Global Gay Nation > Gay Identity - Queer as Volk?

The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture

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Rain:
On a related front:  THIS.

Feral:

--- Quote from: Rain on October 09, 2007, 01:39:16 PM ---On a related front:  THIS.

--- End quote ---

Mmmmm. "Howl" can be heard here.

Personally, I've always preferred reading poetry to listening to it. You'd think that an author reading his own work would be ideal. I rarely find it to be though. I don't know why.

vanrozenheim:
Hm, where shall I start? Without reading the entire book it is difficult to discuss its value in terms of a real analysis of the past Gay culture.

If I were to judge the short excerpt published by NYT, I would say that Mr Harris' analysis of Gay past is somewhat tiresome to read, at least for me as a non-native English reader. His observations/interpretations of several phenomenons are very interesting, but I am not sure that he is accurate [in that one chapter] on the entire picture.

Of course, many homos of the time did elaborate their manners, but so they do now. We also must not mistake the few college-educated Gays with the entire homosexual population. Back in time (and in other places in our times, too) the working class homosexual men were often too much oppressed to come out even to themselves. They married, got children and led a totally straight life, maybe with the exception that they, from time to time, had sex with men. If we were to take those closeted Gay men into account, too, than the picture of the past wouldn't be as rosé as Mr Harris apparently depicts it. In average, the Gays in the West probably are as Gay as they never were before.

Quite a different thing is, that while the average behavious might be the Gayest ever, the extremes (both the proud and the closeted Gay) now are not that extreme anymore, since they have developed towards the "normality." This "normal behaviour" implicates that what previously used to be a closeted, psychotic homosexual man now evolves to a "discreet" and "decent" but non the less self-coscious and happy Gay man. The side effect is, unfortunately, that the social pressure on the "radical" Gays has increased to assume a socially permitted Gay lifestyle, with full social and economical "integration" offered as incentive. In short, it is possible nowadays to be openly Gay in Western societies without fearing immediate loss of the workplace and ostracism from family and neighbours -- provided, one adjusts oneselfe into the tight corsett of "decent" (=straight) behaviour.

Now it would be not that tragical, if this decent behaviour were only a cunning strategy to circumvent societies oppression -- but unfortunately, most Gays seemingly are nowadays entirely deluded into whole-heartedly embracing the assimilationist attitude. They really believe that there is but a last, tiny ditch of prejudice and bias to be rooted out, for the society to accept them, once and forever.

Need I say how foolish such an assimilationist attitude is? That mythical "last ditch of prejudice" amounts to some 40 to 50% of the population sharing belief that Gays are if not an abomination to God, so at least deeply immoral creatures engaging in disgusting sexual practices. This belief is so deeply rooted into the Abrahamic religions, that we simply can't eliminate it. The weed of hate uses to reclaim ground despite any weeding out, and there is little prospect of Gays winning over thousand-year-long traditions of hate and cultural genocide.

The Gays should re-embrace their historical culture, whatever went lost of it. Surely, not all of those mythical heroic national past (as constructed by Mr Harris) is really that glorious as he would like us to believe, but the ability to create and nurture an authentical Gay culture is essential for our further developement as a people.

Rain:

--- Quote ---The Gays should re-embrace their historical culture, whatever went lost of it.
--- End quote ---

Assuming they know that there actually WAS a historic culture to learn.  To a huge part of younger Gays, Gay culture began with Madonna.

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