiences in a book she wrote about things she experienced is not out of line; I just would have preferred her to draw from a wider range of sources.
However! Schulman also makes several comparisons between homophobia and mental illness. Homophobia is not a mental illness. Homophobia should not be likened to a mental illness, because doing so not only offers homophobic people an "out" for their behaviour, it adds to the already-prevalent stigma which mentally ill people have to deal with. This is what really brought the rating down for me. Being an asshole doesn't make you mentally ill.
Schulman spends a lot of time talking about her own experiences which, while they do serve as examples of homophobia, made the book read more like an airing of her own personal grievances rather than the academic read it's billed as. This is not the main problem I had with this book, though. A lesbian talking about her own experiences in a book she wrote about things she experienced is not out of line; I just would have preferred her to draw from a wider range of sources.
However! Schulman also makes several comparisons between homophobia and mental illness. Homophobia is not a mental illness. Homophobia should not be likened to a mental illness, because doing so not only offers homophobic people an "out" for their behaviour, it adds to the already-prevalent stigma which mentally ill people have to deal with. This is what really brought the rating down for me. Being an asshole doesn't make you mentally ill.
December 29, 2024
In it's time, a lot of these concepts would have been groundbreaking. While we discuss concepts like familial homophobia with more nuance today, it was nice to see an earlier work about it. Seeing Schulman's own experience with this was impactful and definitely added to this.
The biggest thing I got out of this is that *we* as a community can be the solution to a lot of things. As cheesy as it may sound, speaking out can do so much in interpersonal situations. And homophobia at large has justified abuses and lessened the likelihood that people will speak out. A lot of what she said makes me very excited to read Conflict is Not Abuse, which she published quite a while later.
I do think it could have been more developed in some ways and it really would have benefited from research backing her points. The question of course would be, were there people out there doing psychology or sociology research on familial homophobia? It was probably slim, so I understand her decision to lean on her own experiences here. I still think some more could have been done in this regard on other angles perhaps.
I also take issue with some of her proposed solutions. She mentions things like bringing in court-ordered therapy and relying on the state to diffuse certain situations. I don't think that is viable (and I'm not even sure whether or not the author would either at this point). There is also a lot that would have benefited a lot by an analysis of race in all of this as well. These, like the bit around gay marriage, I think says more about the state of discourse then (which is valuable to understand I think).
Over all, it was a neat read. Not her best, but it meditates on important topics, many of which remain relevant, and definitely tells us something about its time.
The biggest thing I got out of this is that *we* as a community can be the solution to a lot of things. As cheesy as it may sound, speaking out can do so much in interpersonal situations. And homophobia at large has justified abuses and lessened the likelihood that people will speak out. A lot of what she said makes me very excited to read Conflict is Not Abuse, which she published quite a while later.
I do think it could have been more developed in some ways and it really would have benefited from research backing her points. The question of course would be, were there people out there doing psychology or sociology research on familial homophobia? It was probably slim, so I understand her decision to lean on her own experiences here. I still think some more could have been done in this regard on other angles perhaps.
I also take issue with some of her proposed solutions. She mentions things like bringing in court-ordered therapy and relying on the state to diffuse certain situations. I don't think that is viable (and I'm not even sure whether or not the author would either at this point). There is also a lot that would have benefited a lot by an analysis of race in all of this as well. These, like the bit around gay marriage, I think says more about the state of discourse then (which is valuable to understand I think).
Over all, it was a neat read. Not her best, but it meditates on important topics, many of which remain relevant, and definitely tells us something about its time.
May 16, 2025
la mañana ha sido productiva sí señor. una lectura super ligera, después de tanto academicismo puro ha sido como un soplo de aire fresco. es el primer ensayo que leo de mi nueva reina y la verdad es que ha sido un tag yourself de manual. reflexionando a nivel académico y personal me hayo
si sois queer os lo super recomiendo porque os va a dar más herramientas para identificar los pequeños actos de homofobia que tan normalizados están, y a la vez os va a dar un abrazo (no estáis locos porque os molesten ciertos comportamientos) y una hostia (por mucho que hagáis probablemente esos comportamientos no cambien). si sois cishetero leedlo como manual de lo que NO hay que hacer
si sois queer os lo super recomiendo porque os va a dar más herramientas para identificar los pequeños actos de homofobia que tan normalizados están, y a la vez os va a dar un abrazo (no estáis locos porque os molesten ciertos comportamientos) y una hostia (por mucho que hagáis probablemente esos comportamientos no cambien). si sois cishetero leedlo como manual de lo que NO hay que hacer
July 1, 2019
Ahh, Sarah Schulman...
Ideas/content: 4 stars
Writing: 3 stars
Schulman has really important ideas here, and quite a radical premise: that structures should be in place to allow intervention in the family that practices homophobia against one of its members. This is extended outward to address the dearth of authentic LGBTQ (specifically, lesbian) content in wider arts and culture, as well as the state's role in intervening on behalf of LGBTQ people. All of this should be read and discussed and implemented widely.
Unfortunately, the ideas are muddled by disorganization and a lack of research in some areas which would make her arguments greater weight -- something I've noticed in her other writing as well. What we get instead are powerful, sometimes heartbreaking firsthand accounts of her own experiences, and forceful writing fueled by understandable anger.
Lastly, two things are specifically missing here:
- a methodology for how different kinds of intervention would ideally occur at different scales (there's a little bit of this but not enough) and
- a discussion of ideologies that spread and perpetuate defamation/ false accusations against gay people. Organized religion is a major source of homophobia. Schulman skirts this issue by focusing on the "pleasure system" of homophobia, i.e. power through subjugation. My guess is that a more forceful critique of religion would've been dismissed as offensive by editors.
Ideas/content: 4 stars
Writing: 3 stars
Schulman has really important ideas here, and quite a radical premise: that structures should be in place to allow intervention in the family that practices homophobia against one of its members. This is extended outward to address the dearth of authentic LGBTQ (specifically, lesbian) content in wider arts and culture, as well as the state's role in intervening on behalf of LGBTQ people. All of this should be read and discussed and implemented widely.
Unfortunately, the ideas are muddled by disorganization and a lack of research in some areas which would make her arguments greater weight -- something I've noticed in her other writing as well. What we get instead are powerful, sometimes heartbreaking firsthand accounts of her own experiences, and forceful writing fueled by understandable anger.
Lastly, two things are specifically missing here:
- a methodology for how different kinds of intervention would ideally occur at different scales (there's a little bit of this but not enough) and
- a discussion of ideologies that spread and perpetuate defamation/ false accusations against gay people. Organized religion is a major source of homophobia. Schulman skirts this issue by focusing on the "pleasure system" of homophobia, i.e. power through subjugation. My guess is that a more forceful critique of religion would've been dismissed as offensive by editors.
April 23, 2021
I could have done without the parts about therapy and theater. They dragged on and I didn’t find them completely relevant. I would rate those chapters 3/5.
The rest of the book is unparalleled. I read this first in 2010 and now again in 2021 and so many parts are still extremely relevant, regardless of the progress the US has made in the public sphere (legalization of gay marriage, etc.). Schulman rips apart the "neutrality" of homophobic family members and encourages queer people to stop being grateful for crumbs.
After reading this book, I also wonder: why don’t we push straight people to have these conversations with their parents as well?
Some of my favorite quotes:
“Unfortunately, the system is twisted so that the cruelty looks normative and regular, and the desire to address and overturn it looks strange . . . Resistance gets falsely pegged as the inappropriate behavior because it results in discomfort for the perpetrator. Ironically, it is often not the fact that a gay person is being scapegoated that makes people angry but the assertion that the perpetrator should have to be accountable that infuriates them” (10).
"The betrayal of gay people by their heterosexual family members is as effective as it is undeserved. This confusing combination leaves us with a lifetime burden of having to try to come to terms with and understand the experience. One coping mechanism is to pretend that nothing is happening. Many gay people will say that their families are 'fine.' But when you ask for details, this means basically that the gay person has not been completely excluded from family events. Or, that their partner, if they have one, is allowed in the house. Very few experience their personhood, lives, and feelings to be actively understood as equal to the heterosexual family members. Often, parents or siblings keep the person's homosexuality secret from others. Or euphemism it. They vote for politicians who hurt gay people, they contribute to religious organizations that humiliate gay people . . . In many ways the message is clear that the gay person is not fully human. But because many gay people know others who have been more severely punished by their family's prejudices, they look on their own continued compromised inclusion to be miraculously positive and a product of their own correct behavior” (19).
“That gay people have to tolerate this or be complicit with it in order to be loved is very distorting . . . Gay people are expected to capitulate. And to be grateful for crumbs. When they are not, it is seen as even more of an example of how troubled they are” (24-25).
“The perpetrators, who are the destructive ones, are described as the neutral standard of behavior” (26).
“And there are always gay people willing to point the same finger, gay people who have been persuaded that tolerating or being complicit with prejudice in order to be ‘loved’ is love” (26).
“Why begin with the family? In many ways, we can now understand this force we have previously called ‘society’ to actually be the collective interaction of our families” (30).
“When we insist on inclusion, full recognition, and access to process, we can get internally pathologized as ‘militants,’ even by each other. The dangerous exclusion is naturalized as benign and the desire for accountability is falsely seen as a threat when it is really life enhancing . . . The basic desire to be acknowledged and included is seen as pathological, while the destructive exclusion of people’s lives becomes the definition of reasonable” (33-34).
“Familial homophobia exists with force and brutality in every ethnic, class, racial, and religious group. The modes of manifestation may be different, but it is always there . . . A born-again Christian family in Iowa is just as capable of being strong enough to love their gay children as a lefty academic family in Boston . . . It is really about individual strength of character and the family’s capacity for love” (34).
“The capacity for feeling, strong enough to overwhelm social expectation, is at the root of the homosexual identity” (34).
“If we really believe that homophobia is wrong, we must act that way . . . if people cannot fully love, support, respect, and most importantly, defend and protect their gay or lesbian child, they should not be parents” (40-41).
“The nature of this cruelty is hard to initially conceptualize because it is simultaneously pervasive, invisible, and deeply painful. The people who are doing it often don’t know that they are doing it or pretend that they do not. The repetition and the failures make it seem normal. It is very difficult to try to imagine a life without this constant diminishment . . . and because we love our parents, we make excuses or try to help them expand their thinking, often without fully acknowledging the impact of their prejudices on our emotional lives” (43-44).
“Oppressed people, people unfairly excluded from full participation, cannot have their rightful place until the people who exclude them experience a diminishment of their own access and power” (51).
“Frankly, I often find that the myth of the angry lesbian/angry woman/angry black man is really the rage of the dominant culture person at being asked to look at themselves” (53-54).
“Passive aggressive homophobes withhold . . . They remain unavailable in time of need . . . Passive aggressives install glass ceilings . . . Thus rational, subtle and indirect hostility is actually the most dangerous and destructive kind because it is the most difficult to identify . . . Feeling superior to their victims, they can proceed to persecute them comfortably and without qualms” (56).
“All people have the option to judge and act ethically. That there are individuals in all situations who do take responsibility probes the availability of moral behavior as a possibility for the others” (58).
“That is what evil looks like. Evil knows great old songs, can be weak and vulnerable, can love you, can feed the hungry, can pick out a book because they were thinking of you. Evil can have Alzheimer’s. Familial homophobia is deeply human, as all evil is the product of human imagination” (59).
“There is also a generational translation of homophobia that changes its face but comes from the same impetus . . . It becomes more flexible, more accommodating, perhaps, as the generational context changes, but it is the same animal . . . Instead, she’ll just find another reason that is more generationally suitable. As one straight colleague on a job told me, ‘It’s not your homosexuality that I hate. It’s your clothes’” (59-60).
"My parents never had the opportunity to change their behavior because no one with any currency or authority in their lives, ever confronted them about the morality of what they were doing. Clearly, they were not capable of changing on their own" (71).
"It's as though the *information* that the other person has feelings, ideas, is equally fully human, would violate the chastity, the unknowing state of the shunner's life if the victim was allowed to participate and negotiate, speak . . . The shunner is self-righteously passionate about . . . their right to exclude" (101).
"Perpetrators scapegoat the gay person because they believe that no one cares. They interpret the silence of others as a reward of approval" (102).
"Doing nothing changes the victims (abandons them to being abused). 'But you can't change other people!' you may cry. Not so! Ask anyone whose life has been destroyed by someone else's cruelty. Victims are changed. It's perpetrators whom we are told, we cannot transform. As my college professor Audre Lorde used to say, 'That you can't change City Hall is a rumor being spread by City Hall'" (109).
"Restricting the intake of information makes change harder to articulate or imagine. If you will not let someone tell you how your actions are affecting them, then you have no responsibility to acknowledge or rethink your actions" (109).
"As my grandmother, Dora Leibling Yevish, used to say, 'The Germans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.' In other words, when one person hurts you, they hate you more because you know what they are really like" (114).
"Telling victims that their abuser is wrong does not help anything. You have to tell the abuser herself" (170).
"Silence is the greatest gift that a perpetrator can receive . . . Saying nothing while your friend's family or lover or society or cultural institution shuns and scapegoats her is to participate in the process. Yes, it would be better for you, spiritually, to tell the truth to the perpetrator. But, more importantly, her chance for a decent life depends on it" (171).
The rest of the book is unparalleled. I read this first in 2010 and now again in 2021 and so many parts are still extremely relevant, regardless of the progress the US has made in the public sphere (legalization of gay marriage, etc.). Schulman rips apart the "neutrality" of homophobic family members and encourages queer people to stop being grateful for crumbs.
After reading this book, I also wonder: why don’t we push straight people to have these conversations with their parents as well?
Some of my favorite quotes:
“Unfortunately, the system is twisted so that the cruelty looks normative and regular, and the desire to address and overturn it looks strange . . . Resistance gets falsely pegged as the inappropriate behavior because it results in discomfort for the perpetrator. Ironically, it is often not the fact that a gay person is being scapegoated that makes people angry but the assertion that the perpetrator should have to be accountable that infuriates them” (10).
"The betrayal of gay people by their heterosexual family members is as effective as it is undeserved. This confusing combination leaves us with a lifetime burden of having to try to come to terms with and understand the experience. One coping mechanism is to pretend that nothing is happening. Many gay people will say that their families are 'fine.' But when you ask for details, this means basically that the gay person has not been completely excluded from family events. Or, that their partner, if they have one, is allowed in the house. Very few experience their personhood, lives, and feelings to be actively understood as equal to the heterosexual family members. Often, parents or siblings keep the person's homosexuality secret from others. Or euphemism it. They vote for politicians who hurt gay people, they contribute to religious organizations that humiliate gay people . . . In many ways the message is clear that the gay person is not fully human. But because many gay people know others who have been more severely punished by their family's prejudices, they look on their own continued compromised inclusion to be miraculously positive and a product of their own correct behavior” (19).
“That gay people have to tolerate this or be complicit with it in order to be loved is very distorting . . . Gay people are expected to capitulate. And to be grateful for crumbs. When they are not, it is seen as even more of an example of how troubled they are” (24-25).
“The perpetrators, who are the destructive ones, are described as the neutral standard of behavior” (26).
“And there are always gay people willing to point the same finger, gay people who have been persuaded that tolerating or being complicit with prejudice in order to be ‘loved’ is love” (26).
“Why begin with the family? In many ways, we can now understand this force we have previously called ‘society’ to actually be the collective interaction of our families” (30).
“When we insist on inclusion, full recognition, and access to process, we can get internally pathologized as ‘militants,’ even by each other. The dangerous exclusion is naturalized as benign and the desire for accountability is falsely seen as a threat when it is really life enhancing . . . The basic desire to be acknowledged and included is seen as pathological, while the destructive exclusion of people’s lives becomes the definition of reasonable” (33-34).
“Familial homophobia exists with force and brutality in every ethnic, class, racial, and religious group. The modes of manifestation may be different, but it is always there . . . A born-again Christian family in Iowa is just as capable of being strong enough to love their gay children as a lefty academic family in Boston . . . It is really about individual strength of character and the family’s capacity for love” (34).
“The capacity for feeling, strong enough to overwhelm social expectation, is at the root of the homosexual identity” (34).
“If we really believe that homophobia is wrong, we must act that way . . . if people cannot fully love, support, respect, and most importantly, defend and protect their gay or lesbian child, they should not be parents” (40-41).
“The nature of this cruelty is hard to initially conceptualize because it is simultaneously pervasive, invisible, and deeply painful. The people who are doing it often don’t know that they are doing it or pretend that they do not. The repetition and the failures make it seem normal. It is very difficult to try to imagine a life without this constant diminishment . . . and because we love our parents, we make excuses or try to help them expand their thinking, often without fully acknowledging the impact of their prejudices on our emotional lives” (43-44).
“Oppressed people, people unfairly excluded from full participation, cannot have their rightful place until the people who exclude them experience a diminishment of their own access and power” (51).
“Frankly, I often find that the myth of the angry lesbian/angry woman/angry black man is really the rage of the dominant culture person at being asked to look at themselves” (53-54).
“Passive aggressive homophobes withhold . . . They remain unavailable in time of need . . . Passive aggressives install glass ceilings . . . Thus rational, subtle and indirect hostility is actually the most dangerous and destructive kind because it is the most difficult to identify . . . Feeling superior to their victims, they can proceed to persecute them comfortably and without qualms” (56).
“All people have the option to judge and act ethically. That there are individuals in all situations who do take responsibility probes the availability of moral behavior as a possibility for the others” (58).
“That is what evil looks like. Evil knows great old songs, can be weak and vulnerable, can love you, can feed the hungry, can pick out a book because they were thinking of you. Evil can have Alzheimer’s. Familial homophobia is deeply human, as all evil is the product of human imagination” (59).
“There is also a generational translation of homophobia that changes its face but comes from the same impetus . . . It becomes more flexible, more accommodating, perhaps, as the generational context changes, but it is the same animal . . . Instead, she’ll just find another reason that is more generationally suitable. As one straight colleague on a job told me, ‘It’s not your homosexuality that I hate. It’s your clothes’” (59-60).
"My parents never had the opportunity to change their behavior because no one with any currency or authority in their lives, ever confronted them about the morality of what they were doing. Clearly, they were not capable of changing on their own" (71).
"It's as though the *information* that the other person has feelings, ideas, is equally fully human, would violate the chastity, the unknowing state of the shunner's life if the victim was allowed to participate and negotiate, speak . . . The shunner is self-righteously passionate about . . . their right to exclude" (101).
"Perpetrators scapegoat the gay person because they believe that no one cares. They interpret the silence of others as a reward of approval" (102).
"Doing nothing changes the victims (abandons them to being abused). 'But you can't change other people!' you may cry. Not so! Ask anyone whose life has been destroyed by someone else's cruelty. Victims are changed. It's perpetrators whom we are told, we cannot transform. As my college professor Audre Lorde used to say, 'That you can't change City Hall is a rumor being spread by City Hall'" (109).
"Restricting the intake of information makes change harder to articulate or imagine. If you will not let someone tell you how your actions are affecting them, then you have no responsibility to acknowledge or rethink your actions" (109).
"As my grandmother, Dora Leibling Yevish, used to say, 'The Germans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.' In other words, when one person hurts you, they hate you more because you know what they are really like" (114).
"Telling victims that their abuser is wrong does not help anything. You have to tell the abuser herself" (170).
"Silence is the greatest gift that a perpetrator can receive . . . Saying nothing while your friend's family or lover or society or cultural institution shuns and scapegoats her is to participate in the process. Yes, it would be better for you, spiritually, to tell the truth to the perpetrator. But, more importantly, her chance for a decent life depends on it" (171).
September 21, 2020
i wish i had read this book when it was published in 2009. it feels like so much has changed in the past eleven years in regard to how acceptable homophobia is in polite society (and schulman predicted how gay marriage's legality would shape public conversations about homophobia within families and how the state in this case acts as a third-party arbiter of acceptable behavior). my biggest takeaways were schulman's points about how shunning and scapegoating are used to silence people who are marginalized by society and how there are often few or no consequences for this behavior.
i'm getting increasingly wary of how often advice around conflict (especially in spaces that i tend to occupy that are self-defined as queer, feminist, and anti-carceral) tends to advocate for cutting off contact. i have found myself escalating conflict and then deciding to be done and cutting off contact. through schulman's work i have been able to see how harmful this has been for myself and those i am in conflict with. there are no easy solutions but i am doing a lot of thinking about this.
i'm getting increasingly wary of how often advice around conflict (especially in spaces that i tend to occupy that are self-defined as queer, feminist, and anti-carceral) tends to advocate for cutting off contact. i have found myself escalating conflict and then deciding to be done and cutting off contact. through schulman's work i have been able to see how harmful this has been for myself and those i am in conflict with. there are no easy solutions but i am doing a lot of thinking about this.
June 16, 2021
I just wanted to point out the irony of those who seem to think the book should not have been so linked to the author's personal struggles and family trauma or those unjust exclusions that have impacted her career and limited the scope of her artistic reach that would prove maddening in their capriciousness and irrational reification of existing forms of bias. The very fact of this criticism of the book strikes me as an unfortunate but salient example and evidence in support of her argument. Even with the authority as the author of the book in question we are as readers quick to want her to take up and be quiet about wrongs done and just push forward. We critique teh person who says they where mistreated and we collude with the abusive fathers and the impotent therapists and the Jonathan Larson's in our own lives Instead of being the normative and authoritative voice of our society and letting bad actors know that we see what they are doing and insist that they stop.
January 9, 2025
Honestly very therapeutic reading, but honestly I think this is the kind of book that straight people need to read just as much, because it does a great job of going "well, you can use YOUR privilege within the family to stand up for gay people, etc."
Damn could use some "allies" in my life to think on these terms ...
Damn could use some "allies" in my life to think on these terms ...
July 19, 2024
A pithy exploration off the impact of growing up and coming out in an homophobic family, how the pain of family rejection can linger into relationships and low self esteem. Interesting to read a lesbian perspective, part social commentary, part personal story.
September 6, 2025
L’essai est très intéressant concernant l’homophobie familiale, sociétal et culturel. J’ai été un peu mal à l’aise lorsque l’autrice abordait ses conflits familiaux mais peut-être était-ce son but pour prouver son idée que l’homophobie familiale ne devrait pas être une affaire privée…
Read
August 14, 2024interesting! rehearses a lot of ideas that are more fully fleshed out in conflict is not abuse. at it’s best when it has material personal experiences to analyze
May 23, 2025
everyone should read but most people would think it's ridiculous, too angry and dramatic which hurts and makes me scared to recommend it to anyone
March 19, 2017
1.5 stars. I should have known being thoroughly irritated by the author at the end of Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair that I probably shouldn't pick up another one of her books. But I was interested in the topic, so decided to ILL this one.
Once again, it's a book that is billed as queer theory, but then just ends up being the author airing her grievances and positing herself as the perennial victim of other people's "shunning." She labels a lot of things as homophobia in this book, and I almost never say this, but I think sometimes she's reading homophobia into things that aren't actually homophobic?
And she makes some interesting claims, but doesn't back them up. Like "homophobia as a pleasure system." Sounds interesting, but I don't think she ever came up with any evidence that "homophobes enjoy feeling superior, rely on he pleasure of enacting their superiority, and go out of their way to resist change that would deflate their sense of supremacy. Homophobia makes heterosexuals feel better about themselves. It's not fear - it's fun."
Another small example of not doing research beyond her own views and experience - she calls out Oprah for not ever choosing lesbian writers and lesbian themes for Oprah's book club. This is an alternative fact - Oprah chose Fall on Your Knees in 2002, 7 years before Schulman published Ties that Bind. Would it have been that hard for Schulman to look this up before publishing her call out? (disclosure: I love Oprah Winfrey and will fight you over her honor)
I was also irritated by her references to race - she uses it mostly as a tool, in a tokenizing way, to talk about the victimization of white gays and lesbians. She also rarely labels people in her examples as white (unless it's in contrast to a POC), but always points out a person's race if they're POC, even if it's inconsequential to the story.
Most of my other criticisms can be summed up in my review of Conflict is Not Abuse.
So now to the parts of it I did like (probably could have been summed up in one chapter). I love this quote and sums up a lot of how I feel about the way the news covers things like South Dakota's recent anti-LGBTQ legislation:
I also liked how she talked about how acceptable it is for homophobes to not have to take responsibility for their homophobia. She talks about how representing gay bashers as repressed homosexuals is like blaming black people for anti-black violence by talking about black on black crime - it takes away responsibility from the actual oppressors.
I also liked this quote from a header to one of her chapters by Frantz Fanon: "The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves."
Once again, it's a book that is billed as queer theory, but then just ends up being the author airing her grievances and positing herself as the perennial victim of other people's "shunning." She labels a lot of things as homophobia in this book, and I almost never say this, but I think sometimes she's reading homophobia into things that aren't actually homophobic?
And she makes some interesting claims, but doesn't back them up. Like "homophobia as a pleasure system." Sounds interesting, but I don't think she ever came up with any evidence that "homophobes enjoy feeling superior, rely on he pleasure of enacting their superiority, and go out of their way to resist change that would deflate their sense of supremacy. Homophobia makes heterosexuals feel better about themselves. It's not fear - it's fun."
Another small example of not doing research beyond her own views and experience - she calls out Oprah for not ever choosing lesbian writers and lesbian themes for Oprah's book club. This is an alternative fact - Oprah chose Fall on Your Knees in 2002, 7 years before Schulman published Ties that Bind. Would it have been that hard for Schulman to look this up before publishing her call out? (disclosure: I love Oprah Winfrey and will fight you over her honor)
I was also irritated by her references to race - she uses it mostly as a tool, in a tokenizing way, to talk about the victimization of white gays and lesbians. She also rarely labels people in her examples as white (unless it's in contrast to a POC), but always points out a person's race if they're POC, even if it's inconsequential to the story.
Most of my other criticisms can be summed up in my review of Conflict is Not Abuse.
So now to the parts of it I did like (probably could have been summed up in one chapter). I love this quote and sums up a lot of how I feel about the way the news covers things like South Dakota's recent anti-LGBTQ legislation:
"How gays and lesbians are treated IN families is far more influential on the quality of individual lives and the larger social order than how we're treated AS families.
I also liked how she talked about how acceptable it is for homophobes to not have to take responsibility for their homophobia. She talks about how representing gay bashers as repressed homosexuals is like blaming black people for anti-black violence by talking about black on black crime - it takes away responsibility from the actual oppressors.
I'm imagining a transformed social value in which homophobia is an action worthy of punishment and exclusion, not homosexuality.
Visibility as a strategy for change is a painful confrontation with the realization that it was an engagement with magical thinking. We believed that straight people hate and hurt us because they don't know us.
I also liked this quote from a header to one of her chapters by Frantz Fanon: "The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves."
August 17, 2017
I could not have read this book at a more vital time. With all that happened over the weekend in Charlottesville and our President supporting it again yesterday, Schulman's words helped, not just on a micro-LGBTQ level, but so many of her thoughts and questions about shaking up systems of hatred and standing up for yourself and your community pulsed off the page and even calmed me - even when some might expect to find something more diverting - it was helpful for me to look. Recommend to all!
July 24, 2012
Excellent analysis of the harm caused by homophobia in the family, smoothly blending theory and heartfelt personal narrative.
I especially liked her point that when queer people are often advised to cut all ties with homophobic family members, it can send a message that they don't deserve to have a family, and that their family problems are more insurmountable than those of straight people with family problems, who are more often advised to work out a solution that will enable family ties to continue. (Sometimes, of course, people do need to cut ties. But Schulman points out that it should not be the first or only option advised by outsiders.)
Schulman also has a good analysis of the social forces making it difficult to be a woman writer, a queer writer, and especially a queer woman writer.
I especially liked her point that when queer people are often advised to cut all ties with homophobic family members, it can send a message that they don't deserve to have a family, and that their family problems are more insurmountable than those of straight people with family problems, who are more often advised to work out a solution that will enable family ties to continue. (Sometimes, of course, people do need to cut ties. But Schulman points out that it should not be the first or only option advised by outsiders.)
Schulman also has a good analysis of the social forces making it difficult to be a woman writer, a queer writer, and especially a queer woman writer.
June 7, 2018
This is the book I needed as a closeted and confused teenager!
Every sentence rang so true to the gay experience and gave me a new way to think about and articulate how homophobia and heteronormativity are simultaneously structural and personal. In other words, Schulman writes with powerful conviction to argue—clearly and convincingly—that the social exclusion of LGBT people codified into our laws and written into our cultural scripts starts in the family. The good news: family is also precisely where we can begin to do the necessary work to combat the harmful effects of systemic inequality and start approaching something like justice.
I wish I had come across this work at the age of 15. I also wish this were required reading for everyone with a queer family member.
Every sentence rang so true to the gay experience and gave me a new way to think about and articulate how homophobia and heteronormativity are simultaneously structural and personal. In other words, Schulman writes with powerful conviction to argue—clearly and convincingly—that the social exclusion of LGBT people codified into our laws and written into our cultural scripts starts in the family. The good news: family is also precisely where we can begin to do the necessary work to combat the harmful effects of systemic inequality and start approaching something like justice.
I wish I had come across this work at the age of 15. I also wish this were required reading for everyone with a queer family member.
June 7, 2020
I think I'll stick to her fiction.
This sounded like it was going to be an interesting book and it was in parts, but I find her assertions that the way to end familial homophobia is for friends of the person being mistreated by their family to confront the family and tell them they're in the wrong just baffling. How is that supposed to work? Why on earth would homophobic family members listen to a random stranger, especially one who probably is also gay? The ones who will be effective in getting homophobic family members to change their minds are the straight friends and family members of the homophobes. Those ones might actually be listened to.
This sounded like it was going to be an interesting book and it was in parts, but I find her assertions that the way to end familial homophobia is for friends of the person being mistreated by their family to confront the family and tell them they're in the wrong just baffling. How is that supposed to work? Why on earth would homophobic family members listen to a random stranger, especially one who probably is also gay? The ones who will be effective in getting homophobic family members to change their minds are the straight friends and family members of the homophobes. Those ones might actually be listened to.
August 1, 2018
I cried while reading this, so it was very powerful. It would have been very useful as a closeted teenager. (Some of her criticisms were grating, but I have that problem with some of her other work as well.) I tend to think that I'm fairly knowledgeable, but some of her insights were new to me and rang true.
December 12, 2016
Simultaneously left me wanting more - depth around her family experience and breadth covering the gamut of different LBG familial experience - and feeling like I was exposed to a new lens from which to view homophobia in our society.
August 1, 2020
Excellent ideas expressed within. I really appreciate Sarah Schulman's mind. The book really needs some editing though--it's repetitive and there were lots of small spacing issues that were a little distracting. Other than that, def worth reading for Schulman's insight amd perspective.
March 13, 2010
had high hopes for this book, but it was truly awful. could barely get through it. this book reads like a bad blog entry. ooooof...
Read
August 19, 2009Definitely recommended to send to your parents!
January 31, 2021
I read this book because I was interested in Schulman’s other works, namely “Stagestruck” and “My American History”, but this was her only nonfiction that my library offered. I wanted to read some of her work before I spent money on those other two works, just to get a taste for her writing/arguments.
This book wasn’t what I expected. It’s most anecdotal, something of a hybrid between memoir and social justice piece. I expected there to be more interviews and studies. That doesn’t make the work bad: I think there’s something to learn from anecdotal evidence, so long as you know this is one person’s (in this case, one educated and experienced person’s) perspective. Sarah Schulman knows more about living and working in America as an out-lesbian than most people I know, and her experiences have merit, even if they are not the end-all-be-all of the issues. In her intro, she notes that her main goal is to open a discussion about familial homophobia, and that if the reader disagrees with her, at least they are engaging with her. I respect and appreciate that.
If you go into this book with the lens that it is from one informed person’s perspective and that it is meant to start a dialogue, you will probably like it. I appreciate how she doesn’t mince words or sugarcoat issues. She forces the reader to see oppression for what it is and she doesn’t pull punches. I’m growing tired of the “come together” narrative that victims needs to be the bigger person and see their oppressors as worthy of being heard. Schulman calls that out immediately, mentioning that victims have studied their oppressors for ages, while the oppressors rarely if ever extend themselves to study their victims. Rather, they shun them without a second thought. I also love how she says that a person being gay is not a disruption — rather, a homophobe shunning a gay person is a disruption. I also like how she advocates for dialogue and reconciliation instead of accepting the shunning. I often hear young gays who have homophobic family members to “forget about them”, but Schulman says “no”. You should not be forced to sever family ties because your family doesn’t approve of who you are. Instead, holding that family accountable and making them hear you out is a right that all victims/scapegoats deserve, should they want to exercise it.
That all said, there are a few issues I had with this book, more stylistically than philosophically. The chapter on gay marriage started to lose me a bit. It’s mostly good, but then she goes into a bit where she judges relationships on if they’ll be beneficial to the greater good. Page 129: “One thing I have seen is talented, exceptional people hooking up with simple, more limited people that the relationship can be built entirely around the centrality of the more gifted partner. This upsets me. I find it disappointing and monstrous. I also see people who can stay together because the connection is superficial; they fear a depth of understanding.” She attaches this to her point that legal union is what keeps them together, which homosexuals do not have access to, but it just seemed strange. Why cast judgment on couples you don’t approve of when arguing for marriage equality?
Her final chapter about the publishing industry was also out of left-field. For a book about homophobia in the family, why is there a whole chapter about something else? As an amateur writer with a lesbian character in my story, it was a great look into the publishing scene, but perhaps it should have been an appendix. I also wonder how this chapter might have changed if it were written now instead of in 2009. I’m far from an expert, but I’d like to hear her thoughts on our modern YA genres and how they surpass adult fiction is LGBT representation.
Overall, I learned from this book, and it definitely opened my mind to the issues, but I wish it stayed closer to the thesis statement. I would have loved to hear anecdotes from different LBGT people with different backgrounds. More perspective and focus on the main issue would have been great. As it is, this is a collection of interesting think pieces designed to probe your mind. Definitely worth a read for me, and it convinced me to seek out copies of the books I mentioned at the beginning of this review, but given that it’s from one perspective, I cannot call this “definitive”.
This book wasn’t what I expected. It’s most anecdotal, something of a hybrid between memoir and social justice piece. I expected there to be more interviews and studies. That doesn’t make the work bad: I think there’s something to learn from anecdotal evidence, so long as you know this is one person’s (in this case, one educated and experienced person’s) perspective. Sarah Schulman knows more about living and working in America as an out-lesbian than most people I know, and her experiences have merit, even if they are not the end-all-be-all of the issues. In her intro, she notes that her main goal is to open a discussion about familial homophobia, and that if the reader disagrees with her, at least they are engaging with her. I respect and appreciate that.
If you go into this book with the lens that it is from one informed person’s perspective and that it is meant to start a dialogue, you will probably like it. I appreciate how she doesn’t mince words or sugarcoat issues. She forces the reader to see oppression for what it is and she doesn’t pull punches. I’m growing tired of the “come together” narrative that victims needs to be the bigger person and see their oppressors as worthy of being heard. Schulman calls that out immediately, mentioning that victims have studied their oppressors for ages, while the oppressors rarely if ever extend themselves to study their victims. Rather, they shun them without a second thought. I also love how she says that a person being gay is not a disruption — rather, a homophobe shunning a gay person is a disruption. I also like how she advocates for dialogue and reconciliation instead of accepting the shunning. I often hear young gays who have homophobic family members to “forget about them”, but Schulman says “no”. You should not be forced to sever family ties because your family doesn’t approve of who you are. Instead, holding that family accountable and making them hear you out is a right that all victims/scapegoats deserve, should they want to exercise it.
That all said, there are a few issues I had with this book, more stylistically than philosophically. The chapter on gay marriage started to lose me a bit. It’s mostly good, but then she goes into a bit where she judges relationships on if they’ll be beneficial to the greater good. Page 129: “One thing I have seen is talented, exceptional people hooking up with simple, more limited people that the relationship can be built entirely around the centrality of the more gifted partner. This upsets me. I find it disappointing and monstrous. I also see people who can stay together because the connection is superficial; they fear a depth of understanding.” She attaches this to her point that legal union is what keeps them together, which homosexuals do not have access to, but it just seemed strange. Why cast judgment on couples you don’t approve of when arguing for marriage equality?
Her final chapter about the publishing industry was also out of left-field. For a book about homophobia in the family, why is there a whole chapter about something else? As an amateur writer with a lesbian character in my story, it was a great look into the publishing scene, but perhaps it should have been an appendix. I also wonder how this chapter might have changed if it were written now instead of in 2009. I’m far from an expert, but I’d like to hear her thoughts on our modern YA genres and how they surpass adult fiction is LGBT representation.
Overall, I learned from this book, and it definitely opened my mind to the issues, but I wish it stayed closer to the thesis statement. I would have loved to hear anecdotes from different LBGT people with different backgrounds. More perspective and focus on the main issue would have been great. As it is, this is a collection of interesting think pieces designed to probe your mind. Definitely worth a read for me, and it convinced me to seek out copies of the books I mentioned at the beginning of this review, but given that it’s from one perspective, I cannot call this “definitive”.
October 29, 2021
3.5 / 5
Focuses on Gay people in Family rather than Gay people as Family. Speaks about how we can mirror and enforce the hurt and rejection we are subjected to within the family unit (towards other queers). This shunning is often rewarded by society and thus, enforced.
Family is often the birthplace for understanding power, and usually the first place we will experience homophobia. Therefore, corrective action must begin there.
There needs to be a change in perspective, the onus should not be on gay people to prove they do not deserve to be shunned/victim. The state should intervene to say that officially, it is the perpetrators fault. Example given is rape which is now officially wrong and women are no longer (technically) blamed for rape; although this still happens socially.
There is a tendency to think of familial homophobia as an individual problem rather than a cultural one, however, this is not true as the family unit is often a microcosm of society. Feminism is cited as an example as it highlighted the issue of women within the home/family unit but done so in a way that allowed for collective organising; it reframed the issue as a cultural one rather than private one.
Other social movements rely on generational support e.g. labour movement or feminism (mother, daughter) but the queer movement has not had this advantage and often, we are isolated within our family units and therefore, do not have the support other movements have had.
Rather than focus on the root of homosexuality, there should be a focus on homophobia and how to eradicate it. However, to tackle homophobia, heterosexuals would need to accept loss of power and privilege. It is naive to believe that we can all have a level playing field if we continue the way things are. When black people could sit anywhere on the bus, more white people had to stand; when women got hired in more senior roles, mediocre men suffered. Therefore, there must be an acceptance that power must be transferred for equality.
Therapy often doesn't work as a solution to familial homophobia as heterosexual therapists can reinforce social power structures and homosexual ones can lack the ability to provide advice for something they themselves are victim too. Often, the advice is to abandon your family and create your own queer family which is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it takes responsibility away from your blood family to face their homophobia and secondly, if you are unable to create a queer family you are then left isolated and alienated.
Familial abuse can occur in queer families too. There was a trend of bio-mums taking their lesbian partners to court for sole custody of the child and using the state's indifference/the lack of recognition of their relationship against their partner.
However, family's (blood or otherwise) can set an example for how gay people should be treated, and can intervene if they see their gay family member perpetuating shunning against another gay individual.
One argument for gay marriage provided by Schulman is that is protects the couple from each other rather than the state. For example, rather than getting married because of the tax benefits etc marriage forces the individuals to have an obligation to one another and means that neither can desert the other without first negotiation and explanation. Secondly, by getting married, gay individuals receive state recognition which validates and legitimises their existence. The example given is that a father can disown his daughter, but the state gives her a vote and lets her know that her opinion matters.
Finally, there is a discussion on queer books being marketed as niche and how this destroys any merit these writers have. They are not seen as the same level of quality as the heterosexual books and are often in a smaller section of the bookstore 'LGBT'. Quotes from one publisher who says they have 'too many LGBT books in the pipeline' but you would never hear a publisher say they have too many heterosexual books in the pipeline. Therefore, talented writers are being held back purely because of their sexuality and are being shunned, because society tells the publishers that they won't be published for this action.
Focuses on Gay people in Family rather than Gay people as Family. Speaks about how we can mirror and enforce the hurt and rejection we are subjected to within the family unit (towards other queers). This shunning is often rewarded by society and thus, enforced.
Family is often the birthplace for understanding power, and usually the first place we will experience homophobia. Therefore, corrective action must begin there.
There needs to be a change in perspective, the onus should not be on gay people to prove they do not deserve to be shunned/victim. The state should intervene to say that officially, it is the perpetrators fault. Example given is rape which is now officially wrong and women are no longer (technically) blamed for rape; although this still happens socially.
There is a tendency to think of familial homophobia as an individual problem rather than a cultural one, however, this is not true as the family unit is often a microcosm of society. Feminism is cited as an example as it highlighted the issue of women within the home/family unit but done so in a way that allowed for collective organising; it reframed the issue as a cultural one rather than private one.
Other social movements rely on generational support e.g. labour movement or feminism (mother, daughter) but the queer movement has not had this advantage and often, we are isolated within our family units and therefore, do not have the support other movements have had.
Rather than focus on the root of homosexuality, there should be a focus on homophobia and how to eradicate it. However, to tackle homophobia, heterosexuals would need to accept loss of power and privilege. It is naive to believe that we can all have a level playing field if we continue the way things are. When black people could sit anywhere on the bus, more white people had to stand; when women got hired in more senior roles, mediocre men suffered. Therefore, there must be an acceptance that power must be transferred for equality.
Therapy often doesn't work as a solution to familial homophobia as heterosexual therapists can reinforce social power structures and homosexual ones can lack the ability to provide advice for something they themselves are victim too. Often, the advice is to abandon your family and create your own queer family which is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it takes responsibility away from your blood family to face their homophobia and secondly, if you are unable to create a queer family you are then left isolated and alienated.
Familial abuse can occur in queer families too. There was a trend of bio-mums taking their lesbian partners to court for sole custody of the child and using the state's indifference/the lack of recognition of their relationship against their partner.
However, family's (blood or otherwise) can set an example for how gay people should be treated, and can intervene if they see their gay family member perpetuating shunning against another gay individual.
One argument for gay marriage provided by Schulman is that is protects the couple from each other rather than the state. For example, rather than getting married because of the tax benefits etc marriage forces the individuals to have an obligation to one another and means that neither can desert the other without first negotiation and explanation. Secondly, by getting married, gay individuals receive state recognition which validates and legitimises their existence. The example given is that a father can disown his daughter, but the state gives her a vote and lets her know that her opinion matters.
Finally, there is a discussion on queer books being marketed as niche and how this destroys any merit these writers have. They are not seen as the same level of quality as the heterosexual books and are often in a smaller section of the bookstore 'LGBT'. Quotes from one publisher who says they have 'too many LGBT books in the pipeline' but you would never hear a publisher say they have too many heterosexual books in the pipeline. Therefore, talented writers are being held back purely because of their sexuality and are being shunned, because society tells the publishers that they won't be published for this action.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 21, 2023
This book was so flawed, it made me self-conscious of how much I liked Conflict Is Not Abuse. As other reviewers have said, I think this book should be marketed and taken more as a collection of Schulman's reflections on her personal experiences, and the fact that it is widely read and marketed as if it will have important data or broad appeal is near false advertising. However, Schulman herself seems to have intended the book to be taken as universal fact. She generalizes from her experience, speaks in absolutes, and rejects most dialogues surrounding why straight people hurt gay people. Some of that is warranted and refreshing. She is uncompromising in her expectation that society needs to do better - that it is our moral obligation not to shrink and accept and make space for homophobia. However, I found Schulman's views of us vs. them, human evil (her word, not mine), and the oppression she has personally faced to be exhausting and one-sided to the point of blindness. This book neither contextualized nor helped me deal with the homophobia I see in my own family, and I found myself rejecting her more valid points due to the harshness of her tone and lack of substantiating evidence. At one point she rails at the homophobia of the publishing industry when an editor says he doesn't like her writing. She doesn't seem to be willing to conceive of a world where...maybe her writing just isn't that good.
July 28, 2023
3.5 🌟
I know from reading some of Schulman's nonfiction (The Gentrification of the Mind, Let the Record Show) that she usually writes from her extensive personal experience, and it is experience that is illuminating and important to bear witness to. Here, however, I think these experiences could have been scaffolded with more research and secondary sources, since this is such a large topic. To write about familial homophobia in general through the lens of a single person's experience is not really methodologically sound. Maybe this is an issue of framing; if this book had been positioned as reflections based on Schulman's personal experience, that would be more honest. I also found the book, short as it is, fairly repetitive, and it loses its focus a bit at the end. Schulman has a lot of insights that I find resonant and useful about power and status, the false promise of visibility, and the relationship between familial and societal homophobia. It's a worthy and useful book, but not as robust as I had hoped it would be.
I know from reading some of Schulman's nonfiction (The Gentrification of the Mind, Let the Record Show) that she usually writes from her extensive personal experience, and it is experience that is illuminating and important to bear witness to. Here, however, I think these experiences could have been scaffolded with more research and secondary sources, since this is such a large topic. To write about familial homophobia in general through the lens of a single person's experience is not really methodologically sound. Maybe this is an issue of framing; if this book had been positioned as reflections based on Schulman's personal experience, that would be more honest. I also found the book, short as it is, fairly repetitive, and it loses its focus a bit at the end. Schulman has a lot of insights that I find resonant and useful about power and status, the false promise of visibility, and the relationship between familial and societal homophobia. It's a worthy and useful book, but not as robust as I had hoped it would be.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews