Amis and Gays--8  

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	Jerome jromeb@hotmail.com
Date:	Monday, September 03, 2001 01:15 AM

For what it's worth, gentlemen all, I would add my own devalued two cents to your anecdotal samplings of a few gay men and their first experience of same-sexuality. I have this info from a thoroughly reliable source, namely me: (Pen)Name: Jerome. Year of birth: 1953. Sexuality: homosexual. First sexual experience: one week after turning 20 (1973). First aware of same-sex feelings: age 12. Last sexual experience: 1981 (age 28). Heterosexual experiences: none.  [Reason for eight-year gap between self-awareness at age 12 and first experience at age 20: quite simply, I had no idea who else beside me was gay. Later on, when I started going to gay bars, I met someone from my high school, who in turn told me about all the other guys in our school, etc. Although I feel nearly prehistoric in saying it, there was actually a time, only a few decades ago, when a gay "loner" teenager could feel for a while that there was no one else he knew who was gay.]  [Reason for celibacy for the last 20 years: the feeling that "safe" sex is a sadly relative term.] I only mention all of this because I was getting a rather curious vibe from what I was reading here. As a gay man I felt that I was, as Queen Victoria said of Gladstone, being addressed "as if I were a public meeting." Perhaps mistakenly, I felt that a real face, so to speak, might be a relief from such an anonymous crowd of "homosexuals."  As for Amis and his views, it's not as if I have much expertise, having only read three of his books, a number of articles and a few interviews. For what it's worth, all the same, I do not feel that he is "homophobic" or what you will. Sometimes, as in his essay "Double Jeopardy: Making Sense of AIDS," he seems not to know enough of what he is writing about, or at least is generalizing vastly. But he seems to have sensed this himself, as his own Postscript implied. At any rate, there is a difference between those who do not know better and those not wanting to know any better; and it never struck me that he was one of the latter.   

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	Tod F babiesdead@hotmail.com
Date:	Tuesday, September 04, 2001 08:37 AM

Jerome wrote: "I only mention all of this because I was getting a rather curious vibe from what I was reading here. As a gay man I felt that I was, as Queen Victoria said of Gladstone, being addressed 'as if I were a public meeting.' Perhaps mistakenly, I felt that a real face, so to speak, might be a relief from such an anonymous crowd of 'homosexuals.'"

At the risk of once more laying claim to a presumptuous empathy, I believe I can relate to what you're saying here. As an Irish participant on a wide number of electronic fora I have gotten used to hearing people (predominantly American people) speaking authoratitively on the problems of my country even from a distance of several thousand miles. I wouldn't say that they have no right to do so. But I would expect only that they concede they probably have less intimate knowledge of the realities of the situation. As in this case, of course, do I. Brian   

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	Jerome jromeb@hotmail.com
Date:	Tuesday, September 04, 2001 05:52 PM

It hadn't been your posts, Tod F, that I had in mind when I wrote. I should, of course, have explained what had prompted my message. There was a posting in which someone had written the following: that of the gay men he had asked about their first same-sex experiences, "all, I repeat all, have had their first sexual experience at the hands of a much older male" when they were "between the ages of 8 and 13." This was so far from being my own experience that I thought I should give a chronology of my own. I have also known or read about other men whose experiences were not at all like the ones described in that note. A friend of mine, for example, age 35, came to the conclusion only about a year ago that he is bisexual; he has never had a same-sex experience. [And if I remember correctly, both Oscar Wilde and Tennessee Williams were nearly 30 when they each had their first gay sexual encounter.] I believe I have now reached an age when it provides me more amusement than annoyance to hear, especially among those opposed to homosexuality, what it is that I really think, really say and really do regardless of what I may happen to think, say and do. I suppose that I should be more impassioned upon the matter; but no one, as Nietzsche said, is a greater liar than the indignant man. It is this very defensiveness, I believe, that has ruined almost every discussion or debate on homosexuality that I have come across. Each side, as if in a war, thinks only of tactics.  I suppose I simply find it absurd to take seriously those who would tell me, without even knowing me, that I have chosen my sexuality, that I was initiated into it by someone else, that I am engaged in initiating the young and impressionable and that I am secretly wretched about it all. Why argue with some formidable clairvoyants? Contradict them and they will tell you, with an almost enviable confidence, that you are lying, mistaken, confused. Those who let themselves get angered against homosexuality have often fallen into a debater's paradox: do they say that they know almost nothing about the matter and are pleased to know nothing, or do they say they know all that needs to be known and are ready to lay down the law? They resolve the dilemma in the manner of those who would censor books they have never read: "I don't need to eat garbage to know that it's bad for me." There are those, indeed, with whom it would be a loss of dignity to debate: Holocaust deniers, for instance, or those who show up with hate signs at the funerals of gay men. Dispute with them and they have already won; they get what they want by being heard, by getting a reaction. At least no one here on this board is beyond such a pale.    

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	john john.keillor@primus.ca
Date:	Wednesday, September 05, 2001 11:30 AM

This is a trend; if MA is discussed in public, a bunch of gay people show up and start talking about themselves. It's kind of comforting, actually. 

   

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	Tod F babiesdead@hotmail.com
Date:	Thursday, September 06, 2001 07:50 AM

On 9/5/2001 11:30:01 AM, john wrote: "This is a trend; if MA is discussed in public, a bunch of gay people show up and start talking about themselves. It's kind of comforting, actually."

Nominations for "Most Inaccurate Summation of an Internet Thread 2001" are henceforth closed.  Brian    

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	john john.keillor@primus.ca
Date:	Thursday, September 06, 2001 12:55 PM

Excellent! I feel confident that the title is deserved. The 'comfort' quip was not entirely fictitious; at my old office I was the only heterosexual male. Comments of mine, ranging from deliberately stupid to astonishingly obtuse were taken not only in stride but with a nurturing bemusement. They liked that I admitted to only understanding avant-garde opera and hockey (I'm Canadian). Some of them came with me to a sports bar to watch a game in drag. I couldn't believe how much guts that took. On the other hand, they wouldn't permit any excerpts from Stockhausen's Licht cycle to be played at work, preferring show tunes as they all did. 

Topic:	Martinian moral sloth (49 of 55), Read 22 times
Conf:	Martin Amis Discussion Web
From:	bronteboy sbrockwell@500cc.com
Date:	Monday, September 24, 2001 01:27 AM

Jerome,

I have just read your posts in this thread.

You state:

"Those who let themselves get angered against
homosexuality have often fallen into a debater's paradox:
do they say that they know almost nothing about the
matter and are pleased to know nothing, or do they say
they know all that needs to be known and are ready to lay
down the law? They resolve the dilemma in the manner of
those who would censor books they have never read: "I
don't need to eat garbage to know that it's bad for me."”

Your analogy works and there is the dilemma you pose only if one argues something like: sodomy is unpleasant for the sodomised. This can be met with the legitimate response: how do you know, you haven’t tried it? And your dilemma is produced. And resolved in the way you outline. But its irrelevant except where you confine your thinking to a micro-social, interpersonal plane.

There is no such dilemma (and certainly no analogy between censoring books and) adopting an ideological position aimed at curtailing the astonishing and in modern times unprecedented growth homosexual power and influence in the culture, ethics and the body politic of Western societies. Adopting and articulating such a position is not remotely analogous to eating or not eating garbage/ engaging on homosexual acts or not/ reading or not reading books/ permitting or not permitting people to read certain books.

In stating that “ those people who let themselves get angered by homosexuality”. you convey several beliefs or rhetorical stances :

1) the crux of it is about heterosexuals exercising control over themselves in their attitudes to homosexuality;

2) its all about their , i.e. heterosexuals’, emotions ;

Thus you attempt to place the onus upon the emotional state of individuals of the heterosexual world to do something about their emotional reaction to a complex and significant macro-social phenomenon - i.e. don’t let oneself get “angry” !

This approach conveniently evades the very legitimacy of community acknowledgment that homosexuality is a matter which should be addressed in macro-social policy. You might well say the only public policy necessary in this regard is: live and let live. Many heterosexuals would agree - to a point. The homosexual lobby wants much more than that; it wants heterosexuality and homosexuality to be placed on an “ equal” legal *, social and cultural footings as if homosexuality was akin to an ethnicity or religion. With recognition of same-sex unions as “ marriages ”; legal entitlements to adopt children, sperm donations and IVF treatment, etc etc. These have wide, deep, long - term social implications which haven’t been considered openly because of the pervavsive hysterical anti- “ homophobia”.

* I use equal loosely for where I live there are laws against vilifying and discriminating against homosexuals. The legislation outlaws adverse behaviour against people on grounds of their “ homosexuality ” not “ sexuality” so there is no equivalent legal protection for heterosexuals. Presumably this was not imagined to be a need or anticipated future problem because of the line of thinking that holds that it is homosexuals that are in the minority and therefore will behave nicely and fairly to the majority.

Discrimination against heterosexuals has been habitually and increasingly engaged in with no redress in certain sectors of employment, especially in select parts of the pubic sector. And any raising of the subject is gagged by so called “ vilification ” laws. The result of this is to create a legally privileged class of persons who can criticise, and disseminate contempt for, whoever they please, not hire whoever they please in taxpayer-funded institutions, sexually harass whoever they please, and exclude whoever they please from clubs associations, etc.

Turning to other parts of your post I've no doubt some homosexual men are " late bloomers" , in terms of activity, I do find it difficult to understand how someone in their thirties could suddenly develop a sexual attraction to those of the same gender. Whilst one's hard-wiring - I would not suggest that homosexuality is generally a matter of choice - can be repressed or just not acted upon it seems that orientation is realised pre-pubescently or peri-pubescently.

As to your point that not all homosexuals are wracked in self hatred, I do know two homosexual men* ( who I don’t know quite well enough to ask about their first sexual experiences) who are pretty much at ease with who they are. I also strongly doubt that these same two would try to solicit underage males in any context. However I have no such faith in their various partners over the years nor in the friends of theirs. One is a psych nurse ( alcoholic and pill-popper) in a public asylum who has boasted to me of beating up his charges. I try not to think about the other ways in which he might be exploiting his position over them.

* One of these taught me at university; his superior at the same time in the same institution imported ( by a sponsorship assisted by the RC Church ) a 12 year old Phillipino boy who then shared his bed for many years afterwards.

Your favourable mention of Oscar Wilde not having had his first homosexual experience until 30 is interesting. There is a revisionist school at work coalescing around a very sympathetic new biography which maintains that Oscar simply had a loving homosexual relationship with the Marquis of Queensberry's son. And the acts within this were confined to the fellatio - the implictaion being that Wilde wasn't getting this in his marriage. This may be the basis for the aged 30 contention you repeat, albeit without certainty. This contention seems extremely unlikely based on the myriad of sources available concerning Wilde's life.

Wilde was a notorious homosexual predator. Some of this came out in his trial. His habit ( it was cited in recent years in opposition to the erection of a statute of him in London, honouring him as a person, as distinct to the one existing which honoured his literary contribution ) of having his driver take his carriage through working class areas until he spotted an attractive boy on the street who would then be summoned by the driver invited into the carriage and offered a ( for the boy) substantial sum of money for sexual services. One of Wilde's notable witticisms was to call out from a room adjoining a dinner party he was attending something like this " Would someone turn over another page [boy waiter] for me; I've just torn this one in half!" Hilarious.

So whilst there will be homosexual men who are: temperate in manner, conservative in lifestyle; as self-contented as it is possible for a being to be; and/or non-pedophilic/ hebephilic - how representative are they? You state you have been celibate for a period of many years because there is no such thing as safe sex. Wise move. Diametrically opposed irresponsibility seems to be far more popular. In my neck of the woods a recent documentary estimated that 27% and rising of homosexual men in the second biggest city in my country are regularly "barebacking" because they are tired of using condoms and HIV is no longer a "death sentence" due to ( very expensive) publicly funded medications and treatment regimes. Commensurate increases in rates of syphilis and HIV infection have been detected since a low point was reached in 1991 - 92 and predicted higher future increases of syphilis and gonorrhea in particular, which would inevitably spread into the heterosexual community. The commentators ( all homosexuals judging by their manner and stated affiliations ) predicted that this trend was almost certainly being mirrored in my city " Gay capital of the Southern Hemisphere") but the same data collection was not taking place. The documentary was not only very "sympathetic", it was nauseatingly and uncritically so, e.g. one proud "barebacker" who did not know himself to be HIV positive stated he didn't bother enquiring of the HIV status of his casual sexual partners because he was always the "insertive" partner [so he'd be okay!] And everybody is meant to feel sorry for him when he contracts HIV and also foot the bill for his treatment and invalid pension!