Strong Verbs Are Just Better

I have been arguing that constructions of modern Western gay male identity tend to be, not in the first place "essentially gay", but instead (or at least also) in a very intimately responsive and expressive, though always oblique, relation to incoherences implicit in modern male heterosexuality. Much might be said, then, following this clue, about the production and deployment, especially in contemporary US society, of an extraordinarily high level of self-pity in nongay men. Its effects on our national politics, and international ideology and intervention, have been pervasive. (Snapshot, here, of the tear-welling eyes of Oliver North.) In more intimate manifestations this straight male self-pity is often concurrently referred to (though it appears to exceed) the cultural effects of feminism, and is associated with, or appealed to as a justification of, acts of violence, especially against women. For instance, the astonishing proportion of male violence done on separated wives, ex-wives, and ex-girlfriends, women just at the threshold of establishing a separate personal space, seems sanctioned and guided as much as reflected by the flood of books and movies in which such violence seems an expression not of macho personality but of maudlin. (One reason women get nervous when straight men claim to have received from feminism the gift of "permission to cry".) ... This vast national wash of masculine self-pity is essentially never named or discussed as a cultural and political fact; machismo and competitiveness, or a putative gentleness, take its place as subjects of nomination and analysis. Poised between shame and shamelessness, this regime of heterosexual male self-pity has the projective potency of an open secret. It would scarcely be surprising if gay men, like all women, were a main target of its scapegoating projections - viciously sentimental attributions of a vitiated sentimentality.
The sacred tears of the heterosexual man: rare and precious liquor...

Tim Hunt is undoubtedly a brilliant man in his field.

Tim Hunt is just one man. We will no doubt lose out if his mind and efforts are lots to science. But how much more are we losing every day, from all of the thousands of women whose jobs are that little bit harder than they need to be.

Tim Hunt didn’t create sexist attitudes. However, sexist attitudes- and the harm that they do- continue because we give them space to exist unquestioned. We tell men that the men above them feel this way- that these are the feelings they can have in private until they become powerful enough to share them in public. We tell women that this is how the people who could have been their role models feel. And we tell women that their presence will always be conditional on their accepting that.

Tim Hunt’s resignation isn’t going to solve the all-encompassing problems of sexism in science- or, of course, of the sexism throughout society from which it springs. But large-scale social problems are composed of countless everyday actions. And so are their solutions.

If Tim Hunt stays resigned, we’ll have lost one man. One smart man. One great man, even. But if we send a message that his views on women will not be tolerated, how many women- how many thousands of women and girls- will feel a little less worn down, a little more backed-up, a little more valued tomorrow?

You say it can't happen -- the system is too rotten.

It won't happen if you wallow in the comfort of your cynicism. But it will happen if you and others like you get fired up.

We've done it before.

I remember when progressives joined with African-Americans to get enacted the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. I remember when progressives stopped the Vietnam War. When women finally got freedom of choice over their own bodies. When the Environmental Protection Act became law.

It is well accepted under the act that the sending of sexually explicit material via email or text to a person constitutes sexual harassment. The definition also covers accessing sexually explicit internet sites. Therefore, creating sexually explicit internet sites or posting such sexual material to Facebook pages would easily fall within the definition of sexual harassment.

In her press conference on Thursday, August 23, the Prime Minister identified cartoonist Larry Pickering as someone who publishes ''a vile and sexist website''. She added that ''for many, many months now I have been the subject of a very sexist smear campaign from people for whom I have no respect''.

For many months, Pickering has regularly bombarded not just Gillard but every member of Parliament with emails containing hate-filled commentary about the Prime Minister. Often these commentaries have been accompanied by cartoons, many of which depict Gillard naked and wearing a huge strap-on dildo.

When we look at what the factors are that make life so miserable for young gays and lesbians, it’s tempting for progressives to point the finger at religious traditions that are hostile to sexual pluralism. But the young men in American high schools who are beating up other boys whom they suspect of being gay are rarely doing so in order to comply with a misunderstood dictate from the Torah or the Pauline epistles. It’s not faith that drives the hate as much as it is an overwhelming desire to establish masculine bona fides. “I torment faggots, therefore I can’t be one; I beat up queers, therefore I’m a man.” That toxic equation may be aided and abetted by conservative religion, but it isn’t rooted in it. Rather, the hateful behavior is rooted in the rigid rules of American masculinity, a masculinity predicated on a contempt for and a paranoia about even the slightest whiff of femininity among the be-penised.

Thirteen is a difficult bridging age – no longer a boy, not quite a man, often a prat.

Between boyhood and manhood, between instinctively liking things and thinking about what things to like, on the verge of a troubling hormonal nightmare for which boys are rarely prepared. They should be taken aside, aged 11, for a quiet word: “This won’t make a lot of sense but in a year or two you will submerge and not listen to anybody for five years other than your peers, your pop stars and your penis. The dark tunnel you are about to enter will end and it need not be terribly difficult. Some people are on your side. You may not listen to good advice; indeed, you may not receive good advice. You may listen to bad advice; certainly you will receive bad advice. You will be besotted with girls (or you will discover for certain that you are gay), you will want to paint your bedroom black and you will pretend not to like Abba, Terry & June and Multi-Coloured Swap Shop (you will be wrong about the first two but right about Noel Edmonds). You will be at odds with authority as you try to establish yourself.

You will feel powerful and powerless simultaneously. You will behave like a fool and deny it, whilst suspecting you may have behaved like a fool. Older people will roll their eyes and try to ignore you, they may not offer you any encouragement, they may despair of you. This is normal. You are not a bad person because you are a teenager, in fact, you are about to discover the potential within you. Fly, spotty one, soar and be brilliant, follow your dreams, don’t overdo the Oxy10, eat some fruit, please, be who you want to be. Look, there’s Debbie Harry! What more do you want?”

For an idea of how strange it is to be a teenage boy, consider that, to a teenage boy, the behaviour of other teenage boys is in no way odd. They never wonder what on earth they are saying, or why they are doing what they are doing, or will they ever wake up, or will they ever go to bed, or will they ever eat anything, or will they ever stop eating one thing in particular? They don’t notice teenagers’ poor personal hygiene or, alternatively, their obsessive grooming. They understand a capacity to hang around bus shelters for 14 hours and have no fear of a mosh pit.

I couldn't write about sex at all until after my mother died. Growing up in the 1970s, the official parental line was that nice girls didn't, you know, do it, let alone write about it - although it was a different story for my brothers. Double standards were the order of the day.

Which meant, in effect, that I was barred from writing fiction. In order to create fully rounded human beings, and describe their relationships with each other, I would have to tackle the subject of sex - along with intimacy, misguided love, death, resentment, friendship, the passion of women for their babies, the problems of marriage and finding the right person, and all the rest of the complicated, messy stuff that humans do. When a parent dies, there is grief, of course, but there is also liberation. You must grow up, and one of the grown-up things I wanted to do was write novels.

One major aspect of sexuality that is much ignored in the modern novel is not doing it. And virginity is another theme of One Apple Tasted - where you hang on to it for so long that it becomes hideously significant and hard to shed. In a time when we are meant to have sex all day, every day, drawing on tips from magazines and newspapers to "spice things up in the bedroom", virginity, chastity and celibacy seem thoroughly controversial life choices. But they are part of people's sexual experience, and just as valid as the more exotic perversions that get a regular airing in the tabloids.