Why the Closet Will Never Go Away

In the end, I have to agree with Sedgewick; I don't think the closet is escapable. I think that the Netherlands and Iceland, two of the most tolerant countries on the planet, really demonstrates this fact. In both of these countries, many of the problems associated with homosexuality in less tolerant countries (drug use, STDs, mental illness) remain. Granted, they're lessened, but they still exist.

Of course, when you establish the closet as inescapable, the obvious follow up question is: why? And I think there are several reasons.

First of all, even in a country where parents would be as happy with a gay child as with a straight one, the assumption will be that you are heterosexual. The vast majority of people in the world are, unfortunately, heterosexual. And even if you believe the works of Kinsey on the subject, most people are going to end up being mostly heterosexual. It's insescapable.

It goes back to the whole "biological underpinning" that we discussed in the feminism unit. There are biological reasons for homosexuality. There have been all sorts of studies linking male homosexuality with population pressures and surplus males. When you're dealing with something that blurs the line between culture and biology, you run into these sorts of questions.

A second reason I don't think the closet will ever go away, which may seem rather tangetial, is that history is not progressive. We all assume that homosexuality will be more accepted in the future, but this isn't necessarily the case. Classical Greece was less homophobic than Hellenistic Greece which was less homophobic than modern Greece. The Age of Decadence precedes the Victorian Era. The Roaring Twenties was thirty years before the Square Fifties. And so on. History can change in ways that no one would have predicted.

Of course, as Professor Jenkins rightly pointed out, this does preclude the role of activism. It also precludes the role of the individual in dealing with this sort of thing. There are things people can do that can "fight the closet." Coming out the closet is one. Respecting alternative sexualities is another. We might not be able to see a culture where the closet is destroyed, but we can see one where the closet doors are thinner.