I read the
Daily Mail today. I knew it was a mistake as soon as I picked it up, but my father buys it and I can't walk past any rendition of the printed word without having a quick shuffle through. I read a very interesting article by
Brian Sewell, openly bisexual 'art critic and media personality' (whatever that is), who was lamenting the current state of long-running soap
Coronation Street.
Sewell seems to think that there are too many gays on telly these days, that "There's too much, not only of gay men...but also of lesbians, bisexuals, the trans-gender community, cross-dressers and everyone else with some sexual quirk or fetish." He justifies this view by noting that "just 6 per cent of the population" are gay, and that the appearance of gay / trans characters in TV soaps "gives them a disproportionate amount of airtime."
Firstly, I object hugely to anyone saying that homosexuality or being transgendered is a 'fetish' or 'quirk', and I'm sure I'm not alone there. It's not for a cheap thrill that we live the way we do, it's because this is the only way that we
can live. It's who we are. And last time I checked, falling in love wasn't a fetish, nor was the portrayal of that on TV. Neither, for that matter, is sex, whether it be with a man or a woman. Certain acts are fetishistic, but vanilla gay sex hasn't ever been considered as such, anymore than vanilla straight sex is. Bisexual Swell may well consider sleeping with men to be a fetish, but for most men, that's the last thing it is. It's a way of life, it's an entire identity, not just a grubby act confined to the bedroom.
He also argues that gay characters are anethma to the
Corrie values, that the soap is "pure Salford, that took the paintings of L.S. Lowry and brought them to life on TV, that fortified the great divide between the noble North and the soft and silly South of England...[full of] Squalor, grime and poverty..." That he can describe something as realistic that resembles the famous 'matchstalk men' of Lowry is laughable in itself. The sheer artificiality of Lowry's represention of those that he painted, their two-dimensionality, was meant to symbolise everything that was 'grim up north' - something that apparently Sewell finds quaint, and amusing. In his own words, the north is squalid, it's grimy, it's the last place that any self-respecting homosexual would find himself.
Doesn't he realise that Manchester has the second most vibrant gay community in Britain, after London? That Canal Street is as famous as any other 'gay ghetto' you could name, and that people flock to the city from all over the British Isles simply because of this fact? When I lived in Manchester, I knew gay, lesbian, bi, trans and, yes,
straight, people who lived in every conceivable setting, from the luxury flats at Salford Quays and Deansgate, to the council high-rise christened ironically the Fairy Towers, to the many, many regular rows of terraces that make up so many of the city's suburbs.
In my last house, a new-build mews just outside the city centre, I (lesbian, single) lived with 2 gay men (long-term couple); next door was a straight couple (20s, newly married); next door to them was a pair of spinster sisters (60s, never married) opposite lived a transvestite DJ (gay, single); on the other side of us lived a large family (2 parents in their 30s, 3 kids, a very noisy dog). We all knew each other, and we all got on. Surrounding us lived every imaginable combination of ages, sexualities, relationships, creeds, colours, religions and nationalities. It's part of what makes us a multicultural society, and Manchester is nothing if not multicultural. To suggest that such combinations can't exist - god forbid! - in the north, is at best absurd and ill-informed. At worst, it's the worst kind of bigoted.
But Sewell's greatest crime hides deep within his article, where he argues that viewing homosexual characters on TV is morally damaging to children. "Are soaps," he asks, "watched by prepubescent children - who may still have some tattered remnant of innocence that we should cherish - really a proper platform for sexual propaganda and special pleading?" Where do I start? These are the same soaps, we must remember, that thrive on adultery, violence, drinking and death. Every soap has a local pub and every character frequents it, usually going several times a day - if that is not morally damaging, what is? Heterosexual characters have affairs left, right and centre, often breaking marriage vows in the process, getting pregnant, getting abortions, getting men to raise other men's children. Is that moral? Yet showing two men holding hands; declaring love; hell, maybe even kissing; even in the context of a loving, long-term relationship,
that's immoral?
If that's morality, I'm the Duchess of Cambridge.
Sewell argues that homosexuals have their place on TV, but it's after the watershed - well after. He compares
Coronation Street with
Queer As Folk. Such a comparison is laughably absurd. Apart from the fact that both shows are set in Manchester, there's no similarity whatever between them.
Queer As Folk was written to be a controversial, realistic drama, based on the lives of a certain group of men at a certain period of time. I love it; I applaud it; it is no exaggeration to say that it changed my life.
Coronation Street it certainly ain't.
Oddly enough, for all Sewell's criticism that gays have no place in everyday Manchester, as portrayed in
Corrie, he seems to understand the city's huge contribution to queer culture. He rightly notes that the Campaign for Homosexual Equality was founded in Manchester (by 'a dear old duck' - I kid you not, that's what he wrote) and he calls Manchester the 'centre of homosexual unrest.' Less pleasingly, he calls Manchester the 'Sodom of the North' - where, one wonders, is the Sodom of the South?
Sewell's article contains some breathtakingly condescending opinions on the lives of us northerners, and Mancunians in particular; his argument is often confused (are gays in
Corrie out of place because no-one in Manchester should be gay: even though it's a city with a long and proud queer history and a vibrant and growing queer community: or because there's something fundamentally immoral about showing gay characters on TV at 7.30pm on any show?) but his biggest crime, in my eyes, is reiterating the old and oft-repeated myths that (a) sexuality is 'fetish' or 'quirk' (b) it's somehow contagious (if it wasn't, it wouldn't affect childen to see it) and (c) it's fundamentally immoral.
I know that there were thousands of nodding heads reading his article this morning, heartily agreeing with every confused, self-hating word, and cementing in themselves the moral certainty that they're right. I've heard rants like this before, and no good ever comes of them. We may only be 6-10% of the population (although Sewell's figures are at best only ill-informed guesses, as no-one can claim to know exactly how many people in this world are gay, queer, trans, or otherwise sexually 'Other') but that doesn't give him - or anyone else - the right to defame us, or how we live our lives. People in glass houses, and all that. That this attack comes from 'our' side of the fence, so to speak, is all the more galling. If Sewell can't reconcile himself with his own sexuality, I pity him. He deserves it. But he shouldn't turn that self-hating streak against those of us who
have learnt to live with our sexual identities, and found happiness through it. That's not misinformed homophobia, it's a dliberate and sustained attack against people that are - however much he might want to deny it -
just like him. It's the rage of Caliban, seeing his own face in the glass.
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Kate Aaron is an author of queer and fantasy novels and short stories. Find all her books on Amazon now http://www.amazon.com/Kate-Aaron/e/B0058DL8A0/
