New Year Resolutions

I was messing around on the internet this fine Friday and came across this post which made me giggle every so often: New Years Resolutions Every Gay Should Live By. Read it. It's great.

Then I decided to read the comments as my people are a rather hilarious people. And I came across this comment which sums up a lot of which we need to be cognisant:

As a gay black man, I felt pretty much left out of this conversation. While I can do most of these things, and have done most of them already, it would be nice to be ‘spoken to’ versus completely left out of the conversation. I love being gay and I love our culture, but at times we forget that we are more diverse than any subculture group in the world and we need to recognize that. Not just beautiful, thin, white men. Here’s a New Years resolution for all us gays; open your mind to the fact that gay does not equate to just white. Plus, I look damn good with my beard.

I don't have much to add. 

An interesting...myth buster (long-ass post)

This article was published in Time magazine and managed to annoy me to a fairly large degree. It's by a gay man writing about how and why his relationship ended, and blaming the fact that he is gay, and the structure of gay relationships, as opposed to him taking any responsiblity for how or why his coupledom was removed.

The basic conclusion here is that there are a different set of rules for a relationship in which there are two men, as opposed to a man and a woman. He makes the point that without defined (possibly gender) roles, there is no future possible. Let's take a run through the article with some quotes and I'll show you why he's talking out of his rear end.

I went home with Michael the night we met, and figuratively speaking, I didn't leave again for those 7 1⁄2 years.

It's very important to include this statement to reinforce the fact that gays are all about sex and just bone all the time without giving credence to anything emotional. You know, like how black people steal and Afrikaners are all racists.It's an opening to immediately differentiate the writer from what the reader may be used to.

Things drifted for a while. There was some icky couples counseling ("Try a blindfold") and therapeutic spending on vacations, clothes, furniture. We were lost. The night Michael wouldn't stay up to watch The Office finale with me, I knew I had to move out. Yes, he was tired, but if he couldn't give me the length of a sitcom--Jim and Pam are going to kiss!--then we were really done.

The point is reinforced: you know that gays only care about interior decoration, fashion and showbusiness. Don't you? Same way Americans only care about war and French people stink of garlic. One again, it is the writer forcing upon the reader that he is GAY GAY GAY.

He then has a whole speel about how his life is better because he is now single and the sex is better (ja because that's not a vengeful thing to do, is it?), he went back to gym. Oh, and his evenings contained "moderate drug use" because in case you forgot, he is gay, and a nice cliched gay myth hasn't been in this paragraph yet. Ok, we've finally ascertained that this man is NOT straight and now the article can go on.

Finally I started reading the academic research on relationships, which is abundant and, surprisingly, often rigorous. I wondered whether Michael and I could have done more to save our union. What impact had our homosexuality had on the longevity, arc and dissolution of our relationship? Had we given up on each other because we were men or because we were gay? Or neither? Friends offered clichés: Some people just aren't meant for each other. But our straight friends usually stayed married. Why not us?

Yeh that's it. Some straight people that he knows stayed together but him and his boyfriend broke up. Conclusive evidence in my book. This is also where he begins to ask whether he was personally responsible, or whether it was his gay handicap that prevented him from being together with someone else. Where did he start researching? Dr. David Reuben's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex. A good modern insight into contemporary sexuality as it was published 41 years ago. Yep, the writer consulted a book published in 1969. You know, back when homosexuality was thought of as a disease. Summed up, this twat's conclusion is that gays cannot have a proper relationship because they are always on the lookout for the next penis. This was in the era where STDs hadn't been discovered yet so excuse my scepticism when it comes to sexual expertise during the hippie era. All of a sardine, after quoting the book,the writer says:

I know now that the book was blithe and stupid, but I think many people, gay and straight, assume gay men are worse at maintaining relationships than straight people are. I needed experts, answers. I was also curious if I should be so upset about my breakup. As a society, we treat single people over 30 with condescension or pity, but maybe the problem was that I had hurtled into a serious relationship too young. I know that in my 20s I had wanted to impress my family and my heterosexual friends with my stability. Maybe I should have waited.

This is where he offers a real morsel of how he's starting to think it's a gay thing: his fwiendy-wiendies didn't think gays could be stable and THAT'S what drove him into a relationship too early. Peer pressure, can't you see? Not love or attraction or chemistry or anything that could apply to heterosexuals too (because they never ever rush into relationships in their 20s which they regret later on). Everyone who gets into relationships too early thinks "maybe I should have waited" but in his case it was because he was gay, not just a person who did something they regret... like everyone else.

Research on gay relationships is young. The first study to observe how gays and lesbians interact with their partners during conversations (monitoring facial expressions, vocal tones, emotional displays and physical reactions like changes in heart rate) wasn't published until 2003, even though such studies have long been a staple of hetero-couple research.

He then goes on to quote that very first study. Not anything that extended from it, but the very first one ever which compared 40 straight couples and 40 gay couples, the conclusion of which said that gays were bad at repairing things that went wrong in relationships and this is where homosexual relationship counsellors should focus.

The therapist Michael and I hired did not encourage us to repair. She didn't have to. Our relationship had become so etiolated and dull that we didn't even have proper fights. We carried an aura of passivity, and the therapist wanted to see passion.

He goes on to say that gay people get off on emotions and tension and straight people don't. So the problem was that this therapist treated them like straight people not that the relationship was already doomed by then. Or dull. Or just a normal relationsip that ended because the twosome grew apart.

For gays, it is apathy that murders relationships, not tension. Straight people more often prefer a lento placidity.

No margins are given here as results of this small study. How many of the 80 couples exhibited this? Was it 22 vs 23? 12 vs 36?

It just sounds like such a generalised statement lifted off a study I don't feel is big enough. Surely all relationships have their own ebb and flow?

Now we get into complete and utter bullshit:

No one is sure why gay men are worse at making up after fights, but I have a theory: it's less important for their sex lives. Probably because they don't have women to restrain their evolutionarily male sexual appetites, gay men are more likely than straight and lesbian couples to agree to nonmonogamy, which decreases the stakes for not repairing.

So, gays fight differently to straight people because to feel better they can just run out of the door and bang someone else. The assumption here that gay men do not give a flying toss about how their partner feels? The assumption that the relationship doesn't matter because we won't run out of people to shag? And on that note, straight people never go looking for others to bone? To say that gay men put so much emphasis on getting a leg over with no regard for emotions and feelings is condescending, incorrect, and a somewhat bitter statement.

Finally, I think gay and lesbian couples may prefer more heart-racing during conflict because of what happens to gays and lesbians as kids. Although the world is changing--more than 3,700 schools now have student clubs that welcome gays--many gay kids still grow up believing that what they want is disgusting. They repress for years, and when they finally do have relationships, they need them to carry sufficient drama into those emotional spaces that were empty for so long. Gays need their relationships to scorch.

By virtue of being gay in a straight world, it is possible that tension could result in later feelings toward and away from certain aspects of life, like relationships. I find it difficult to believe that this transcends the sexual preference barrier though. Surely kids (and adults, I suppose) who grow up under any kind of uncomfortable circmstance could have this kind of influence affect them? I find it difficult to believe that gay men may react differently in later life if they faced serious prejudice and consternation when they were younger. The same way a child with an abusive father may act differently to someone who didn't have that kind of characteristic in his or her life. I hardly believe this is exclusive to homosexuals as a group and is far more applicable on a specific personal basis.

Penutimate paragraph: Today Michael and I are friends. On Christmas Eve, we gathered a group, and I made an enthusiastic attempt at the traditional Italian seven-fishes feast. I'm in better shape now than I was in high school, which fits with psychologist Bella DePaulo's finding (in her fascinating 2006 book on single life, Singled Out) that the period around divorce is associated with improvements in health. Divorced men are also, not surprisingly, happier than men stuck in bad marriages.

Once again, not one thing he mentions here applies exclusively to gays. Once again, I think that the writer and Michael broke up becaue of normal relationship reasons and not because they were gay. The reactions to the break up from the writer are certainly bog-standard for people in general.

And yet if ours had been a straight marriage, I have little doubt we would still be together. We had financial security and supportive families. We almost certainly would have had children. This isn't regret--fighting my homosexuality would be like shouting against the rain. But while the researchers are certainly right that straight couples have something to learn from gay couples, I think the inverse is true as well.

Financial security and supportive families does not a happy marriage make. There are so many aspects to marriage and coupledom - finances and family being two of them - and they don't all have to go wrong for problems to develop. Loads of couples with fiscal security and familes that love them dearly break up. And it's not the pure fact of being gay that drove them to do it. There are a host of reasons that it could have been, and to tie it up in homosexuality is insulting, condescending, and, dare I say it, bitter.

But it's much easier to blame it on something like that, hey?

An interesting... sokkie dans

For the first time I went to a sokkie sokkie for the gays - termed a GAT party by the regular attendees.

There are few things more enjoyable than watching people dancing. Hand in hand, cheek-to-cheek, spinning around in rhythmical fashion. The smiles shared between couples waltzing around a dancefloor make me feel great, and I sat a few weeks watching this parade of people swishing gracefully anti-clockwise around the room. It was such a grand, chilled-out evening with few worries, cheap beer and no drama whatsoever. And full of homos.

It is the first time I have ever been at a gay party which came with so little admin, drama and judgementalness, and so much happiness.

The gays are a tricky bunch. Very few of us are the typically screechy queen that popular culture loves to display us as – in fairness, that’s the meaningful equivalent of the hypocritical white liberal, the khakid-up Dutchman with a comb in his sock and the fact that the logo for every single thing in KZN is a badly-drawn King Shaka. I digress.

Although every subculture has its own politicking, (open generalisation) gays have a nasty bitchy streak that’s constantly on show (close generalisation). In fact in our world, being a bigger bitch adds to your brand value. Unfortunately, this manifests itself in our behaviour – becoming the biggest prick (no pun intended) means smashing other people down with your self-confidence rapier. This, in turn, possibly on a subconscious level, means we need behave as if we are impervious to criticism, hence the obsession with highly-crafted bodies, dress sense and other superfluous and expensive crap.

Because of our obsession with keeping ourselves at the top of our game constantly, it is very hard to just chill. Even what we think is a chilled, relaxed evening out ain’t no rugby braai. And this is why the aforementioned sokkiedans partytjie I was at on Saturday absolutely blew me away. Quite frankly, it was a room full of gays enjoying themselves in a very “straight” and traditional way – simply by dancing. Not in a showy-off, check-out-the-junk-in-my-trunk manner, but proper, lekker, classic dancing – I did a (toe-crushing) waltz for the first time in my life there. What could have been a night of personal-worry was actually stress-free fun – like singing alone in your car.

I think that we sometimes forget that fun is a simple thing, and in amongst the showmanship the simplicity gets lost. As ridiculous as it sounds, straight people have a lot to teach us when it comes to enjoying ourselves. I can sense that people may think I am saying that gays don’t have fun or are miserable inside – not so. My point is that fun is not necessarily an extension of judgemental bitchiness, a waxed, contrived body or Dolce & Gabbana. I think that the sooner we realise this, the happier more people will be.

So thanks to the sokkie-dansers. The lesson was good.

An interesting... first-time fear

It's not often I get scared in South Africa but my recent sojourn up to Polokwane I have to admit I was slightly. (My point of view is odd - I have actually only experienced blatant fuck you homophobia twice before - once from a cop who hit me, and the other when a friend's father threw me out his house.) I may live in Cape Town where all this malarkey is far more common, but I have never faced shit in Joburg or Durban.

That being said, I am a big city kind of guy. And Polokwane ain't one of them. And I was actually staying outside Polokwane on a small-holding. And the door to our room was held closed with a brick. Well, needless to say, I stressed about being a gay couple in small-town SA (anything smaller than Durban is small-town in my vocabulary). Since then, I have thought about homos in small-town SA a lot and done a bit of digging around (the conclusions of which you will discover when I finish).

On this note though, I have friend who lived in Kenton-on-Sea, and he sent me the text to a column he wrote a few years back which is relevant to what I was thinking about. So here is the column published by Alistair Mackay on Mambaonline - sometime in the past.

There is a lot to be said for small-town South Africa. At least, there is a lot to be said for coastal small-town South Africa: I've always believed no one would miss the Free State if it were flooded to make way for a picturesque little inland sea or covered - this is my humanitarian side coming through - from horizon to horizon in solar panels to ease the world's energy crisis.

Similarly, I have enough friends from Benoni who claim to be from Joburg to know that Gauteng small towns won't be winning any awards any time soon either. But small coastal towns are fantastic. From the sleepy hamlets of the Transkei and the tropical greenery of KZN to the reassuringly 'boutique-y' villages of the Western Cape and the unassuming dorps of the Eastern, our coastline is magical. In some parts magnificent and dramatic, in others gentle and forgiving, but everywhere beautiful.

My mother lives in just such a village. It is the kind of place that I would call salt-of-the-earth if I were feeling diplomatic. I have been served a cosmo in a beer mug there, and the only pizzeria in town eschews this newfangled mozzarella nonsense and uses cheddar on its pizzas. But it restores my soul to go home. After all, the Buddha was a rural fella. So it was only natural that a couple of weeks into a new relationship I invited my boyfriend along on one of my weekend trips home. I phoned my mother to tell her and she suddenly sounded panicked. In a quintessentially South African moment that made me laugh out loud she blurted out "but what will the maid think?" This is the same mother who told me on the night of my matric dance how proud she was of me for taking a guy, and how handsome we both looked. She dropped me off at Pride parades when I was still too young to drive and nursed me through all those ugly teenage breakups . But this was all while we still lived in Joburg; it turns out that being ip and liberal is partly situational. "Get a grip, mom" I said, and turned into Steve's* driveway to pick him up.

The weekend got off to an unremarkable start. I ate too much, drank too much and could barely motivate myself to wander onto the beach (There is a strong disincentive to move when you find yourself on a veranda armed with gin and tonic and confronting uninterrupted views of sea, sand dunes and nature reserve). We had dinner. We went to bed. I refused to have sex because of the proximity of my bedroom to my mother's, and we woke up to the tranquil sounds of waves crashing and birds singing.

It was so cheesily idyllic it seemed almost Scandinavian. In the feature film about my life there would definitely be an ABBA track to this scene. And perhaps the director would even throw in some animated butterflies.

I went downstairs to make some coffee and ten minutes later a friend who lives a couple of houses down from my mother's place arrived. "Do you know", she said, accepting a cup of coffee, "that you are the Spawn of Satan?"

It is testament to my naive and very un-Satanic nature that my initial reaction wasn't anger so much as slow-blinking incomprehension. "Nombulelo said to me this morning that you are the Spawn of Satan. Because there's a boy in your bed," she explained.

Now do bear in mind that Nombulelo is not even my mother's domestic; she is my friend's. Which means that there must have been clandestine cell phone conversations between the two housekeepers immediately after the discovery of the sleepy Steven. I erupted into a fit of curses and indignation. My neighbour looked a little alarmed by my rant and became downright terrified when my mother heard the news and joined in (If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, try scorning her laatlammetjie son). I was on an emotional rollercoaster that fell from rage into the precipice of deep sadness that people who knew and loved me could be so brainwashed by institutional religion, and settled finally on fear.

By that evening I was tormenting myself with mental images of angry locals with pitchforks torching our house to the ground while chanting uyabaleka uSatane!** Needless to say, Steven didn't get any that night either, and I barely slept. Every snapping stick outside sent me bolt upright and wide-eyed in bed.

I was surprised by how much Nombulelo's comment had upset me. I don't suppose anyone likes to be referred to as an evil demon, but it was hardly my first brush with Christian fundamentalism. My previous partner's father has the delightful belief that gay people need to be exorcised. But it especially upset me because I had convinced myself that I was part of that little seaside community.

I had worked in the village for six months the previous year. People greet me by name in the shops and everyone knows my mom. I used to give Nombulelo a lift home after work every day. It was all very neighbourly. But it transpires that inclusion was conditional on my apparent heterosexuality.

Why is it that gay people are not entitled to rural life? I love living in the city, but I'd also like the option of a quiet seaside existence one day. Why does being liberal depend on a high population density? And does acceptance of gay people only come with the full spectrum of acceptance of drugs, prostitution, urban decay and crime? What kind of pick-and-mix is that?

I see now why small towns often have reactionary, camp, self-ghettoising gay communities. It is defensiveness. Our sexual orientation, which to me is no more interesting as a characteristic than having blue eyes or being Chinese, becomes a defining characteristic in small towns. It is met with denial and abhorrence by some and with curious fascination by the well-meaning.

Wouldn't it be great if the barman casually enquired after my boyfriend while handing me my cosmo in a beer mug? But until that happens, perhaps I should listen to my mom and realise that in small towns, feeling welcome means deferring to what the maid thinks.

* Not his real name
** IsiXhosa for "run away Satan"


By Alistair Mackay.
See Alistair's blog here or follow him on twitter.