I am a thirty something married gay boy living in Sydney, almost on top of the gay scene but not in it!
Why Sometimes blue?, because I love blue, but also I am sometimes blue :)
Documentary - The Trouble with Gay Men
There are so many things right with this documentary and there are so many things wrong with it at the same time. I think to start with the statement that all the equality we as Gay Men seek has been afforded is total rubbish.
Yes in the UK there are civil unions and anti discrimination laws but there is still large scale opposition, violence and the UK Government wouldn't even give refugee status to Gay Guys who were going to be killed if they were forced back to IRAN.
I think this documentary is very very slanted towards the scene and the very small microcosm within the gay community who do take things to extremes. Yes there is a scary culture of destructive behaviour and this is a very big problem.
But to lump all gay men in with this is wrong, misleading and insulting.
If you look at any group of people gay or straight you will find extremes, in the straight community you can find the same sort of destructive behaviour.
I do agree that the gay scene is focused on 'image, youth and beauty', but so is the entire world! We are constantly bombarded with all sorts of images and messages encouraging us to find the gift of eternal youth, gay or straight it's the same.
So to call this a problem within the gay community is disingenuous and plain wrong.
The documentary is good but fatally flawed. Maybe if Simon Fanshaw did not come across as a slightly jealous old man who is now looking at something for which he does not belong to the message would be stronger.
Instead the documentary is a vehicle for which opponents if gay rights immediately latch on to and point their fingers at the gay community and their 'hedonistic self destructive lifestyles'.
Bottom line I do agree with the summation that many in the gay scene are going through a life of perpetual 'adolescence'. As I think the whole Gay Movement is at this moment.
We are stuck in between the ideals of the activist 1970's queers who advocate we be anti everything normalised, the don't give a fuck and then the people in the middle.
So - food for thought though
Print
Send Page
Favorites
6 Comments:
i dunno, i thought the programme was pretty spot on. Of course,it is a tv programme and it does use hyperbole, but then that is what tv does.
The fundamentals were pretty sound. I agree with your point that he did gloss over the injustices that gay men continue to fight and live in the pressence of. Indeed gay people are marginalised in society. Unfortunately the scene, is not the place of safety and community it should be. Yes it is 'fun'. But it is fundamentally driven by a very basice desire. Unfortunately the gay scene, and gay men in general have done little to counter this, but instead have sadly exploited it and the fall out is very much the high rates of sexually transmitted disease, drug abuse and mental health problems.
For sure the whole world is susceptible to similar pressures, it just seems to me that the gay scene has magnified those issues. To simply say that its not just our issue seems to be missing the point.
FOr sure the guy is a bit of an old queen, but its easy to use that to right off his essentially sound points.
Gay haters are gay haters and do not need this programme as a vehicle. They have plenty of bullshit to dish out at us. This programme is useful in that we as a gay community can think about the issues it raises and the behaviours we all collude in.
Thanks for posting this Drew - fascinating viewing.
I'm with you - it's at once both so right and so wrong. I've always believed the queer rights movement, like feminism, should be about empowering queer folk to make whichever choices suit them, without prejudice or discrimination.
So if one gay boy chooses to be a eternally-single disco bunny who fucks his brains out around town, hopefully he'll have enough information at hand to make the choice to do so safely so he's not jeopardising his own health or that of others. If that works for him, and he's not harming anyone else, power to him.
On the flip side, if another gay boy decides he wants to live in the 'burbs with his life partner, eschew the party scene altogether and settle down to a relatively less turbulent life of committed monogamy, he should be allowed to do that too - and the laws should accommodate his choice, i.e. marriage/civil union laws should be available to him and his partner as a way of securing that relationship at law.
I think Fanshaw falls too easily for the either/or dichotomy - we can only be categorised as one extreme or the other - without considering that making an informed, safe (and if relevant, legally applicable) personal choice is far more important than conforming to or rejecting perceived pre-existing stereotypes.
< /soapbox>
The religous and conservative blogs / sites etc have grabbed this documetary of late and are using it to demonise the whoel gay community.
As my boy said, he could find just as many of not more straight people just as hedonistic and just as bad as those potrayed.
Yeah it's definitely a shame he's provided fuel for the homophobic bigot flame - which I'm sure was not his primary intention but he would've been smart enough to know it was a potential consequence.
but would you find the same rates of mental health problems, drug addiction and sti's??
could you point out 2 or 3 of these conservative sites - it would be interesting to see the enemy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOYv8fsZzR4
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home