gayunity

GAY UNITY

It seems that the issue of unity raises its head regularly. Perhaps it is an important issue to discuss this month, especially in the light of the recent Gay Pride Parade, whose theme for 1999 was 'Unity".

The endless call for unity among gay people, and the constant complaint of it never being achieved should perhaps be viewed in the light that 'unity' is only the second half of the word 'comm-unity'. This leads us to examine the ubiquitous gay 'community', which everyone talks about. However, is there such a thing as a gay 'community', in the traditional sense of the word, or has the gay 'community' merely become a clever (and hypothetical) invention by marketers, aimed at parting gay people from their money? In the traditional sense, a community is usually homogenous, sharing the same, or at least similar, values, traditions, language, religious affiliation, ethnicity, etc. In this light, gay people do not, and never have, been a community. In fact all that gay people have in common is sexual orientation. Anyone who has been on the gay scene for even a short period of time will know that the gay 'community' is extremely fragmented, and is organised on a clique basis, with very little identity or contact with gay people outside one's social circle. The conclusion one is led to in the light of this is that there is no such thing as a gay 'community', and thus by extension, there is no gay 'unity'.

It may be pertinent at this point to take a look at gay 'unity', as it is proposed by the activists. An extremely good example was the 1999 Gay Pride Parade. As has been noted above, the theme of this year's Parade was "Unity". However, what we saw at the Parade itself was the antithesis of this. Sharon Cooper and her politically correct ilk on the Pride Committee saw fit to have the parade led by women. On Saturday 25 September at the Electric Warehouse in Johannesburg, lesbians were exhorted to separate themselves from gay men, and lead the parade. I found it amazing that this act of political correct facism flew in the face of the theme of unity, and instead of bringing all gay people together, it actually polarised the sexes. Who needs homophobic enemies when we have gay activists in our midst? What was heartening however, was the number of gay women in the parade who saw through this expedience, and who refused to join the lesbians at the front of the parade. Instead they preferred to mingle with other obviously un-politically correct gay people (read white gay males), and identify with the broader gay cause rather than the narrow agenda of the Pride Committee. What this act of apartheid by the Committee actually did was to highlight the pathetically small number of gay women (who, in a generous assessment of the numbers present, probably accounted for no more than 10% of the 20000 people present) who turned out to express their pride.

This act of separatism demonstrates how the so-called (un-elected, unrepresentative) leaders of the gay 'community' actively and consciously strive to sow disunity among gay people.

For gay unity to be realised, we cannot expect it to spontaneously evolve. The leadership among gay people must take the lead. So what are the 'leaders' doing?

Firstly, it would be pertinent to identify the gay 'leaders' in South Africa. They fall into two camps: the gay media and the gay organisations.

The gay media, instead of promoting gay unity in South Africa, has its own agenda. There are only three (kind of) regular gay publications in this country. Two take the format of tabloids, and the third is a glossy. Without pointing fingers, an analysis of the function of the gay media in South Africa reveals that these publications are either published (a) as a vehicle for the ego of the editor (in which other mainstream publication does one regularly see so much coverage and photographs of the editor and his private social activities? Does anyone really care?); or (b) as a collection of plagiarised snippets from other international gay publications, with the focus of local content revolving around who won the Miss So-and-So competition in the So-and-so province (as if anyone other than the winner really gives a shit); or (c) a fifth rate "lifestyle" collection of articles which have no interest to the majority of gay men and women in South Africa. Nowhere in any of these publications are gay issues in South Africa reported or editorialised upon in any depth. One can only wonder if the editorial boards of all three publications have any journalistic qualifications or experience between the lot of them. Do they not see what a driving force in the gay 'community' real gay publications like the "Advocate" from the USA and Attitude from the UK are, and how they are positioned to lead the way in forging unity among gay readers? Or are the local editors too small minded to see their role in the subculture? What amazes me even more is how South African gay people part with their hard earned money to buy these tacky rags. (See the above remarks on preying on the gay 'community' as a marketing ploy).

If we want gay unity, we should demand that our local magazines address this. Let us see some commitment from the gay media to the gay cause rather than their commitment to seeing gay people simply as a milch cow to finance the editors' lifestyles. It will only take a letter from each disgruntled gay man and women in South Africa to these publications, followed by a month or two of boycotting the purchase of these rags, and a withdrawal of advertising by gay businesses, for readers, the consumers, to be taken seriously.

The second group who should be showing leadership in forging gay unity, and who are failing miserably, are the self-styled gay leaders in the National Coalition of Gay and Lesbian Equality. Once again, we find a small, self-appointed group of "leaders", with a definite socialist bent, who are more concerned with political correct games than doing any unifying of gay people, across the spectrum. Their discrimination against white gay males is so palpable that they have actually appointed a black STRAIGHT male, in the person of Mazibuko Jara, as one of the NCGLE gay leaders, rather than appoint a white GAY male to this position!!! The NCGLE's greatest accomplishment in the past few years has been to illustrate that Gay and Lesbian Equality is the last thing on their agenda. If we cannot have equality among our ranks, how can we ever expect straight society to view us as equals.

The above serves to illustrate what the gay and lesbian leaders are (not) doing to promote unity among the ranks of gay people everywhere, regardless of colour, creed, race or gender. And we wonder why there is no unity?

What do you think?