A rather long mini-review of Hit and Run

I went to see Hit and Run because I saw the husband and wife creative team (and stars) Dax Shepard and Joy Bryant on Pierce Morgan talking about the movie. So call me crazy (and I know you will) but I’ve always had a thing for Dax Shepard, as he seems to me to be kinda gayishly cute. Anyway, the couple talked about the movie as an ‘indie’ film, meaning that it is not your typical mainstream fare. I also noted that on Rotten Tomatoes the movie was semi-dismissed as ‘raunchy’ -- which of course made me really want to see it. Not for the reasons you might think; it just seemed to me that everyone who was talking about the movie was talking in code. Well I saw it yesterday. Sure enough there is a gay cop in the movie replete with badly dyed red hair. He’s cruising people on ‘pouncer,’ which is of course a NOT very subtly disguised reference to the gay cruising app ‘Grindr.’ The gay cop is a major/minorish sort of character. But there’s also Dax’s tendency to ramble on about gay stuff. At one point he makes the somewhat offensive but rather accurate remark that black men view white men as women (ie vulnerable and effeminate) and also, that white men view Asian men as women (ditto). These remarks could of course be viewed as racist, sexist, and homophobic (the triple whammy of political incorrectness!). The film tries to head off such perceptions by having Bryant, early on, castigate Shepard for using the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory way.  She says -- “I mean, would it be alright for me to call my purse the n-word? Like no!”  -- or something to that effect -- which does make a kind of  funny, wacky sense in the context of their conversation. What I’m trying to say is that this movie is -- well, um, smart -- and even (God help me!) well written at times; it toys with deliciously dangerous stuff in a witty way. But of course the film is being promoted as a ‘raunchy’ comedy. Dax and Joy are obviously a pair of sharp cookies, and they were somehow able to sneak a teensy bit of intelligence into a run-of–the-mill Hollywood car chase movie, by advertising the film as a ‘raunchy’ sex farce, ala American Pie, albeit with an ‘alternative’ flair. I’m just kind of amazed that amidst the endless tedious remakes of Spiderman and Total Recall there exists, in a Hollywood movie, somewhere, the tiniest germ of an idea or two (however politically correct or even offensive those ideas might be). I hope the Hollywood Bigwigs don’t find out; it seems they are pretty dead set on keeping even a flash of actual adult braininess out of most standard flicks.

A Modest Proposal: Arrest All Women Who Have Had Abortions!

 An editorial in the Globe and Mail on July 11, 2012 criticized a recent United Nations report that calls for all nations of the world to refrain from criminalizing HIV.  The Globe says: “And where the report seems to go astray in its laudable concern for the rights of persons living with HIV is in the realm of disclosure. It labels as ‘counterproductive’ laws that  ‘criminalize HIV transmission, exposure or non-disclosure of HIV status.’” The article then goes on to imply that because AIDS is  a life-threatening illness, those who continue to have unsafe sex without disclosing their HIV status should be put in jail.

This editorial comes at an important moment in Canadian history. The Supreme Court of Canada is on the verge of making a landmark decision about whether or not there should be legal penalties for HIV positive people who have sex with others. And law courts in Ontario are presently refusing to dismiss sexual assault cases against HIV positive people who do not disclose, even when they use condoms.

Surprise! For much of the general public (and for the Globe) the issue is a no-brainer. They say “Why shouldn’t people tell their sexual partners their HIV status? If they’re going to have sex with a lot of people, it’s their responsibility to disclose, and if people can’t accept that, then they should be put in jail!”

But this kind of reasoning makes very little sense.

Consider an analogy.

I posit that criminalizing people who have sex without disclosing their HIV status makes just as much sense as jailing women for having abortions.

First:

In both cases, some people assert that a human life is at stake and some people don’t. This is because many people avidly believe that to destroy a foetus is murder; while others say that’s a crazy idea. Many believe that HIV is a death sentence; others say that’s a preposterous notion.

Second:

In both cases some say that a jail term will discourage these activities, others don’t.  This is because some think that if women and their doctors were jailed for performing abortions then it would discourage people from having abortions. Some also think if people were jailed for not disclosing their HIV status, it would encourage people to be more honest. But is this true, or would the threat of jail actually drive these activities underground?

 Abortion is unpleasant; no one wants anyone to have an abortion. HIV is very unpleasant; no one wants anyone to get AIDS.

But one should not arrest women for having abortions, and one should not arrest anyone for having unsafe sex – because the issues involved cannot be scientifically proven.  Think about it. The following two questions are ultimately unanswerable  -- Is a foetus already a life?  Who exactly gave me AIDS?

I would suggest that the issues of abortion and HIV disclosure are alike in  another very significant way. Most people weren’t too concerned about HIV disclosure when AIDS was just a ‘gay disease.’ Now that AIDS is an equal opportunity infection, non-disclosure is a huge issue. Why? Because those who favour the criminalization of HIV, see themselves (quite wrong-headedly) as protecting women. But it does not protect women to disempower them. Instead of empowering women to speak up for themselves (i.e. assuming they are capable of demanding men use condoms, or of making their own choices about abortion) the patriarchy seeks to disempower women (by telling them they need to be protected from abortions, promiscuity, and men who want to have unprotected sex with them).

            Of course this kind of paternalistic, puritanical thinking appeals to fundamentalists everywhere. But why in God’s name (to coin a phrase!) would gay men support these ideas? Because whenever the issue of HIV criminalization appears, gay guys go twitter crazy! There are ‘tweets galore’ from gay men yelling ‘Throw ‘em all in jail! Have no mercy! If those sluts didn’t fuck around this never would have happened!”  And why do gay men believe that? Because most queers are working so hard right now to prove their respectability that they would gladly send their own kind to the gas chambers to do it. “Justice be damned! I just want everyone to know I’m a ‘good’ faggot, not a ‘bad’ one!”

            The truth of the matter is that criminalizing HIV non-disclosure makes as much sense as criminalizing women who have abortions. IT MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL! Irresponsible, uncaring (perhaps evil) people will continue to make unwanted babies, and will continue to spread HIV.  We can and should use all our powers of social and moral persuasion to stop these practices, but they must not become legal issues.

Believe me, that will just make matters much, much worse.

Mini-Reviews: Five Fabulous New Gay Movies For July!!!!!!

Savages

OMG. This is the gayest movie ever made! No wonder the reviews were so horrible! It’s all about two gorgeous guys -- a butch top and a fem bottom -- who fall in love and decide to involve an unfortunate woman in their relationship as a beard. But it’s really about THE TWO OF THEM! And THEY ARE THE SAVAGES!!!!!

You’ve got to see it, man.

Ted

Let’s see. There’s Marky Mark’s naked butt, which is delicious and just, well ….he’s in love with a bear and he can’t seem to get married. Need I say more?

Dark Horse

A gay guy made this and even though it’s not about a gay couple it IS a bout a nerdy man who lives with his parents and can’t get married (yet another one) and he has fantasies about a dominatrix who is kinda like his mother.  Oh, and like, Mia Farrow is in it. (Duh!)

What could be gayer?

Magic Mike

People are falling all over themselves to say how ‘insubstantial’ this movie is. No…not like um…Men in Black! I’m sorry but there is so much fabulous male semi-nudity in this move that……well.….case closed.

Moonrise Kingdom

Okay there’s nothing gay about this movie except it’s VERY campy and it’s also PRO SEX and ANTI-AUTHORITY so I hereby define this movie as gay!

So there.

June Mini Reviews (some of these movies are actually good…)

Dictator

Okay this one’s not good. But it’s interesting to see that a Sasha Baron Cohen movie is not as funny when he’s not being cruel to innocent bystanders by tricking them into being in his film. What does that mean?

Indie Game

Sublime -- I mean I don’t know what to say. The movie was about me and other people I know. Fucked up lonely creative people yearning to be loved, and so they lock themselves in their rooms and create.

Double wow.

The Intouchables

Another perfect movie. And it’s gay! Paraplegic Man Hires Young Gay Stud to have sex with him via his ears! Of course at the end they show the Paraplegic Man having dinner with a woman but it’s only so audiences won’t feel guilty about enjoying the love between two men -- one white, the other black, one legless and and the other with three!

Edwin Boyd

Scott Speedman I love you and I want to have sex with you! Especially now that I know you are actually an amazing actor who looks unbelievably gorgeous in drag.

Will you love me back! 

(ps and when?)

Bernie

This one was okay until I figured out it was about another sad, effeminate, gay man who also happens to be a killer. Bernie is kinda like Luka Rocco Magnotta before he lost the weight. And we all know that until Luka’s disgusting trial is over we’re going to have to put up with Christie Blatchford and every other idiot wondering: “Did his tragic failure as a gay male porn actor cause him to do it?” Gee whiz -- I’m a tragic failure as a gay male porn actor but I never killed anyone.

Homosexuality, Effeminacy and the Shaw Festival

            Recently two Toronto theatre reviewers wrote homophobic reviews of Shaw Festival productions.

This must be discussed.

            Let’s get the minor matter of sexuality out of the way. One reason that the gay liberation movement was founded so many years ago was to eliminate the need for sexual categories. The movement hoped society might someday evolve to a point where such things would not matter. Unfortunately we have not reached that point. If I were to reveal that the two actors who were victimized in these reviews were gay, I know I would immediately stand corrected. There would certainly be actor denials (‘My sexuality is irrelevant, and also a private issue!’) or I would be accused of ‘outing’ them. So I won’t. However, the fact that I feel inhibited speaking about the sexuality of these actors means that we haven’t come a long way, baby. Not at all.

To the larger issues.

Richard Ouzounian’s review of Ragtime is blatantly homophobic. His remark about Jay Turvey’s portrayal of Tateh…"too often, you feel you’re watching Paul Lynde” – is quite witty – that is, for those of us long-in-the-tooth enough to know who Paul Lynde was. For those under 50, I will explain. Paul Lynde was an American comedian who was known primarily for his effeminacy. He was the closest thing to an ‘out of the closet’ gay TV/movie actor there was in the pre-liberation days of the 1960s. Ouzounian is saying that Jay Turvey’s performance was too effeminate; therefore heterosexual audience would not accept him as playing a heterosexual character.

J. Kelly Nestruck says pretty much the same thing about Steven Sutcliffe in Present Laughter, only he backs up his opinions with scholarship, and seems conscious that his remarks may be homophobic. “I realize it’s stepping into a bit of minefield to suggest that a particular actor is unconvincing as straight—in part because it’s silly to assert that gay men act one way and straight men another. But with his hair slicked back, a high-pitched flamboyant delivery and frequent swishing of his dressing gown, Sutcliffe’s Garry certainly reads as gay to a modern audience.” Nestruck not only takes on Sutcliffe’s performance, but Noel Coward, the playwright, quoting Peter Hall “What a wonderful play Present Laughter would be if – as Coward must have wanted – all those love affairs were about homosexuals.”

By these remarks, both reviewers suggest that effeminacy and homosexuality are one in the same thing. Nestruck tries to make us aware that he knows this is not true. I realize that the well-meant political correctness that controls discourse in modern culture has created quite a sticky wicket for Nestruck -- and all others who are thoughtful and well-meaning. We dare not suggest that homosexuals are more effeminate than heterosexuals, as most modern gay men spend 100% percent of their time trying to convince straights they are exactly the same as they are. Nevertheless, cultural stereotypes and prejudices exist, and the ‘general public’ --  i.e. everybody -- pretty well figures that a limp wristed male is a cocksucker. Sorry, but those are the facts, ma’am.

            Underlying these assumptions is a notion that pretty well everyone has accepted: i.e. that there’s something wrong with being an effeminate male (whether you’re gay or straight). This, I would suggest, is a fundamental transhistorical western notion, and has a lot to do with worries about male ‘begetting’ and being a warrior, two skills that are considered linked to masculinity (bizzarely, I think). However, the idea that all men should be or can be consistently masculine is inhumane, unrealistic and, well, nuts.

            Nestruck’s critique of Noel Coward’s playwrighting hints at the difficulties that arise from accepting such a premise. He’s certainly right to suggest that Present Laughter is not a perfect a play (the way Private Lives and Hay Fever are). It behooves Coward (and all gay men) to eternally write perfect plays, because if they do not, the plays will be criticized for being badly written because they author was a homosexual. Homosexuals, you see, don’t really understand straight culture, or at least understood it differently than straights themselves (i.e. there are dangerous implications to their understandings). This critique of gay writers goes back to 1958 when Robert Brustein lambasted William Inge for emasculating American males in his plays.

            Present Laughter features a beautifully written, hilarious, deep , witty analysis of the relationship between vanity and illusion, and between love and sex. It’s as if Jacques walked out of As You Like it and starred in his own play. When Coward performed the role he was much adored in the part. In1942 he was able to indulge his own effeminacy as Garry because effeminacy and homosexuality were linked secretly, but not publicly. Nowadays gay liberation has brought us to the (glad?) point where we seem comfortable openly demonizing men who are effeminate (they of course cannot be deep, they cannot help us understand life, they cannot really love anyone -- especially women) because new conservative homosexuals have colluded with the straights to such a point that they have given straights the blessing to do so.

            Well, this is not alright with me. I don’t blame Richard Ouzounian or J. Kelly Nestruck – they  (as much as Steven Sutcliffe and Jay Turvey ) are victims of a homophobic culture.

            But you know, I’m getting kinda tired of it.

           

What’s Wrong with The Velvet Rage

            I look around me and it seems that gay has gone away. I tried to create my own ungay movement a couple of years ago but it didn’t seem to stick. I guess I’m just too old and will always be gay.

            All around me herds of young gay men are looking frighteningly natty. They sport charming spectacles, perfectly tailored suits, bow ties, and well-kept beards. They are often to be found holding hands with their adopted children, running in Cancer marathons, or buying expensive appliances for the condo.

This is not the ‘gay’ I grew up with.  What happened?

            A young friend of mine recently gave me a copy of The Velvet Rage. Now everything is clear. This self-help book by Alan Downs Ph.D. was published in 2006 and apparently all the young fags are reading it. Many seem to be changing their lives because of it.

            I had mixed feelings about The Velvet Rage. But mostly, I hated it. On the one hand, it was nice to see a book that actually attempts to deal with homophobia and gay self-hatred. The Velvet Rage focuses quite extensively on the notion that gay men are damaged by the homophobia directed against them, and attempts to help gay men love themselves, and reach a much vaunted ‘third stage’ of self-acceptance.

            Yes it would be fabulous if we could each arrive at a place where we could love ourselves. But many of the methods this book recommends for achieving that are resolutely homophobic.

            When I teach queer theory in my classes I talk about the three most important ideas that queers bring to straight culture, which are:

a)    gender play

b)   alternative relationships

c)    camp

Gender play means the notion that men can be feminine and women can be masculine. Alternative relationships mean all the different types of bonding that are possible for loving people to engage in that are alternatives to marriage: promiscuity, polyamorousness, ménages, open relationships, the single life,  etc.. Camp is the self-defensive brittle wit that so many queers bring to their lives and ultimately to their art, which has produced masterpieces from artists like Oscar Wilde, John Waters, Gertrude Stein and many others.

            The Velvet Rage pretty well ignores male effeminacy, except to trash it. Downs buys into an age old psychiatric cliché (is he really a Ph.D.?), one I presumed went out of fashion when homosexuality was removed from the DSM back in 1973: the idea that gay men were ignored by the fathers and overindulged by their mothers.  He says we “ingratiate ourselves to our mothers, and distance ourselves from our fathers.” This is simply bullshit. There are, I’m sure millions of gay men who were closer to their fathers than their mothers – and such associations have nothing to do with homosexuality. He criticizes “the stereotype of the bitchy bitter queen…. ‘Don’t mess with me sister, cause I’ll bite back and I’ll bite back hard.’” He recommends that gay men not “act on every emotion that you feel” and warns us “others are put off by perfection.”  But most significantly, Downs does not celebrate effeminacy, and seems to see it as something to be overcome. I certainly don’t think all gay males are effeminate (or that all lesbians are masculine) but I do think that this happy gender confusion many of us embrace is something we can offer the straights. Something that will help them become more human, and humane.

            Downs also exhibits a complete lack of sympathy with (or understanding about) gay liberation. In one short paragraph he trashes The Mattachine Society and Harry Hay by dismissing the radical fairies and queer nation: “There are even some gay men, such as those involved in queer nation or the radial fairies, that suggest that gay men are not meant to be in committed relationships.” First of all, Downs gets it wrong. What I think (along with many of the original gay liberationists) is that monogamy is not for the majority of people period – gay, straight, male, female, whatever, and that we should all open ourselves up to the possibility of relationship alternatives. For Downs, only monogamy exists. This precipitates a horrible shame cycle for the many who try and fit themselves into a system that does not work for them, and never will.

            It’s all very sad really. The book seems to be working from the outside in. It’s as if the author did a poll of all the characteristics that straight people find most appalling about the gay male stereotype -- promiscuity, excessive drug use, effeminacy, crankiness, and a designer-fag mentality -- and decided to root them out of our culture.

            I really couldn’t care less if straights think we are all temperamental, gender-bending sluts. Queers with those qualities are the ones who shouted down the cops at Stonewall in 1969. They are the best we have to offer, not the worst. And, trust me, we won’t learning anything about homophobia or self-hatred by hating them, or the aspects of them that we find in ourselves.

The Fascism of The Righteous Mind

Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind is well intentioned (or seems to be) and is getting much talk here, there and everywhere. The purpose of The Righteous Mind is ostensibly to help the American political left and right understand each other better. I don’t know if the book will achieve this. But more ominously, this book is one of a rash of modern tomes that ask us to look charitably on the views of the extreme religious right. I certainly don’t think Jonathan Haidt is a fascist, but I do think his book (like Nietzche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra) could easily become the bible of a fascist regime. Haidt’s methodology is pretty straightforward; he is a psychologist who applies mostly Darwinian science to morality. What is typical of this kind of approach is that it ends up quite often being an apology for conservative right wing views.

I don’t know what Jonathan Haidt’s personal moral ideas are. He certainly makes a valiant attempt to keep them out of his book, and mostly succeeds. However he speaks briefly of a young woman overheard at a university cafeteria saying to another woman -- “Oh my God! If you were a guy I’d be so on your dick right now!” Haidt responds to her remark like this: “I felt a mixture of amusement and revulsion.” Hm. Revulsion.  I don’t get it. If I overheard a young woman speak like that I would be nothing but happy. First of all it’s nice to see someone -- indeed anyone – speak in a sex-positive manner. Secondly, it takes a great deal of bravery for a young woman to talk in such a manner when there have been historically, so many pressures on young women to appear not to be sexual (the danger being they will be demonized as ‘whores’.)

So I don’t think Haidt likes sex much, or that he understands the oppression of women.

But more importantly, let’s look at his observation in the context of his central argument. Haidt uses it to prove a very important point about morality. He says, speaking of the same girl “how could I criticize her from the ethic of autonomy?” The ‘ethic of autonomy’ refers to John Stuart Mill’s notion that people should be free individuals, and judgments about right or wrong should only be related to hurt. In other words if we believe that ethics is all about weighing the harm that one person does to another, then a girl who talks in this manner cannot be morally criticized because she is hurting no one. The only reason we would be allowed to criticize the poor girl morally (and the more I think about Haidt’s book, the sorrier I feel for this young woman!) would be if we believe morality has to do with ‘instinctive’ reactions to the sanctity of the body. Haidt wants us to know that ideas of fairness, hurt and harm are quite particular to modern western morality, and that ideas of bodily sanctity and degradation are an integral part of the morality of many ancient western and non-western religions. Haidt is ostensibly saying both types of morality are in their own way right, or at least should be accepted as equal. This is despite the fact that fairness is something that we can justify through rational argument, while ‘sanctity’ is something we cannot.

            I take issue with this. The problem with Haidt’s argument is that he is yet another ‘scientist’ (although as much as I think psychology is important, I still don’t know if it can yet be considered a science) using biological theories to bolster conservative views. His final conclusion is very revealing. The left and right are  divided in the U.S.A. because “our minds were designed for groupish righteousness. We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning. This makes it difficult – but not impossible – to connect with those who live in other matrices, which are often build on different configurations of available moral foundations.” Haidt’s findings are not the least bit surprising. He is definitely not the first person to suggest that we are creatures of feeling easily swayed by group sentiments. What is ‘new’ -- only in the sense that people are speaking from this position more and more these days -- is to suggest that because humans are biologically constructed in a certain way, we must therefore be tolerant of their ignorance or prejudice and perhaps not challenge them (after all, challenging them can be ‘difficult’ and we are ‘hardwired’ to be like that).  This is the same argument that many are use to justify heterosexism -- i.e. women have different brains than men, so they are programmed to act differently, so we must treat them differently. But of course no one would dare use this argument to justify racism (although that is a logically corollary of Haidt’s argument).

            Are we not rational beings? Isn’t it pretty evident that we are animals, with

irrational feelings and desires, but also (thank God) with brains that can reason (yes with difficulty) to help us to control, understand, and weigh, our impulses, tastes and prejudices? One would hope so. But a new breed of scientists (mostly Darwinians) would have us tolerate the most irrational aspects of ourselves because they are after all, part of what we inherit from the animals.

            It’s ironic that a Darwinian psychologist’s arguments could be so potently used to prop up the views of the religious right. Haidt argues essentially that we are animals programmed to have innate motions of sanctity. He makes a complex, paradoxical connection between logic and illogic.

If I were paranoid, I would say it’s all part of an elaborate plot to make some very antiquated, scary and fundamentally anti-human ideas seem modern, scientific and palatable.

            Thank goodness I’m not.