Lynn Kusmin

01/07/17
Period 4

Trait Mutability and the Persistence of Covering

Covering is, in the words of acclaimed Harvard professor and legal scholar Kenji

Yoshino, the phenomenon whereby individuals, particularly women and minorities tone down a

disfavored identity [in order] to fit into the mainstream. This phenomenon, as well as the

similarly-motivated phenomena of the past, is the subject of Yoshino's Covering: The Hidden

Assault on Our Civil Rights. The book is a part manifesto, part memoir, in which Yoshino draws

on his legal expertise, as well as on his own identities as a gay man and as a Japanese-American,

to examine the various means by which women and minorities have historically been asked to

minimize the inconvenience supposedly posed to society by their identities: conversion, passing,

and, finally, covering. While Yoshino believes that the days of conversion and passing are long

gone, the persistence of covering, he is equally emphatic, should be obvious. While the reasons

therefore might not be as readily apparent as the fact itself, it is the aforementioned reasons

which one of the central arguments of Covering explores. In Covering, Yoshino argues that the

technically mutable nature of those traits which women and minorities are pressured to cover has

led to to the persistence of covering demands, even when conversion and passing demands have,

as previously stated, become essentially a thing of the past. This argument relies on proof of

three smaller, less complex arguments, all of which can be supported by ample evidence: that

conversion and passing demands are of a bygone age, that covering demands have persisted, and

that the difference in endurance of these various kinds of demands is related to the perceived

mutability of different aspects of female and minority identity.

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Although demands for conversion and passing still exist, particularly in some areas and in

some circles, over the past few decades, they have largely given way to covering demands. This

is immensely evident in 1995 study by Verta Taylor and Nicole C. Raeburn, Identity Politics as

High-Risk Activism: Career Consequences for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Sociologists,

published in Volume 42 of Oxford University Press's Social Problems. The study, based on the

Sociologists' Lesbian and Gay Caucus of the United Kingdom, is admittedly limited in its

examination of only a single profession in a single nation; however, as legal anecdotes from

Covering will later show, the principle findings of Taylor and Raeburn's study are reflective as

well of other professions and of other developed countries similar in culture to the United

Kingdom. Inspired by a 1981 survey of members of the Lesbian and Gay Caucus [which]

concluded that 'those who are known as homosexuals or, even more so, as activists run

considerable risk of experiencing discrimination in being hired or promoted in a sociology

department, Identity Politics as High-Risk Activism looks, among other things, at the

discrepancies in the experiences of discrimination of activist and non-activist gay, lesbian, and

bisexual faculty members of sociology in academic settings (Taylor 3). While the study's

findings show that non-activist gay, lesbian, and bisexual faculty do suffer from discrimination

they feel to be related to their sexualities for their failures to convert to heterosexuality or to

pass as heterosexuals percentages among activist faculty were much higher; 71 percent of

activists versus 36 percent of non-activists reported experiencing various forms of

discrimination, including bias in hiring, tenure, and promotion, exclusion from social and

professional networks, and harassment and intimidation (Taylor 12). According to Yoshino,
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activism is, in as many words, one of the four axes along which women and minorities can be

asked to cover (appearance, affiliation, activism, association); heterosexuals, for example, are

nowadays often accepting of the fact of a colleague, friend, or loved one's non-heterosexuality,

but are still made uncomfortable by that associate's seemingly incomprehensible need to talk or

write about it, or to participate in organized activist events such as letter-writing campaigns and

protest marches. This disdain for the activist behaviors of minorities, rather than for the minority

status thereof, is even clearer in a legal anecdote included in Covering. In his book, Yoshino

recounts the court case of Robin Shahar, who, in 1991, sued Georgia attorney general Michael J.

Bowers for discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation after having her job offer under the

attorney general revoked when Bowers learned of Shahar's religious marriage to a woman.

Yoshino writes that:

As the trial court observed, Bowers contended 'he would never exclude a homosexual

from employment solely on the basis of his or her sexual orientation when he extended

plaintiff an offer of employment, he had constructive knowledge of plaintiff's sexual

orientation' Bowers noted that the couple had flaunted their homosexuality by

engaging in a commitment ceremony, by changing their names, by living together, and by

holding insurance jointly. He viewed this conduct as 'activist' (Yoshino 97).

Here, the objection to activist conduct, defined loosely by Bowers as what he saw as Shahar

'flaunting' her sexuality through a gay approximation of traditional heterosexual marriage, is

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completely explicit; Shahar's job offer was revoked not because of her failure to convert to

heterosexuality or to pass as heterosexual, as Bowers was aware of these failures when he

offered her the job, but rather because of her failure to cover her homosexuality by refraining

from the same behavior, viewed in as many words as 'activist,' for which Bower's deputy

congratulated her when he thought her marriage would be a heterosexual one to a man. These

examples, as well as various others discussed in Covering, are representative of the significant

persistence of covering demands, even in an age where demands to convert and pass are no

longer made. The question which remains, of course, is why.

As with the establishment of the persistence of covering demands in the wake of the

essential obsolescence of conversion and passing demands, it makes sense, when examining the

reasons therefore, to focus on the LGBT+ community, in this case not merely because it is the

greatest focus of Yoshino's book, but because it is in examining the relatively sudden and recent

success of the gay rights movement that the reason for the persistence of covering demands most

plainly reveals itself. Although, as Columbia University sociologist Shamus Khan points out in

an exploration of the differences between racial and LGBTQ rights movements in his aeon

article, Not Born This Way, African-American activists aggressively called out arguments

about genetic and biological differences as legacies of racist, Nazi science, it is indisputable that

race, or at the very least the commonly-associated skin color, as well as gender, is intrinsic and

inherited. While some other groups, such as national origin minorities, lack biological cases for

immutability, it is equally established that one has no control over one's national origin, and that

such a minority status is a fact which is unable to change. It is only with regards to the LGBT+
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community, and perhaps to the disabled community as well, that the immutability of minority

status has been the subject of debate. This has led to a desire, particularly prominent among the

more mainstream majority of LGBTQ activists, to assert the immutability of their own minority

status. This LGBTQ biological determinism is known colloquially as the 'born this way'

argument, after pop musician Lady Gaga's eponymous 2011 hit, and has been the prevailing

and prevailingly effective strategy for the promotion of LGBTQ rights for some years.

According to a Gallup poll referenced by Khan in Not Born This Way, in 1977... only 13 per

cent of Americans believed people were born gay. Even in 1990, only 20 per cent thought of

sexuality as biologically innate today just under half of Americans think that the sexuality of

gays and lesbians is determined at birth. Support for gay marriage and support for the idea of

being 'born that way' closely track one another. The correlation between the popularity of

biological determinism and support for gay marriage long viewed by the general populace as

the ultimate symbol of LGBTQ rights speaks to the effectiveness of a biological deterministic

argument in rousing heterosexual support for the rights of LGBTQ individuals, and, in turn, the

effectiveness of this argument has led to its prevalence in the way that people, and in particular

the way that straight, white, able-bodied men, think about what constitutes unjust discrimination.

Brenden Shucart puts the problem with this most clearly in his Advocate article 'Born This Way'

vs. the Empty 'Choice' Argument, when he admits that yes, anchoring the struggle for

LGBT[Q] rights in a 'born this way' sensibility has been strategically effective, but it carries an

implication of inferiority: Of course they were born gay! Who wouldn't choose to be straight if

they could? This implication further implies that, as the reason to oppose discrimination against
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minorities, such as LGBTQ individuals, is because they cannot choose not to be minorities, any

minority-associated trait which they can choose such as the activist participation discussed by

Taylor and Raeburn and Yoshino is fair game for discrimination. This idea is not only one

which penetrates the minds of civilians, however; it can also be seen in practice in the legal

world, and not only in cases relating to LGBTQ individuals. One anecdote recounted by Yoshino

in Covering concerns English-only rules in the workplace, and the legal challenges leveled

against them by those who claim that such rules constitute discrimination on the basis of national

origin. Yoshino notes that while these cases are, across the board, not often won, monolingual

employees are far more likely to secure a victory in the courts than their bilingual counterparts.

As one court put it, writes Yoshino, 'To a person who speaks only one tongue language

might well be an immutable characteristic However, the language a person who is

multilingual elects to speak at a particular time is by definition a matter of choice (137). No one

can analyze this quote more succinctly than Yoshino himself, who summarizes the argument of

this and other courts thusly: because bilingual employees can choose to speak English, they

must, an argument which relates clearly to the implications of the 'born this way' argument, as

well as to Yoshino's own original claim that it is the technical mutability of the traits which the

mainstream demands minorities cover which is responsible for the inappropriate persistence of

the covering demand.

Although we live in an age where the letters of professional policy and of the law have

seemingly been purged of bias against women and minorities, discrimination continues not only

on the cultural level, but on the professional and legal levels as well, as illustrated by the Taylor
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and Raeburn study, the Shahar court case, and countless other cases discussed both in Covering

and elsewhere, which were excluded from this essay only for the purpose of concision. This bias

is not based on the failure of individuals to convert to membership of a majority group or to pass

as members thereof, as was most common in earlier times; it is, rather, the oddly persistent bias,

more obvious to us now that conversion and passing-based bias have faded, based on the failure

of individuals to minimize the inconvenience posed to the status quo by their minority identities.

While the reason that this covering-based bias, unlike its elder companions, remains such an

influence in our society today when conversion and passing-based bias have passed on, may not

be as readily apparent as the simple fact that it remains so, brief examination reveals this as well.

As the effectiveness of the biological deterministic argument for LGBTQ equality, in addition to

the history of court cases such as those regarding English-only rules discussed in Covering,

suggest, Yoshino's claim that it is the technically mutable nature of those traits which women and

minorities are pressured to cover that has led to to the persistence of covering demands is indeed

an accurate one Movement away from a fight for identity-based equality and towards a fight for

universal personal liberty is, as Yoshino proposes in Covering, the step it will take to rid society

of the notion that the only unjust discrimination is discrimination against individuals for traits

that it is not in their power to alter or remove.

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01/07/17
Period 4

Works Cited

Khan, Shamus. Not Born This Way. aeon, Aeon Media Group. 23 July 2015. Web. 07 Jan.

2017.

Shucart, Brenden. 'Born This Way' vs. the Empty 'Choice' Argument. Advocate. 02 Nov. 2016.

Web. 07 Jan. 2017.

Taylor, Verta and Nicole C. Raeburn. Identity Politics As High-Risk Activism: Career

Consequences for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Sociologists. Social Problems, Vol 42,

No. 2, Oxford University Press. May 1995. Web. 07 Jan. 2017.

Yoshino, Kenji. Covering: The Hidden Assault On Our Civil Rights. Random House, 2006.