by

Tim Murphy

There was a lot of talk on an electronic list to which I belong of late about a planned kiss-in at a local mall (remember, despite its taking the geographical and, to some extent, contextual space of a public square or town market, a mall is PRIVATE PROPERTY). Many complained about its being exclusionary (hey! in my mind, if straights wanted to show up, they were welcome…allies are very important…). Some thought it was in ill taste. Others thought it would be a freak show. Some expressed the concern that it might, as it were, scare the horses (okay, so no-one used that metaphor…I’m going to go somewhere, probably an over-extended trip, with that turn of phrase, and the IDEA was put forward, if not the exact wording…).

A lot of things are in ill taste (warning – rant approaching at Warp Factor Nine…). As far as I’m concerned, though I find Robin Sharpe, a pornographer and author who has written smut about young men and sadism, sleazy, I am leery of appealing to ‘community values’, as one feminist editioralist in the Toronto Star whom I normally respect did, in an attempt to define what is acceptable (our Supreme Court, which struck down two parts of the child pornography law, thanks to an appeal launched by Mr. Sharpe largely avoided that take, focusing instead on imagination and free speech as its key reasons for the deletions…). In the past, and, despite restrictions placed upon it, probably for the foreseeable future, Canada Customs has used such guidelines to keep out a good portion of gay literature (and even some het porn), including, as irony would have it, safer sex info and an anti-smut book by Andrea Dworkin. Ever since the ‘community values’ clause was put in, the feminists who backed the law have discovered it is being used to censor lesbian erotica and even some relatively mainstream work which criticizes community standards (though I am reasonably certain that Dworkin, at least, might enjoy that – after all, if she can believe that gay porn harms women (I still can’t figure that one out), she must surely believe that lesbian porn does…).

Therefore, I think talking about ‘ill taste’, in a world in which a judge can rule that a child’s being raped was not so bad because she was violated anally, or a planet on which someone can go into a video booth whose recordings are often played on television and ramble on about how she doesn’t want to give any money to the poor and needy panhandlers, and that they had best look at her face and remember it (those passing by the booth that cold day, or perhaps even those who get some chance to see TV, I assure you, WILL remember that face…you had best stop walking downtown, madam…), or where government officials who surely MUST be on powerful hallucinogens themselves, or at least something that allows them to float unconcerned above all the misery they have caused, go on about testing all welfare recipients for drugs (how would they afford drugs with that 22 percent cut in the social services allowance, boys? Furthermore, I’d be a lot more concerned, if I were you, about the big boys at the top propping up your rotten capitalist system – if THEY do a little coke, they might make a bad decision and bankrupt you, and wouldn’t THAT be tragic?), at goddess knows what extra cost to the public purse, is, so to speak, pretty damn ill in and of itself.

As to a ‘freak show’, I’m afraid that would reflect more upon your own feelings than those of the average straight person. Judging from the appearance of most queers in my town, you look exactly like the vast majority of hets who walk around the mall holding hands and kissing. If you’re a freak for doing such things, then so are they.

Now, of course, I’m aware that’s a naïve viewpoint. However, it will only continue to be one as long as people allow such a ludicrous perception to persist. As I see it, the reason for things like kiss-ins (if a reason needs to be sought for something that might just be fun and frivolous) is to ‘normalize’ queer behaviour. While I have my quarrels with ‘normalizing’, I can see that, if you WANT to be accepted by straight society, you have to go to where it is, do the same things it does (as broad categories, not specific acts) and not act ashamed or skulk away when you meet some disapproval (it is not as though straights do not face rejection for some of their behaviours – been in a high school lately?) – stand up – as Bette Midler once said: ‘What’s wrong with you people? Why do you let yourselves get kicked around?’. It is true that the participants in the kiss-in wore signs identifying themselves as queer, but that is the dialectic of education. You make someone aware of your reality and issues, and then you attempt to get those ideas into the public discourse. As a Marxist, just as I long to see the end of class society, but realize it is important to organize along class lines now, I can see that it is important to fight for ‘invisibility’ with visibility first. If you feel uncomfortable being on ‘public display’ (I am reminded some years ago of the justification some male strippers gave for not allowing men at their shows, as they said it made them uncomfortable – if you are on stage, you do not have the luxury of choosing your audience, as I see it) in any way, shape or form (going out ANYWHERE is ‘public display’) and see all forms of organization as a ‘freak show’, that says a lot more about you than it does about the participants, and suggests you have some issues to deal with. As the anarchist saw goes: ‘If you don’t get in shit, you haven’t done shit.’

Now, in a related point to the ‘freak show’ is the notion that overt queer behaviour ‘scares the horses’; in other words, it is not so much that YOU have a problem with being on display, as that straights might be scared by your display, and you don’t want to spook the hooved critters, in case they step on you.

Guess what, baby? They’re ALREADY stepping on you – they have your hand in their teeth, and horses do not let go when they bite down unless you break their jaw or smack them awfully hard. You might think that with recent laws being passed you can ride the horse in style – but I wouldn’t trust those frayed reins too much, kids. Furthermore, there are some awfully big blinders on that horse, and they aren’t always adjusted to your advantage – if the horse is always looking forward, one misstep in a hole to the side can send you flying – and there are plenty of those holes around.

(Can I over-extend a metaphor or WHAT!?)

They leave their droppings for you to step in, then say: ‘Oh, well.’ No, big horsie – NOT ‘Oh, well.’ Matthew Shepard was not an ‘oh, well’; Harvey Milk was not an ‘oh, well’ – Shawn Keegan (a trans prostitute from around my hometown killed in Toronto in 1996) was not an ‘oh, well’ – get that big horsey grin off your face, and stop batting your big blue eyes at me. It’s not cute. Are you scared? Join the club, Mr. Ed and Ms. Edwina. Maybe you SHOULD be scared. Maybe you should be scared half to death, or perhaps half measures are weak in this instance. You have the right to have calm nerves the day no queer person is beaten to death in a park, office or washroom on a military base – you may be safe in your home the day every young fag, dyke, switch-hitter and trannie is – and you can start preaching about the sanctity of the family the day you stop playing Stalin and cease excising people you squeezed out from between your legs (or contributed to putting them there) from the official record of your breeding stock.

Not ‘Oh, well’ at all. More like, as some of you are prone to say when you see two people of the same sex kissing: ‘Oh, SICK!’

To return to the specific – what DID happen when the kiss-in took place at the mall? First of all, there was a small turnout – five dykes – one trannie – and one fag (guess who? No kissing for me, then…). We were hassled by security and told that groups of people are not permitted to gather and shop.