If I actually remembered anything from my stats class I'd aim for some sort of pun here. But I digress.
A piece by Guy Branum appeared last week in the Huffington Post accusing statistics deity Nate Silver of distancing himself from the gay community. Silver, who was named Out magazine's Man of the Year, apparently said something to the effect of not identifying a great deal with gay culture, and wanting to be known first and foremost for his statistical work.
"I don't want to be Nate Silver, gay statistician, any more than I want to be known as a white, half-Jewish statistician who lives in New York.'"
Nate could probably have chosen his words a bit better, but overall they seem relatively innocuous to me. Branum doesn't think so:
"So is identification with homosexuality dehumanizing to us? Does it turn us from individuals into a lumped-together mass of stereotypes? Not remotely. Silver's refusal to fully participate in gay identity is the real problem. I'm not saying he's a bad guy but that we must acknowledge the cultural forces that allow a person to participate in homosexual sex while feeling like the concerns, bigotries and culture that surround homosexuality do not apply to them."
and later:
"Nate Silver is participating in a continued construct of homosexuality as a behavior rather than a culture, perspective or neurological atypicality. It is not uncommon for people to say, "Gay is something I do, not who I am." We are able to conceive of race and gender as aspects of a person's identity without overwhelming it, but we, as a culture, persist in a terror that any cultural identification with homosexuality overwhelms and displaces all other aspects of one's being."
Branum argues that by distancing himself from gay culture, Silver does gay culture a disservice, by legitimizing efforts to prevent it from being defined as a culture. He needs to more fully embrace his gay identity, and show that you can embrace that identity and show that it can be an enriching part of your life.
If queer theory made my head spin a bit less, I'd break down Branum's argument a bit more (which as an aside, is pretty rambling and could have been about half as long). I agree with parts of it. But what I mostly don't get is what Nate Silver is supposed to do. He hasn't been dishonest about his sexuality; he hasn't been hypocritical about it. He merely said that he doesn't identify with the dominant gay culture, and that he wants to be known for other things.
Branum says that he needs to have a solid identity to show people that you can be a gay man and a statistician, and not let it overwhelm your work. You should be the very best gay statistician you can be.
But isn't that what he's doing? He's gay, he's a good statistician. Nobody questions either of those things. What else is there?
Which brings me back to my initial question. Statistics are statistics. There is no particularly gay way to do statistics (well there probably is, but FiveThirtyEight isn't that kind of blog), and I think most rational, open-minded people don't think of his sexuality as being any sort of handicap.
The ultimate point (which Branum confusingly seems to approach) is that there are all sorts of gay men, but what unites us is certain common realities and difficulties. But the thing is, these are the sorts of realities that we can understand merely by understanding that another man is gay and has been through those same things.
Again: Nate Silver is gay. He has never explicitly denied it. So what else is there?
Gay culture is like a lot of other minority cultures in that it's often been crafted by necessity. Gay men have banded together and formed a culture in response to a majority culture that hasn't always welcomed them. Forty years ago, Nate Silver could have lost his job and been evicted (or arrested) for admitting even this much.
But what to do when the majority culture does start welcoming you in? Does the culture need to be abandoned or assimilated?
Not entirely. There is beauty in that shared culture, even if it is a product of oppression. But it also means that people have the freedom to choose which parts of that culture they identify with. This choice — this choice to define yourself as an individual, to show that you can not only be gay, but in your own individual way—is the most essential thing that the rights movement has fought for the last several decades.
Progress takes a lot of forms. This year, it took the form of three states equalizing marriage, of thousands of happy couples lining up at courthouses.
But I also think it takes the form of gay men having the ability to say with a shrug "Yeah, I'm gay. But I'm also these other things. And they're also pretty interesting."
Also, what Branum doesn't realize is that scientists and statisticians have to constantly distance themselves from their humanity in the public eye in order to retain an aura of objectivity, which is their validation. Nate Silver has decided to be the people's statistician, and therefore should position himself as close to a non-human calculating machine as possible. Ergo, being Jewish, gay, white, male, etc. is indeed irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteexactly. if Nate Silver were in a more expressive career (artist, author, musician, comedian), it would be more relevant to talk of him as a "Gay ____."
Deletebut even then, as Silver made the point with the Keith Haring example, if you get too caught up in someone being a Gay X it can sometimes distract from the X. Given that most sane people these days don't care if you're gay, it doesn't make as much sense as it once did to make a big deal of your gay identity unless it's relevant to your work.