Don't settle like Sontag Before faulting the media for 'straight-washing' the personal life of author Susan Sontag, consider how we all rationalize keeping one foot in the closet.
By Chris Crain, executive editor
SUSAN SONTAG HAS been described as a radical intellectual who challenged mainstream thought, particularly in parochial America - what we now refer to as "the red states." She was so outspoken in the defense of human rights that she fancied herself an "obsessed moralist" and a "zealot of seriousness."
But for all Sontag's intellectual independence and free spirit, we are learning in her death that she lived her life in much the same constrictive closet in which you'd expect to find quivering your typical red-state queer.
Sontag's death was not unanticipated; she had battled cancer on and off for more than a quarter-century. When that struggle came to an end last week, the press was ready with lengthy obituaries celebrating four decades of prolific achievement in fiction, non-fiction, cultural commentary and even film.
We learned about her early marriage and her son and much about her ideas and personal life, but there was no mention anywhere - or almost anywhere - about her bisexuality.
Daniel Okrent, the New York Times ombudsman, offered a defense of that paper's omission of Sontag's romantic involvements with women that would later be echoed by other publications, including the Los Angeles Times.
Okrent pointed out, fairly enough, that Sontag largely kept private her romantic relationships with women, including famed photographer Annie Liebovitz. Without confirmation, and those closest to Sontag weren't talking on the record, the "newspaper of record" stuck to the facts, ma'am.
IN THE LAST several days, a number of critics, including our own blogger, have played "gotcha" with the Times, uncovering a 1995 essay for the New Yorker in which Sontag described her relationship with Leibovitz as "an open secret."
Elsewhere, in an interview four years ago with the Guardian newspaper in London, Sontag spoke more openly about her bisexuality, describing the nine "loves of her life" as including five men and four women. (See news story, Page 1)
It's easy enough to tweak the Times for missing these tidbits, though it's harder to suggest it was intentional.
What might be even harder is to take a closer look at why such an outspoken and doggedly unconventional woman would keep her relationship with Liebovitz a secret at all, open or otherwise.
What might be hardest of all is to then take a long look in the mirror.
Sontag's silence on gay rights is something of a mystery. It's not as if she was a stranger to discussions of homosexuality.
She first achieved widespread acclaim 40 years ago with her essay "Notes on Camp," which for the first time educated the masses about how gay men adopted a "so-bad-it's-good" attitude toward popular culture.
But for all her intellectual energy, exercised in novels, essays, film and activism with a dramatic flair, Sontag never took up or even publicly supported a cause that should have been natural for her: the freedom of people to love without regard to gender, while receiving equal treatment from the government for doing so.
Sontag apologists have offered some pretty esoteric explanations for her MIA status, from Larry Kramer's suggestion that she was "beyond being a lesbian" to the claim by others that she didn't want to risk alienating men who might be swayed by her views if they saw her as sexually available.
A MORE PEDESTRIAN explanation, but probably more accurate, is that Sontag was a product of her times, and carried some degree of discomfort discussing an issue that might lead to more public attention to her unconventional romantic history, loving men and women at different times in her life.
It's not quite fair to describe Sontag as closeted, considering the New Yorker essay and the Guardian interview. Instead, she comes across like two famous lesbians before their official, orchestrated "coming out": Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres.
Both women said at the time that they viewed their sexual orientation as obvious to them and those who knew them, so there was no need to discuss it. Of course that wasn't the case, or neither would have gone to such lengths to time and control the announcement for its biggest bang.
Now if that sort of logic seems self-delusional, don't be quick to judge. Every one of us - yes you - has engaged in similar thinking, even if we consider ourselves "completely out."
I may have had "the big talk" with my parents, but I don't feel the need to bring up my partner in every phone call. The people at the office may know I'm gay and have met my girlfriend, but that doesn't mean I have to bring up the camping trip we took when they ask what I did last weekend.
Being gay means fighting a dozen small battles with self-censorship every day. Any number of rationalizations can justify stifling the natural tendency to discuss our private lives to the same degree of those we are joining in conversation. But it really boils down to some stubborn degree of discomfort we each have at talking about our unconventional lives.
Unfortunately, Susan Sontag's failure to integrate her own life with her activism and her brilliant literary talent is only a magnified version of the impact of our own mundane failures to do the same every day.
We can't possibly need any more examples of how being open about our lives is the most important and powerful form of activism at our disposal. Lecturing our friends and family about gay marriage isn't nearly so important as letting them see that our relationships are as important and integral to us as theirs are to them.
If we do not treat our relationships as equal, how can we ever expect others to do the same?
"Coming out" isn't a one-step conversation; it's a lifelong commitment. And it isn't just about activism and civil rights. It's about living your life with integrity and honesty and, to use an overused word, it's about pride.