The Guardian Gay Issue

Don't ever try and edit a post on your iPad.  I managed to delete this whole post earlier when trying to correct a typo.  Huge thanks to Alex who saved me by sending through the original text which is now back below.  Phew!

The Guardian carried a number of 'gay' Tories yesterday as part of their magazine 'gay issue'. A number of people have already commented on various social media platforms that the issue was very gay male focused and I think that's right. Although lesbians were covered (as the reference to 'sleeper-lesbians' demonstrates on the paper header) they didn't seem to be the central focus. Indeed, 'sleeper-lesbians' made them sound like a team of crack terrorists, ready to attack the nearest male meat vendor and disrupt the phallic dildo distribution network. We also had Alan Carr decked out as 'The' Queen on Liz's very own birthday. Republican/gay pride and all that.

Anyway, on to the content. The main piece was by the ever lovely Evan Davis - the openly gay presenter of the popular morning BBC Radio 4 show, Today. He wrote a piece 'Glad to be Gay, Glad to be Tory' which attracted quite a bit of RT action but for me seemed a tad meandering. The central question - which Davis fails to answer - is how such a historically homophobic party has also been stuffed full with homes (at least gay men at any rate). As someone who joined the Tory party at 15 (I'm now a member of the LibDems and a candidate in the local elections) and was also a member of TORCHE (the gay Conservative group before LGBTory) my reasons are as helpful - and as flawed - as any. I was interested in politics and in my neck of the woods that meant choosing between two parties - the Conservatives or Labour. The neighbouring constituency did have a strong LibDem group and so I took a punt and left a message for them as that was were I felt instinctively drawn. Of the other two, I was faced between a choice of a party that seemed to want to tell people what to do, and to treat everyone the same (Labour) verses a party that talked about opportunity, had a leader who genuinely knew what it was to work hard and succeed on your own endeavours and took an approach of giving people more control over their lives. Of course, the following years so the Conservatives drift to the right, and my own views (I think) have remained pretty much in the centre (although maybe more centre left these days). At no point was the issue of sexuality an influence on joining a party. However, I did manage to make the front page of that illustrious Lancashire rag, the Accrington Observer, in 1998 by calling for more people who identified as gay to join the party in a bid to make it more in touch, and more reflective of society. I was forced for resign and as I moved to university, I became disengaged from party politics, working instead first against top-up fees and then for the repeal of Section 28. My story is a personal one but it shows how perfectly rational joining the very party that introduced Section 28 can seem. It is for these reasons of complexity that - I think - Evan failed to find a clear and simple answer to his starting question.

Check out the Evan Davis Tory piece here.

On we move to a piece about gay parenting. I confess, I skim read most of it. This is as far away from my life and interest as reading about straight people and their children. This reaction served as a harsh reminder to me that although we still talk of 'the gay community' - always a problematic label - it is becoming more diffuse than ever before. What did strike me about the piece however were the images. They look very, well, posh. I felt like I was trapped in a Waitrose parenting supplement. I just know they will bore me with talk of granola and skinning holidays in real life. I don't sense any of these kids going to the local rough comp but I could be being entirely unfair. Of course, this is important not as part of some class bashing rant, but because it goes to the heart of our contemporary gay rights discourse. There is an assumption that we can all engage in surrogacy, and create this new families of choice. In truth, many of us - especially men - can't. It's a middle class homosexual activity. The rest of us are looking in, our noses pressed against the glass like some disgruntled street urchin seeking out the promised warmth inside. Oh well, back to the bareback party for the rest of us.

Check out that full piece (and the photos) here.


We also had a mea cupola from someone who tried to 'cure' gay people. The Times (£) also wanted to get in on the act and so the gay columnist - and former Tory MP - Matthew Paris who questions the simple tribe division between 'straight' and 'gay'. He is of course absolutely right in this regard and comes close to applying a queer critique. Unfortunately, he doesn't and instead the piece becomes rather muddled. Nonetheless, it does make a challenging and alternative intervention, worthy of a read.

Gay Marriage: The Right Perspective

Charles Moore, the right-wing columnist has written an interesting piece in the Telegraph in which he challenges the recent acceptance by David Cameron of same-sex marriage.  Whilst Cameron has cleverly taken the concept of marriage and used it to include homosexuals in a very 'traditional' conception of the family, Moore appears to short-circuit at such ideas and uses his piece to propagate the kind of hateful homophobia that many have to expect from the media of the right.  In case his diatribe against 'tolerance' and homosexuality more generally didn't convince readers, he moves on to include a reference to Muslims (always a sure fire way to have readers in full boggle eyed mode).  He writes:

'...for example, roughly as many Muslims in Britain as there are homosexuals. Muslims believe in polygamy – for men only, up to four wives. Muslims insist that women, just as much as men, welcome this rule. Suppose that Mr Cameron had got up and told his conference, “it shouldn’t matter whether commitment is between a man and a woman or a man and four women”, would he have been able to make the audience clap? Mightn’t they have recognised that a situation in which men were now permitted to marry four women would damage a society in which, until now, one man could only be married to one woman at a time? Wouldn’t they have said that the consent of those involved was not the only issue at stake? Wouldn’t they have been right?'

Now, for liberal loons like me, that's an easy one, yes, polygamy should be 'allowed' and recognised by the state.  Moore reminds us that the 'victories' of gay marriage/same-sex marriage are in fact about the incorporation of homosexuals to heteronormative institutions. These acts of 'progress' are not about a fundamental re-appraisal of the marriage construct, which remains inherently conservative.  As such, these attacks by the likes of Moore can act as a 'smokescreen', creating a reaction among LGBTQ activists to argue for same-sex marriage - if the nuts are against it, we must be for it.

 Check out the full piece here.

Fancy Seeing you Here! Oh and You're Uncut Versatile?

At the risk of coming over all Carrie Bradshaw, let be a little personal for a moment. A funny thing happened this evening. Like many academics, I spend my evening faffing with bits of work at the computer, twitter and Facebook whirling in the background. Yet as a gay academic it's not untypical to also have various gay networking sites running along in the background too. There is something a little predatory about the gay male (yowzers, a little too SATC) and so maybe it's to be expected that we would ever have one eye on the next encounter.

But what happens when, as happened to me earlier this evening, you see that another academic who you know has stopped by your profile? Obviously you might be relieved that they've not been confronted by your penis flopping out at them (as many a profile may have the unfortunate quality of doing), and also intrigued to learn whether they define themselves as top/bottom/versatile; along with their attitudes to drugs, smoking and safe sex. You are now possess the knowledge of whether they are circumcised and how they define the length of the penis (seasoned gay men know this is utterly disconnected from actual size).

As gay men, sharing and being open about these characteristics is the norm on network sites. Yet, as academics we seek to maintain an air of heteronormative respectability. As I've written elsewhere, it's acceptable for the straight guy or woman to share information in the workplace about their family existence but the out gay man is unlikely to reveal his authentic private life in the workplace. Attending a Kylie concert and a friends civil partnership is fine. Explaining a fisting encounter that went wrong maybe not. Not that I have a fisting encounter that's gone wrong. Or right for that matter.

Anyway...we do seek to define ourselves to fellow gay and queer academics in slightly more open ways - especially at specialist conferences but there the presence of other gay groups - notably lesbians, acts as a further control on our behaviour.

So how do we respond to these moments? Of course students might also share these network spaces and that presents additional issues. When the 'professional' and the sexual clash, it might be tempting to retreat to the construction of a safe identity but the real challenge for queer theorists and queer academics is to queer the professional academic identity, to recast and redefine ourselves in the academy.

I'm in talks to edit a book that will explore these themes and for my money it's one of the least talked about, and most important issues facing queers in the modern Academy.