…I guess the idea of gay culture was always an oxymoron, but lately I find myself declaring to it more definitively, “You’re dead to me,” as you might say to a former lover. Now, the gay movement is a zombie movement. It vaguely looks like its former self, operating remotely like it used to, going through the motions. But there’s no real life to it, no purpose, beyond bland consumerism.”
Says Bruce LaBruce. He’s probably right, but isn’t the purpose of any movement to do just that, move? Sorry if things didn’t move the right way.
The problem, I think, started when the gay movement decided that it wasn’t a movement about being accepted for the freak show that it was, and it became a movement about being accepted for begging to be like straight people. That’s sad, and everything is pretty awful, but you don’t have to let some movement completely co-opt your identity, Bruce. You can still be a freak show, on your own. You can still have your column in Vice. And it’s a good column!
The engine of the gay movement used to be an idea of adventurous and extreme sexuality. Gay culture itself was regarded by the status quo as something pornographic and sexually radical. Today, with the emergence of the gay conservatism, pornography appears to be the last bastion of sexual radicalism. That’s why I always express solidarity with gay pornographers. They’re the last glimmer of glamour in the gay movement.
Ha. Which ones? Because, uhhh…
Now you have Elton John publicly professing his love of child rearing—not the kind preferred by the archdioceses of the Catholic Church—and waxing hopeful for a utopian future society in which all homophobia has been eradicated (does he want to take ALL the fun out of it?). This is a far cry from the sexually ambivalent posturing featured on his breakout album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in the early 70s, which offered up insanely conflicted and decidedly tortured expressions of homosexual longing…
I guess this issue has been on my mind lately because I’ve been on a book tour in Italy promoting the new monograph about my work, entitled Bruce(x)ploitation, published by my Italian distributor, L’Atlantide Entertainment, and their subsidiary, Queer Frame. Just for fun, I’ve been making all sorts of outlandish pronouncements in mainstream newspapers about the death of gay culture. “Bruce LaBruce Provocation: Gays are Conservative,” screamed the headline in the Florence edition of La Repubblica, one of Italy’s major dailies.
Gay culture might be dead, but luckily there’s just enough of it left to allow for Bruce LaBruce to travel the world, promote his book, and be quoted in Italian newspapers.
[Vice: Wondering…Gay Culture Is Dead]
Being sexually/physically/emotionally attracted to men doesn’t necessitate “adventurous and extreme sexuality”. Having an “adventurous and extreme sexuality” does.
I am so tired of people who say that everything was better in the past. It is a false nostalgia and a sure sign that the person in question is becoming really old. Elton John? Yeah, he’s really getting old.
And while I’m at it, I’ve heard this argument before — from people who never get out of New York/LA/SF. Come down south and to the midwest, where there’s one gay bar in an hour or two’s drive and there aren’t enough people concentrated in any one area to make hook-up applications a useful endeavor. The scene is still weird (and a little sordid and special) and wonderful.
Maybe specialization is what’s killing the scene? A bar for these people, a bar for those people, and never shall a leatherman have a meaningful conversation about engine parts with a dyke on a bike. And then you get sick of seeing the same 40 people over and over again, go home, and complain about the scene being boring & stale.
It’s a thought. . .
If he believes the gay movement is about “adventurous and extreme sexuality” then thats where i’ll stop paying attention.
There is a lot more to being gay than just sex, and saying its about rampant sexuality just give ammunition to the anti-gay movement.
Pardon me if I don’t lend too much credence to whatever Vice magazine is selling. And while I think Bruce LaBruce has said some interesting & provocative things, under the Vice editorial mandate. . .I have doubts.