Alain Martinossi: Alain Martinossi is a Ph.D. candidate in the school of education at the University of Southern California. His dissertation is a qualitative analysis of the coming out experience of gay and lesbian high school teachers.
In this book Martin Duberman chronicles his own battle with his internalized homophobia from 1948 to 1973 when he eventually emerges victorious, achieving his own liberation as an openly gay man largely through his involvement with political activism.
First a brilliant student, Duberman was later to become a distinguished historian, an innovative educator and a successful playwright. Duberman's incredible propensity for scholarly achievements serves as a refuge away from the temptation of his libido and as a protection from his own mind given to self-doubt and self-hatred when not filled with the task of completing a million projects all at once. Finally, after nearly two decades of half-hearted failed attempts at renouncing his homosexuality, he emerges victorious, achieving his own liberation as an openly gay man largely through his involvement with political activism.
A strikingly honest account of a gay man's struggle with his own identity, CURES must also be pointed out as more than merely biographical. As Duberman recounts his experiences with sexuality, always mingled with large doses of guilt, he manages to intertwine his own development with the historical and social changes taking place while he struggles.
Duberman captures remarkably well the ambiguity and the complexity of his internal struggle by portraying himself as harboring decidedly homophobic views while, at the same time, experiencing the pleasures of homosexual sex. Similarly, he ironically illustrates the futility of so-called “cures” with accounts of his progressive discovery of the gay subculture and of the pleasure he derives from his sexual experiences while at the same time making weekly trips to the psychiatrist supposed to rid him of his “pathological” tendencies.
His book clearly shows that, during these two decades, the closet was the norm. The liberation movement was in the hands of a few while the great majority of gays and lesbians throughout the country, dealing with their internalized self-hatred and their daily struggle for psychological and physical survival, often paid little or no attention to the budding movement for the liberation of an identity they were actively trying to deny. Duberman himself, now well aware of the history of the gay and lesbian liberation, makes no claim to have noticed its developments, to have welcomed them on the few occasions when he did notice them, or even to have understood their importance as they were unfolding. His own deep-seated rejection of homosexuality as pathological prompted him to denigrate the efforts of gay and lesbian activists to gain visibility and to fight society's stigmatization.
Duberman's internal struggle intensifies as he grapples with emotional experiences of a conflicting nature: painful (but perceived as morally right) psychological “cures” for homosexuality and highly pleasurable (but perceived as morally wrong) sex with his male lovers. In contrast with his laboriously slow progression (as he himself acknowledges repeatedly throughout the book), he chronicles the political and social changes taking place. As his personal story unfolds, we read about books such as David Bergler's homophobic best-seller HOMOSEXUALITY: DISEASE OR WAY OF LIFE? and about their nefarious contribution to an already strong homophobic climate. In contrast, we are also told about Evelyn hooker's groundbreaking 1957 study of non-patient homosexuals which reported no difference between gay and heterosexual men's tendency to pathological behavior, thus pointing out to the conclusion that social stigmatization was the only cause of any pathology found in homosexuals. Also present throughout the book are descriptions of the creation and the development of organizations such as the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles and, later, of the human rights movement and feminism, both highly influential in the development of a gay and lesbian consciousness as an oppressed minority.
Martin Duberman's book is pleasantly written with wit, humor, honesty and retrospective political consciousness. It is an important testimony of two parallel struggles: his own as a gay man in a hostile homophobic society and, at a more general level, the one fought by activists for the benefit of the entire community. One of the strengths of Duberman's book is that it shows us, by chronicling these two struggles simultaneously, that his own development, personal as it may have been, would have never been possible without the positive social changes brought about by the political struggle of gay and lesbian activists. Indeed, after having developed quite independently, both struggles finally merge successfully and, through activism, Duberman achieves his own liberation. Thus, Duberman's book, apart from its literary quality, represents a valuable social, historical and political contribution. On the one hand, the account of his personal history, spanning over two decades, vividly portrays the social context of the 1950s and the 1960s as well as the plight of a gay man living in these times. On the other hand, the political background serves as an inspiration for us all to continue the political struggle until “struggle” is no longer synonymous with the development of a gay identity.
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