Notre Dame Culture

Closeted gay males only saw two options. The first was to pass as straight, or blend in with the dominant Notre Dame culture. The second was to adopt a code that some gay students had developed. Typically, the idea of coding is the development of a secret of a double language to express queerness within the context of the dominant culture. However, in this case the code was applied to both language and behaviors. Nathaniel witnessed an exaggerated way of talking, with the addition of flamboyant hand gestures and the clothing choices that were discussed earlier. In addition, the code wasn’t made secret, but was clearly visible to gay and straight students alike to express queerness to contrast the established Notre Dame culture. But for many …show more content…
Many conforming gay men thought that the nonconforming “swishes” would monopolize the visibility of homosexual men and that society would associate femininity with all homosexual men. This seems to be exactly what happened at Notre Dame in the late nineties. Because members of the LGBTQ community who didn’t fit into the dominant Notre Dame culture were often in the most visible positions, namely, being involved in the school’s gay and lesbian politics, their appearance and behavior became associated with all homosexuals on campus. What allowed this to happen was most likely the low visibility of any other homosexuals, either on campus or available to those on campus, that didn’t fit within that mold at …show more content…
During that time period conformity to the predominant national culture and conceding to the ideas and values of the majority was crucial, otherwise one could be socially isolated and scrutinized. At Notre Dame homogeneity in dress, attitudes, and appearance was definitely valued among students, if not by faculty, staff, and administrators as well. But because many of the visible openly gay students completely abandoned the idea of conforming, it created a sense of shock among those who were firmly fixed into the consensus culture. If Nathaniel’s perspective is accurate, his incrementalism viewpoint may have been a more effective way to gain support for the LGBT students on campus. Incrementalism is the idea that change happens slowly, rather than radically, which can often stunt progress by shocking those that you want to garner support from. Nathaniel sensed that some discrimination towards gays was simply because many students had a sense of disgust towards homosexual acts, but he believes the main reason was separate from sexuality completely. Nathaniel posits that the main reason many heterosexual students, and closeted gay students purposefully separated themselves from homosexual students was because of the inauthenticity of their behavior, rather than their sexuality. If instead, homosexual students were able to come out of the