I thought I’d throw my two penneth into this debate (because it hasn’t been discussed enough!!). For too long there has been an undercurrent of certain readers rejecting (queer) male characters that they refer to as chicks with dicks. (more…)
I’ve just read a great blog post about coming out, which has got me thinking (again) about the whole process. I always say I came out at 14, but of course that’s not strictly true. What I mean by that is I told my best friends (via email – my bestie responded with I KNEW IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) but everyone else took a little bit longer, and it’s a process that’s still not really over. It never will be. (more…)
The leader of an ‘ex-gay’ Kansas City prayer group, has just been named as a suspect in the alleged murder of his wife. According to ex-members of the group – part of the virulently anti-gay International House of Prayer “charismatic movement” – he feared that his wife was about to report the systematic abuse that she had been subject to under the guise of ‘spiritual experience’. One of the claims was that she was drugged with anti-psychotics while he engaged in sexual activity with the male members of the group. (more…)
How many times have we heard the expression, the “gay lifestyle”. What, exactly, is it? We know what our detractors say, we’re promiscuous and immoral and obsessed with sex and youth. We’re all fundamentally flawed, broken; the gay lifestyle is incompatible with happiness. We’re deeply, deeply miserable (excuses for) human beings who adopt a happy, campy air in order to sucker the next generation into our vast whirlpool of misery and self-loathing. The gay lifestyle is nothing if not self-propagating. (more…)
I hate the word slut.
More than hate; I despise it, I detest it, I loathe it. It is a horrible, judgemental, prejudiced word. It’s one of those words that says far more about the person using it than the person it’s addressed to. When I see reviews like the ones below, I have to grit my teeth to stop from screaming. (more…)
So said Oscar Wilde during his trial in 1895. Of course, he’s right. A book is fiction, it’s not real. It’s no indication of the real life intent or lifestyle of either the reader or the author.
Except that it is.
I’m talking gay stereotypes. The bulldyke, the screaming queen. You know them, I know them. Heaven forbid anyone should write about them. Because, y’know, they’re stereotypical. Most gay people aren’t like that. Most gay people hate to be associated with people like that. Most gay people are ordinary men and women just like you and me who feel no particular urge to fill their lives with glitter and sparkles.
How dull for them.
There’s been enough talk in the media this month about people wanting to round us gays up, put us in camps, beat us straight, take our rights away and otherwise treat us worse than animals. That’s not what this post is about. Instead, I want to think about the casual, everyday homophobia ingrained in our culture. Behaviour people don’t even realise is homophobic. Behaviour by people who, if you called them homophobes, would argue vehemently they are pro-gay and support equal rights.