Left Behinds

The anti-andrewsullivan.com. Or, the Robin Hood (Maid Marian?) of bright pink Blogger blogs.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

A Sad Gay Scene?

I just read this article by Miles Douglas, in which he bemoans the cruelty and materialism of the gay scene, complaining that "the public face of gay male life, noisily hedonistic and self-consciously triumphalist, glosses over the reality of personal unhappiness and collective callousness." His description of the scene couldn't have been further from my experience. I feel sorry for Douglas, but it's wrong of him to generalize his individual discontent.

I'll put most of my thoughts after this jump.


Douglas writes that

Gay men have failed to create a community of shared values and mutual support. The word 'community' is trotted out for political purposes, but the stereotypes of bitchiness and backstabbing remain all too prominent features of gay men's lives.
...
Our problems, [the gay political movement] maintains, do not arise from within ourselves, or from the choices we make, but from oppression by heterosexual society and anything perceived as traditional values.

That simplistic narrative holds sway across the spectrum of gay organisations, from the most radical to the ostensibly conservative. It at once denies us our individuality and absolves us of personal responsibility.

...
[In gay culture,] politically correct victim culture is allied with rampant consumerism. Freedom is identified with a shopping list, whether of possessions or political demands. Throughout the gay media, consumerism is extended to the human person, who is reduced to a disposable item.


Wow, bad breakup recently, Miles?

I lived in London for a year and a half, and if anything, that was the tightest queer community I've ever experienced. There was a robust alternative gay scene (revolving around an online community called Bentpunk and five or so bars and clubs, a few owned by Simon Hobart) that embodied all the things Douglas claims do not exist.

Without rhapsodizing too Polyanna, suffice to say that we hung out together, we "shared values," and we supported each other emotionally and otherwise. There was a real sense of being part of a community. We even had a kind of alternative Pride event, in which we took over a corner of Hyde Park and drank, wrestled, climbed trees, and generally had a good time. After I left, that became a kind of annual tradition. It should, perhaps, be emphasized that most of the Bentpunkers were sardonic people who would roll their eyes at this entire paragraph, but I think it's a fairly accurate, if saccharine, description.

Bentpunk was more than just a closed group of friends. Because it was largely conducted in public (online or offline), it was inherently open to anyone with similar interests (how else could we ever find people to date?). And it wasn't a huge scene, but it was large enough to sustain a number of bars and club nights (Redeye, a queer metal/punk/rock club would get, what, 75 punters each week?).

Scott and Ben (at Redeye) hadn't seen each other in months, apparently

Granted, we were partially organized in reaction to the mainstream gay scene that Douglas decries. I'm sympathetic to his disgust at the consumerism in mainstream gay periodicals et al. But there's more to gay life than Old Compton Street. Lambasting the gay scene because of Boyz Magazine would be like lambasting the whole "straight world" because of FHM Magazine. The fact is, the gay world contains multitudes. The Bentpunk scene was organized around a shared musical subculture combined with a roughly shared sexual identity. There are other scenes with similar organizing principles. In New York, I suppose I'm involved in a gay artist/writers scene, which is more informal, but still coherent, and I've been involved with queer scenes organized around activism, music, and other shared interests.

Our contradictory impressions of contemporary queer life might be attributed to generational differences, but I'm only ten years younger than he is, and I hang out with people from a wide range of ages and backgrounds. One of the cool things about Bentpunk, for instance, was that it comprised people from all classes, ages (well, teens, 20somethings, and 30somethings, at least), genders, etc.

In fact, the really interesting thing about gay scenes is the way they crash together people from widely divergent class and racial backgrounds. If you see a black and a white guy hanging out together in public, chances are that they're gay. And I can't tell you how many rich/working class gay couples I know (still a pretty major taboo in the so-called straight world). This mixing is probably the aspect of gay scenes that I will most lament as the scenes disappear (with more social parity, there will be less need for distinct gay scenes).

A lot of Douglas' criticisms sound similar to what snooty people often say when confronted with the reality of pop culture and poor/working-class/lower-middle-class life: It's crass, it's conformist, it's shallow. Maybe Mr. Douglas is so cranky because he just doesn't enjoy being forced to interact with guys who are so unlike him.


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6 Comments:

  • At 6:13 PM, Blogger Solomon Grundy said…

    Heh, agreed about Bentpunk having next to nothing to do with politics (about the only other person who ever gave a fuck about gay or other politics was Kath, who is, ostensibly, straight). Other scenes I've been involved with in the US (SF and NYC) have revolved around politics, though (such as the Queer Fist scene -- god, these names speak volumes, don't they?).

    My roseate reminiscence was offending my own sense of cynicism even as I wrote it (so I tacked on a few lines of auto-critique just now). I guess I wanted to write (for who, I don't know, since probably only people already involved in Bentpunk will read this) about why that scene was more than nothing. About how it was a kind of community. I disagree with you mainly in that the fact that most of us were queer largely defined the scene (in combination with more important subcultural interests, as you said). The contours were blurry, but the name bentpunk itself roughly described them.

    And very, very good point about gay scenes in general being scenes for the young or young at heart. I would think that in the UK, with its lifelong pub culture, that might be somewhat less true, but I basically agree.

    The truth is, I think if people like the author wake up at 37 and realize that all their gay relationships are empty and callous, they're probably largely to blame themselves. Or at least their failure of imagination.

     
  • At 8:05 PM, Blogger Solomon Grundy said…

    Btw, remind me of the details of your showdown with those squatter anarchists at that alternative pride gathering a few years ago. I remember it being very funny, but I can't quite remember the details. Didn't some butch lesbian squatter declare that you weren't gay so you weren't allowed in or something? Lol. I suppose that undercuts my argument about inclusion.

     
  • At 8:54 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    i didn't know i was ostensibly straight, but thanks for pointing it out... Ha ha also at that wiki on Simon - i wish you could tell who wrote these things!

    i'm too tired to reply to anything else having just got back from holiday... suffice to say myles don't half go on a bit...

     
  • At 10:02 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    "whether he likes it or not, there is something 'renegade' about homosexuality. it IS the road less travelled. a stable family life modelled on the bourgeois ideal is an unrealistic expectation."

    See, but there's the irony. The advantage of Frost is that he comes to the fork in the road and chooses, a luxury that not everybody has when it comes to sexual orientation. There are those that want the 2.5kids and a dog lifestyle, and being told that it simply cannot be had is problematic (not to mention that not having a wife). Isn't it ok (even normal), not to want to be a renegade, and to try to make the road less traveled look as much like the other one as possible? Not everyone wants to be labeled, or to wear it on their sleeves. They just want the same life as everyone else, surely people inside the movement can understand that? If you want to pick the road less traveled for the sake of adventure, go ahead, but don't make that choice for everyone.

     
  • At 1:28 AM, Blogger Solomon Grundy said…

    But I think joanie was saying that to the extent that queerness is different from straightness, it's because it's the road less travelled. What distinctly defines it is that it's to some extent a rejection of the heterosexual nuclear family.

    Now, maybe you'd like to minimize that defining characteristic. But the fact remains that the rejection (to some extent, at least) of mainstream values is the very thing that makes a queer a queer.

     
  • At 10:16 AM, Anonymous Nightwing79 said…

    wow! thanks to the comments it really is just like being back on Bentpunk.

     

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