A Case Against Inclusion
Gail Simon
The Pink Practice
Paper presented at Social Exclusion Conference
I am speaking here
following an invitation to The Pink Practice for me to speak on the experience
of exclusion for lesbians and gay men.
I will say a little
about the Pink Practice and then go on to introduce what I am going to talk
about.
The Pink Practice is
a counselling and psychotherapy practice for lesbians, gay men, their friends,
partners and families.
It has been in
existence for over ten years and came into being as a response to lesbians and
gay men who were keen to find a counsellor or psychotherapist who was
identifiably lesbian or gay.
People's experience
was that when they had requested a lesbian or gay practitioner, they had been
met with derision, hostility, unhelpfulness and negative interpretation.
People often imagine
that The Pink Practice works with people who have problems coming to term with
their sexuality.
This is in fact, very
rarely the case.
The Pink Practice is
a general counselling and therapy practice.
The difference, aside
from its clientele, is that all practitioners are known to be lesbian or gay.
This has never been
known to interfere with the therapy and it is a shame that so many
practitioners still subscribe to the myth that this information about
the therapist "contaminates" the therapeutic relationship.
*************************
When I elected to
participate in this conference, I was very clear in my abstract that I was not
willing to speak only on the experience of exclusion of lesbians and gay men.
My focus for this
presentation is entitled: "The Case
Against Inclusion"
I am interested in
addressing exclusivity as affects people from a variety of social and cultural
groupings.
And I speak as,
amongst other things, a woman, as a lesbian, as a Jew and as a UKCP
registered systemic therapist.
***********************************
I might guess that my
description of myself as a lesbian, as a Jew and as a woman might be greeted
with a kindly acceptance.
Coming out as a
systemic therapist, nay a UKCP registered systemic therapist in the
midst of a YAPP convened meeting might be the weakest point in any desire on
the part of this group to be both welcoming to me and take seriously the
content of my thoughts.
On a less optimistic
day, I might feel that I might as well stop talking now as, in this forum,
the words of a systemic therapist may well count for much less than those of a
psychoanalytic
therapist.
To those of you who
feel more inclined towards the BCP, then my affiliation with the UKCP or BAC,
might discredit my thoughts further. Is this a kind of exclusion?
Of course not,
because we can theorise what is objectively sound and what is subjectively
unsound and therefore excludable.
This brings me to
some important questions which are worth
bearing in mind when trying to promote inclusivity:
· Who decides what and whom to include and what and whom to
exclude?
· Who is likely to benefit from the practice of inclusion? And
how?
· Who is likely to remain excluded and what does this tell you
about those with the power to determine policies and practices of inclusivity?
***********************************
Social exclusion is
an unacceptable reality
-
when enforced
by those
with the power to exclude.
Excluding oneself can be a positive choice.
Furthermore, an
invitation to membership by a dominant group is often a dangerous invitation,
highly conditional, patronising, may well come about for dubious reasons and
one which can result in the annihilation of less dominant cultures.
There is something
sinister for me about inclusivity.
There have been many
attempts by liberal institutions to deactivate the threat of difference by
inviting, incorporating the “other” into the mainstream, into the dominant
language and cultures of the professional and broader right wing power
structures.
But this invitation
can only
offer a conditional membership:
-
so long as you are not too challenging of the dominant theories and practices..
-
so long as you are relatively amiable and not too threatening to the dominant
heterosexual/white culture’.
Those who choose not
to fit in with a particular psychotherapeutic story of what counts
as healthy behaviour, those therapists who challenge the dominant
culture of the employing authority, their colleagues’ well intentioned
liberalism, are likely to have the old stories of pathology revived for them -
and be excluded!
***********************************
What is your account
of how change occurs in institutions?
It is important to
have an account.
Theories of a melting
pot society and the richness of diversity are skin deep stories and do not
touch the deeply embedded institutionalised prejudices which gave rise to
exclusive practices in the first place.
How has your
training/registering institution thought about "homosexuality" - for
example?
How have they (and
now you) come by these ideas?
How do they [think
they] "know"?
How come they have
changed their ideas [about lesbians and gay men]? (Have they really changed
their ideas?)
What is your account
of how change occurs in institutions?
This is an important
question because changes are happening and we need to be able
to have accounts of these changes and contextualise any invitation to a
party.
For years lesbians
and gay men have been excluded from so many psychotherapy and counselling
trainings. So now more of these institutions are specifically opening their
doors to us. Why?
Have they succumbed
to the mainstreaming of certain liberal ideas?
Has their theory of
"homosexuality" changed?
Can one really
separate out one bit of theory and say, "Well, yes, since the cultural
revolution, we can now admit we got that bit wrong. We have
replaced it with a more ethically sensitive piece of
theory"?
Can we really expect
to take
out, surgically remove one
element of the theory and replace it with something less controversial?
The practices of many
such training institutions have bordered on fascistic with regard to
"homosexual" trainees (often only prospective).
What does it mean for
lesbians and gay men to be entering into the previously forbidden zone in order
to do therapy trainings?
Are we assured no
negative knock-on effect into our community of the institution's recent
history/stories?
In what ways might
the history of the training institution's relationship to sexuality, gender and
power be affecting your practice, your identity and our diverse communities?
Should lesbians and
gay men be even considering training programmes or therapies which - and
many still do - advocate homosexuality as unhealthy, immature and deviant?
Where psychoanalytic trainings feel entitled to
enquire of lesbian and gay
applicants as to whether they have performed full penetrative heterosexual sex
- only to be excluded anyway?
Is it not truly
perverse for lesbians and gay men to be insisting on admission to institutions
which have such an appalling history of knowing best.
Might there not be
some flaw in the very ideology which gave rise to such arrogance of knowing?
How would you account
for some Jews applying for positions in the Gestapo?
Is it really that
extreme of just a terribly uncomfortable analogy to be making?
************************
Let us reflect for a
moment on the concept of "homophobia".
"Homophobia"
suggests an irrational fear of lesbians and gay men. And the concept of social
inclusion suggests the overcoming of irrational fears of others.
Kitzinger and others
suggest that the fear of homosexuals is well founded.
You cannot expect to
include "homosexuals" and hope that your lives will remain comfortably
unaffected,
that homosexuals will fit in - nicely.
Attempts at inclusion
by a dominant institution are always going to be conditional upon lesbians
and gay men being compliant, agreeable to certain definitions of
what counts as pathology, agreeable to joining as opposed to
separatism, not coming out to clients, upon being monogamous, and
displaying relatively acceptable behaviours associated
with gender
roles etc.
Lesbians and gay men
are a real threat.
Kitzinger describes
heterosexuality as a very fragile institution which continually
needs to reproduce itself using the media and so on to reassure itself
of its existence.
I want to conclude
with the three questions I raised at the beginning of this talk:
· Who decides what and whom to include and what and whom to
exclude?
· Who is likely to benefit from the practice of inclusion? And
how?
· Who is likely to remain excluded and what does this tell you
about those with the power to determine policies and practices of inclusivity?