Sexual tension

The firing of Out magazine editor Sarah Pettit has raised uncomfortable questions about the ability of gay men and lesbians to work together

by Michael Bronski

The news moved quickly through gay and lesbian literary and publishing circles: on December 4, Out magazine's editor in chief, Sarah Pettit, had been fired by Out's president, Henry Scott. Pettit, who was also a vice president of Out Publishing Inc., had held the position since replacing Michael Goff, a cofounder of Out who was forced to step down in January 1996. Pettit had been on Out's founding team five years earlier and has been one of the most visible lesbians in the publishing industry. Just five days after Pettit's abrupt dismissal, Scott announced that James Collard, the editor of the British publication Attitudes, which labels itself a "postgay" magazine, would become editor in chief in February.

Sudden firings and lateral moves are common in the publishing world, but Pettit's dismissal has become a symbol of the tensions that often exist when gay men and lesbians work together, particularly in a gay-owned business. These tensions may center on immediate working conditions, but they frequently point to broader cultural issues: sexism and overt gender discrimination.

As in most disputes of this sort, many of the specifics are contested by each side. Pettit claims she learned she would be fired when she heard through the "gayvine" that Scott had been engaged in a monthlong search for her replacement. "It came as a complete shock. I was stunned," she says. "I had been at Out for its entire history and had no warning this was about to happen."

Scott counters that Pettit should not have been surprised. "Her contract was up for renewal on February 28, 1998," he says. "In September I told Sarah that unless there were some serious changes in office management, I was not going to renew her contract." He adds that although the magazine was doing well financially -- it was showing a profit for the first time, and Pettit's tenure saw an 8 percent increase in advertising pages and a 5 percent rise in circulation -- Out's organizational culture and management style were showing serious strains.

"The office was imperious and authoritarian. Writers and other editors were denied the basic respect they were due," he says.

But Pettit says she was never warned about her managerial style. Instead, she recalls the September discussion as an intense but collegial talk about budgets. "It is unheard of in publishing, or almost any other profession, not to issue written warnings or memos about unsatisfactory performance. I received none," Pettit says. "I was dismissed without cause -- for no stated reason. If they actually had reasons, they obviously would have stated them to protect themselves against a lawsuit."

During the weeks that Scott was looking for Pettit's replacement, several high-profile gay male writers who were unhappy with some of Pettit's editorial decisions -- author and activist Larry Kramer, Out columnist Michelangelo Signorile, and Sexual Ecology author Gabriel Rotello -- engaged in a spirited and at times acrimonious e-mail debate with Pettit and Scott. Most of their complaints were about Pettit's allegedly "pro-sex" political biases, but the subtext -- fully articulated by Kramer -- was that Pettit, as a lesbian, was not fully qualified to report on gay men's lives and sexuality.

What sparked the critics' unhappiness was Pettit's decision to publish two pieces by Village Voice executive editor Richard Goldstein. The first was a lengthy critique of Rotello's Sexual Ecology, a controversial book that's received attention for its contention that gay men's sexual promiscuity -- and, by extension, gay male culture itself -- was one of the root causes of the AIDS epidemic. The second piece was a breezy run-down on the very public battle of words between Sex Panic!, an activist group that defends public sex, and writers like Rotello, Kramer, Signorile, and Andrew Sullivan, who are in favor of same-sex marriage and have written critically about gay male promiscuity, public sex, and the overt sexualization of much of gay male culture.

The inclusion of several Sex Panic! members, particularly New York-based gay academic Michael Warner and San Diego-based activist and sex worker Tony Valenzuela, in the annual "Out 100" (a list of the year's most influential gay men and lesbians) also irked Kramer, Signorile, and Rotello, who felt that Pettit was irresponsibly promoting the group. The writers' dissatisfaction with Pettit became public knowledge when the e-mails were cc'd to community notables including long-time activist and writer Urvashi Vaid, Advocate editor Judy Weider, Out contributing writer Daniel Mendelsohn, and various Out editors. (Those e-mails have since found wide distribution on the Net.)

In the middle of the debate came a missive from Kramer to Pettit that pointedly brought the issues of gender to the fore:

I find it beyond acceptable ..... that Out is entirely edited by lesbians now. That you can be so passively hostile (well, not even so passively) on this current issue [the Sex Panic! debate] is such a slap in my face, in Gabriel's face, that it becomes doubly painful that we have no recourse to anyone on your staff who knows what the fuck we are talking about. . . . The Advocate, too, is now becoming more lesbian slanted because of its editor [Weider]. But the Advocate has strong ownership input, and from men who are exceptionally politically motivated. The ownership of your magazine is invisible. So you and your fellow editors, all women, are left to deal with us as you see fit. I would rather you made it a lesbian magazine entirely. I would not pretend to assume what would interest a lesbian audience or to cast such rigid parameters around this content as you have cast, are casting, around us.

In a community that gives, at the very least, lip service to the idea of gender equality -- and one that endorses the ideal of lesbians and gay men working together in a caring, intelligent manner -- Kramer's remarks are shocking and deeply disconcerting. Aside from the fact that he is simply wrong about the gender composition of Out's editorial staff -- four of the eight editors listed on the masthead are men -- Kramer's remarks assume (or seem to assume) that lesbians, simply by being lesbians, lack the ability to understand or care about issues that concern gay men.

Pettit says she was "stunned" by Kramer's remarks, adding: "To know that they were off the wall did not make them less hurtful." Daniel Mendelsohn defends the expertise of the magazine's staff, pointing out that senior writer Anne-christine d'Adesky is one of the leading authorities on HIV/AIDS treatment issues. And Urvashi Vaid characterizes Kramer's remarks as "incredibly misogynistic" and "absurd."

Scott, meanwhile, adamantly denies that Kramer's complaints had anything to do with Pettit's dismissal. "We had already begun a search for Sarah's replacement six weeks earlier -- you don't hire someone from London on a week's notice. The Goldstein pieces, or anything else to do with gender balance or gay male sexuality concerns, were simply not issues in looking for a new editor."

But can the e-mails, and the complaints raised therein, truly be separated from Pettit's firing, even if they were not directly related? Vaid thinks not. "I'm sure it did not help Sarah that prominent writers were attacking her judgment and editorial acumen," she says. "Both the e-mails and the Pettit firing reveal the old truth that those who own the presses control what is in them. Lesbians do not own very many of the general-interest gay/lesbian/bi/ trans-oriented publications in this country.

Meanwhile, much of the public discussion around Pettit's firing has focused on Out's editorial direction. Scott says that although Pettit was an "intelligent" editor, she was "too cautious," and Out, consequently, took itself too seriously. "We did a series of focus groups and discovered that while both gay male and lesbian readers buy and for the most part like Out, it was not 'essential' to their lives," Scott says. "It was a 'want to have,' not a 'need to have.' We wanted it to be sexy and serious, to have more wit, and an edge." He adds that Pettit was not the person to bring this "edge" to Out. But he strenuously denies that the dismissal has anything to do with gender politics or a desire to make Out a gay men's magazine.

Mendelsohn, whom Pettit brought on as one of Out's few regular contributing writers in 1993, and who quit in protest of Pettit's dismissal, disagrees. "Phrases like `edgy' and `postgay' feel like code words for less serious features, as well as for let's-get-rid-of-the-women. Edge and wit have nothing to do with gender," he says.

Vaid notes that it makes economic sense for Out to move in a more gay male direction. "If we are looking at what ads bring in money, what ads you need to get to make more money, we're looking at ads aimed at a male market," she says. "Out, like all commercial publications, is market driven, and the bottom line is that men have more money than women. Advertisers know that, and that is where they will put their money."

Pettit acknowledges this economic reality, but she says it's a shortsighted strategy that, if pursued, is likely to fail. "When Michael Goff started Out, he understood that its co-gender basis was necessary. It was what made it unique," she says. "Out can't compete against GQ and Details. And the marketing demographics show that women readers make up just under 40 percent of Out's readers. These women spend as much as the male readers. If Out -- intentionally or through a slow attrition of female readers -- becomes a gay male magazine, it will lose its niche and ultimately its income."

Under Goff's editorship and then Pettit's, Out was decidedly gender-balanced in its editorial content and outlook, offering an even mix of serious and lifestyle features. It's nearly impossible to divide the content of Out into neat "gay" and "lesbian" categories. Is an article by Anne-christine d'Adesky detailing cutting-edge HIV treatments of interest only to a gay man, and not to a lesbian health professional who treats people with AIDS? And might not an article on the legal hassles of gay adoption, which used lesbian couples as examples, also be of interest to some gay men? Articles about police crackdowns on public sex are probably aimed more at male readers, but how do you classify articles on Ellen DeGeneres or the murder of a female-to-male transsexual in the Midwest?

Scott says that this balanced approach will continue: "There may be changes in Out under James Collard, but there is no question that we are committed to maintaining a lesbian and gay male readership. That is what Out is about."

But a lesbian contributor to Out, who wishes to remain anonymous, is worried. "Let's face it, it's a struggle to maintain a consistent lesbian and gay male balance when much of the advertising and subscriptions are male-oriented," she says. "As editor, Sarah made sure that happened. I'm concerned it may not now. Most male readers probably could care less about Out's lesbian content." And she may be right. Recent focus groups, Scott admits, showed that although lesbians read the articles about gay male concerns, almost none of the men interviewed could recall a single article that dealt with lesbian issues.

Pettit's defenders see Scott's goal of an "edgy" publication as code for a flashier, more service- and fashion-oriented magazine for men. Yet market research indicates that this may not be in Out's best interests. Pettit notes that although Out's gay male readers have at times been perceived as more interested in the "service" aspects of the magazine -- fashion, grooming, how-to-invest-as-a-couple articles -- recent focus groups showed most men wanted more in-depth, critical articles on social issues. The reality is that Out has not been everything every reader ever wanted, and it never will be. In magazine publishing the search for "edge" is tantamount to the quest for the Holy Grail -- endless and usually hopeless, for the goal exists only in the fevered imaginations of those who seek it. Can James Collard brings this elusive quality to Out? And, as important, will this "edge" edge out lesbian content? Only time, subscription figures, and advertising revenue will tell.

But in the meantime, discomfort over the role of gender in Pettit's dismissal continues. Vaid thinks the firing brings into high relief tensions that have always existed between gay men and lesbians. "I presume -- or at least I hope -- that very few men think as Larry Kramer does about lesbians' ability to edit magazines that can be of interest to men, but the discussion brings up quite vividly the whole problem of men's fundamental lack of faith in lesbian leadership," she says. "It also brings up the harsh truth that many men are not at all interested in creating mixed, co-gender publications or spaces, in reading about issues that may affect lesbians more than they affect men, or in otherwise having to deal with lesbians."

In many ways, gay and lesbian publications are caught in a double bind. On the one hand, they may want to reflect a better world in which gay men and lesbians work, play, and struggle together. It is a world in which lesbians are interested in discussions of gay male sexuality and gay men want to read about advances against breast cancer. A world in which female-oriented advertising brings in as much income as ads aimed at men. Yet in the material world, this is not how things work. As long as inequality exists between women and men in general, that inequity will be replicated in the relationship between lesbians and gay men -- and will block any authentic ideal of equality and freedom from becoming a reality.

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