That's not really what it says, though, is it? It says everyone (or at least, all the men in the environment Ives grew up in) used effeminacy as an insult, but it doesn't say that that makes the insult OK; it just says that effeminacy is not equated with homosexuality by those making the insult.

It also says - and this I find very plausible - that such insults tend to be used by people with minimal direct experience of homosexuality, and KG argues that they're not homophobic because as soon as they encountered real gay people they would realise the possible offence caused and be more careful with their language. My dad used to make jokes about gay people quite regularly; he stopped as soon as he realised I was gay, but he's never apologised and I actually doubt he remembers that he used to do it. He just didn't have any experience of gay people in normal everyday life before, and all being gay meant to him was something you could make jokes about.

Without necessarily disagreeing with any of the above, I'd just add that many such people probably do have at least direct experience of homosexually inclined people (prefer that term to simply saying 'homosexual', so it's a sexual preference rather than an essential identity), but just without necessarily realising it. I've put this to both of my parents on various occasions - pointing out that, by the law of averages, chances are some people they went to school with, or knew as adults would have been inclined in such a manner, just the very fact of such endemic prejudices did not allow them to be open about that fact (a situation that still applies in some communities, and certainly does with others of alternative sexual preferences of other types, especially for women).

Well, here we are into the realm of 'gendered constructs', a term which AH does like to quote rather sneeringly. I may start a new thread explaining those terms - that sort of discourse that you mention certainly reached a high point in Ives, but has roots going back much earlier.

No, just saying that they probably have known some such people, without realising it.

Now come on, Pace - I'm certainly not sneering here; in fact, I am rather more puzzled by the use (not yours) of the phrase "the language of testosterone" as applied to Ives than I am about yours or anyone else's use of the term "gendered constructs", whether heavy or otherwise; where is the incontrovertible evidence that Ives "articulated musical adventurousness" in such a language and how does one specifically identify and define such a musical language in terms of harmony (sorry, Mrs Ives!), counterpoint, melody, rhythm, texture, instrumentation, etc.? My observation here is not intended as any kind of comment on Ives's sexual proclivities (which have not been questioned here) or his attitudes about sexuality (which have), since I am insufficiently qualified to comment about this. Perhaps we can also have some detailed definitions of the musical language of progesterone and the like, compared and contrasted with that of "testosterone". Or perhaps not.

Best,

Alistair

That's a quite wonderful phrase, Colin, and you're right indeed. Andy, I take your points and I think I was perhaps responding more to modern situations within my own experience on to which I could read Kyle Gann's points rather than using them to think about Ives. Let's put it slightly differently:

Do I think Ives would have dropped the rhetoric as soon as confronted with 'real gay people'? No. Do I think he would have developed that rhetoric in the first place if he'd grown up in a society where real gay people were more visible? Highly unlikely. In that sense I think it's fair to say that he wasn't intentionally or wilfully homophobic. On the other hand, if Ives hadn't grown up in the circumstances and at the time he did, he wouldn't have been Ives anyway. So it's meaningless to exonerate him in those terms. However, I think it's more productive to register the intimate weaving of certain social attitudes into Ives' world-view and that of his historical epoch/context than it is to talk about liking his music less because of his personal attitudes. Maybe it comes down to a question of the difference between 'liking' and 'being interested in', or between 'identifying with' and 'liking'.

You (Andy) and Ian both raise various other points which I'd like to consider, but this probably isn't the place to do so at length. Just to say quickly that honourable as Ian's distinction between 'homosexually inclined' and 'homosexual' is, to register 'a sexual preference rather than an essential identity', nonetheless it has been and remains important to many gay people to call themselves gay, or homosexual. That's not just a question of choosing divisive identity politics over an inclusive drive for equality, which I can see Ian would have problems with as a socialist (I have problems with it myself, for related though not identical reasons); it's also born, I believe, of a sense that even a term like 'homosexually inclined' can sound like an evasion, like not wanting to name something directly or feeling that a euphemism or a periphrasis is more polite or socially acceptable. Also, 'homosexually inclined' can sound like it's coming from the position that sexuality is a matter of degree (that everyone is to some extent bisexual), which again can be an honourable position to take but can also come uncomfortably close to the mother who tells her teenage gay son 'It's just a phase'!

You're quite right, too, Ian, about the chances of some people of your parents' acquaintance having been homosexually inclined, and possibly feeling not able to express that publicly. But I think to some extent I'd argue that what we call 'homophobia' in the sense of attacks on people known to be gay is a different phenomenon from the sort of institutionalised societal repression of homosexuality with which Ives' rhetorical discourse could be argued to be bound up. In that sense, calling him homophobic is wrong not so much because it tells a lie about his attitude to homosexuality but because it implies an anachronistic construction of what it supposes him to have been against.

Who said anything about 'musical language'? Colin said that Ives 'articulated musical adventurousness in the language of testosterone' ... I took him to mean 'in the (verbal) language of', i.e. when Ives talks or writes about his music his metaphors take that form. Surely in this sense, given that Ives is one of the composers who commented quite frequently and extensively in words about his music, the case is much clearer than when we're talking about the sort of musically-sedimented meanings and discourses that interest Ian (please note that in saying that I don't mean to suggest at all that I disagree with Ian about them).

George - this is AFAIK the most generally recommended set of the Ives symphonies:

http://www.mdt.co.uk/MDTSite/product//SB3K87746.htm

When Schumann wrote disapprovingly, in a review of a piano trio by Alexander Fesca, of the type of music that appeals to 'sentimental women', then he was applying a gender-inflected standard. This type of language was frequently used by artists and their advocates of many types during the nineteenth century, associating cheapness and sentimentality with the creation of work that would appeal to women (who were seen as emblematic of the consumers of mass culture). The problem I have is that when some recent musicologists address this, they maintain the distinction but simply reverse the valorisation - making sentimentality into a positive virtue, for example. Personally, I don't have a lot of time for cheap sentimentality in music, but don't associate it by any means particularly with women, unlike Schumann. This is why what Schumann was talking about was a 'construct' - it didn't necessarily represent the reality of 'masculine' or 'feminine' artistic wishes (which almost certainly were nothing like as monolithic and uniform), but an ideology and a set of aesthetic standards that are rooted in conceptions of gender and identity. And that is by no means an isolated example.