The Sad Irony of Black Lives Matter

It is ironic that Black Lives Matter should have been asked to participate in this year’s Pride Toronto — and even more ironic after what happened at this year’s parade.

Pride Toronto has become a meaningless exercise in corporate  display. The floats are no longer sexual because it might scare the kids. Grass roots political organizations are priced out of the parade, so mostly what’s left are splashy floats featuring boys in speedos, funded by big corporations. 

Middle class LGBT+ people (not unlike middle class people everywhere) are attracted by anything that involves money and shopping. So Pride Toronto is well attended. What you will see there are the knobby knees of older folks marching in support of their right to have children, go to church, vote Conservative or join the armed forces. Any ‘political agenda’ is confined to campaigning for full legal rights for LGBT+ people; most of which we have already achieved.

There is very little these days in Toronto Pride that speaks to lefty politics, queer culture, or homophobia.

So why did Toronto Pride invite Black Lives Matter — an organization with a fiercely political left-wing agenda — to be featured at this year’s Pride?

What did Toronto Pride expect?

The actions of Black Lives Matter are a slap in the face to Toronto’s LGBT+ community.

Congratulations to Black Lives Matter!

Unfortunately the slap will have little or no effect.

The irony of Black Lives Matter staging the anti-police protest in the middle of this year’s Toronto Pride is that each and every one of Toronto’s LGBTQ+ people have many reasons to protest Toronto police. Not only did Toronto Police famously raid the bathhouses in 1981 (which they have quite ineffectually apologized for) but they also raided The Pussy Palace in 2000. Also in 2000, police raided The Bijou sex cinema — where I was working as a cashier. (There have been no attempts by Toronto police to apologize for that incident.) Toronto Police haven’t just made one mistake — they keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

But do you think anything will ever mobilize the hidebound, old-fashioned, ‘family-centred’ LGBT+ community to protest the actions of the Toronto police?

Recent Toronto LGBT+ community ‘concern’ over the 1981 bath raids is lip service. No one cares. If bath raids were to happen today, no one would support the men or women victimized by police action. We tried to organize a march against the police raid of The Bijou in 2000, and guess what?

Nobody turned up.

Today’s LGBT+ community is fervently apolitical. I predict that — tragically — after singing along with a Lady Gaga song at a Toronto Pride church service, or observing sad floral displays on the street to remember ‘Orlando’, Toronto Pride will continue on its merry, apolitical corporate funded way.

The document Matthew Charlebois  signed isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. In Toronto’s LGBT+ community, intersectionality does not mean fighting for our own rights along with other radical groups, it means offering token space to Black Lives Matter as an excuse to ignore our own oppression.

It’s all very sad.

Just Say No to Kate Taylor

Invective can be like a drug; addictive and appealing in a demented way. For years Kate Taylor spewed her vile bile as the Globe and Mail theatre critic. Her work was like a car accident, difficult to see but hard to turn away from. I thought we were done with her — but it seems she’s back with a vengeance.

In the Globe and Mail recently, Kate joined the gang of supporters for The James Plays at Luminato, bemoaning the sad state of Canadian theatre. She whines that we have no Canadian National Theatre, saying “our closest thing would be the National Arts Centre,” going on to say that even if we did have a ‘national theatre’ there would be only one playwright (Michel Tremblay) good enough to fill it. Sorry Kate, but what about Judith Thompson, Linda Griffiths, Djanet Sears, John Mighton, Michel Marc Bouchard, or Daniel MacIvor and Daniel Brooks, or Leah Cherniak and Martha Ross? You see, there are so many brilliant Canadian playwrights, that I run the risk of offending someone by not mentioning all of them. 

What is going on here? I’ll tell you: Taylor has joined the pack of Canadian culture naysayers. The king of Canadian- Culture-Haters is without a doubt, Jorn Weisbrodt, who (in case you haven’t heard) has just built a monumental arts centre (apparently with his bare hands!) called The Hearn which, some say, will be his legacy.

Well I certainly hope so. The place is in the middle of nowhere, and you can’t get too it or from it unless you are rich enough to own a car, and you can’t get into or out of it on foot unless you are young and able bodied. I can see the lawsuits coming; they sell booze at The Hearn and the floors are rocky with rubble. But apparently since Europe is filled with giant old factories that they have turned into pretentious ‘culture centres’ for the affluent middle class, Toronto must have one too.

I know I am behind the times on this. The new culture critics tell us that Canada is a backwater with no history of an indigenous culture (which of course includes our Aboriginal work). Jorn, who is member of the worlds cultural elite, an international arts entrepreneur, came to Toronto to tell us what culture is — and it’s certainly not us. To the suggestion that Toronto might be a world class city, Jorn responded with a sneer: “If you are world-class, it means that the world talks about you. Certain criteria go with that. Toronto may be on the cusp of breaking through to be a world-class city?” 

May be on the cusp? 

Sorry Jorn, but I don’t give a flying you-know-what whether you or anyone else thinks Toronto is a world class city. We spent years wresting ourself from the colonialism of British plays; now we must bow to this colonialism yet again?

I think it’s a crime the way our cultural institutions,  arts councils and most of all Canadian producers themselves, have dialled the enthusiasm down for indigenous Canadian talent, to the point of ignoring Canadian work and offering full support to non-Canadian work instead.

And please, please tell me Kate Taylor is not going to start critiquing theatre once more — we just can’t have her hurling venomous brickbats at us all again!

It was the kiss

On Sunday June 12, 2016 Mateen Omar shot killed 49 people at the gay nightclub Pulse, in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. 

There will be the usual discussion. Was he a Muslim extremist? Was it a terrorist attack? A racist attack? Was he mentally ill? Is it time for sensible U.S. gun regulation once and for all?

Matten’s father had this to say:

“We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And [Omar] saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid, and he got very angry. They were kissing each other and touching each other, and he said ‘Look at that. In front of my son, they are doing that.’”

We are eager to find a reason for the massacre. That’s only natural. So we look outside ourselves — for something that is not in us, something that is not like us, something that is the ‘other.’  Omar Mateen is a foreign name. So perhaps Omar was not really an American at all. He claimed allegiance with ISIL. And on top of that, he was probably very different from us; he was probably insane.

Don’t you see what’s happening here?

Can you not understand that it in the rush to make this horrid act into something alien, something from outside ourselves, we have ignored the obvious? How many straight men do you know who would find the sight of two men kissing — or (worse yet!) making love — disgusting? And how many straight men might even get angry about it?

You see, the fault is not out there somewhere; it’s in ourselves.

It is gay bodies they hate — gay bodies that yearn for each other, that yearn to touch, that yearn to to have sex. We can pass gay marriage legislation, we can institute transgendered washrooms, LGBT people can fight for the right to adopt children or join the military, they can become the most respectable doctors, lawyers, ministers, policemen, politicians in the world. But don’t you see that none of that ultimately matters?

I’m gay. So I’m going to organize a kiss-in at a straight bar near you. In fact I think I’ll go down to The Fifth Social Club on Richmond Street West with my boyfriend — and sit at a table, and neck. Or maybe I’ll have sex with my latest trick in the washroom of Faces Nightclub. Or I’ll try to pick up some guy at Cabin Five.

Why would I want to do that?

I’ll tell you why. 

Because it was the kiss.

What's Wrong with 'Reality Theatre'

'Reality theatre' is a fad that will fade — probably sooner than later. 
I am talking about plays like Brimful of Asha and Winners and Losers. I am not a theatre critic; so I'm not judging these productions (the first one I have not seen, and the second I saw and quite enjoyed). Here is my definition of reality theatre: theatre that takes place in real time and in which the actors:  a) play themselves, and b) if they do speak -- instead of speaking pre-scripted dialogue -- simply converse.

There are two pretty obvious objections to the notion that reality theatre is a radical new form. And there is one objection that may not have occurred to you.

First: reality theatre is not real. Even if the performers are not 'actors' but 'real people' they nevertheless are performing for us and are fully conscious of that. Just as documentary films are not necessarily truth, reality theatre involves certain choices about what will be presented and what will not. Significantly, reality theatre is not a new form or style; the history of theatre brings us countless examples of efforts to make writing, directing and acting more ‘true to life.’ Reality theatre is simply the latest and trendiest claim to authenticity. Those who promote it are the ‘New Stanislavskis.’

The second obvious objection to reality theatre is that people love stories and are not about to give them up any day soon. Fiction allows us enormous freedom to imagine possibilities for what we can do and who we can be.

Now to the less obvious objection.

The problem with reality theatre is that it tends to towards the contentless. Like abstract art, reality theatre — when for instance, it is about watching people stack boxes — often says nothing, or what it says is inscrutable or vaguely concerns the human condition. Purveyors of reality theatre like to go on about the idea that reality theatre accentuates the essence of theatre; its ‘liveness.’ I would argue that watching an old-fashioned story can be suddenly and stunningly ‘live’ if the content is controversial, offensive, or merely challenging to the average bourgeois consumer. Have you ever sat in a theatre where different members of the audience have violently opposing reactions to the content of a play? Where people laugh at the ‘wrong’ places? Where people walk out, or even speak back to the actors?

It is not plays with made-up plots that lack ‘liveness,’ it is mainstream plotted plays— like those approved for presentation by the Mirvish Real Estate Corporation — that are utterly devoid of it. Even the most experimental recent Broadway hit deemed suitable for the Panasonic Theatre has been judged clear of any discernible offence, or it would not be performed there.

Reality theatre is a lot of fun, and certainly has the potential to be a lot more than merely entertainment. 

But please don’t try and convince me it’s something I haven’t seen before.

I Hate Pride

I started hating Pride back in the early 90s when they told us we couldn’t do S/M on our float. I got all dressed up in a sailor outfit — and practically killed myself on a diet of white wine and salads so I'd look sexy in it. And my job was to go down on this dyke’s giant dildo. It was going to be so much fun. And then some Prissy Little Pride Monitor came up to us before the parade and said  'S/M is no longer allowed on floats!' and we were like — why? And The Prissy Little Pride Monitor said it was because of the kids, because Pride was a family thing now. We went ahead and did our S/M float, but after that it was just never the same.

And then one year I was on the roof of Glad Day watching the parade and I realized it was all just so boring — a lot of middle aged people with ugly knees in their bermuda shorts. You call that a parade?

And then of course there’s the commercialism that everybody complains about. Back in the day —  in the 70s, the queers — like the hippies — hated capitalism, the military industrial complex, and organized religion. Nowadays we’re supposed to be so enthralled that The Toronto Dominion Bank hires a bunch of boys in green shorts to dance on their floats. But those boys won’t have sex with you. Even if they’re gay they don’t have time for sex; it’s all about their goddamn careers.

And then there’s all the sympathetic straight people. So happy to support they gays — as long as we are entertaining, don’t talk about our sex lives in detail, still appear as hosts on designer TV shows, and are still afraid of AIDS.

And I hate the way my neighbourhood is suddenly filled with people I don’t know. And lunch is suddenly hugely expensive and you can’t get a blow job because everybody is either too cute for their own faces or the place is too crowded.

Because the truth is I’m a PF. (Professional Faggot) The rest of them are just a bunch of AHs. (You know — Amateur Homosexuals.)

It’s just like alcoholism. As well as being a Professional Faggot, I am also a Professional Alcoholic. So when I go out on St. Patrick’s Day or New Years, I have to put up with a bunch of AAs — Amateur Alcoholics. They don’t know how to drink. They make a big show of it — you know, waving their arms around and yelling and interrupting conversations. But me, I’m a Professional Alcoholic and I know how to do the job, quietly, efficiently, and with style. I’m getting drunk, with a studied persistence. They’re just fooling around.

It’s really all about how much time you spend at it. I’ve got nothing against Amateur Homosexuals. After all, ‘amateur’ means ‘lover.’ But they just don’t spend the time on it I do. I’m a fully qualified, Professional Faggot. I spend a significant amount of time cruising, worrying about he way my pants fit, yelling about gay rights, and dying my beard. And I like to be around other faggots, even though I want to kill them half the time. But I need to be around them. 

A lot.

Not just once a year.

Sorry guys, I wish this blog could be a more inspiring. I wish there was a rainbow or

something.

But the fact is:

I HATE Pride.

Lessons from Trump U

I’ve fallen a little in love with Kayleigh McEnany. She is by far my favourite Donald Trump surrogate — a cute little gal who is often trotted out to express Donald Trump’s innermost thoughts on CNN. She is both pretty and perky. And now and then she even smiles in a way that suggests she is human.

To those who dismiss Donald Trump, listening to a Trump surrogate might seem like a giant waste of time. 

Well, it’ not. 

True, Trump admits he gets most of his ‘facts’ from the web. And Trump surrogates like McEnany — when asked for proof of their assertions, often reply — ‘just google it!’

But you find this new, slaphappy, internet-dependent attitude to knowledge everywhere. Nobody bothers to prove anything with a reasoned argument anymore. They just throw websites at each other: ’I read on the web that….’ ‘Well I read on the web something else….’

What I find so fascinating about Donald Trump is that he has admitted to trolling right-wing websites and podcasts to inform his policies. That’s because he’s less concerned with the truth than the most popular opinion. And his surrogates — the ‘Kayleigh McEnanies’ of the world — just parrot what right-wing dumbbells are saying online. 

In this context, McEnany’s defence of “Trump U’ is fascinating. Trump University — as you’ve most likely heard — was a very-much-for-profit education company guaranteeing instruction in real estate success. The company is now defunct and under investigation for fraud. The whole thing seems pretty clearly to have been a con job. But McEnany’s defence of ‘Trump U’ really tells us what America thinks about the state of higher education (I will paraphrase it here):

‘Donald Trump is just doing what any university does. He’s offering a product; so he sells that product. And he’s doing it a lot better than those left-wing universities that promise you a job by teaching you something useless called ‘philosophy.’ 

The terrifying news is that what Kayleigh McEnany is saying is not that crazy.

As North American universities bow to pressure to become career factories, they gradually lose their ability to articulate what higher education should be. Professors are being required to come up with ‘learning outcomes’ for their courses that guarantee students are getting a bang for their buck. 

I find the notion of ‘learning outcomes’ repellant — not just because I’m a left-wing professor who often teaches ‘philosophy’  — but because I’m appalled that higher education has become less and less committed to teaching critical analysis, fostering originality, and encouraging students to think outside the usual cultural paradigms.

In a steadily shrinking job market teaching students how to fit into the world is robbing them of the ability to think outside the box and create a new world and a new place for themselves in it.

And is it ultimately wise for universities to start saying their purpose is to prepare students for jobs in the real world, when a trade school or community college can do that much better? 

If universities continue to describe themselves as prime movers of the economy rather than centres of intellectual thought, they will get what they deserve — in other words, they may very well be sued for fraud by their students (or should I say customers?).

And not even Kayleigh McEnany will be cute enough to defend them.

Israel Cured Me of Islamophobia

Today I was waiting for a bus in Hamilton and a Muslim family walked by. I noticed because she was wearing the hijab. He was looking quite hip, and they had two children as well as a baby on the way. And my usual internal reaction would have been — ‘There they go, those Muslims.  Just like the Catholics — all they do is reproduce like crazy so they can take over the world.’

But then, uncharacteristically, I quashed these Islamophobic thoughts.

I am acknowledging my own Islamophobia here, hoping this acknowledgement of my own prejudice might help eradicate it in others. Because honestly, how could one live in North America — with the anti-Muslim rhetoric at full blast — without it turning you against Muslims just a bit? 

But having just returned from Israel, it occurred to me that the family I saw on the street in Hamilton were not Muslims. They were just people. I think Jaffa, Israel was the origin of my revelation — an ancient city where Muslims and Jews have lived together in peace for centuries. And why shouldn’t they? There are Iots of Muslims all over Israel (not just in Palestine) co-existing quite happily with Jews. And there are lots of Muslims in Israel who would rather live in Tel Aviv than Palestine. In other words there are lots of Muslims who are tolerant of other religions. Muslims are just people, like you and me.

And you might ask ‘What about this Muslim suicide bombers?’ Or, if you are coming from the other side — ‘What about the Muslim folks pushed out of their homes by the Israeli settlements?’

But let me tell you, those are only the fundamentalists.

In case you haven’t guessed, although I no longer consider myself Islamophobic, I am a confirmed ‘fundamentalist-phobe.’ I hate and fear all fundamentalist religions. I don’t think hate is too strong a word if one considers the appalling violence done in the name of religion. If fundamentalism didn’t exist, if people stopped trying to convert others to their religious beliefs, if people didn’t try to follow rules inscribed in centuries old books — rules probably translated inaccurately, which should be open to interpretation, which are nevertheless held to be the word of God — well, the world would be a much happier place.

And I’m afraid what I really don’t understand (as a gay man) is why so many queers hate Israel. 

Sure, Israel is being run by a sort of Jewish Donald Trump right now (Netanyahu) who has just appointed a particularly fascistic defence minister named Liberman who has said that Arabs not loyal to Israel should be beheaded. But blaming Israel for electing the wrong person ignores all the sensible people who voted against him. (Was Stephen Harper my fault? I voted for  Jack Layton!)

Israel is a very tolerant, pro-feminist, pro-queer country. Though gays cannot marry because civil marriage doesn’t exist, queer married couples arriving from elsewhere are considered legally married by the government. Tel Aviv has a thriving gay scene, gays are welcome in the military, right now there are rainbow flags all over Tel Aviv for their sexy pride.

Why can’t left-wing queers celebrate Israel’s tolerance for queers, and stand behind a country that (despite it’s colonialist beginnings) has its origins in love? Israel is a great, terribly important experiment. If Jews and Muslims can learn to live there without killing each other, then religions can live together anywhere in the world.

It’s time to support Israel. Because all Israelis don’t hate Muslims — only extremists like Liberman do.

And similarly, most Muslims in Israel don’t hate Jews.

Well, a trip to Israel sure cured me of my Islamophobia.

Now I have to work on my feelings about Catholics……