Fri 23rd

In Support of Gay Men Kissing

Published by: Rose on Friday 23rd October 2009 09:10pm
In Support of Gay Men Kissing
This is the first man on man kiss I ever saw on TV. Yes, I know there have been others, but I don’t watch TV much. Anyway, it was certainly the first that ever came on at 7.30 on a Saturday evening and my first reaction was to fall off my chair in surprise and shout something incomprehensible about Mary Whitehouse spinning in her grave. Unfortunately, the spirit of Mary lives on in others!
This is the first man on man kiss I ever saw on TV. Yes, I know there have been others, but I don’t watch TV  much. Anyway, it was certainly the first that ever came on at 7.30 on a Saturday evening and my first reaction was to fall off my chair in surprise and shout something incomprehensible about Mary Whitehouse spinning in her grave. Unfortunately, the spirit of Mary lives on in others!

On the much hyped Question Time debate, BNP spokesman Nick Griffin caused a storm – well, a mild squall, anyway, he’s not really worth a full on gale - by saying that he thinks gay men kissing is ‘creepy’. He hasn’t exactly divided the nation on this subject. There are plenty of people still who would say ‘Who’s Nick Griffin’. That’s political apathy for you! But there are some opinions going around and they seem to be split three ways.

First there are the basically ‘nice’, basically ‘decent’ people who, while not necessarily considering themselves homophobic, and certainly unlikely to vote for the BNP, nevertheless think “kind of”, “sort of”, “well, you know”, that it is a bit odd when they see men kiss each other, and broadly agree with him.
Men kissing in public! Shouldn’t be allowed!
Men kissing in public! Shouldn’t be allowed!

Then there’s the camp that think that sort of thing is disgusting, shouldn’t be allowed. Absolutely vile, repulsive. Shameless homosexuals flouting their deviancy in public. They don’t need Nick Griffin or anyone else to voice an opinion on their behalf. They’re noisy enough already. For them ‘a bit creepy’ is too mild a description of the abomination!

More men kissing!
More men kissing!

And there is what seems a much smaller camp of people who have no problem with gays kissing whatsoever, who think the act of kissing, of one Human being pressing lips against the lips of another Human being is a beautiful expression of warmth, affection, love, passion, devotion. This group seems to be drowned out at the moment by the other two groups.

Happy, smiling, open display of affection. This would be perfectly socially acceptable for a heterosexual couple.
Happy, smiling, open display of affection. This would be perfectly socially acceptable for a heterosexual couple.

But anyway, a couple of things struck me about the statement and the reaction. The first was that I disagree completely with his comment, and that he is utterly and completely wrong, and he would still be utterly and completely wrong if he wasn’t a bigot who nobody likes very much anyway.
Remember the fuss about THIS ‘gay’ kiss!
Remember the fuss about THIS ‘gay’ kiss!

The second was, actually, he is right. Not, of course, that gay men kissing is creepy, but that a lot of people think – like him – that it is creepy. And I can personally vouch for that. I’ve experienced that reaction a lot more than you might expect, seeing as I’m a woman!

Science fiction kissing! Captain Jack on Captain John!
Science fiction kissing! Captain Jack on Captain John!

 Anyone who knows me knows that my laptop goes wherever I go. I am a writer, and I write wherever the mood takes me. And if I stop writing for more than 60 seconds my screensaver kicks in. The screensaver is a slideshow of pictures of my favourite entertainer. For anyone who doesn’t know me, that would be the lovely John Barrowman. I’ve got pictures of him singing on stage, acting in Doctor Who and Torchwood, attending celebrity parties, all the sort of pictures you can find with a concerted Google image search - nothing especially shocking. But among the pictures there are quite a few that are of John and his civil partner, Scott. And of those pictures there some in which they are kissing. The screensaver programme randomises the pictures so you don’t know what’s going to come up next.
 This picture upsets the little old ladies at my local church.
This picture upsets the little old ladies at my local church.

Now, I have noticed whenever the  screensaver kicks in, that people will sit watching the pictures change every eleven seconds. When one of the pictures of John and Scott kissing comes up I have noticed their reactions. They vary from a twitch of the face, to a drawing back of the whole body, to a full recoil or exclamations of disgust. These friends of mine, incidentally, range from little old Irish Catholic ladies who I know from volunteering on a Saturday in church to young adults, male and female, who I worked with in another volunteer job during the summer.

The full recoil tended to be from the little old Irish Catholic ladies who were brought up in places where that sort of thing just didn’t happen and couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. They had been happy looking at pictures of a good looking man who they thought had a lovely singing voice and seemed to be rather nice on whatever daytime TV programme they had seen him on recently. When the pictures of John with Scott popped up they said things like ‘oh, they look like brothers’. But the pictures of the two of them kissing left them stunned and confused.
A straight man kissing a gay man – Gareth David-Lloyd and John Barrowman at a 2008 Convention playing up to the crowd.
A straight man kissing a gay man – Gareth David-Lloyd and John Barrowman at a 2008 Convention playing up to the crowd.

The exclamations of disgust tended to be from the young adult males between 17 and 25 who were perfectly ok with pictures of the star of an action television programme they’ve all watched until they were faced with him kissing another man. These young adults, incidentally, were sitting under one of those big red Stonewall posters with the ‘Some People Are Gay’ slogan on it, and open expressions of homophobia could get them chucked out of the centre. And it is true that they weren’t really being homophobic – as such. Some of them said they had nothing against gays – as such. But when they saw a picture of a gay kiss for eleven seconds their reaction was one of embarrassment, confusion, disgust.

Another straight man kissing a gay man – David Tennant snogs John Barrowman at the 2009 Comic-Con San Diego.
Another straight man kissing a gay man – David Tennant snogs John Barrowman at the 2009 Comic-Con San Diego.

Or, at least, some of them might have pretended to react that way because that was the reaction they were supposed to have to such a thing.  Most of them come from council estates where any sign of non-conformity to a certain perception of what is ‘normal’ for a young adult male would be downright dangerous. It is instilled in them by the society they live in that men are supposed to act in a certain way. And if any of them thought that kiss was anything but disgusting, if any of them actually liked it, they would have had to keep that to themselves.

I don’t think any of these people would think of themselves as homophobic. I don’t think even those young adults living in their rough council estates where unreconstructed views of the world are rife actually would beat up a gay couple if they saw them holding hands in the street. But they all displayed homophobic reactions to an eleven second exposure to two men kissing. This kind of ‘latent’ and what seems to me almost unintentional homophobia seems to be quite common among ordinary people who really don’t think of themselves as homophobic.
Two Oscar winners express themselves openly.
Two Oscar winners express themselves openly.

  And it really seems to me that the reason is they don’t see enough gay kisses. Actually, on an average day in any ordinary town or city in the UK, you don’t see people kiss very often at all. People in the street just don’t. Kissing is something that generally speaking goes on in private. In fact, I actually wonder where it is that Nick Griffin regularly gets creeped out seeing gay men kiss publicly. He must be like those people who complain about all the porn on TV when the rest of us are flicking through the channels wondering where it all is! Unless you’re living opposite a cruising site, I think the chances are you can get through the day without seeing a heterosexual kiss, let along a homosexual one.
A soapy kiss on Coronation Street
A soapy kiss on Coronation Street
But we all see kissing going on all the time on TV. Not on the aforementioned porn, but in ordinary programmes. It’s on the soaps, it’s on Casualty, it’s on The Bill. It’s on Doctor Who!  TV is where most of us see the most kissing going on, unless we’re lucky enough to have a fair share of it from our significant others. And there isn’t as much of it on TV as some people make out. Even Torchwood only averages one snog for every three episodes. The soaps have had their moments. Coronation Street and Eastenders have had a couple of storylines and the kisses have been headline news. And that’s the problem. If gay kissing wasn’t so rare a sight, it wouldn’t be headline news. It would be just another soap storyline. And if gay kissing happened more often on TV, people might get used to it. They might start to find that latent homophobia falling away.
Another soapy one on Eastenders.
Another soapy one on Eastenders.

In short, they wouldn’t agree with Nick Griffin that gay men kissing is “a bit creepy”. They would start to join the camp that thinks people exchanging expressions of affection with each other openly and happily, regardless of gender, is a beautiful thing.

Because it is.
So go for it, guys.
So Go For It, Guys
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Wed 14th

Stating the Obvious

Published by: Rose on Wednesday 14th October 2009 05:10pm
 

Stating the Obvious

paul o'grady

I was just reading a new article on Pink News about comedian and TV presenter Paul O’Grady possibly moving to ITV from Channel 4 due to issues about the budget for his show. I was not entirely surprised to see that the very first two words in this article were ‘openly gay.’

A link at the bottom of the page to an old article about Graham Norton possibly taking over O’Grady’s Channel 4 slot begins with the same two words ‘openly gay’.

A few days ago the same two words ‘openly gay’ opened the first paragraph of the report on the tragic death of singer Stephen Gately.

On the same day an article about Stephen Fry’s TV series Kingdom being axed began with the words ‘gay broadcaster’.

picture of John BarrowmanTwo weeks ago, there was an article about John Barrowman that spawned all kinds of criticisms and comments. The headline of the article was ‘Gay Dr Who and Torchwood Star…” And in the links below was another article about John that opened with “Gay actor…”

At this point let me quote John Barrowman in a Times article marking the anniversary of the Stonewall riots which makes the same point.

“If there’s one thing that annoys me it’s the media that calls me “gay” as a prefix to everything….”

See, even he’s noticed.
Looking further back in the Pink pages I came across further examples of this lazy journalism. These three were one after the other.

“Gay comedian Matt Lucas….”
“Openly gay fashion designer Tom Ford….”
“Gay illusionist Derren Brown….”

And then Graham Norton and John Barrowman popped up again, both still openly gay. As if we didn’t know that. If you took a poll in any high street and asked people to name two gay celebrities chances are those two would be mentioned. Nomad tribes deep in the Sahara who don’t even have a word for gay know that John Barrowman and Graham Norton are gay. Ok, I exaggerate. But you get the point. They’re gay. We don’t need to be told they are every time their names are mentioned in the press.

And it’s the same for the women.

 “Lesbian rock icon Melissa Etheridge…”
“Bisexual singer Lady Gaga…”
“Bisexual actress Megan Fox….”

Has anyone ever seen an article that refers to “openly heterosexual actor Brad Pitt” or “completely straight singer, Beyonce” or “pathologically non-gay politician’s wife, Iris Robinson…”

Heterosexual people are not defined by their sexual preferences. Why are gay people?

Why, especially on a website specifically for the LGBT community, is it necessary to keep using phrases like ‘openly gay’ to describe the subjects of the article?

Even if the article is about the fact that the person is gay, such as the recent one about John Barrowman that we all had such fun with, ‘openly gay’ don’t need to be the first two words in the sentence. They don’t need to be in the title. The subject matter speaks for itself.

It is even less necessary when the article is nothing to do with the subject’s sexuality. Paul O’Grady is not moving to ITV because it is a more gay friendly channel. Graham Norton isn’t going to Channel 4 for that reason, either. Kingdom was axed because ITV has budget problems, not because Stephen Fry is gay. And Stephen Gately, bless his poor soul, didn’t die at the terribly young age of 33 because he was gay. The lazy journalism that pigeon-holes people so conveniently seemed all the more annoying in the articles that covered that tragedy.

Stephen Gately


If gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals are to have a truly equal place in society with everyone who doesn’t fit into one of those categories, then we all have to stop using easy labels, and it ought to start with the people who write the news, especially those who write the Pink News.
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