1 February, 1999
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I write what I like Still in search of queer Deane Stuart wonders about gay competitions, straight men and the absurdity of ghetto culture The cause of human sexual liberation was unintentionally advanced when the title "Mr Moon - January 1999" was awarded to a "straight" man. Indeed all three of the finalists were "straight", as were more than half the entrants. A suspicious "Mistress" of Ceremonies quizzed the finalists on their sexuality and so the sober few among us were treated to the spectacle of three stereotypically "straight" boys squirming as they struggled to fabricate "gayness" for the sake of R200. In the meanwhile the drunken faggots around us cheered and clapped oblivious to the irony inherent in "gayness" being embodied in icons of "straight" masculinity. This thought provoking event led the writer to muse on the absurdities of gay ghetto culture. The choice of the finalists was clearly the effect of the judges bowing to popular demand. The self-hatred of "gays" was poignantly illustrated by the audience's selection of "straight" representations of masculinity above "gay" ones to represent themselves, gay pride rhetoric notwithstanding. As a matter of course an event such as this is supposed to be a camp subversion of norms of masculinity that oppress gay and straight men alike, a carnival of queer fun which celebrates liberation from these norms. In this case no such event was to occur, for the joke was at the joker's expense. The large number straight entrants showed up the ways in which straight masculinity, lacking in hard cash and short on self respect, can easily be brought to compromise itself - its fragility was laid bare. This seldom leads to a reassessment of what masculinity means by those compromised, but more often to an aggressive reassertion of it. The taking of money in this way is rationalized as being in not a compromise of masculinity, but rather the fleecing of stupid faggots by "real men", as a symbolic form of fag bashing. This kind of rationalization underlies whole relationship of "straight" rents to their "gay" clients. However, should the compromise of masculinity be too great the symbolic violence may become actual, which explains to some extent the gratuitous and horrific violence visited by rent boys on their clients when they rob and/or kill them. This theatre of human moral bankruptcy at the Moon Café was made possible only by the internalization by straights and gays alike of the heterosexist polarities that define their identities without corresponding to their own experience or sense of themselves. Alas, the possibility of a queer culture emerging in South Africa, one that liberates gays from their ghetto and straights from their sexual straight jackets, remains as yet but dream as long as the lessons of events such as these are not reflected on by "gays" and "straights" alike. an Electronic Mail & Guardian publication home  |   news  |   jumpstart  |   archives  |   madam & eve za@play  |   movies  |   theatre  |   fine art  |   books © q online - 1 February, 1999

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