"External html imported from the Yale Daily News for the convenience of our website visitors. 30 January 2006. Copyright 2005 by Allison Battey . All rights reserved."
This fall, Megan Prichard '06 attended "Out for
Business," a conference sponsored by investment banks and consulting
firms that gathers promising gay and lesbian students for a
recruitment weekend in New York. During the first few days of the
event, Prichard, who is the president of Yale Lesbians, said almost
none of the guests acted or dressed like people she would have
singled out as gay. The predominantly male group of attendees
dressed in standard suits and talked about sports, she said, and the
conference could have been just any business event.
But
things changed on the last night. The atmosphere at the closing
dinner party, where students were encouraged to dress in their
street clothes rather than their suits, was decidedly different,
Prichard said.
"Then it was obviously a gay conference,"
Prichard said, "but that was after two whole days of being with
these people."
Prichard's experience, which she said is
typical of the business world, falls perfectly under the label of
"covering," a phenomenon described in Yale Law School professor
Kenji Yoshino LAW '96's new book, "Covering: The Hidden Assault on
our Civil Rights," which was released earlier this month. Yoshino, a
scholar whose work often links constitutional and
anti-discrimination law, argues that the phenomenon of covering --
toning down parts of one's identity that do not fit in with the
supposed mainstream, like engaging in "straight" behavior even at a
business event that is gay-oriented -- is the civil rights issue of
the new millennium.
Prichard said she does not consider the
kind of covering that occurred at Out for Business a civil rights
matter, but just "what happens" in society. One reason she may have
found the covering so surprising, however, is because she was coming
from Yale.
In his book, Yoshino describes Yale as a
"vigorously tolerant" place where for every one person who
discouraged him from writing on gay issues, five people encouraged
him. Prichard said she agreed that her experience of Yale has been
of a tolerant and inclusive university.
Yoshino said he
developed his conclusions through a combination of scholarly
research and personal experience. A Japanese-American born to
immigrant parents, Yoshino struggled with his sexuality during his
years as a student at Phillips Exeter and Harvard. But his social
and romantic anxieties, he writes, led to academic and
extracurricular successes, and Yoshino attended Oxford University on
a Rhodes Scholarship, receiving a Master's degree in management
studies.
"Perhaps the closeted should not be allowed to
compete for these fellowships -- we have the advantage of those
Saturday nights," he jokes in his book.
After Oxford, Yoshino
attended Yale Law School, where he began to come to terms with his
sexuality and to fall in love with the law. An essay on gay symbolic
politics that was cited in pro-gay judicial opinions helped to
secure Yoshino a teaching post at the Law School, where he has been
teaching for the past 9 years and also serves as deputy dean for
intellectual life.
In 2002, Yoshino published an academic
article with the same name as his book that garnered attention and
offers from publishers. Yoshino ultimately decided to accept a book
offer, he said, because he wanted to bring his ideas about covering
to a wider audience.
"The challenge I set for myself in
writing the book was to try to make the ideas more broadly
applicable to people who weren't lawyers or legal scholars," he
said. "The attempt was to make the argument more accessible, in part
just by using a different non-fiction prose style, and also by
including memoir."
The book mixes Yoshino's story with
research and case law to work readers through what he calls the
three stages of assimilation: conversion, passing and
covering.
Through the middle of the 20th century, Yoshino
said, gays were routinely asked to convert their sexuality to
heterosexual, and sometimes subjected to lobotomies or electroshock
therapy as a means to this end. In the later decades of the century,
the demand to convert turned to a demand to pass -- individuals
could be gay, but should remain in the closet. For example, Yoshino
said, the military's policy of categorical exclusion of homosexuals
turned into "don't ask, don't tell," a policy that clearly demands
that gays pass.
At the turn of the millennium, the demand is
now that gays cover their sexuality, Yoshino said. Being gay and out
is fine, Yoshino said, as long as one does not flaunt it. As a
personal example, Yoshino writes that a colleague once advised him
that it would be easier for him to be a "homosexual professional" --
a law professor who happens to be gay -- than it would to be a
"professional homosexual" -- a gay law professor who studies gay
issues.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered
community has varying opinions as to how covering manifests itself
at Yale. Maria Stevens '06, a member of the Queer Peer counseling
program and the women's crew team, said her main experience with
covering at Yale has been in athletics. Throughout her years rowing
for the Bulldogs, Stevens said, she has had to skirt the issue of
her sexuality with her coach, who she said has never seemed
comfortable talking to her about it.
"For his sake, I try to
omit those details from my life and interact with him as if I were
single or something," she said.
Stevens said she is trying to
improve the situation in the Athletics Department by lobbying for
coaches to put queer safe-space stickers in their offices. The
stickers, which appear in other faculty offices on campus, let
students know that it is okay to bring up issues of
sexuality.
"If other athletes would see them they might feel
less of a pressure to cover, just by seeing they have tolerant
coaches," she said.
As of yet, Stevens has received no
response from the administration or the Athletics Department in
regards to using the stickers.
Justin Ross '07, the former
coordinator of the LGBTQ Co-op, said that while Yoshino is correct
in saying Yale is tolerant, tolerance is not the
ideal.
"Tolerance implies that a negative attribute is being
overlooked rather than understood," Ross said.
Ross said that
while gay issues usually receive ample support at Yale, the LGBTQ
Co-op experienced some problems with acceptance during last year's
pride week. Publicity posters for the event were torn down, Ross
said, sometimes in front of students who had put them up.
In
his book, Yoshino stresses that the pressure to cover does not
simply apply to sexuality, but to race, religion, gender, national
origin, disability, and a host of other attributes. But just as the
issue of covering is not exclusive, it is not simple, he
said.
"It would be silly to be against all forms of
assimilation, of which covering is one," Yoshino said. "Assimilating
is part of living in civilization. Where I get worried is where
covering occurs on grounds that are civil rights
categories."
Yoshino is currently working on an academic
article that advances the idea of universal rights over group-based
identity politics. He pointed to the example of Hispanic Americans
fighting for their right to speak Spanish in the workplace. Instead
of only fighting for the rights of their group, Yoshino said,
reformers should fight for the right of all citizens to speak their
language of origin.
"I think then we need a civil rights
rhetoric that draws people together rather than drives them apart,"
Yoshino said. "The universal rights idea is one way of, ironically,
protecting difference in the name of what we all have in
common."
The reaction to Yoshino's book at the Law School has
been overwhelmingly positive.
Law School Dean Harold Koh said
his colleague has the "heart of a poet."
"We're all
thrilled," Koh said. "I think people are kind of in awe of Kenji
because he is a person of such brilliance and human warmth, combined
with a genuine eloquence."
But some critics argue that
Yoshino does not advance a satisfactory solution for the problem of
covering. In a New York Times book review on Jan. 22, Ann Althouse
wrote that although Yoshino's description of the problem is accurate
and insightful, he falls somewhat short in his
conclusion.
"If this is an 'assault on our civil rights,' as
the subtitle has it, we might expect to hear how the courts can save
us," Althouse wrote. "Though he speaks vaguely of shifting the legal
discourse from equality to liberty, he holds out little hope for new
remedies."
Yoshino said his goal for the book is that the
term "covering" stimulate personal conversations and become part of
popular culture -- a new weapon in the fight for inclusion and
universal rights.
"My real hope is that the word 'covering'
will make its way into as many circles as possible," he said. "I
would love it if the word 'covering' were as much a part of our
cultural vocabulary as 'passing' or 'the closet' has
become."
