Yes there is misogyny among gay men – but our sexist world is the problem
|
Version 0 of 1. Let us begin with some drag-speak: “fishy”. This is used by drag queens to describe one of their own who looks ultra feminine in a “natural” way resembling actual women – as opposed to a deliberately exaggerated impersonation. Why “fishy”? The website for the hit US reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race – which features the word in most episodes without comment or shame – explains: “The term is a reference to the scent of a woman’s vagina, which is colloquially likened to the smell of fish.” Could there be a more choking illustration of the misogyny of gay men? I have heard this vile denigration ever since I stepped into the gay scene in 1993 – “fish”, “tuna”, and any number of terrible words for female genitalia, often accompanied by vomiting gestures. So it amazes me that, bar the odd murmur that rarely reaches a roar, gay men have escaped the rightful opprobrium of women for the only real smell: the stench of sexism. But this week that changed. Rose McGowan, star of the US TV series Charmed, and an LGBT activist, spoke of the “huge problem” of misogyny among gay men. “Gay men are as misogynistic as straight men, if not more so … You wanna talk about the fact that I have never heard nobody in the gay community, no gay males, standing up for women on any level?” She continued: “I think it’s what happens to you as a group when you are starting to get most of what you fought for. What I would hope they would do is lend a hand to women.” Aside from the fact that we are far from getting most of what we have fought for, the first issue here – misogyny – is true, in part. Many gay men individuate their identity from straight men by exaggerating their sexual lack of interest in women. It pours out with misogyny. It is commonplace for women’s appearances to be analysed in brutish detail, in part through jealousy of presumed sexual power. As a movement we have ignored women, individually and structurally. Along with the many gay rights organisations headed by men over the decades (thankfully Stonewall now has a second woman in charge), there is no more poignant example of this than in the fight against HIV/Aids, where the tender altruism of hordes of lesbian volunteers who tended to dying men in the 1980s has been forgotten. And many prominent gay men will delight in propping up existing models of oppression. As Lily Allen said when I interviewed her a few years ago, the world’s most popular celebrity blogger, Perez Hilton, has forged a career on scrawling “whore” and “slut” over pictures of famous women, all while opining how good they look (read, how well they conform to Hollywood’s starvation-and-surgery ideal.) “As a gay man you should be championing young girls … not shaming them for owning their sexuality,” she said. He should be picketed. But to suggest we hate women more than heterosexual men, as McGowan does, is offensive and alarmist. Unencumbered by evidence, it incites retributive homophobia. It is not gay men who rape women, beat them, and murder two women in England and Wales every week. Are gay men responsible for producing and consuming the pornography that eviscerates the dignity of women and endorses rape? Are gay men responsible for hiring women’s bodies to perform whatever egregious sex act they fancy? Do gay men stalk women, troll women or follow women down the street, shouting abuse, or shouting obscenities from car windows? Is it gay men who so want to control women that we mutilate en masse labias and clitorises? Is it gay men forcing women and girls into marriage? Or gay men pimping and trafficking women? There is a problem of misogyny among gay men. Of course there is. We were brought up in a rotten, binary world, doused in the hatred of women. Misogyny is as unavoidable as carbon dioxide. It seeps in everywhere. And, thus, must be challenged everywhere. Gay men must do more – as everyone must – but I suspect many do not know what to do, or even if we are welcome. I, for instance, am feminist to my marrow, a feminist first and a gay rights activist second – second because there is no emancipation for gay people without the universal liberation of women, second because I was raised by feminists, raised without gender expectations, thus foreseeing what the world could be if only we dismantle our tyrannical construction of gender. There are many like me, but many who feel we do best fighting the corner we know best. Is there a hunger for the voices of gay men within the feminist movement? I do not sense it. Men’s voices are not exactly going unheard. It does not matter what I think or feel, what matters is women’s experiences, women’s beliefs, and that the men who hate them listen and change. Women and gay men are natural allies, with shared enemies; the distinctions between our fights are porous. These stones thrown do not help. I understand McGowan’s anger, I share some of it, but I ask this: before blame is disproportionately laid at the feet of gay men, is there not something a little bit fishy about any theory that excludes the bulk of the evidence? |