Clapham Junction - Really that Wide off the Mark?

I've been reflecting in the last few days on the programme 'Clapham Junction'. It seemed generally panned as an image of 80s "gayness". "We're not like that anymore", "I don't recognise that rather sad portrait of being gay" seemed the general consensus in discussion rooms/forums and television/reviews. During the Pride Season when every "cosmopolitan" city competes to host the biggest and most glam celebration of all things gay (a task Tyne & Wear has failed miserably in) it seems churlish to suggest that things might not be quite perfect. That these events are themselves rooted in gay liberation and political wars seems another fact forgotten. The latest edition of the Pink Paper brought this home to me. On page 6 we read about three twenty somethings facing life sentences after admitting to "gay bashing" a 57 year old man in Blackpool in January. The events took place at 2am when the victim had gone out looking for sex in well known cruising areas. The reluctance of gay groups such as Stonewall or television shows such as those we've seen on Channel 4 to discuss or defend this behaviour is striking. This is an image that people just don't want to discuss because it allows gay men to be portrayed as sex crazed lunatics sniffing about in bushes and toilets in the early hours of the morning for sex.

The very separation of the sexual act (i.e. buggery) from identity ("homosexual") in 1967 is responsible not only for the the "successes" of the last forty years but also for the limitations of the debate. Fear of "homosexuals" being portrayed as preferring a particular act means that those acts are dismissed. Cottaging and cruising (and indeed dogging) cuts across identities. The terms "gay", "straight" bi" all become too cumbersome and unhelpful and so rather than engage in a radical discussion about sexuality the leading organisations stay remarkably quiet.

The other slightly depressing story in the Pink Paper that seems to fly in the face of post Clapham Junction consensus is actually a couple of letters. The first is from a guy writing about being stopped on Old Compton Street in London. "Fit Guys" stopped the man and gave him a mark out of ten reportedly handing him a flyer and saying "dahling, you are an eight, you have just been selected". The flyer was for a dating site that proclaimed "no ugly guys, no fat guys and no trannies!". The reader was outraged and wrote in to the Pink Paper complaining. The response from Fit Guys was unapologetic saying "Fitguysonlinedating.co.uk is not about fighting prejudice or discrimination; we are about creating a community where gorgeous guys can interact with other gorgeous guys". See folks, gay men are no longer interested in sex, they have moved beyond that yet. Yea, right. lol.

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