Talk:The Politics of Being Queer

Sourcing for claim

@User:czar The article claims that Goodman "described his relationships with young boys as being neither exploitative or pathological, despite public opinion, and that same-sex sexuality was a healthy prelude to friendship and student–mentor relationships". I don't know enough about the life of Goodman, so I'm not sure whether or not he abused young boys. I read the essay and I didn't see anything in it where Goodman admits to CSA. Is this sentence accurate? What is the source for it? I tried looking, but I cannot access the cited source. If Goodman makes these assertions elsewhere, the article should be edited to clarify that this essay itself does not contain those claims. I see the essay states his view that "The teacher-student relation is almost always erotic" but that "erotic feeling" may not involve "overt sex". Whether or not he was referring to the erotic in some abstract Freudian sense or whether he was referring to abusive behavior is something worth clarifying. Thank you. Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 12:31, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Bohemian Baltimore, here's the full quotation from p. 451:

The first modern reclamation of the word queer came in 1969, when countercultural writer Paul Goodman penned his well-known essay “The Politics of Being Queer.” In the essay, Goodman contended that rigidly straight sexual attractions were as pathological as rigidly gay ones. He argued that his own relationships with young boys were neither, as public opinion contended, exploitative nor pathological. Same-sex sexuality, according to Goodman, was often a healthy precursor to friendship and to a successful student/teacher relationship, even across the adult/child divide. While Goodman’s ideas were not all taken up by the emerging lesbian and gay civil rights movement, galvanized in the 1960s, his reclamation of the word queer and the assertion that queerness was not pathological were instrumental in laying the groundwork for activist reclamation of the term.

For some related discussions, see Talk:Parents' Day (novel)/GA1 and Wikipedia:Peer review/Paul Goodman/archive1 § Sexual orientation. czar 12:14, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

@Czar Well, that's upsetting. Thank you for the full quotation. Given the essay's characterization of gay people as "pathological", are you aware of any critiques that address the essay's homophobia? Has this essay ever been characterized as a homophobic work? Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 14:11, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I'm not sure what that source is referencing with that "were as pathological" comparison, which is why I didn't include it. You can read the essay for yourself and see. Goodman was bisexual and an outspoken advocate of homosexuality. I'm not aware of major critiques of his work as homophobic. But anyway, I think that's getting off-topic. I've written on Goodman's sexuality in his biographical article and in the aformentioned discussions. czar 16:04, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

@Czar The full essay isn't available in that link. I read the essay here. From googling, it seems like the context for Goodman's advocacy of child abuse is that heterosexual male private school teachers were allowed to prey on teenage girls; a homophobic double standard that deprived him of his own male sexual entitlement to teenage boys. As for the homophobia, it makes no difference to me what Goodman's sexuality was. A bisexual can be homophobic. A gay person can also be homophobic, for that matter. That said, I'm also not seeing Goodman claim in that essay that homosexuality is pathological. As another aside, the essay's racism and flagrant use of racial slurs is something else that could use mentioning in the article, sources permitting. Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 04:15, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps a clarification can be added that these descriptions are the views of the person who wrote that book? Bohemian Baltimore (talk) 04:16, 6 May 2024 (UTC)