Popping your cherries for the pink dollar

[rioters bloc]

We are living in an era of zealous queer explosion in mainstream popular culture. What was once the token ‘cool’ black person on TV has been replaced by the token ‘stylish’ queer person. It would seem that many producers have jumped from the Urbane edge of grotesquely stereotyped black ‘ghettoism’ to some sort of modern metrosexual chic, where its cool to be queer if you have money, are twenty-something, have an American accent, and your skin can camouflage with Prada Suede.

I was reading an article an unnamed Australian glossy pink dollar mag, ‘for the intelligent gay’ the other day, which implied suicide rates amongst young queer people had dropped significantly since Queer Eye for the Straight Guy had been on air. The saying goes ‘I nearly fell off my chair’, but I literally did. It would have been laughable if the subject matter had not been so serious. This is not to invalidate the confidence that can be generated through public exposure of queer people, but this article made no mention of the community projects run by activists across the US in relation to queer suicides. It would seem yet again that the Pink Economy would wish to be congratulated for work efforts in generating self-income as efforts for the ‘community’.

There is an assumption of ‘community’ when we enter the Gay Ghettos of inner cities. There is almost something global about them – airfare packages rich gay boys can buy that follow the ‘global gay party syndicate’. Every big city must have a Gay Ghetto otherwise it just doesn’t cut the metrosexual chic cool. Sydney is the gay capital of Australia. It is not coincidental that it is also economically the business capital of Australia.

“Gay” is everywhere. “Lesbian” and “transgender” make a mention but more so for the novelty factor. For the gay business man who sips on his martini in the [s]wanky gaybar, freedom has come. But not for the ‘Fag’ behind the bar who gets paid 10 bucks an hour and can’t join a union for fear of losing his job. He’s thinking about how much he can make in tips so he doesn’t fall behind in his rents. For the pinstriped suited lesbian who sips her organic soy-decaf-latte the freedom to enjoy her Saturday afternoon reading the glossies has come. But not for the waiter ‘Dyke’ serving her who’s worrying about how much time she has to study for Uni exams whilst juggling two part-time jobs.

The notion that something is beneficial for all queers is like saying something is beneficial for Australia as an entire nation. It’s like saying all queers are the same or all the people living in Australia are one homogenous block. This is simply not true. Equality is not about treating everyone the same, but recognising differences and accommodating them. for example, signing a Free-Trade Agreement with the US may be beneficial for some businesses, but not for the multitudes of workers who will face greater vulnerability over work security – despite the Liberal Government’s attempts to dress it up in “if it’s good for the economy, it’s good for the people.” Then the question becomes one of who controls the economy. It is this question which is most relevant to queer people when we discuss who benefits from particular reforms.

Reforms only create equality if everyone starts out on an equal platform, and this is heavily reliant on economics.

Inevitable when a minority receives large amounts of exposure, there is going to be a backlash from the political Right. Christian groups, for example, lobbied advertisers to pull supprt for The L Word and Howard’s zealous quasi-religious political scapegoating aims to enshrine queer people’s exclusion from marriage. However the question must be raised, what material relevance does advertisers pulling the plug on The L Word have with the transgendered person being raped in prison?

Nothing.

It is interesting to see what the Pink Press will pick up as worthy issues to discuss and usually they are not relevant to working class people’s lives. Rather they tend to be relevant to the Pink Economy of which the Pink Press is an essential part.

It seems that to engage in Gay and Lesbian politics is to engage in a perpetual reform movement where we surrender our right to our own voices to community ‘leaders’. These usually take the form of lobby groups and government agencies speaking into the ears of politicians on our behalf that they will win the pink block vote if they vote for the right reform at the right time. All this so we can benchmark ourselves – if we win all the rights of the straighties, then we have won equality.

To me, this is not equality but assimilation, where heterosexual people have a monopoly over the social values and currencies. The heterosexual model of living with 1.8 children, a mortgage, being chained to a job to pay said mortgage, a domesticated animal to amuse the kids and a white picket fence, so the world can see exactly what you own and what they don’t. is this what we want? This is the greatest distinction between queer politics and pink dollar politics – whether or not we ideologically affect social change or whether we just deal with the effects of oppression and hope that we will be accepted into the system.

If we see that the road to self-determination for queer people is linked to the struggle of womyn, ethnians, and indigenous people then by logic, why the hell are we trying to integrate into a system set-up for the benefit of our colonial masters?

So to my fellow queers, pop your cherries for the pink dollar if you want, I’d prefer my freedom to not come at the expense of other people’s. it is a question of class, that dirty word people try and steer away from. Your station in the world is inescapable at present. Even if you try and climb the latter of social mobility from the one pouring the martini to the one buying it to celebrate having screwed over another thousand workers for your own profit, you are from being liberated or liberating other queers.

[Amusing Scrotum]

The article starts off on a rather bold note....

Originally posted by rioters bloc+--> (rioters bloc)We are living in an era of zealous queer explosion in mainstream popular culture.[/b]

Really? ....it's perhaps one of the "hallmarks" of the entertainment industry to over-emphasise certain characteristics in order to produce "entertainment." Can this over-emphasis really be called zealous? ....perhaps it is slightly "vulgar" but zealous? ....I don't know.

The case could also be made that "zealous" exposure is not necessarily a bad thing. Promoting something with zeal (enthusiastic devotion) is not always a bad thing if what is promoted is worth promoting.

Originally posted by rioters bloc+--> (rioters bloc)where its cool to be queer if you have money, are twenty-something, have an American accent, and your skin can camouflage with Prada Suede.[/b]

No doubt it is "cool" to be these things in a class society. Being part of the ruling class is always more fun than being part of the exploited class.

Therefore it is not surprising that the entertainment industry of said class society supports such an image. The same way being a successful businessman (or woman) is presented as "cool."

Originally posted by rioters bloc
It would seem yet again that the Pink Economy would wish to be congratulated for work efforts in generating self-income as efforts for the ‘community’.

That's Capitalism, no one in their right mind would expect the "Pink" Economy to function that differently from other economies.

Originally posted by rioters bloc
For the gay business man who sips on his martini in the [s]wanky gaybar, freedom has come. But not for the ‘Fag’ behind the bar who gets paid 10 bucks an hour and can’t join a union for fear of losing his job. He’s thinking about how much he can make in tips so he doesn’t fall behind in his rents. For the pinstriped suited lesbian who sips her organic soy-decaf-latte the freedom to enjoy her Saturday afternoon reading the glossies has come. But not for the waiter ‘Dyke’ serving her who’s worrying about how much time she has to study for Uni exams whilst juggling two part-time jobs.

I don't think I would be wrong in assuming that this article wasn't written for the "revolutionary left." I would hope most people on this board would realise that this is not a "gay" issue, rather a class issue.

However, as a piece of emotional propaganda this is pretty good.

Originally posted by rioters bloc
It is interesting to see what the Pink Press will pick up as worthy issues to discuss and usually they are not relevant to working class people’s lives. Rather they tend to be relevant to the Pink Economy of which the Pink Press is an essential part.

I know this was probably meant for a wider audience, but still I think this paragraph is a little misleading. Emotional appeals to the ruling class don't work, I'd prefer it if even in propaganda pieces the "left" was blunt.

Simply put you should have said "The Pink Press (like all other Capitalist press) chooses to ignore the troubles of the gay working class and instead focuses on the ability of the gay ruling class and its economy.

In this respect the gay movement should not seek liberation from puritanical notions of sexuality, rather liberation from all forms of class society.

....because it is only when we remove classes can we truly become liberated as human beings. Therefore it is essential that we don't concentrate on just gay rights, but instead class rights, namely the right to abolish class society."

Honesty is the best policy.

Originally posted by rioters bloc
All this so we can benchmark ourselves – if we win all the rights of the straighties, then we have won equality.

Well technically, yes. A successful "gay" reform would mean that the "gay" working class is brought up to the same level as the "straight" working class, has the same privileges etc.

The question is, is the horrible existence of wage-slavery really what any of us want? ....surely the whole working class can do better than a few concessions from above.

As the famous words of the Internationale go....

No saviour from on high delivers;
No faith have we in prince or peer.
Our own right hand the chains must shiver:
Chains of hatred, greed and fear.
E’er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at his forge must do his duty
And strike the iron while it’s hot!

Originally posted by rioters bloc
To me, this is not equality but assimilation, where heterosexual people have a monopoly over the social values and currencies.

To me, that sentence is hogwash.

There seems to be a strange notion on parts of the left that somehow certain oppressed groups could do a "nicer" Capitalism. Then when these groups turn out to be just as exploitative (as no doubt the "Pink" Economy has done) the villany of the oppressor is invoked.

It's not "gay" Capitalism that is bad, rather "gay" Capitalism has been destroyed by heterosexual "villany."

Like I said, such a notion is pure folly.

Originally posted by rioters bloc
The heterosexual model of living with 1.8 children, a mortgage, being chained to a job to pay said mortgage, a domesticated animal to amuse the kids and a white picket fence, so the world can see exactly what you own and what they don’t.

I suspect that is less a heterosexual model than it is a middle class model. Placing identity politics on top of class politics produces some strange (and wrong) results.

rioters bloc

@
If we see that the road to self-determination for queer people is linked to the struggle of womyn, ethnians, and indigenous people then by logic, why the hell are we trying to integrate into a system set-up for the benefit of our colonial masters?

I know this is a propaganda piece, but lip service should at least be payed to the working class. All politics are essentially class politics.

rioters bloc

it is a question of class, that dirty word people try and steer away from.

Including it seems yourself, for the majority if this article.

[Amusing Scrotum]

I read an interesting article in "The Independent" today, so (been as it relates to this topic) I decided to post it here....

Originally posted by Johann Hari: Don't rejoice over 'Brokeback Mountain' just yet+--> (Johann Hari: Don't rejoice over 'Brokeback Mountain' just yet)For Hollywood, there are two types of Acceptable Gays: limp-wristed queens and tragic heroes


After millennia of persecution and decades of civil rights struggles, gays have finally clambered to the top of the Hollywood Hills. The message from the Homintern is clear: rejoice, rejoice! But - wait - what is the reason for this glee? This week, a movie is released - Brokeback Mountain - that depicts us as pitiful self-hating victims, doomed to loneliness and despair. Victory?

Ang Lee's Brokeback has been hailed as Hollywood's coming-out-of-age, the film that finally shows gay people have been accepted into the American mainstream. And it is indeed a film almost as beautiful as its lead actors, Jake Gyllenhall and Heath Ledger. They play a pair of ranchers who meet and fall in love, but are so pickled in rural homophobia that even as they have impressively athletic anal sex, they mutter, "I'm not a fag." Although Heath begs Jake to settle down (and who wouldn't?), it is never an option. They are doomed. As Annie Proulx summarises their situation in the original short story, "Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved."

The film is tender and sensitive and (most important) tragic. And that's why, far from being a radical break, it actually fits into a long pattern of Hollywood's very constrained acceptance of gay people. The rules are simple, and stretch back to the first backlot MGM ever built. There are two types of Acceptable Gay Man: you can be a sexless sissy who is fairly happy with his female friends and waspish one-liners, or you can be masculine and actually have a sex drive - in which case you will die.

Let's look at the sissies first, because one of the reasons Brokeback seems like an advance is in contrast to this other, more high-pitched Hollywood tradition. When DW Griffith was making his first movie in 1913 - the Biblical epic Judith of Bethulia - he faced a dilemma. One of the characters was a eunuch, but nobody knew how eunuchs behaved - so Griffith decided to make him act like a "pansy" gay man, with bent wrists and wiggling hips. The audience found it hilarious.

Without realising it, Griffith set the pattern for how gay men would be depicted right up until the present: as licensed court-jesters, whose homosexuality consists solely of comic mannerisms, rather than (whisper it) sexual attraction to men.

Even in films made by people who imagine they are pro-gay, this is still - in the Noughties - the most popular way of depicting gay men. Look at Mean Girls, the terrific 2004 high school movie that was congratulated by much of the gay press for having a sympathetic gay supporting character, Damien. He is described as "too gay to function", which means he is an expert on lip gloss, is nice to women, and has a barbed wit.

He never mentions being attracted to men - not once. In the final scene, when all the movie's characters are pairing off, he is left dancing alone, and it's not meant to be sad. Damien - and the majority of Hollywood's gay characters, even today - could have walked out straight of DW Griffith's harem of eunuchs.

Compared to this army of asexual queens, the square-jawed Marlboro Men of Brokeback Mountain are a step (in a well-heeled cowboy boot) forward. But they are firmly rooted in an alternative Hollywood tradition: if you don't want to be limp-wristed, you can be tragic instead.

This school of Hollywood gays was founded in 1970, on the set of The Boys in the Band. Written just before the Stonewall riots, it now seems like a strange time-capsule from the closet, the story of a group of depressed, self-loathing gay New Yorkers who gather to celebrate their friend Harold's birthday. They spend the night fetishising Judy Garland and wistfully muttering lines like, "If we can only learn to stop hating ourselves ..." The school motto emerges when one character, Michael, says, "You show me a happy homosexual and I'll show you a gay corpse."

That line would fit perfectly into Jake Gyllenhall's mouth in Brokeback. There is an unspoken, unconscious equation in Hollywood: gay lust leads to misery and probable death. Look at the first achingly hip films to hint at gay love: in Rebel Without a Cause, Sal Mineo is clearly in love with James Dean - and he is gunned down by the final reel.

The first "gay" movie to be showered with Oscars, Philadelphia, shows its central character wasting away throughout the film. Brokeback belongs to an old, old pattern.

Most of the time, I'm sure these rules are unconscious, simply gut feelings about what audiences are prepared to take. But occasionally film and TV writers openly admit that they are unwilling to push their gay characters beyond these settled boundaries because they are scared of a homophobic backlash.

The co-creator of the sitcom Will and Grace, Max Mutchnick, was asked recently why the gay central character has gone through eight seasons without even the hint of a boyfriend. He said, "I'd rather keep a show like Will and Grace on the air than put Will in a relationship where he's going to be expressing himself physically and turn off a large part of the audience."

Since Will can't be tragic - this is Sitcom-Land - he has to be chaste. It's the rules. We wouldn't want to upset viewers by hinting that our gay characters actually have a gay sex drive, would we?

This might all seem trivial, but as the great gay novelist Armistead Maupin says, "For many young gay men and women, the subliminal message [from the movies] is that being gay means despair, self-destruction and death." Sure, Brokeback takes us inches forward by being far more graphic than its tragic predecessors: it can only be a good thing for teenagers in mini-malls in Kansas to see undoubtedly cool men making out, even if it ends in misery. And if the film was part of a balanced diet of gay movies - some ending happily, some badly - I would champion it with a megaphone for its stunning direction, script and acting. But it's not. Brokeback-style tragedies are all young gay people have as a cinematic picture of their future, apart from the Damiens and Wills.

But - out here in the real world - changes are happening that will force themselves onto the big screen sooner or later. The chronic instability of the closet - the world of Boys in the Band - is being replaced, in Europe at least, with social acceptance, embodied in the beautiful burst of civil partnerships we have seen over the past month. These de facto marriages are creating a world where it is considered normal for gay people to settle down and stay together - a world beyond Brokeback.

So if you want an cinematic excuse for a party, wait until you finally see a Hollywood movie where the boy gets the boy and they live happily ever after.

The Independent - 03/01/2006[/b]

Link.

It's an interesting take on what the "Pink Economy" is promoting at the moment, however....

Johann Hari

But - out here in the real world - changes are happening that will force themselves onto the big screen sooner or later. The chronic instability of the closet - the world of Boys in the Band - is being replaced, in Europe at least, with social acceptance, embodied in the beautiful burst of civil partnerships we have seen over the past month. These de facto marriages are creating a world where it is considered normal for gay people to settle down and stay together - a world beyond Brokeback.

There is, in my opinion, an underlying meaning that can be drawn from this paragraph. In Europe at least, the Capitalists will eventually in the near future realise there is money to be made from the "gay community." This means that being "gay" will have to be accepted as "mainstream" and therefore in its search for profits, Capitalism itself will undo the ideologically driven oppression of the "gay community."

[Sentinel]

[/QUOTE]There is, in my opinion, an underlying meaning that can be drawn from this paragraph. In Europe at least, the Capitalists will eventually in the near future realise there is money to be made from the "gay community." This means that being "gay" will have to be accepted as "mainstream" and therefore in its search for profits, Capitalism itself will undo the ideologically driven oppression of the "gay community."[QUOTE]

Yes! Maybe indeed the "pink economy", changing peoples views regarding gay people and reducing homophobia is one of capitalisms last progressive contributions to mankind? Didn't someone state that capitalism will disappear first when it has ceased to be progressive in any way?
Homophobia is a remain from the dark age of feudalism, when peoples minds were dominated by religion. Capitalism was back then a "step to the right direction".
The "pink economy" doesn't help us in the class struggle, capitalist economy doesn't
do that.
But it makes homosexuality more accepted. I can't see that as negative.

[Amusing Scrotum]

Originally posted by Red Sentinel+--> (Red Sentinel)Didn't someone state that capitalism will disappear first when it has ceased to be progressive in any way?[/b]

If memory serves me correctly, it was that "old fart" Marx.

Originally posted by Red Sentinel@
Homophobia is a remain from the dark age of feudalism, when peoples minds were dominated by religion.

From what I've read on the subject (which isn't a lot) the ruling individuals of many a Monarchy indulged themselves in sex with both sexes. It's just such acts were forbidden for the "rabble".

I've always found it slightly odd that the emerging bourgeois were so hostile towards homosexuality. Particularly given that many early bourgeois philosophers, theorists, and revolutionaries were gay.

Red Sentinel

But it makes homosexuality more accepted. I can't see that as negative.

Contry to the assertions of some, Capitalism still appears to have some time to go. Particularly with regard "tapping into" the markets of the "oppressed". With this "tapping in" a unity will form between members of the working class, based on class relations alone.

Well, that is at least what Marx thought and I hope. Like everything, we'll see in due time.

Things like this however, do seem like a step in the right direction.