Amis and Gays--7  

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	TodF
Date:	Monday, July 16 2001 08:46 AM

On 7/11/2001 1:17:36 AM, bronteboy wrote:

"Homosexual men I have known well enough to ask about their early sex lives and expect a candid response from have all, I repeat all, have had their first sexual experience at the hands of a much older male (neighbour trusted by parents, cousin, Christian camp leader, schoolteacher etc) between the >ages of 8 and 13. Over the weekend in conversation with a few gay friends I cited the above statement.  One of them replied he had his first experience while in his early teens with a peer. The other two had theirs in their early twenties (again with peers).  Since I wouldn't dare suggest that you're inventing your experience, I feel duty-bound to adhere to the common sense conclusion that the only homosexuals who would be open with you (a man with a litanous catalogue of anti-gay grudges both minor and major) must be that small minority so damaged by a childhood of abuse that they would willingly confide their worst experiences to a homophobe. And yes, I do recall that you don't like that word; but - believe me - it *loves* you. Brian 

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	bronteboy
Date:	Tuesday, July 17, 1:07  AM

Reluctant as I am to engage with Tod F ( why did he pick the nom de plume of Amis's only Nazi extermination camp murderer character as his own ? ) there is something that simply doesn't ring true ( and begs closer scrutiny) in the sample of homosexuals Tod F offers by way of rebuttal: how likely is it that any male born in the last fifty years heterosexual, homosexual, whatever, had their first sexual experience in their TWENTIES ?! But two of Tod F's three interviewees fell into this unlikely category of humans. (Were they both Mormons or Lubavichers ? With gross physical deformities and chronic halitosis? ) And in all of Tod F's three cases, surprise, surprise, it was with a peer . No age inequality, manipulation or coercion, just the natural flowering of pure human love. Sweet tender moments in sylan settings between two mature, if inexperienced, beings. I'll bet.  For those that have been following the posts ( see my replies to Stephen P ), it will be discerned that for many years as a younger man, I was a thoroughly modern milly in relation to my attitudes to our same sexers. Quite in the vanguard of supporters at a time when homosexual acts were illegal and homosexuals lacked public acceptability. It follows that it was during this period, not in more recent years, that I had acquaintanceships, in three or four cases arguably friendships, of sufficient depth and duration with a number of homosexual men for them to confide in me. It defies common sense that any homosexual would confide or disclose anything about their personal history to someone who holds the views I now hold. Ostensibly " proud and happy gay " men don't tell virtual strangers that their father's caretaker molested them/ had a homosexual relationship with the through their teenaged years, or volunteer that they'd rather be staright if given a choice, or that they paid thousands to be counselled into turning hetero, or be happy to not have children because they wouldn't wish their sexuality on anybody, because such information could undermine all that has been achieved since c.1980. Much better that the masses be given simple if dishonest messages as they were with AIDS very successfully. Let me share a little vignette with you all - its 1979 and the 25 year old homosexual I shared an apartment with: handsome, bright, personable, lacking the usual affectations of voice and manner ( whose sex life he told me later primarily consisted of evening visits to a nearby public toilet ) developed an association with another, female, fellow employee; a single, thirtysomething, bright but physically unattractive. She wanted kids and asked him would he sire them, obligation free. He was attracted to the idea and spoke wistfully of "my three sons", but he wanted an ongoing role in their lives. They negotiated the terms of their respective roles and rights. He quietly informed me one evening that he wasn't going through with it. I asked him why. He replied that he knew himself too well, he was afraid that if he had sons he would want to fuck them. It was left unstated that this was not of itself a good thing for a intending father. I suspect I'm the only person he gave that explanation to. He's not a monster or a psychopath and he's not into children under 15 and generally he's into adults. He seriously disapproved of the goings on at a " sex bar " operating at the time where 13 year old boys were available in purpose built cubicles. He is, privately, appalled that homosexual men have recently won the legal right to adopt children. And, privately, appalled that legislation to compensate people who had medically acquired AIDS through blood transfusions was squashed by the homosexual lobby ( he and his cohorts routinely donated blood in the seventies and early 80's in order to be screened for STDs without the embarassment of attending STD clinics. He'd love Martin Amis's work ( I might send him a copy of Money for his 50th!)  The point of this anecdote, and it is of course merely one anecdote and one swallow doesn't make a summer etc ( I have many others), is that such insights are rarely obtained because such honesty is rare. As a general proposition applying to all people. Specifically, in a climate of astonishingly successful agitation for "gay rights" dishonesty and strategic pre-emption are the order of the day. Your average 20 - 40 year old homosexual wouldn't dream of letting the side down by telling a " straight " anything that could reflect badly upon and thus possibly impede the agenda.  I reject the term "Homophobia" as a tendentious ( and pernicious) invention by the homosexual lobby. It was conceived by them to suit their agenda, eg "gay" - its light, its fun, its user-friendly, kind on the ears and doesn't frighten the kiddies with concepts : control the langauge people use and you can better control the way they think: Orwell.Neatly reversing the traditional view the term connotes that it is the person occupying the anti-homosexualist position who has the mental health problem*. The wearyingly implied subtext is that no one could find anything objectionable about the homosexual world and its effect on society unless they were in a state of psychological trauma about their own sexuality.This either your pro-homo or you are deranged dichotomy is very convenient and the device has been used widely in other contexts. Note Tod F's opener some time back " Your defensiveness is telling ...". Yeah, yeah, I'm just another tortured closet case ' projecting' my purportedly anti-homosexual views into cyberspace in a futile attempt to avert the inevitable self discovery/acceptance, whatever. I'm waiting until mother dies before I come out - it seems to be a popular juncture. If only homosexuals could get outside their own heads and try to understand that male bodies/ genitalia don't arouse the vast majority of men. It is an indictment upon our era that such a proposition is in any way controversial.  Similarly it is an indictment upon same that my original post on Amis (Dave L's replies in large measure excluded as he makes the valid point that Amis doesn't portray men in the light that women want Amis to portray women) elicit such predictable homosexualist outpourings. Tellingly, as to priorities, nobody even bothered to address the naked violent hatred of Jews put forth by Bilge. Not because they endorse his views, necessarily , but because it has been inculcated into their brains by the wash of contemporary culture to attack " homophobia" whenever it sticks its supposedly ugly head over the parapet. Here's hoping Amis does a large and central homosexual character in his inimitable way. It won't be pretty, but it will be real. * What I find ironic and not a little chilling is that only a few decades ago it was homosexuals that were, in a monstrous misuse of medicine, tortured in psych hospitals ( Lou Reed) for their sexual orientation. Now with the term " homophobia" they attempt to smear anybody who dares to question their agenda as the ones implicitly deserving of treatment. Indeed an openly homosexual superior Court judge in my country has publicly stated this in the last year. There is an old Arab saying " Put a beggar on a horse and he will trample all over you."  

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	TodF
Date:	Tuesday, July 17, 9:03  AM

[there is something that simply doesn't ring true  (and begs closer scrutiny) in the sample of homosexuals Tod F offers by way of rebuttal: how likely is it that any male born in the last fifty years heterosexual, homosexual, whatever, had their first sexual experience in their TWENTIES ?! But two of Tod F's three interviewees fell into this unlikely category of humans. ] Marvellous. You readily believe anyone homosexual who says they were molested as a child but refuse to believe anyone who claims they were not. Your impartiality is further illuminated as we learn anything you don't want to hear is of course a lie.  [ Note Tod F's opener some time back " Your defensiveness is telling ...". Yeah, yeah, I'm just another tortured closet case ' projecting' my purportedly anti-homosexual views into cyberspace in a futile attempt to avert the inevitable self discovery/acceptance, whatever. I'm waiting until mother dies before I come out- it seems to be a popular juncture. If only homosexuals could get outside their own heads and try to understand that male bodies/ genitalia don't arouse the vast majority of men. It is an indictment upon our era that such a proposition is in any way controversial.] More swathes of intellectual dishonesty. In no sense was my accusation of "defensiveness" intended to impute that you were latently homosexual, nor could any reasonable person have gained that impression. Quote it in some kind of context and remake your accusation, so we can all laugh. The context of that remark - nothing do to with homosexuality - was that you first implied that MA and John Self were one and the same. I then said they were not. And you consequently said I rejected any possibility of flow between the authorial viewpoint and that of his characters. Absolute primo *defensive* misrepresentation of my viewpoint. And the defensiveness was telling because it showed how unwilling you were to back your *actual* argument up. The fact that you managed to conjure all the above out of thin air makes this the first time it had ever occurred to me that you might be latent; although I notice your highhandedness here doesn’t stop you from suggesting that obviously I must be gay in another post. [ nobody even bothered to address the naked violent hatred of Jews put forth by Bilge. Not because they endorse his views, necessarily , but because it has been inculcated into their brains by the wash of contemporary culture to attack " homophobia" whenever it sticks its supposedly ugly head over the parapet. ] I’m not sure where you must be living to believe that anti-semitism is more acceptable than homophobia. Some country where WW2 just didn’t make the news? If your loathing of gays had been anything like as obvious in your first post as Bilge's remarks were on Jews.  I wouldn't have even bothered getting into this ugly dance with you in the first place either. Again it's telling how much spin you initially put on what lies at the heart of all of this in your first missive.  I think at your age you should have learnt to grasp the fact that your opinions are dismissed not because of some big homo-conspiracy but because they are vindictive, spiteful and flatly contradictory of the experiences of the bulk of educated people. But now that you have obviated your skewed perceptions at putrescent length, the music stops. And this dance is over. 

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	bronteboy
Date:	Wednesday, July 18, 2001 12:19 AM

This sentence from Tod F, in view of what I've posted has to be the most illogical, clanging non-sequitur ever put : " I’m not sure where you must be living to believe that anti-semitism is more acceptable than homophobia." Whaaattt??? And then there's the non-sequitur moving from that sentence to the next:  " Some country where WW2 just didn’t make the news? "  not to mention the abysmal poverty of the attempted sarcasm in the second sentence itself which puts me in mind of how the dumb kids in school endeavoured to trade wits with their betters. BTW Can anyone tell me whether there were any instances of anti-semitism in world history before WW2? I got this hunch, no more, that it might have been going on before. Before flouncing off in a state of high dudgeon, vowing never to dance with me again ( with the cutting barb " I would never have danced with you in the first place if I had have known what you were really like [ sob] ... and I thought you were interested in literature ... you brute " ) Tod F chastises me : " I think at your age you should have learnt to grasp the fact that your opinions are dismissed..." What I've learnt to grasp at my age is the fact that there is a vast, belief-beggaring, amount of dishonesty in public discourse, huge gulfs exist between peoples' rhetoric and what they actually believe in and then again what they actually do ( cf the three literary prize judges in The Information for the type of phenomenon ) and that a great many heterosexual people, after reflexively and formulaically rejecting the sort of views I express, as they have been conditioned to do in recent decades, especially when presented with them in public fora, come around to concurring with them to a greater or lesser degree. Some time after one short but acrimonious exchange with me a well-established actor and film director told his girlfriend " If I told people what I thought about homosexuals I'd never get work in this town again." Ego can get in the way and often it takes time. But I still got a helluva shock when a famously pro-homosexual former colleague of mine, who wore an earring from time to time to keep the ambiguity alive ( he's having a brilliant career despite a serious moodiness/anger problem which made him a lousy manager ) said to me in a uncharacteristic moment of candour: " My experience is, scratch a homosexual and you'll find a misogynist." Readers could be forgiven for asking: is it likely that a person holding the opinions and sentiments that bronteboy has expressed here would be in the least bit concerned at what Tod F " think[s] " about him ? A person who offers a staple fare of straight-off-the-shelf, colour-by-number, responses that have at their apex, and as their singular purpose, the shrieking denunciation: " you're a homophobe [ aka, thought criminal ]" Would De Gaulle have been wounded or offended in any way by the accusation that he was a chauvinist? : " Pardon? Chauvinist? Moi? Absolutement!! France is, how should I say ... essential to human civilization. No? " Stephen P, although steadfastly detesting what he would characterise as anti-homosexualism, understands that I may be correct in my assessment of MA. Tod F, policing cyberspace in his Buzz Lightyear outfit with pink sash and red ribbon, never addresses my original point beyond the cat-rat-dog language level of analysis: he triumphally makes the game, set & match point that author and character are not one and the same, then sagely observes that there is a lot of " unthinking homophobia" in my post. Unthinking? Jesus Christ - it couldn't have been more transparent that it was thoughtfully intended. Perhaps the Space Ranger thought he was cutting a possibly inadvertent offender a lucky break. Finally, as to the distance between author and character/ MA and homosexuality, its instructive to take a look at pp 65-68 of London Fields ( I'm going by week old memory - the part pertaining to Nicola Six's sexual predilections ) and ask yourself is this Samson Young talking or Martin Amis? And if its the former why does Amis bother giving the reader such an extended insight into Young's views on this subject, when Young as a character is really only just a thinly rendered plot vehicle anyway. And this takes no account of the context of Amis's propensity to digress off into riffs about " yellow dwarves " and " black holes " other subjects that take his fancy. Amis is very often directly talking to his readers; we know this because the same themes keep reappearing. For example when Richard Tull is musing over the filthy cruel origins of Gwnn's wife's family's money - we can be pretty sure this is Amis holding forth on the subject as the same ideas were put forward by Samson Young about the taintedness of Guy Clinch's family money. 

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	jules jwells7908@aol.com
Date:	Thursday, July 19, 2001 05:27 PM

bronteboy says "Amis is very often directly  talking to his readers; we know this because  the same themes keep reappearing. For example  when Richard Tull is musing over the filthy  cruel origins of Gwnn's wife's family's money  - we can be pretty sure this is Amis holding  forth on the subject as the same ideas were  put forward by Samson Young about the  taintedness of Guy Clinch's family money."

Perspicacious Simon, you got that right.. and  btw, you did know my father's name is Walter  Clinch, didn't you? (Guy's dad's name was  "Walker Clinch." fiction is stranger when it  mirrors reality.) *jules