|
 Jason Foster gives closeted heterosexism the red card.
If there’s one thing almost as bad as a rampant homophobe, it’s someone who pretends to be gay-friendly while trafficking in the kind of ideas that heterosexism thrives on.
Take, for example, an article by Danny Katz in The Age (18/10) that rehashed some of the most predictable clichés in the name of showing what a gay-friendly guy he really is.
Katz’s article was ostensibly about what a great time he had when he went to see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert: the Musical with his wife. But, not content to praise the show itself, this self-confessed “lady-luster” proceeded to wax lyrical about what a “gay old time” he had on “the gayest night ever”.
“Outrageous costumes, colour-saturated sets, high-camp humour”, he raved, “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert satisfied all the prerequisites for the perfect hetero-homo night at the theatre”. In fact, according to Katz, he himself is “fully, massively, GUSHINGLY gay”, despite his preference for sleeping with women - even though he admitted that he gets little crushes on extremely handsome men (Ewan McGregor because of his “devil eyes”, Chris Isaak for his “boxer’s nose”).
According to Katz, the reason why he’s a “hetero-homo” is not his sexuality, but his cultural tastes. Like “any proper genuine gay man” he prefers the ABC’s Sunday arts program to Sunday football, has never owned an album by a band like Nirvana, and loves big lavish stage musicals.
Well, in that case this author certainly isn’t a “proper genuine gay man”. Unlike Katz, I’ve never owned the recording of a musical - but I have owned a Nirvana CD, along with the rather un-gay Smashing Pumpkins, Joy Division, Stone Temple Pilots, etc. Nor had I ever heard of Lotte Lenya or Indie Arie until Katz mentioned them as gay icons.
It seems therefore that if a straight guy can be ‘hetero-homo’ based on his CD collection, then a gay guy can be ‘homo-hetero’ (even if he doesn’t get little crushes on extremely beautiful women).
Yet despite his own ambivalent identity, however, apparently Katz can only cope with all the ‘high-campery’ of gayness if he can then retreat into the security of a pure heterosexuality. Thus our hetero queer confesses he was “completely gayed out” by the end of the night and had to recover at home by watching “some good, blokey yobbo-thuggery” on the TV – meaning the rugby.
Unfortunately, what Katz doesn’t realise is that rugby – which is full of big dudes in shorts grabbing and jumping on each other in pursuit of a pig’s bladder – possesses far more homoerotic attraction than a drag-attired musical, especially when players like Thierry Dusautoir (France), Olly Barkley (England) and Lucas Ostiglia (Argentina) are in the game. There’s no shortage of devil’s eyes and boxer’s snouts to get “little crushes” over, and like ‘any proper genuine straight man’, I love it when some big bloke gets laid out on the field.
Sports gear, solid muscle, man-on-man action: the Rugby World Cup 2007 satisfied all the prerequisites for the perfect homo-hetero night at the stadium – or in the lounge-room, for those of us who couldn’t be in Paris.
You don’t even need those incomparable French calendars to appreciate the potential. You don’t even need to know the rules.
Thank heaven the next Rugby World Cup tournament (2011) will be in New Zealand – close enough for all us homo-heteros to nip over for some live contact sport!
 |
Opinion 
Subscribe to this comment's feed