This story, Out of the Closet, But Still Under Cover, ran in the SF Chron books section yesterday. The review on Covering by Kenji Yoshino, was written by Sandip Roy (a Hyphen advisory board member and sometimes contributing writer).
Covering is what you do when you've come out but tone it down in some circumstances. The example Roy gives is you go to a family gathering and you bring your significant other, but you're careful not to show any affection with each other. And covering is not just a gay thing, but something that anyone might feel they have to engage in. The examples Roy cites are "whether it's Ramon Estévez becoming Martin Sheen or Margaret Thatcher using a voice coach to lower the timbre of her voice, or Franklin Roosevelt hiding his wheelchair behind a desk before Cabinet meetings, everyone covers."
Whoa, Margaret Thatcher used a voice coach? I totally missed that one.
Yoshino's argument is that this may seem like a small, innocous thing, but it's actually an assault on civil rights.
Roy writes: But Yoshino argues convincingly in this book, part luminous, moving memoir, part cogent, level-headed treatise, that covering is going to become more and more a civil rights issue as the nation (and the nation's courts) struggle with an increasingly multiethnic America. There is a weariness (and a wariness) about identity politics in a country spawning new identities every day. From a legal standpoint it has meant courts are increasingly veering toward protecting only the immutable aspects of identity.
I find this idea interesting, that when one person can't fully be him or herself 100%, that this decreases the well being and rights of everyone.
Posted by melissa at January 23, 2006 1:25 PM
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