Mr Loverman

Content Warning: This section discusses anti-gay bias, including instances of hate crimes and conversion therapy. It also references racism and domestic abuse.

Harsh and violent anti-gay bias is a major theme in Mr. Loverman, as it forms part of the heteronormative societal context that prevents the protagonist and his lover from coming out. Heteronormativity is an ideology that privileges heterosexuality as an ideal and considers anything outside of it abnormal or unacceptable. By considering the different forms that anti-gay bias can take, Mr. Loverman teases out the connections between societal and individual prejudice.

Barry fears being exposed as gay because he associates it with violence. Barry recalls that he lived in fear in Antigua, stating, “I was afraid I’d be up before a judge on some trumped-up charge of indecent exposure; or end up lying on an operating table with a bar of wood between my teeth and electric volts destroying parts of my brain forever”(38). Notably, the violence in this passage is institutional; it refers to shock therapy, implying that the legal and/or medical establishments would treat Barry’s orientation as a disease in need of fixing and respond with force. This societal endorsement of violence, the novel suggests, creates an environment in which hate crimes against LGBT people become more likely. Delroy Simmons, a Jamaican electrician, is shot by his wife’s brother after his wife discovers him with a man. Lola, Maxine’s friend, receives a death threat from his own father when he comes out and is hospitalized due to his brother’s abuse. When Larry, Barry’s brother, finds Barry having sex with Morris, Barry fears that Larry will kill him.

Mr. Loverman depicts organized religion as another source of anti-gay ideology. Carmel and her friends attend a church where the pastor goes so far as to advocate sexual assault as a punishment for the “sin” of being gay: “[A]s for the homos, they goin’ end up raped by Lucifer himself, and they won’t get no kicks from it either, because his scorching hot rod’s so big it will go in one end and come out the other” (154). Carmel and her friends echo such ideas when gossiping about another church member’s daughter’s illness. They argue that God must be punishing her because she’s a lesbian, and Merty cites the Bible to back up her claim: “Does it not say in Romans that if man lies with man as he lies with woman, he will surely be put to death? Same goes with woman-woman business” (60). Carmel remains anti-gay to the very end of the novel, displaying a hybrid understanding of gayness as both a disease and a sin. She refers to gay men as “homosicksical” but also tells Barry that “the only person who can help [him] now is God” (282).

Even those characters who do not advocate for the killing, torture, or erasure (i.e., via conversion therapy) of gay people have absorbed some of the same prejudices. For example, Donna prides herself on her progressive views when she confronts Merty’s hateful rhetoric. However, when Merty pushes back, Donna’s own anti-gay bias is exposed, as it’s evident that she wouldn’t accept Daniel’s orientation if he were gay. Daniel himself displays anti-gay bias when he tells his grandfather that he has disrespected him by coming out. Heteronormativity also informs Carmel’s and Donna’s suspicions that Barry is cheating on Carmel with other women. They don’t even consider that Barry could be cheating on her with a man because it’s outside of their heteronormative worldview.

In this environment, Barry is not just anxious about coming out but also somewhat ashamed of his own orientation; he has internalized certain heteronormative viewpoints. For example, Barry argues that gay liberationists are too open in expressing their orientation and that he believes gay people should be more discreet, effectively policing how gay people should act. Barry further distances himself from the struggles of other gay men by saying, “I ain’t no homosexual, I am a…Barrysexual!” (142). Barry finally confronts his misconceptions about other gay men when Maxine takes him to LGBT-friendly spaces in London, and his growth is evident in his public displays of affection for Morris. Nevertheless, Barry’s struggles to accept himself demonstrate the consequences of living in an anti-gay society that discourages people both tacitly and overtly from coming out or living freely.