He’s In. He’s Out. He’s Post-Gay: The Misadventures of James Collard’s Post-Gay Journey to America
Gary R. Drum, Ph.D. (drum@lambuth.edu)
Dept. of Communications & Theatre, Lambuth University, Jackson, TN
“Post-gay isn’t ‘ungay. It’s about taking a critical look at gay life and no longer thinking solely in terms of a struggle. It’s going to a gay bar and wishing there were some girls there to talk to.” So spoke James Collard, then Editor-in-Chief of Out Magazine, to a June 1998 symposium at the New School for Social Research. (“Sexual politics”).
At the time of the symposium, Collard, formerly editor of the British gay men’s magazine, Attitude, had been at the helm of Out only four months. He would last there for another two months. While he oversaw a significant graphic makeover to the then four-year-old publication, it was his advocacy of “post-gay” that led to his downfall. Was he on to something? Was he misunderstood? Or was he, as some suggest, simply advocating exchanging one ghetto for another?
According to the New York Times article on the symposium,
Post-gay is a fledging, somewhat murky idea that describes a homosexual identity in which sexual behavior no longer defines one’s life. . . . It’s a way of saying, “We’ve come a long way, so calm down.” In a post-gay world, homosexuals have won their battle for acceptance and are now free to move beyond identity politics. Anne Heche is post-gay, for example. Ellen isn’t. (“Sexual politics).
So what is “post-gay” and does it matter? This paper will examine first the origins of the concept, then review the history of the Collard controversy, and finally consider some implications his brief 1998 tenure had for gay and lesbian identity today.
Whence Out?
“Out is out,” announced Time in its June 29, 1992 issue, noting that “not everyone’s idea of gay liberation is a magazine modishly modeled on Vogue or GQ.” Editor Michael Goff told Time, “We’re called Out because coming out is the one thing all gays and lesbians have in common.” The article suggested that, “it may be the only thing they have in common. Out must span the chasm of gender, traditionally even wider in gay media than straight, if it is to survive.”
Goff left Out in January of 1996, apparently over a conflict regarding finances with Out Publishing Inc. chairman Robert Hardman. Sarah Pettit, with Out from its founding, remained as editor, while Henry Scott was brought in to replace Goff. (“Out founder Goff on his way out”).
By late 1997, Scott had begun a search for a replacement for Pettit, citing a need for a re-design and re-focus of the magazine, to give it an “edge.” According to Michael Bronski, Pettit’s dismissal was sparked by her decision to publish two pieces by Village Voice editor Richard Goldstein, articles that critiqued positions by leading gay figures such as Larry Kramer, Gabriel Rotello and Andrew Sullivan over the issue of gay male promiscuity. (“Sexual politics”). Playwright and AIDS activist Kramer raised the question of the gender chasm Time had mentioned in 1992.
I find it beyond acceptable, for instance, that Out is entirely edited by lesbians now. That you can be so passively hostile on this current issue (the Sex Panic debate) is such a slap in my face, in Gabriel’s face, that it becomes doubly painful that we have no recourse to anyone on your staff who knows what the fuck we are talking about. . . . The Advocate too is becoming more lesbian slanted because of its editor, Judy Weider . . . I would rather you made it a lesbian magazine entirely.
Urvaishi Vaid suggested that Pettit’s ouster was both economically and gender related, especially in light of Scott’s comment about finding an “edge.” “There is no question in my mind that gender have everything to do with Sarah Pettit’s being fired at Out. I suspect that it was an economic decision based on the thinking that Out will be, or could be, more successful as a magazine aimed at gay men.”
For Pettit’s replacement, Scott recruited James Collard, then editor of Attitude, a glossy British gay-male-oriented fashion and lifestyle monthly. Collard undertook a major design overhaul of the magazine and used the first newly-designed issue to declare Out a “post-gay” publication. But Daniel Mendelsohn, whom Pettit brought to the magazine in 1993 as one of its first paid contributors, resigned Pettit’s dismissal, declaring, “Phrases like ‘edgy’ and ‘post-gay’ feel like code-words for less serious features as well as let’s-get-rid-of-women. Edge and wit have nothing to do with gender.” (“Sexual politics”).
Whence “Post-gay?”
Neither James Collard nor Out created the idea of “post-gay.” In an April 15, 1997 article in Folio, Chris Beam notes Out published Louis Fabrizio’s reaction to The Advocate’s change to more of a focus on news. According to Beam, Fabrizio believed that, “many gay people no longer see themselves as isolated, as living on the fringe and there may be less need for hard news. Gay people have evolved into being more mainstream, and we like to read Out because it’s presented in a mainstream way.” (Beam, “Not so straight news”).
A year earlier, however, author Daniel Harris commented in the Antioch Review on the perceived appeal of Out and similar publications.
Full of lipstick lesbians and gym queens, Out, Genre and 10 Percent convey a utopian vision of a post-gay-liberation subculture, a distinctly futuristic urban Nirvana in which gay people are no longer persecuted and self-loathing. (Harris, “From After Dark to Out”).
Harris called these publications “Teflon” magazines, magazines “safe” for mainstream advertisers because no bad reputations would “stick” to advertisers whose products appeared it the magazines’ pages.
As James Collard notes in an August 17, 1998 column in Newsweek, “post-gay” was not a term he invented, but one first used in 1994 by gay British journalist and activist Paul Burston. Collard declares that
For me, post-gay sensibility began when I realized I preferred the social variety of “mixed” clubs to the more homogeneous gay clubs. First for protection and later with understandable pride, gays have come to colonize whole neighborhoods, like West Hollywood in L.A. and Chelsea in New York City. It seems to me that the New Jerusalem gay people have been striving for all these years won’t be found in a gay-only ghetto, but in a world where we are free, equal and safe to live our lives. (Collard, “Leaving the gay ghetto”).
Apparently, Collard believed that London, at least, allowed such a post-gay existence. To be fair, another part of Burston’s and Collard’s concern was with the gay male body obsession. Gay men not only moved into ghetto-like neighborhoods, they appeared to have a body code and dress code for admission.
While Collard credits Burston with coining the term in 1994, post-gay became a cause celebre two years earlier with the publication in the November 1996 Esquire of “A Post-Gay Man” by former Vibe magazine editor, Jonathan Van Meter. While admitted that he may have always been “predisposed to be a homosexual,” Van Meter sees his life as having had “three phases of gayness.”
In high school and college, I was pregay, a heterosexual with almost no erotic confusion and a fair amount of sex with girls. For about ten years after college I lived through my gay phase, gradually identifying completely with the political and psychological landscape of gayness. About a year ago, I entered my postgay phase, a stage that is much harder to define since I just made it up myself. . . . I am confidently placing myself ahead of the curve on this issue, blithely separating gender from sexuality and searching for a more honest definition of myself and my weird, postgay friends. (Van Meter, “The Post Gay Man”).
While admitting to what most would call a bisexual youth of intimacy with both males and females, what seems to have prompted Van Meter’s appraisal was his very public tenure and subsequent dismissal as editor of Vibe, a Time Inc. publication headed up by Quincy Jones and devoted to the then-emerging world of hip-hop music and culture.
The fact that I am white rankled more than a few of the gatekeepers of that other identity quagmire, blackness—and that debate too ended up in the papers. One day I got a call from a reporting friend working on a story who asked, “Is it okay if I print that you are gay?” . . . He printed it, and for the next several months I had to discuss my sexuality with Time, Inc. lawyers, umpteen bosses, Quincy Jones, reporters from around the world, and my grandmother. (Van Meter).
The New York Times picked up on the story, as did several gay publications with headlines such as, “Who put the homo in hip-hop,” and “Is this man too white and too gay for rap music?” Van Meter recounts even being brought to tears by questions from reporter Maria Shriver on an hour-long network special, “Gay in the Nineties.”
It might be said that Van Meter’s embrace of “post gay” was a reaction to a sense of being defined by media and by sexuality alone. He had already been “defined” by his whiteness by those in the hip-hop community, which is also known for rampant homophobia. (Nutter, “Fronting for the enemy”). To be defined by first race, then sexuality, then made a “cover boy” for gay life in an entire decade was doubtless traumatic for him. His embrace of a term he claimed he had “just made up” makes it seem he was not so much aligned with the thinking of Burston and Collard, but with a desire to avoid having others publicly define him. Although he had many detractors, one gay writer for the online publication, suck.com, showed his admiration by assuming the nom-de-web of “Jonathan Van Decimeter.” (Van Decimeter, “A fish, a barrel, and a smoking gun”).
Whence James Collard?
Following his return to Great Britain after leaving Out, Collard wrote in The Independent of London about the differences between British and American gay attitudes that may have caused his downfall. He had left a country “where to be gay was becoming less controversial by the day, where Lily Savage was seen as family entertainment and gay people played roles in British public life unimaginable in America. . . . A ‘mixed’ gay-friendly nightlife flourishes.” (Collard, “Who’d be gay in the US of A?”).
Collard had been editor of Attitude a magazine quite obviously aimed at gay males, but in a rather subtle way. Available in the United States at many chain bookstores, Attitude fits in with other male-oriented fashion and lifestyle magazines, at least those that tend to have males and not erotically-charged women on the cover. And the covers lacked something Out and The Advocate clearly had – the use of the words, “gay” and “lesbian.”
James Collard joined Out in February 1998 and immediately set to work on a graphic makeover. Content changed too. David Colman of The New York Times wrote of Collard in July of 1998 that he espoused “what he and others call a “post gay” philosophy, in which a homosexual’s identity is not defined by sexuality alone. It champions the idea that gay culture and mainstream culture cross-pollinate. The July issue of Out has an article about Idlewild, a downtown bar with a clientele more heterosexual than gay.” (Colman, “A Night Out With: James Collard”).
A month earlier, Collard had received mention in The Times with the controversial symposium at New School mentioned earlier.
Collard also sought change among the magazine’s regular columnists, most notably Michelangelo Signorile. In August 1998, according to Rex Wockner, the two had a heated confrontation at Manhattan’s Blue Water Grill, ending when Signorile told Collard he was quitting and threw a glass of water in Collard’s face. (Wockner, “Events”). Signorile told Wockner at the time that, “We had a heated discussion and he insulted my sensibilities and it made me so angry I threw water in his face. They did not want to write biting commentary and opinion . . . He told me I should tone down the column and said it had lost passion, which is ludicrous.”
What likely sparked this confrontation were comments made in the September issue that had just been released.
Post-gay theorizing is part of the early 80s time warp. It harkens back to a complacent time when many gay people believed that they’d been accepted by American society, that Stonewall and the activism of the 1970s had earned them visibility and respect in the culture simply because they could boogie on a dance floor all night without fear of the club being raided. (“Out’s Loss of Signorile Raises New Questions”).
Larry Kramer, who figured in the earlier controversy regarding Sarah Pettit’s dismissal, wrote to Out President Henry Scott in October 1998 that,
If your ears ever told you that I ever said anything complimentary about that nitty twit who edits your repulsively banal and useless magazine then you are even more out of touch with the realities of today’s gay world that even its last three issues has led our world to witness. Have a nice life and if you every regain your intelligence please inject some of it into Out. (Wockner).
Less than three months later, Scott announced that “James Collard has taken an extended leave of absence,” and was scheduled to return May 1. Although Scott claimed the leave was temporary and for “personal reasons,” skeptics saw it as not only the end of Collard’s reign but a clear sign of troubles at the magazine. One source said that circulation had fallen from 145,000 at the end of Pettit’s tenure to 110,000 (Van Decimeter), although Scott told Wockner that circulation figures were not a factor, and in fact, ad revenues had considerably increased. According to Wockner, a former Out employee told him that Scott was using figures from a June 1998 ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) report that “is not at all indicative of Collard’s performance since he’d just arrived at that time.” (Wockner).
When the first of May 1999 arrived, however, James Collard did not return from his “personal leave of absence.” He resigned to return to England.
“I’m leaving Out – and New York City – with very positive feelings about my time here . . . but for some time now I have really been missing London.” (“James Collard resigns”). Collard went on to say that, “There are a number of editorial possibilities for me there, but in the short-time I’ll be writing for The Times of London, The Guardian and The Observer, and working on a book.
Henry Scott asserted in the official press release that,
I hired James to give Out a sorely needed remake. And in a remarkably short time he managed to attract some of the industry’s most creative and innovative minds and delivered a redesign that made the magazine more vital and attractive . . . changes that firmly established Out as the best and most provocative publication in the largely stagnant world of gay and lesbian media. (“James Collard resigns).
Scott himself took over Collard’s duties for a short while, creating more controversy by claiming that the drop in circulation was really a matter of the magazine “shedding undesirable ‘poor’ subscribers before high-tailing it to Connecticut.” (Van Decimeter).
Executive Editor Tom Beer then took charge and, in February of 2000, Out was sold to Liberation Publications of Los Angeles, California, the publisher of the bi-weekly gay and lesbian newsmagazine, The Advocate. Judy Weider, editor in chief of The Advocate and corporate editorial director for Liberation Publications made note of Out’s problems. “We really hope to help it find its voice again,” she said, without offering further detail as to proposed changes. (Abelson, “Out Mag Acquired by the Advocate”).
In the January 8, 2000 issue of The Times of London, Collard referred to his return to his native land as an “Escape from New York.” (Collard, “Escape”). Two month earlier, he wrote in The Independent that, “they started it all with Stonewall, but we’ve left them way behind now.” (Collard, “Who’d be gay in the US of A?”). Collard apparently saw the controversy as America’s fault – gay America, least – and not his. America had not “caught up” enough to be truly post-gay. He apparently had that in mind in July 1998 with his presentation at the symposium at New School.
The response to his remarks at that event were recalled in an August 17, 1998 opinion piece in Newsweek. Collard critiqued the anger of the respondents by asserting that
Anger no longer has the power to unite us. Much has been achieved in the short time since the gay-rights movement leapt out of the closet – and onto the streets – in the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The movement survived the conservative backlash of the ‘80s, organized itself to fight the AIDS epidemic and won numerous battles for equality and acceptance. In the aftermath many gay people – because of their economic position, where they work or where they live – feel they can live their lives freely and openly. (Collard, “Leaving the gay ghetto”).
While noting that there were many who did not have this freedom, he asserted that “these disparate groups are unlikely to be united by the orthodox tactics of angry veterans from earlier battles,” perhaps a reference to such critics as Larry Kramer.
Collard claimed that “the most striking difference I found in New York was one of mood: there’s a kind of embattled quality to gay life in America we no longer have in Britain. . . Perhaps the answer lies in what Britain lacks but America must contend with – the powerful and highly organized religious right. . . . The argument for acceptance isn’t just far from being won – it may never be won.” (Collard, “Who’d be gay in the US of A?”).
Whither “Post Gay?”
Collard’s comments in The Independent may have been prescient, for an exhaustive search of databases yielded only two articles published in this country since then extolling the virtues of being “post-gay.”
Writing in the February 27, 2001 issue of The Advocate, Keith Boykin writes:
Since 1998, I have discovered a more comfortable and peaceful place in the “postgay” world. While I still write column and give speeches about race and sexuality, I no longer consider myself an “activist,” and I have carefully avoided accepting any leadership positions in gay organizations. . . . I still support the GLBT struggle, but my sexual orientation identity is now more social than political. (Boykin, “Black and postgay”).
Boykin notes that he and his friends are postgay because “we have found a space where our sexual orientation neither limits nor identifies us.”
In the cover story of the April 2, 2003 issue of Sacramento News & Review, R. V. Scheide writes of postgays who agree with columnist Rex Wockner that, “In urban environments in First World nations these days, the people who actually care if you’re gay are limited to some (not all) fundamentalist Christians and some teenage boys who dislike their own homoerotic impulses.” (Scheide, “Post Gay”).
A member of one gay couple interviewed told Scheide that “he’d like to see more tolerance, but at the same time, he thinks gay activists have pushed things too far, too fast.” On the other hand, a clinical psychologist who teaches gay studies courses told Scheide, “Some of the most conservative folks are more apt to not make a big deal about being gay. I’m suspicious because I suspect being gay is a big deal to most homosexuals.”
So perhaps James Collard was both wrong and right, wrong prior to his arrival to believe that the gay community of the United States was ready to be post-gay when he took over the editorship of Out.
But perhaps he was right to believe, after returning to his homeland, that America may never be post-gay, for as lesbian New York writer told Collard on a visit to London, “In America we are forced to do gay lib over and over again. It gets boring – but it has to be done. What are the options?” (Collard, “Who’d be gay in the US of A?”)
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