Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

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PC, although it is not universally endorsed. Even within the ranks of non-Macintosh

users, some prefer the Unix and Linux operating systems, criticizing Windows for being

“buggy” and flawed.

In 1995 the company changed focus again, this time turning towards the

Internet

and

pushing its browser, Internet Explorer, tied to the functioning of the computer’s desktop.

The bundling of software (which didn’t include IE’s rival Netscape) has come under

scrutiny from the Justice Department, whose preliminary decision stated that Microsoft

had engaged in monopolistic practices, thus continuing a series of antitrust investigations.

Regardless, Microsoft is now a major player in Internet-related and entertainment

businesses and has entered into alliances with NBS and with the

cable

station and web-

site MSNBC.

In 1998, the Justice Department began court actions against Microsoft for antitrust

violations, especially with regard to bundling Internet software with its PC operating

system and maintaining a monopoly for that system. After a preliminary finding of fact in

ovember, 1999, on April 3, 2000, Judge Thomas Jackson ruled that Microsoft had in

fact violated the Sherman Anti-trust Act and soon recommended divisions in the

operation of the company. Public reaction as well as stockmarket interest has been

intense.

Nonetheless, Gates remains one of the world’s richest men; he has recently begun to

involve himself in philanthropy with the Bill and Melinda Gates

foundation,

and has

talked about the need to return to creative outlets. His lifestyle, meanwhile, combines

elements of the American

middle class

and its success stories with the opulence of a

40,000 square foot mansion. His company both loved and hated, has become one of the

foundations of the century ahead.

EDWARD MILLER

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.

b. 1950

Widely considered, since publication of

The Signifying Monkey

(1988), the dean o

letters among

African American intellectuals,

reinforced by his regular contributions to

ournals like

The New Yorker

. Also noted for his impact on black studies with the

establishment, first at Duke and then at Harvard, of strong liberally inclined African

American studies departments, carving out a middle ground between the more

Afrocentric programs of Molefi Kete Asante and Leonard Jeffries, and the Marxist

orientations of

intellectuals

like Manning Marable and Robin D.G. Kelley. Gates has

also promoted the study of gender in edited work on black women writers (for example

eading Black, Reading Feminist,

1990). His memoir,

Colored People,

was published in

1994.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 476

ROBERT GREGG

gay and lesbian life and politics

After the 1969

Stonewall

riots, the call for an active gay and lesbian political agenda

ecame paramount. Through often spirited activism and persistent grassroots politics, a

gay and lesbian movement cavalierly came into being. As this coalition gained

momentum, important social changes occurred not only at state level, but in areas such as

psychology, education, religion

and media representation. At its best, the gay and

lesbian movement has forged a powerful visibility in the political arena. At its worst and

most banal, the movement has served to create a new demographic for commercial

advertising

. In any case, these changes were not always agreed upon by either the

popular heterosexual culture or gay and lesbian activists themselves.

As the gay and lesbian movement quickly learned, the constituency of any radical

movement is unequivocally diverse. The difficulty inherent to any coalition-

uilding is

the sometimes obstreperous struggle to proactively engage these differences for a unified

cause. What became apparent to many post-Stonewall gay and lesbian activists was that

the “lifestyle” did not simply occupy a univocal position. While there was much political

agreement that “liberation” was a good and important thing to have, the very definition o

liberation took on multiple and complex meanings.

At the outset, the very terms used to describe the movement began to fragment. Was a

drag queen a gay man? Did the S&M leather dyke share the same political desire as the

lesbian who thrived on a life in the country? Should bisexuals be included in the gay and

lesbian political caucus? Can there be such a thing as a gay Republican? Where does the

transgender (pre-operative, post-operative, non-operative) fit into the “gay and lesbian”

schema? How “out” is out? Does one only tell one’s friends? family? co-workers? fellow

students? Needless to say there has been much contention within the movement. It is no

wonder that as diversity superseded the original intention of gay and lesbian

organizations the question was asked: how can a gay and lesbian movement continually

expand its cultural base in order to encapsulate the vicissitudes of sexual identity?

Sensitivity to difference among many gays and lesbians has led to an ever-evolving

nomenclature that takes into consideration the variance of social categories. One need

only peruse, for example, the pages of the

Gayellow Pages

whose objective in 1973 was

to “[inform] the lesbian, gay and bisexual community.” In 1998 the new sexual identities

that struggle for cultural position were laundry-listed on the front page of the phone book.

Inclusion serves in the marketing of difference. Hence, the

Gayellow Pages

now informs

a consumer that is referred to as the “gay, lesbian, bisexual,

and

transgender community”

There will, of course, be additions.

Indeed, gay and lesbian (bisexual, transgender, etc.) life is besotted with consumer

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goods that purportedly support our irreducible needs, wants and pleasures. Books,

movies,

television

programs, clothing manufacturers, furniture stores, realtors,

restaurants and other traditional commercial establishments rigorously vie for gay and

lesbian customers. Even non-traditional commercial venues such as sex-toy shops, leather

ars and sex clubs, and their exotic wares, have strategized effective advertising

campaigns that appeal to their niche audiences.

Political organizations such as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation

(GLAAD) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) have kept their

names, but have over the years changed their mission statements to embrace and include

transgender people, as well as other progressive sexual and non-sexual movements. The

endular side of these politics is the Washingtonbased lobbyists such as the Human

Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Republican Log Cabins who seek to diversify gay and

lesbian initiatives through beltway politics. While HRC seeks to negotiate the political

terrain of both the

Democratic Party

and the

Republican Party,

the Log Cabins

ideologically place all their stock in the Republican agenda. Most recently both groups

have been accused of conservative initiatives that are perceived as being out of political

step with many gays, lesbians and transgenders.

arriage, AIDS, homophobia,

public sex,

abortion

and racism continue to be (as the

movement itself) some of the highly debatable issues that homosexuals wrangle over.

The stakes are certainly high in the ongoing adjustments of the political landscape. The

dynamics of power in the now historical movement rapidly shift between gay white stock

rokers and radical activists. What is striking, however, is also the rapidity with which

these glaring differences can

and

do unify Whether it has been at an AIDS demonstration

or a memorial march for Matthew Shepard (a twentyone-year-old Wyoming student who

was a victim of deadly homophobia in 1998), gays, lesbians, transgenders, queers, dykes

on bikes, stockbrokers, students, poets, painters, theorists, historians and clerics have

rallied together to flag the insidiousness of heterosexism and homophobia.

In the twenty-first century the arguments over difference in what was once known as

the “gay and lesbian movement” will undoubtedly continue. In fact, the debate will

probably become more contentious as more people identify themselves as

not

heterosexual. Not only are there more voices added to the cacophony of sexual politics,

ut the geographical dispersion of this population is growing larger. While the urban gay

“ghetto”

of the Stonewall era has clearly thrived, many homosexuals have chosen to find

ermanent dwellings on rural farms, in small towns and in the suburbs. The political and

cultural implications of these population shifts remain to be seen. Add to these

demographic changes the “gay and lesbian” workers who constitute an economy of many

different ethnicities, moralities and financial strata, and one will find that the sexuality o

everyday life in America is certain to trigger a politically raucous twenty-first century.

ee also:

Fire Island; gender and sexuality; queer

DAVID GERSTNER

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 478

gay and lesbian press

It is arguable that the “gay and lesbian”

ress began with the dramatic moment when

Oscar Wilde was seen carrying an issue of

The Yellow Book

on his way into prison for

acts of “gross indecency.” Although gay and lesbian “issues” covertly (or not so covertly)

emerged during the early part of the twentieth century in

theater

and arts journals like

roadway Brevities

and the avant-garde journal

View,

it was not until 1953 that gay and

lesbian political concerns came to the fore in the publication

One

(under the auspices o

the Mattachine Society) and in the Daughters of Bilitis’

newspaper

The Ladder

. Since

Stonewall

(1969), the proliferation of the gay and lesbian press has been tremendous i

not (in some cases) troublesomely banal (

Out,

for instance).

DAVID GERSTNER

Gaye, Marvin

b. 1939; d. 1984

Marvin Gaye helped to shape the “Motown sound” that moved

soul

music into

mainstream American popular culture. He became Hitsville’s leading man when matched

with Mary Wells in duets in 1964. After numerous hits, Gaye’s greatest moment came

with the

What’s Going On

album (1971), when he turned from soul ballads to problems

of the

inner-city

and Vietnam; this became the first soul-concept album. Gaye made a

comeback with “Sexual Healing” (1981), which featured the return of his sweet, plaintive

tones in one of pop music’s most sensual songs, rivaling his previous “Let’s Get it

On” (1981). His personal life, however, had become increasingly difficult; his father shot

him in an argument in 1984.

EDWARD MILLER

Gehry, Frank

b. 1929

Winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize (1989), Canadian-

orn Gehry is known for

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the sculptural elements in his designs, as well as his ability to relate buildings to a human

scale. Gehry’s work reached

celebrity

status with the spectacular Guggenheim Museum

in Bilbao, Spain (1997). The titanium-clad building consists of multitudinous curves

designed with the help of the most advanced computer-design programs. Gehry’s work

has prompted the question: what comes after

postmodernism?

In addition to the

Guggenheim, Gehry has designed two lines of furniture and continues to design at his

firm based in

Los Angeles, CA

ISABEL KRIEGEL

gender and sexuality

Americans in the last half of the twentieth century often felt as if they had become

suddenly inundated with an obsessive fascination with gender and sexuality. The most

commonly evoked cause—the movement for equal rights for women that emerged out o

the 1960s ferment (known to historians as

feminism’s

second wave)—has propelled

fundamental alterations in women’s legal and personal status in many areas of the world.

Yet, the very name—the “second wave”—suggests that what appears to be a “modern”

issue carries significantly deeper roots.

When we discuss gender, we mean the assumptions made about and the social roles

occupied by individuals with specific physical characteristics that we denote as “male”

and “female.” Although we tend to assume two sexes (male and female) as “natural,”

scholars have pointed out that other societies have had different ideas. Some believed that

there was only one physical

body

(for example, that women were men turned inside out);

other societies believed that there were three or even more sexes. The particular social

assumption about how many sexes even exist is often more a reflection of gender beliefs

than any empirical knowledge. For example, the fact that a small, but significant, number

of infants are born every year with the physical characteristics of both a male and a

female (known as “intersexed” in medical terminology) has only recently received

extended public discussion. Many individuals argue that they are transgendered—

belonging to neither “official” category of current gender identification.

Since such basic gender identifications can be so fluid, it is not surprising that

gendered ideas about what people should wear or the work they should do are also

subject to dramatic change over time. In America, there have been ongoing historical

struggles over the roles men and women should occupy—

articularly in the public

arena—since the country’s inception. The most famous battle—the movement for

women’s right to vote—

egan officially in 1848 and took over seventy years o

continuous activity until passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution in 1920.

Dramatic changes in gender relations did accelerate in response to the Industrial

Revolution. As more people moved into urban environments and as factory employment

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 480

needs increased, it became less clear who was “supposed” to work in what locales and

who was not. Simultaneously the rules for public activity proved less enforceable. Who

was really there to tell the factory-shop girl she should not venture out to an evening’s

entertainment? In a relatively short time, rigid assumptions about “acceptable”

ehavior

for both men and women began to collapse under the pressure of real-life circumstances.

By the 1920s, following feminism’s “First Wave,” American women both had the vote

and had received more PhDs than they would for another sixty years.

As the last fact reveals, gender assumptions are often the playthings of economic

developments. Despite significant advances early in the twentieth century much progress

for women seemed to disappear in the face of the economic and political crises of the

1930s and 1940s. More traditional notions of gender roles reasserted themselves despite

evidence of very real needs and possibilities to the contrary

The growing dichotomy between supposed gender roles and actual gender behavior

helped fuel the gender controversies in the last fifty years. The very fact that women

successfully staffed defense-industry plants in large numbers during the Second World

War—despite being told they were biologically unfit for such activity and fired once the

war concluded—helped pave the way for important subsequent gender re-evaluation.

While imagery in the 1950s presented a simple domestic life in which women stayed

home,

in fact women constituted the fastest-growing group entering the labor market

during this period. White women working in the 1950s proved essential to creating the

highly prized growing

middle class

. As the economy of the 1950s and 1960s expanded,

career doors opened. Women refused to be limited by simple prejudice about

“appropriate” work, and the movement for access to all employment categories gathered

steam. It is this ongoing insistence that has vexed so many in the last quarter century.

If gender assumptions are often shaped by economic circumstances, in America they

are also determined by racial ideologies. Claims about proper “women’s” work often

applied only to certain white women. Those arguing against women working outside the

home rarely worried that a significant proportion of

African American

women always

did just that. Indeed, without the highly circumscribed categories of domestic and menial

labor enforced upon African Americans, both male and female, it is unlikely that so many

white Americans could have so successfully entered that desirable middle class in the

postSecond World War era.

While gender questions are often assumed to be “only” about women, the nature o

masculinity

also changed profoundly in the same period. In an age of increasing

bureaucratization and technology physical strength and aggression—often hallmarks o

behavior marked as “male”—

ecame more liabilities than assets. Men have also had to

adapt to women’s refusal to limit their activities to home and child rearing. Although the

most apparent “beneficiaries” of the gender struggles are women, men have also been

changed almost as dramatically.

If shifts in gender roles and even in gender itself have hardly occurred quietly debates

over sexuality have raged even more loudly The topics of gender and sexuality are

natural cousins because they often impact on each other. This linkage is nothing new.

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Those studying sexuality in the late nineteenth century—a group of scientists known as

sexologists—believed that they could determine “deviant” sexual practices based upon

observed “improper” gender behavior. Thus, a quiet man who liked to cook was probably

a homosexual; a woman with short hair who liked sports most likely a lesbian. As these

examples indicate, stereotypes about sexuality remain even more obstinate over 100 years

than do those about gender.

All societies have engaged in a wide variety of sexual practices. All societies have

depicted or written about sexuality Americans are no different in this regard. The

seemingly accelerated pace of public sexual controversy in the late twentieth and early

twenty-first centuries is a reflection of particular historical trends—some specific to the

American context, some more reflective of broader changes.

The Industrial Revolution impacted sexual practice with the same force that it

disrupted gender relations (and everything else). A stunning decline in average childbirth

rates from eight children per family in 1800 to approximately three in 1900 trumpets the

fact that heterosexuals made informed reproductive choices. On the

farm,

children

were

unpaid essential laborers. In the new post-industrial world order they became economic

liabilities—mouths to be fed and impediments to capital accumulation. Men and women

chose not to have children. They did not choose to stop having sex. In these raw

demographic numbers lie the roots for much of what we call “modern sexuality.” Men

and women needed to discuss their decision; they needed to negotiate; they needed to

have access to contraceptive devices. Ultimately what they needed most was to find

another way to understand and talk about the now primarily non-reproductive sexual

practices they enjoyed with each other.

They did so in an increasingly urban environment that provided expanded anonymity

and freedom from social restraints. The effects of modernization itself with developing

leisure cultures, visual technologies,

mass media

and increasing mobility contributed to

an expanded universe of sexual possibility and public presentation. All this was set in

lace in America by the 1920s. People wrote sex manuals for married couples; millions

of dollars poured into sex education in the schools; Freud’s ideas became enormously

opular and homosexual subcultures flourished in numerous cities around the country.

The very controversies that would so inflame the second half of the century appeared

well underway during the first.

As the twentieth century closed however, debates over both the proper place o

sexuality and what sexuality is occupied the thoughts of many. Although the roots o

these issues are apparent earlier, the claims made by the women’s movement in the 1960s

and 1970s that women owned their own bodies and held the sole rights to reproductive

authority produced the fundamental conflict within the heterosexual

community

. The

development of the pill in 1960 provided strong medical support for women’s position.

Completely divorced from reproduction, sexuality now demanded its own vocabulary

The early twentiethcentury debates over female sexual satisfaction escalated into endless

ublic discussions over how best to achieve sexual pleasure. Most importantly the battle

for reproductive autonomy was truly joined with the 1973

Supreme Court

decision

Roe

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 482

Wade,

which legalized

abortion

. This highly contested ruling formed the basis for

years of struggle at whose core sat the question of women’s sexual choices.

The women’s movement set into motion a series of questions about sex, the answers to

which seemed to call for greater sexual possibilities. Gays and lesbians, men and women

who had already begun struggling for social acceptance in the 1950s, expanded that call

into a demand for gay liberation in the 1970s and 1980s. The debate over homosexuality

has been as ferocious as the argument over abortion. As homosexual-rights activists press

their claims for equal rights and full acceptance with greater success, those opposed grow

increasingly insistent and point to what they argue is a general decline in moral values.

They look to the increased presence of children born to those not married, the large

number of heterosexuals who choose to live together without marrying and the

widespread popularity of sexual themes in popular culture as examples of unacceptable

sexual chaos. The Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress in 1996, which

prohibited the federal government from legally recognizing a “homosexual

marriage” (should a state permit such a union), reinforced the perception of many that

heterosexual marriage—perhaps heterosexuality itself—had become and institution in

eopardy at the end of the twentieth century.

From the emergence of sexually explicit magazines in the 1950s and 1960s, like

laybo

and

Penthouse,

which catered to private male sexual fantasy to the late

twentieth-century expansion of

pornography

into the sexually integrated home through

video, cable

and the

Internet,

millions of Americans have responded eagerly to the

much decried sexual culture. This continued discrepancy between values proclaimed and

activities practiced has animated significant public discussion and numerous scholarly

debates. Propelled also in large part by the women’s movement, scholars began to look at

the history of sexuality and gender roles in society. French philosopher Michel Foucault

provided the central impetus with his influential introduction to the

History of Sexuality,

Volume I, published initially in 1976. Foucault outlined the socially constructed nature o

sexuality (a point long illustrated by anthropologists) and laid out key analytic techniques

for those who might follow. Many did. Among the numerous texts produced by this next

generation of scholars, several of the most important include:

Sexual Meanings: The

Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality,

Sherry Ortner and Harriet Whitehead

(eds) (1981);

Gender and the Politics of History,

Joan Scott (1988);

Epistemology of the

Closet,

Eve Kesofsky Sedgewick (1990); and

Gender Trouble

by Judith Butler (1996).

Theoretically challenging, late twentieth-century scholars provided new methods and

languages for discussing gender. Although some critics claimed that such work remained

isolated in an “ivory tower,” the development of this innovative scholarship clearly

reflected the fact that the very real, day-to-day world of gender relations and sexuality

surrounding everyone has been fundamentally transformed.

SHARON ULLMAN

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gender gap

Term coined in the 1980s to refer to the emergence of a significant women’s vote on

specific issues and candidates. The 1980 election marked the first time that more women

than men favored

Democratic

over

Republican

candidates, and it was also the first time

in which a substantial feminist vote surfaced. The gender gap widened as the decade

progressed and, correspondingly women’s power to sway elections grew. The women

who made up this voting bloc largely supported, and fostered in candidates, a feminist

agenda of progressive social policies, including pay equity social equality passage of an

Equal Rights Amendment

and reproductive rights.

MARY-CHRISTINE SUNGAILA, ESQ.

General Electric

“GE,” founded in 1892, focused for decades on appliances and electrical products, from

refrigerators to jet turbines, that ushered in modernity with slogans like “Progress is Our

Most Important Product” and “We Bring Good Things to Life.” The company which

employs 276,000 people worldwide in the 1990s after

downsizing,

has diversified to

include the NBC

television

network and financial services.

GARY McDONOGH

General Motors

automakers; advertising; Detroit, MI; sports cars

Generation X

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 484

Widely known to be a term coined by Douglas Copeland’s 1991 book

Generation X,

the

term carries cultural meanings and targets a market. Generation X generally refers to

people who grew up after the

Civil Rights Movement

and up to the early 1980s, after

(and offspring of) the

baby boomers

. More importantly Generation X is a state o

mind—cynical, ironic and sarcastic—the slacker type. As a marketing ploy Generation X

aims for a mostly white

middle class

with a pretty carefree lifestyle.

CINDY WONG

genetics/genetic engineering

Genetics has played an important role in the development of civilizations through

artificial selection of plant and animal features. This type of genetic manipulation is

called classical in reference to observations made by Gregor Mendel. Genetic

engineering, often discussed in the context of molecular genetics, is a science involving

the manipulation of genes either within the original organism (host) or between

organisms (transgenic). Both branches of genetic study are based on an understanding

that the genetic code for cells is contained in DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and that this

material is the blueprint for all proteins made by cells. The code is generally universal,

nearly identical in all living cells, allowing transfer of material between organisms.

Hybrid plants and animals created from both classical and molecular means form the

base of much of the world’s foods today and genetic resources have become important

commodities in world markets. Though concerns have been raised about the efficacy o

germ plasm manipulation in non-human organisms, world attention has focused on the

science more intensely as humans have become the center of genetic research. Within the

shadow of attempted national eugenics programs during the Second World War,

questions of ethics as well as law are intertwined with scientific advances brought about

through the Human Genome Project, a worldwide collaboration to locate the more than

100,000 human genes by 2005, and the patenting of genetically engineered higher life

forms. Indeed, this project moved ahead far faster than imagined, raising both profound

ethical and “business” questions about the ownership of the mapped genome.

Though fictional films like

Jurassic Park

(1993; novel by Michael Crichton) depict a

level of genetic engineering beyond current capabilities, the advent of Dolly the sheep

cloned from her mother’s cells, focuses attention on implications of current research.

Popular notions of cloning that suggest a recreation of physical, mental and personality

traits have given way to the reality that environment plays a large role in shaping the

identity of an organism. The film

Boys from Brazil

(1978; novel by Ira Levin) illustrates

the consequences of varying factors shaping personality

Gene therapy and the production of medicines through genetic engineering have

revolutionized modern medical practice. Gene therapy on humans began in 1990 and

Entries A-Z 485