Yet another thing for which I lack the time

Section28 of the Local Government Act 1988 – commonly just referred to as Section 28 – was a piece of legislation which stated:

A local authority shall not—

intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality;

promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.

It was passed in 1988, and not repealed until 2000 in Scotland, and 2003 in England and Wales.  It is, for my money, the single most spiteful and damaging piece of legislation to have graced the UK statute books since the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967.  Other legislation, such as the lack of marriage rights and the unequal age of consent, tried to control what people *did*, but Section 28 tried to control what people *thought*.  It denied vital information and reassurance to an entire generation of queer youth, and it threatened teachers and other council workers with the loss of their livelihoods if they tried to provide that information and reassurance.  Not only did it harm gay people directly by making it a crime for them to learn about themselves and be told there was nothing wrong with them, it harmed straight people by denying them the same knowledge.

Recently, a then Tory MP and now member of the House of Lords tried to defend her support of Section 28 Twitter.  In a response to a tweet which stated, “You voted for section 28 and against the equal age of consent. You are not an ally.” She replied:

“I am seriously thinking of you and those like you as wishful of AIDS unchecked! I voted for S.28 when there was NO immunisation nor cure.  But you and yours wished schools to teach the very behaviour that was the only known cause of AIDS. I as VP of charity CRUSAID - did not.”

That was two weeks ago, and I am still livid. 

Let’s be clear: unprotected sex was and is a vector for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.  The gender of the people having the sex is irrelevant.  Section 28 did not do ANYTHING to combat this.  By denying people education about homosexuality, it denied them important education about safer sex.  Section 28 was not an inhibitor to the spread of AIDS; it was neutral at best and a contributor at worst.

More than this, being gay is not “a behaviour” as the Tory baroness puts it.  Having sex is a behaviour but it is not – and this will shock you, I’m sure – a behaviour in which I spend much of my time indulging.  When I’m watching the telly, or playing a boardgame, or cooking dinner, or answering a question about housing law, or popping to the shops, I am not any less gay than I am when I’m canoodling with a gentleman.  The fervour with which homophobes try to reduce the state of being gay down to act of bumming – something I have never once done in 45 years of life – and cannot accept that it is so much more than that, about the full range of love and attraction, would be laughable were not so pathetic.  And so damaging.

UK newspapers are reporting today on “reforms” made by the government to the legal protections afforded to LGBT+ people, the main bulk of which is removing such protections for transgender people.  I’ve already seen friends of friends saying, “well, at least they’re banning gay conversion therapy.”  Please don’t be one of these people.

Is it a good thing that gay conversion ‘therapy’ is to be banned?  In principle, yes, absolutely.  Do trans rights need to be eroded in order to do this?  No, absolutely not – the two issues are utterly and entirely separate.  This being so, and given the fact that until very recently the government has been vocally reluctant to ban gay conversion ‘therapy’, a cynical person might wonder if its inclusion in today’s announcements is motivated not by any kind of genuine desire to respect and protect gay people, but instead is an opportunistic grab for appearing more moderate than they truly are, while at the same time sewing division in the LGBT+ community.

A lot of the arguments used to advocate against trans rights are exactly the same as the arguments historically (and in some cases, not so historically) used to advocate against gay rights.  It’s just a phase.  This isn’t a real identity, they’re actually mentally ill.  Giving rights to these people will endanger children.  Giving rights to these people will put normal people at risk.  Giving rights to these people will make normal people uncomfortable(!).  Recognising their identity as real will destroy the meaning of marriage/the definition of gender/the very bedrock of society.  These arguments were nonsense then, and they are nonsense now.  And if you are a cisgender gay person who wants to argue against recognising, respecting and protecting trans people then good luck to you, because once trans rights and protections have been dismantled then sooner or later – and my money’s on sooner – then the people responsible will turn their attention back to us.

A somewhat belated post - I started typing up my thoughts about Series 12 shortly after it ended, but only found the energy for a sustained bout of typing while taking a few days off work.

Season 12 of Doctor Who is now over. Readers may recall that I felt season 11 was pretty lacklustre. Season 12… has been an improvement, but a lot of the issues remain. The cast are great – Jodie Whittaker is fantastic, and I honestly cannot understand the vocal subset of fandom who insist on saying she can’t act – but there are too many regular characters, which means that none of the three companions get a decent share of screen time or character development. There’s been an improvement in the number and development of the guest characters, but many episodes have really suffered from the problem of scooping up all of the NPCs into the TARDIS and carting them along. As a consequence, a lot of episodes really struggle to cultivate a sense of location, and having guest characters in the TARDIS becomes run of the mill.

It’s also very interesting to me that, after making his first series almost entirely continuity-free, Chibnall’s second series is probably the most fanwanky we’ve ever had. Spoilers for all of the episodes follow.

Recently, I’ve seen a lot of people talking about dissatisfaction with, and anxiety about, their body.

I sometimes visit a site called FM Forums, where people post photos of male celebrities, often shirtless or nude. And while the photos are fun, very often the comments just descend into vitriol about the person in the photo – he’s ugly, he’s too young, he’s too old, he’s too fat, he’s too thin, he’s too muscly, he’s too scrawny, he’s too hairy, he’s too smooth, his cock’s too small, he trims too much, he doesn’t trim enough, it’s disgusting that he’s circumcised, it’s disgusting that he isn’t. On and on and on, often with pretty much all of the above opinions about one image!

I take two things away from this:

Firstly, a lot of people have a completely unearned sense of entitlement about other people’s bodies, and are not afraid to be cruel and spiteful, especially if they believe that the target of their spite and cruelty isn’t around to witness it. These people are not worth listening to.

Secondly, there is no objective standard for beauty. There are people that I find hugely attractive that I have seen others decry as ugly; there are people who are just not my cup of tea who I’ve seen others utterly swoon over.

Your body doesn’t exist for anybody’s benefit or entertainment except your own. It’s absolutely fine to have preferences about other people’s bodies, but it’s not remotely fine to expect anyone else to modify their body to conform to your preferences. I realise that that may seem like an odd statement coming from me, given that a lot of my favourite pastimes involve people taking their clothes off, and most of my activity on here involves liking people's nudes, but I think – I hope – that I’m able to see the difference between appreciating a thing and wanting control of it. If I think that your body is aesthetically pleasing, then I honestly hope that that buoys you up and gives you confidence – but in either event, you are under precisely zero obligation to entertain me with it. And if your body isn’t my particular cup of tea, then that’s spectacularly irrelevant because your body isn’t *for* me, it’s for you, and someone else whose cup of tea it is will be just around the corner. (The metaphorical corner – I’m not suggesting that you’re being stalked.)

I understand that when you have body image issues – and goodness knows, I certainly have my share – having someone say “no really, you look great” is naff all help, but I hope that you are able to bear the above in mind. I hope that I am, too.

This post contains incredibly mild spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.

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 I’ve seen a lot of discussion on-line recently about the moment of gay representation in Endgame, and about whether it’s a triumph or an insult.  The reality, I think, is that it’s both.

 Taken purely on its own merits, the scene is superb. We see a very honest portrayal of a man moving through the stages of grief and trying the rebuild his life, and when this man talks about the person he has lost, and the person he is now dating, he uses the word “he.”  The scene would have been not one iota different if we had instead heard “she” and that’s exactly how it should be.  We are shown that gay love is just the same as straight love, and that gay grief feels just the same as straight grief.  I still hear people complaining when a character in a piece of fiction is depicted as LGBT+ “even though it’s not relevant to the plot” – I heard it an uncomfortable amount of times about Bill in Doctor Who, for example.  But the reality is that people aren’t queer in real life because it’s “relevant to the plot”, we just _are_.

 More importantly still, it is absolutely perfect that the person this man is talking to is Captain America, a person who very literally embodies the heroic ideal of America, and who lived most of his life when homosexuality was criminalised and taboo.  He doesn’t bat an eyelid at the character’s use of “he” but is compassionate and supportive – clearly, this person’s sexual orientation is a complete non-issue to him, just as it should be.  It’s really valuable to see this depicted.

 However.

 Taken as the sum total of overt queer representation in eleven years of major films, this scene is the very epitome of too little, too late.  

 This is the twenty-first film in the MCU, and it’s the first to have any overt on-screen queer representation.  The fact that all we get is some unnamed rando in a thirty second scene, even a beautifully composed one, is frustrating to say the least.  To an extent, I am sympathetic to the argument that none of the principal characters we’ve seen in the films are LGBT in the comics, and that it would therefore be too much of a departure change their orientation for the screen – but there have been some fairly major departures from the comicbook cannon, and there have definitely been enough supporting characters created for the screen that not everyone needed to be straight.

 Also, I say “overt representation” because Valkyrie was intended to be queer, and her moment of same-sex affection ended up on the cutting room floor.  While I don’t think for a moment that the Russo Brothers had any hand in her excision, it does make their trumpeting of the Endgame’s gay scene feel a little hubristic.  

 The thing that makes me REALLY angry about this discussion, though, and the similar ones that have been held over the years, is the inevitable cry of “I’m not homophobic, I just…” fill in the blank as applicable.  I remember a few years ago now reading an article by right-wing social commentator and alleged journalist Melanie Phillips about guidelines that advised schools to help normalise pupils’ perceptions of gay people by, for example, occasionally referencing a same sex couple in the text of a maths question.  “What has maths got to do with gayness?” cried Ms Phillips.  She then went on explain that she could not possibly be homophobic because of articles she has written in the past decrying the systemic murder of gay people in Iran, without ever considering that perhaps the reason why it is seen as acceptable in Iran to systemically murder gay people is precisely because there are no examples there or homosexuality being normal, unremarkable and everyday.

 And to be clear, I am absolutely certain that when the Melanie Phillipses and Andrea Leadsoms of this world say that they are opposed to gay people being systemically murdered, they are being entirely sincere.  I think that not wanting an entire class of people to be arbitrarily killed is a fairly low ethical bar, but I’m confident that they meet it.  And they are homophobes nevertheless.  

 If you believe that discussing being gay necessitates some kind of graphic description of sex acts, you are a homophobe.  If you believe that telling children that some of their classmates will have two mummies, or two daddies, and that that’s okay is disgusting, perverted, immoral, or just too sensitive for their innocent young ears, you are a homophobe.  If you believe that that telling your children that being gay is wrong in the hope that they won’t turn out to be is better than telling them that you’ll still love them if they are, then not only are you a homophobe, you are not fit to be a parent.

 And I’m not throwing around the word “homophobia” because I find these attitudes offensive (although they are) or because I am “triggered” but because these attitudes kill gay people.  They kill as surely and as certainly as Melanie Phillips’s Iranian death squads.  They kill by empowering the hate criminal, and they kill by feeding the despair of frightened, vulnerable gay kids who believe that this world has no place for them. These attitudes are dangerous; do not pander to them and do not allow them to flourish.  Stand up to hate.