gayisgood

"GAY IS GOOD" or "GAY IS GOODS"?

Isn’t it embarrassing to be gay nowadays, when ‘Gay’ products, entertainment and services are, by and large of poor quality and exorbitantly priced, while at the same time being the bench-mark of what being gay is all about? When the politically correct act of merely labelling something or someone as ‘gay’ over-rides any consideration of merit? (Did anyone see that B-grade movie, "Killer Condom" at the Gay and Lesbian Film Festival recently – a case in point?)

Isn’t it embarrassing to see so many gay men and women mindlessly following marketers like sheep, buying everything which ‘gay culture’ says they must possess in order to be gay? Unquestioning, unthinking victims of clever (straight) marketing practices in our latter day gay society. The "Gay is Good" slogan of the 1970s has become the "Gay is Goods" mantra twenty-five years later. Being gay is no longer determined by who you are or with whom you sleep, but by what material goods you have.

This mindless ‘gay culture’ only reinforces what it perceives to be the positive, unrealistic aspects of gay life, and sweeps under the carpet the diversity of the gay experience. Look at the advertisements in any gay publication. What do you see? Do you see street drag queens, skinny punk boys and girls, superannuated gay people, chubbies, transsexuals or disabled gays advertising products? No. What you do see is an unrealistic fantasy of pretty boys and hunky men, usually eager to expose their dicks at the click of a shutter. How often do you see any of these Adonises in real life? You hardly ever see them in gay bars, clubs or anywhere on the gay scene. In short, unreal people with whom no ordinary gay people (the vast majority of us) can identify. And if you do not identify with these visions of beauty, you are not represented in mainstream gay ‘culture’. It’s ironic that latter day ‘gay culture’ actually excludes perhaps 95% of gay people. No wonder so many gay people are terminally fucked up! Gay advertising is in effect false advertising. An example. You see an ad for a ‘health club’ (of the steam room variety) in a gay publication. Adorning the ad are pictures of the most mouthwatering morsels of manhood. But what do you find when you visit the aforementioned ‘health club’? It looks like the gates of hell have been flung open and the hounds of the apocalypse have been let loose! Not a hint of the virile pulchritude promised in the ad!

Perhaps the gay media ignores the marginalised gay groups because they prefer to sanitise their publications with what they consider ‘positive gay images’ in order to pander to their mainstream (read straight) advertisers who have picked up the scent of the pecuniary benefit the alleged ‘pink rand’. And so, we are inundated with "The Bland and the Beautiful" mediocrity and selectivity of gay life. Editors of gay publications, besides looking at their advertising revenues, promote the naïve belief that by portraying the gay market as being ‘normal, nice and unbelievably beautiful people’, gay people will be respected and liked by these advertisers. Wake up girlfriends! The only thing which straight advertisers are interested in is how economically beneficial the gay market is. Our lifestyle has unfortunately simply become a market segment. When did gay ‘visibility’, in the one-size-fits-all boring fashion relentlessly spewed out by the gay press, automatically confer individual worth and acceptance? My view is that the type of ‘visibility’ which is promoted by the gay press is by and large simply airhead exhibitionism by bimbos who lack the integrity and intelligence to make decisions concerning their individual lives. The ilk who need "gay lifestyle magazines" to tell them what underwear to wear, where it is trendy to drink coffee with one’s friends, what fragrance to wear this month, what dinner settings to put on the table and where to go on holiday. In short, the apostles of "Gay is Goods".

I personally find this lack of individuality and herd-mentality of a large section of the gay population to be very depressing and embarrassing. The tendency to exhibit yourself to the world through goods is perhaps even more depressing when one considers that perhaps these fuckwits-of-no-personal-taste have nothing to present to the outside world except a characterless carbon copy of the ‘gay culture’ monolith, making themselves nonentities in the noxious swarm of contemporary clones, where individuality is an arcane concept.

This monolithic ‘gay culture’ has one clearly defined goal – sell more products. This goal has been set by the gay media and business. Sadly, the way of life which we fought so long and hard for has merely become a commercial enterprise in this post-liberation era. Watered down and meaningless, it makes one feel ashamed to be labelled "gay". "Gay" has become anachronistic, and we are now perhaps "post-gay", "anti-gay" "ex-gay" or "counter-gay". Take your pick.