The Camp Vamp: Katrina Fox

Straight and Narrow

2009-02-28T21:22:00.000-08:00

This is my article that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age (state newspapers for Sydney and Melbourne, Australia respectively) on Friday 27 Feb, 2009:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/straight-and-narrow-20090226-8j9y.html

My name is Katrina Fox and I am a homosexual. As is the case with Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous, that admission is apparently the first step in my journey to become straight - according to Living Waters, an international ministry that offers courses to help people who suffer from a range of sexual problems or "brokenness", including same-sex attraction.

It's 9.30am on Saturday morning and I'm waiting for Living Waters' one-day Grace and Sexuality Conference at the Wesley Mission in Sydney to start. There's around 60 of us in attendance, old and young, from a range of ethnic backgrounds and my gaydar has honed in on a few fellow queers.Boxes of tissues have been set out around the room by the organisers, presumably in anticipation of an outpouring of emotion.

They're not disappointed as the band takes its place on stage and the head of the ministry, Ron Brookman, leads the audience in song and prayer.Smiles turn to tears as it gets too much for several people and they break down sobbing. It's not unlike a Kylie or k.d. lang concert.Brookman, according to the conference brochure, has been "transformed from homosexuality" and leads the Living Waters ministry from its headquarters in Ramsgate with his wife Ruth.

"I was living a double life as a pastor and immersed in the homosexual scene in Darlinghurst," he tells us. "I know what it is to live in utter brokenness and shame."Brookman goes on to explain that God's image can only be displayed on earth when male and female come together in sexual union within the context of monogamous heterosexual marriage. Anything outside is a sin."Desire is powerful, which is why God has given boundaries," he asserts. "If boundaries were kept there would be no such thing as sexually transmitted diseases … there is no such thing as casual sex … the power of intimacy and sex is a foreshadow of what awaits us in heaven."Homosexuality is a "handicap" but healing our "brokenness" is as simple as "yielding our lives to Jesus", he adds.

Although it wasn't easy, Brookman says he has turned his back on the "homosexual lifestyle", but admits it is a struggle every day.After a talk by Ruth Brookman on how she forgave her husband's sexual indiscretions with other men and they now live happily as a heterosexual couple, it's lunchtime. And I'm still gay.

After lunch the conference delegates break off to take part in a workshop of their choice. Naturally I pick the one on homosexuality, led by Ian Lind, who founded Living Waters in Australia 30 years ago. Before becoming a Christian, Lind was part of the gay scene in Sydney for 10 years. For him, the two are mutually exclusive. "There is no such thing as a gay Christian," he proclaims."I don't believe you can sit in church as a gay person. I chose homosexuality like others choose drugs or alcohol. When I gave myself to the Lord, I turned my back on my lifestyle so I was no longer gay. I am still attracted to men, but I never went back to that lifestyle or gave in to my feelings.

"The workshop has drawn around 20 people. One couple is concerned about their son who came out as gay a year ago. "It's there in your upbringing," Lind asserts."If our mothers nurtured us and our fathers spent time with us, we wouldn't have those issues."

Discussion ensues about whether a person is "born gay".While Lind is adamant this is not the case - despite various research studies identifying biological factors such as prenatal hormones and brain structure that may be related to sexual orientation - others in the room argue it doesn't matter if people are born gay. "As Christians we shouldn't be worried about this," says one participant. "You can still be redeemed and choose to live a pure life.

"You've probably realised by now I have no intention of yielding my life to Jesus or repenting my "sin". Unlike many people who come to organisations such as Living Waters, I don't struggle with being a dyke. I live with my girlfriend of 15 years, a gorgeous, passionate and talented therapist who's blessed with amazing cheekbones, and when I stare at a photo of Debbie Harry, shame is the last thing I'm feeling.

But for those who leave ex-gay programs, unsuccessful in their quest to become straight, depression and suicide are common, according to Anthony Venn-Brown, a former Assemblies of God preacher, author of A Life of Unlearning and leader of the Freedom 2 B[e] organisation that offers support to gay and lesbian Christians. Venn-Brown went through several ex-gay programs before embracing his homosexuality and is adamant such programs don't work. "You can't recover from your sexual orientation," he says."You can deny and suppress it but you can't change it. Trying to be someone I wasn't caused great stress, a sense of failure and shame that eventually led to depression."

Brookman and Lind say they are now heterosexual, despite still finding men sexually attractive, and couldn't be happier. Living Waters runs a 30-week course for people "struggling with same-sex attraction" although both men admit it's often necessary for a person to complete the course three or four times to really "get it".

In an interview a few days after the conference, Brookman was keen to point out that Living Waters "goes to great pains not to condemn people in homosexuality or any other form of sexual brokenness, but seeks to reach out with compassion to those who are ill at ease with their sexuality".

It's true that at that no time during the conference did anyone express outright hatred towards gay or lesbian people, but references to Satan and "the enemy" in the context of discussing the "sin" of homosexuality hardly empower us. Spending the day with people who continually reinforced the message that a core part of my identity is "broken" or a "handicap" or an addiction to be overcome didn't exactly fill me with joy. The musical parts of the day were the best. I'm partial to a nice uplifting singalong but instead of suppressing my sexuality while revering a male deity, I'll take dancing naked at Coogee women's pool with a bunch of hot sheilas chanting "We All Come From The Goddess" any day. Or the Mardi Gras Parade.
Because I'm still gay.

Polite conversation is so last-century

2009-01-08T15:55:00.000-08:00

After trying to resist the lure of social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook, I've caved in and acquired several 'friends' on both, but quite what we're supposed to do now, I don't know. I've never liked that initial polite conversation stuff you have to do with new people: 'Nice weather, isnt' it?', 'So, what do you do?'

That one always bugs me - what do I do when and which piece of information is more interesting to you? That I sub-edit and proof pages for various magazines, or spend at least an hour most Sunday mornings imagining slightly kinky fantasies set in downtown New York involving women wearing glitter eyeshadow? I also speak in a strange tongue when addressing my cat, with made-up words of affection such as 'choochy woochy ooboobooboochickitapussicatus'; shuffle my feet from side to side while singing the lyrics to Dr Hook's 'Who the Fuck is Alice?' to myself while waiting at traffic lights; and create my own social message T-shirts proclaiming such things as 'lesbian vegans will save the world' using an inkjet printer, special paper and an iron.

Being defined by your job gives an extremely limited picture of a person. The only time I've been truly interested in or impressed by someone's job and keen to know more is when I met a female Israeli fighter pilot a few years ago at a party in London hosted by a gorgeous old dominatrix called Kate who, at only four-feet five inches in height, somehow got away with manoeuvring a large four-wheel-drive jeep through the city for 30 years while completely shitfaced on marijuana and not crash, even once.

Then there's the whole 'Where are you from?' I know it's customary to reply with your city or country of birth, but aren't you so tempted to come back with 'My mother's vagina' every now and then, just to mix it up a bit and make the conversation less predictable? 'How are you?' has to be the most bland, not to mention dishonest, polite conversation opener since it's guaranteed to elicit a lie. We're like robots programmed with a small selection of acceptable standard answers, namely 'good', 'very well', 'great' or 'fine'. At least the last one as an acronym is more likely to offer some vestige of truth: F**ked-up Insecure Neurotic Emotional. I propose replacing the preposition now and then, again just to mix it up a bit - for example, 'Why are you?' should be enough to induce psychological meltdown in your acquaintance and provide you with a few moments of amusement while they struggle with philosophical paradigms to try and come up with an answer.

I suppose I'd better get the ball rolling with my new Myspace and Facebook 'friends'. You never know, one of them might also enjoy imagining slightly kinky fantasies set in downtown New York involving women wearing glitter eyeshadow, and we can bond.

Girls kissing girls is a good thing, whatever the reason

2009-01-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

According to a survey by internet portal Lycos, most British men aren’t bothered if their female partners indulge in lesbian affairs. While 30 per cent found it “a bit odd”, 61 per cent said it is “not a problem”. It would be nice to think that the 21st century has given rise to a whole new breed of enlightened blokes, who are totally cool and comfortable with women’s sexuality and no longer see lesbianism as a threat to their masculinity. But I suspect it’s more to do with the popularity of online porn involving two or more chicks and with the current trend of straight girls kissing or snogging other straight girls, not for their own pleasure, but to please straight guys.

Young women are more inclined to indulge in these 'faux' Sapphic fumblings, with the trend happening mostly on college campuses and night-clubs. Any touching, sucking or poking of any sexual organs below the mouth, however, is strictly forbidden. “The impulse [to go further than kissing] is there, and some girls do it, but respectable girls who kiss girls don’t,” says ‘Julie’ in an article on the subject on Salon.com in 2006. Whether this trend is a good or bad thing continues to be hotly debated in the media. Some argue it’s an expression of girls’ sexuality and therefore valid and empowering. Others believe it degrades ‘real’ lesbians because of participants’ insistence that they are absolutely not gay, not even bisexual, as if gay or bi is something bad.

All I know is, I wish this trend had been in place when I was in my teens. If my cousin Alan had asked me to snog a cute girl in my class to turn him on, instead of having to suck his face off at the end of our first (and last) date, I’d have been in my element. If Alison Stewart, the gorgeous blonde Debbie Harry lookalike at high school had solicited me for a bit of lip action and dirty dancing in order to help her snare a lad she had her eye on, I would have been most happy to oblige – after all, that’s what sisterhood is all about, right?

And that’s the point the critics of girl-girl make-outs seem to be missing. All the analyses of how ‘degrading’ it might be for queer girls to see straight girls playing bi for male attention omit to point out that it’s the perfect opportunity for said queer girls to have a full-on lesbo make-out session with the straight girl crush of their dreams that they would otherwise have had no chance with and had to spend the summer mooning over their unrequited love and playing maudlin Karen Carpenter songs. Most of us have had and will continue to have to spend even just a little time in the closet in our youth – at least nowadays some of the rewards are a lot more substantial.

LSD needs a makeover

2009-01-08T15:23:00.000-08:00

The problems associated with crystal meth, particularly among the gay community, have been well documented, I thought I’d shift the focus onto mind-expanding substances such as LSD and ‘magic’ mushrooms. The last acid ‘epidemic’ occurred four decades ago in a haze of peace and love, and as far as I’m aware, no gay community in the world has ever been decimated by thousands of our kind shovelling inordinate amounts of special fungi down our gullets.

Various groups are doing their best to combat the crystal ‘problem’, putting forward ideas and strategies, ranging from hard-hitting campaigns with messages such as ‘meth = death’ to advice on how to take the drug safely and where to go for help if and when you need it. I’d like to propose another option: Employ the services of a top marketing firm to launch a multi-million dollar campaign to make acid and shrooms sexy, so they replace crystal as the substances of choice among queers. As has been done with disco, flares and Charlie’s Angels, psychedelics should be repackaged, glamorised and promoted as the ‘in-thing’ of the moment.

Let’s have a very quick look at the history and benefits of these two catalysts to opening the doors of perception, to see why this could work, not only to the advantage of the gay community but society as a whole. First off, psychedelic plants and their use in spiritual pursuits can be traced back to the beginnings of recorded history. In his 1993 book, Food of the Gods, author Terence McKenna offers a plausible hypothesis that homosapiens were in fact descended from psychedelic-using hominids, so we’d basically be going back to our roots. The successful use of LSD in psychotherapy, including overcoming addictions to other drugs, was widespread until the substance was made illegal in the 1960s. Unlike crystal, which turns you into a grumpy arsehole during the comedown, psychedelics offer the opportunity to be at one with the universe – a phenomenon known as ‘cosmic consciousness’ – returning gently to the recognisable dimension usually referred to as ‘reality’ with new insights about life, love and the nature of existence. Oh, and if you put The Wizard of Oz on while peaking, you may get the chance, as I did, to fly over the rainbow with Dorothy.

We need another Summer of Love. Let’s face it, if someone had dropped a tab or two into George W’s morning cuppa and sat him in the garden under a tree to commune with nature and allow his neural pathways to be reprogrammed, global warming would be on its way to being halted and war in Iraq could have been avoided. So, never mind ‘meth = death’, let’s hear ‘LSD = sexy’.

Disclaimer: This article, while calling for revolutionary tactics, is not intended to incite anyone to imbibe illegal substances. However, The Essential Psychedelic Guide by DM Turner is a good starting point on how to do it safely, for those who might have been considering it anyway. Peace ’n love, people.

We're not perfect - even when we're dead

2009-01-08T15:09:00.000-08:00

I’m dying. I don’t know when or how I’ll finally kick it, but it’s one of the only guarantees in life; one of the few certainties that you can rely on. Each day, each hour, each second, our bodies decay and we edge another step closer to death. For some it has nothing to do with the ageing process; in fact a natural death from simple old age is rare now. So polluted is our environment, so messed up are our food systems, so excessive are our working hours and 24/7 high-stress society that we are often struck down with illnesses that can prove fatal, at quite young ages. Then there’s sudden death. Accident. Murder.

Where the latter two are concerned, chances are reports of your death may appear in state or national media - like the learner-driver who ploughs into a group of people at a bus-stop and kills them. It’s times like these that can turn your thoughts to how you might be remembered once you slip off the physical plane of existence. “She was the kindest, nicest little girl - the sweetest thing”, said the coach of the 14-year-old skating champion from Queensland who was killed in a ferry crash. “Beautiful”, "positive" and "talented" was how the fashion student victim of a bus crash in Kogarah was described. Without meaning any disrespect to these young people who lost their lives in such horrible ways, it does beg the question: Why do the sudden deaths of ugly, grumpy, miserable, bitchy people never get reported? How come it’s only the pretty, good-natured, happy and kind ones?

Why is it that when we die, we suddenly achieve a kind of saintliness? Admittedly I’d like to think if I was extinguished via some kind of public catastrophe that my girlfriend would tell journalists what a loving, flamboyant, intelligent and caring person I was. It’s not far off the truth, but in all honesty, it would be equally fair of her to tell them that I’m also a moody, emotionally volatile harridan who bears a striking resemblance to Mad Bertha in the attic in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. In grief and shock we want to remember the best qualities of a loved one wrenched unexpectedly from our lives. But I don’t want to be a hypocrite, or not practise what I preach. So for the record, should I end my days in a way deemed worthy of reporting and a newspaper rings any of you up and asks what you thought of me, you have my permission to say that I was a crazy-arse lesbian with militant vegan ideologies that I never failed to impose on others at any given opportunity.

Just remember to add that I was also very pretty and had lovely hair.

Designer babies - yes please!

2009-01-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

So a couple of gay men from Melbourne, Australia travelled to the US and allegedly spent around $130,000 to buy “designer twin boys”, according to various reports from News Limited publications. Apparently the couple are one of several gay couples taking advantage of California’s liberal IVF laws.

Prospective parents with enough cash can choose the sex of their baby, as well as specify a number of physical characteristics and the education level of egg donors. The Australian Family Association has complained that the move is nothing short of ‘trafficking in children’ while the gay dads have defended their right to start a family.

So, should queer couples have the right to buy made-to-order babies? Well, hell yeah – provided they adhere to strict guidelines. Only egg donors with the fashion sense of Björk, musical inclinations of Liza Minnelli and politics of Peter Tatchell should be considered. It goes without saying that they should be vegan (or at the very least, vegetarian), outspoken, passionate, no-nonsense sort of chicks, preferably with some kind of creative body art. A penchant for mind-expanding recreational drugs without the addictive personality is an optional but definite bonus. Radical free-thinkers who believe conformity is one of the roots of all evil get a big tick, while any donor exhibiting even the slightest sign of mediocrity or normalcy should be avoided at all costs.Well someone has to start a revolution, so it might as well be the queers.

Forget all this ‘we’re just like everyone else’ crap. They don’t want us to get married and have babies, so if you’re intent on doing it, do it with style. Stand out, be different, be defiant. Refuse to bring another boring brat into the world who’ll end up as a ‘suit’ in middle-management for some pharmaceutical giant or oil company, afraid to speak out against the destruction of the planet or the oppression of minority groups in case it compromises their career or cosy suburban lifestyle. Aim higher – do your utmost to produce a little Leigh Bowery or Emma Goldman. The world needs more Lydia Lunches and Boy Georges. It’s time for GLBTIQs who want kids to step up and turn the concept of family and child-rearing on its head. We need an army of freaks – proud, individual, ethical and of course totally fabulous human beings to hand this crazy world over to in the hope they’ll rediscover and implement the concepts of democracy and equality for all.

All well and good, you may say, but not everyone can afford $130,000 on high-tech reproductive systems. Fear not, a solution is at hand for the financially challenged: Ebaby. Visit www.discountbabies.com to bid for a kid online. Choose from a large range of bubs including Smelly Babies, Automotive Babies, Sporty Babies or Babies That Sew. Celebrity Clone Babies are available for the shallower among us, while Satanic Babies are suited to those drawn to the dark. My personal favourite is the Bio-Engineered Government Destruction Machine Babies. Now that’s what I call progress.

Do it anyway

2007-09-13T17:06:00.001-07:00

Last week saw the beautiful city of Sydney transformed into a military zone that could have come straight out of George Orwell’s 1984. Fences were erected and streets were cordoned off for the APEC summit. Big Brother was watching all (although apparently not looking too closely at the Chaser guys who pulled off a spectacular coup and made the Police Commissioner and his cronies look like the plonkers they are). In a stunning display of propaganda, John Howard and the boys in blue told the public not to blame the federal government or police for the inconvenient ‘security’ measures enforced to protect Bush and his 800-strong entourage from dissenting voices, but the ‘violent’ protestors who were expected to cause havoc on the streets. While this rhetoric has been exposed as the rubbish that it is, it still had the effect of terrorising a lot of people into not attending the big demonstration last Saturday.

“Oooh, be careful” and “Don’t get arrested!” were among the responses I received when I said I was going to the APEC protest. “You’re going on the protest?” said one otherwise intelligent colleague, in an incredulous tone. I should have replied, “There are 21 world leaders in the CBD looking to exploit poorer countries and line their own coffers under the guise of ‘free trade’ – not ‘fair’ trade note – led by a man who invades countries for oil, who prizes profits over human lives and who, along with our own Prime Minister, refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, instead coming up with an alternative agreement that has been slammed by environmental experts as ‘an empty gesture that may actually undermine efforts to halt global warming’. How come you’re not going to the protest?” – in an equally shocked manner.

Many people I spoke with had expressed disdain, even outrage, at the extreme security measures inflicted on the city – but few of them actually bothered to put their money where their mouths were and turn up to a rally whose issues stretch far beyond equal rights for same-sex couples. After all, what’s the point of tax breaks and other fiscal benefits if we’re bombed to smithereens by insurgents pissed off at our troops taking over their lands, or if the planet, under constant destruction by multi-national corporations possessed with the spirit of greed, stops sustaining and instead kills us?

I can understand people being concerned about their safety, but one of my favourite sayings is ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’. Kudos to the several thousand people who did bother to turn up on Saturday and march through the streets in support of peace and equality, despite the oppressive presence of 3,500 NSW police officers and 450 federal police, including snipers on rooftops (funny how ‘resources’ can stretch to this, but not a few extra coppers on Oxford Street at the weekends, eh?). For those of you who weren’t there, I have another saying: ‘All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing’. Mission accomplished.

Fat and Thin

2007-09-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

The thing about opinion pieces is they will often induce a strong reaction in readers. Whether it’s Germaine Greer lambasting Steve Irwin in The Guardian or Jason Foster proffering his views on butch-femme gender roles in SX, some people are likely to take offence, even becoming incensed enough to contact as many magazines, newspapers, online media and other public forums as they possibly can to refute the writer’s comments.I’ve done this myself, especially on Fairfax or News.com blogs where the original blogger has waffled on about how they believe humans need to eat meat and why vivisection is nothing to get excited about. I’ve gone through the gamut of emotions from extremely upset, deeply disappointed, to utterly furious. I’ve forwarded the articles to my friends and networks so they can experience the same flood of strong feelings and add their own comments. But while I may disagree vehemently with the writer of the original article, I don’t dispute their right to publish their views.

Now before anyone thinks this is a precursor to me wading into the butch-femme debate that has now made it into every GLBTIQ magazine in Sydney and beyond, thanks to Jason Foster, it’s not. I’m going to take up the perhaps equally controversial fat/thin dichotomy and ask: Why is rock chick Beth Ditto being held up to be such a role model for lesbians and even women in general, simply because of her body size?

The Gossip frontwoman was named the coolest woman on the planet by British music magazine NME; dyke magazines across the world have either featured her on their cover or are chasing her for that purpose; even Greer praised Ditto: “Her intention is to force acceptance of her body type, 5ft tall and 15 stone, and by this strategy to challenge the conventional imagery of women,” Greer said.

It all sounds well and good, but quite frankly it stinks of hypocrisy. On the one hand, we denounce the media’s and society’s pushing of thin as the ideal body shape for a woman to be, on the grounds that it’s ‘unhealthy’. Fair enough. So why go to the other extreme and champion fat? Because fat is just as unhealthy as thin. And before the Fat Pride people take aim at me, I’m not saying anyone shouldn’t be fat and proud of it.

But it’s nothing short of hypocritical to wave the political-correctness banner around by denigrating thinness as a ‘dangerous’ model for women to aspire to, inducing all manner of eating disorders, while celebrating fat and claiming it as a feminist issue, when both extremes pose health risks. Ditto may be cool for many reasons – a great voice, an awareness of queer theory and gender roles – but watching clips of her perform, she looks like she’s about to have a heart attack on stage. Good on her for wanting to break the conventional imagery of women. But 5ft and 15 stone is no more cause for celebration than 5ft and 4 stone.

Well, someone had to say it.

Bloodthirsty lesbians

2007-08-22T19:23:00.000-07:00

I just love it when women cause trouble. Growing up I never understood all that 'sugar and spice and all things nice' that girls were supposed to aspire to. So I couldn't help being a bit pleased when I read that female authors and especially lesbian ones are far more bloodthirsty than men – according to popular crime writer Ian Rankin. Speaking to an audience at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Rankin said, "The people writing the most graphic novels today are women. They are mostly lesbians as well, which I find interesting."

It seemed like an innocent enough comment, but the shit subsequently hit the proverbial. Val McDermid – one of a number of lesbian crime writers and famous for her Wire in the Blood novels which have been made into a TV series – slammed Rankin's comments as "so offensive". Yet according to the Sydney Morning Herald, McDermid's The Last Temptation features a killer whose signature is to take a pubic "scalp" from his victims, The Treatment by Mo Hayder has a crazed killer who forces a man to rape his own child and Heartsick by Chelsea Cain features a beautiful serial killer who tortures the detective hunting her by hammering nails into his ribs, pouring bleach down his throat and removing his spleen without anaesthetic.

So does Rankin have a point, and does it really matter? If men write about women being cut up, tortured and raped, it's often seen as misogynistic, so what happens when a lesbian writes these kinds of scenes involving women? Obviously it pushes some people's buttons: on the Girls' Wall on gay message board Pinkboard, one poster said she was so disturbed by the "gratuitous" and "sick" sexual violence portrayed in one of McDermid's books that she vowed never to read her again. But some female writers argue that what they write is less gratuitous than men because they highlight the consequences of the violence because they have a keener appreciation of what it means to be a victim of it.

McDermid may have taken offence at Rankin's comments, but, political correctness aside, the truth is, some of us are a bit bloodthirsty. We much prefer to immerse ourselves in crime novels such as McDermid's Wire in the Blood, with their depictions of axes slicing through human flesh and other horrific scenarios, than succumbing to the ancient art of lesbian poetry, for example. Call me trash if you like, but the only sort of poetry I have any affinity for is silly ditties you can clap along to with lines such as 'Four and twenty virgins came down from Inverness and when the ball was over, there were four and twenty less …The mayor's daughter she was there and having forty fits, jumping off the mantelpiece and landing on her ….' (You get the picture). As a young teenager my creative stories consisted of epic disasters in the vein of The Poseidon Adventure but in which there were no heroes and everyone died horrible deaths. I think Rankin may have a point.

A good bitch

2007-08-15T18:40:00.000-07:00

Why waste money on basic civil, human rights and protecting minority groups when you can spend it on giving internet service providers (ISPs) a hard time? That must have surely been the logic running through John Howard’s head recently. Last week the PM announced a $189 million “crackdown” on “online bad language, pornography and child sex predators”, including $90 million to provide every household that wants it with software to filter out porn. Fair enough. Porn’s not everyone’s cup of tea; while I may chuckle at sex sites struggling to gain my attention by an ever-increasingly creative set of subject headers (‘My cock is really huge, but my girlfriend’s mouth is so small’), others may burst a blood vessel. But Howard’s new policy also includes plans to force ISPs to filter web content at the request of users – something the ISPs have branded ‘unworkable’. Steve Dalby, chief regulatory officer at iiNet, told the Sydney Morning Herald that such a move would “affect the performance of the network quite significantly” and that “it’s hard to understand ... how people will make decisions at the network about what Mr and Mrs Average ought to see, and you're talking about a censoring service provided by the private sector”. Quite. Especially since Mr and Mrs Average are just as likely to be tugging and fingering themselves to porn as a pierced, tattooed dyke or horny scene queen.

And if you think this is political correctness gone mad, be glad you don’t live in New York City. The NY Times reported last week that a bill has been proposed to outlaw the use of the word ‘bitch’. The city drew headlines earlier this year after it introduced a citywide ban on the word ‘nigger’, and now Councilwoman Darlene Mealy of Brooklyn wants to do the same with what she terms the ‘b’ word. ‘Bitch’ is “hateful and deeply sexist” according to Mealy, and creates a “paradigm of shame and indignity” for all women. Does that mean that the popular feminist magazine, Bitch, which has been running for eleven years, will be banned from newsagents in NYC? BANG! That was the irony of the situation making its presence felt, in case anyone missed it.

Then there’s the gays and drag queens to consider. “Half my conversation would be gone,” said Michael Musto, the Village Voice columnist renowned for his celebrity gossip. Whether a flat-out ban on the word is on the cards, or simply the context in which it’s used, is unclear. If I shout ‘Hey bitch!’ to my girlfriend while on a trip to NYC, how will they know if I’m being friendly or not? Extending the pronunciation to ‘Beeeeeeeaaaaatch!’ won’t necessarily make its intended effect on said girlfriend any clearer, so will it come down to voice tone and body language? And if so, who will police this? Even kennel-club owners and those who live with female dogs won’t be immune from penalty. Expect to hear the phrase ‘This is my doggess’ some time soon. Rap and hip hop just won’t be the same.

Transphobia

2007-08-08T17:58:00.000-07:00

Evidence of the rise of right-wing fundamentalism is abundant: a concrete wall will be erected around the CBD next month to prevent anti-war and other protestors from getting near the APEC summit; police have bought a water canon to use on anyone who tries to assert their right to make their opinions known (yes, we blinked and missed it – the 'it' being the moment democracy as we once knew it was annihilated); the two major political parties in the country are united in their stance against same-sex marriage; and the Foreign Minister has signed a nasty piece of legislation, without any community consultation, that puts trans people at risk (see my story in SX magazine at http://evolutionpublishing.com.au/sxnews/features/danger-zone.aspx.

But it's not just the right-wing politicians trannies have to watch out for. Beware the return of the radical lesbian feminists into the mainstream media arena – this time with new tactics. Instead of the histrionic, belligerent and blatant anti-trans sentiments of yesteryear, the Sisters of Womyn-Born-Womyn Indulgence are attempting to disguise their transphobia by appearing to play nice. A friend of mine attended the International Feminist Summit in Queensland recently whose guest speakers included Sheila Jeffreys and Catharine McKinnon. She reported that angry outbursts in which women referred to male-to-female (MTF) trans people as men and were aggressively anti-trans had been replaced with calm, relaxed tones that advocated being pro-womyn-born-womyn rather than anti-anything.

It's an interesting tactic, but smacks of NIMBYism: 'I have nothing against transgenders, I just don't want them anywhere near me'. Replace the word 'transgenders' with 'blacks', 'Aboriginals', 'Jews' or 'Muslims' and the 'pro' argument is shown up clearly for the prejudiced rhetoric it is: 'I'm not anti-black, I'm just pro-white'. And the rad feminists wonder why they were nicknamed 'Feminazis'.

The co-option of porno chic into mainstream culture over the past decade appears to have opened the door to a backlash against sexuality and sex and gender diversity. Gender Centre founder Roberta Perkins was vilified in the Australian press a few months ago by feminazis who disliked any suggestion in her new book on prostitution that not all sex workers were screwed up by their jobs. Now British writer Julie Bindel – who in 2004 said that a world inhabited only by transsexuals would look like the set of Grease – is claiming that gender reassignment surgery for trans people is like aversion therapy for gays and that trans people have a 'psychological problem' that shouldn't be fixed by surgery. In the same breath, she calls for an end to discrimination for 'this community'. Um, yeah, Julie, that would be nice.

Bindel likes to think of herself as 'controversial' which is possibly why she contradicts herself on many occasions. In her regular column in The Guardian, she publicly unleashes her hatred towards men who commit violent crimes and rape against women one minute, while supporting and condoning rape and murder the next when she reveals that she eats meat and dairy.

It's not that I have anything against hypocritical feminazis, of course. I don't even care if they live next door to me...

Wishful thinking

2007-08-01T22:58:00.000-07:00

The phrase ‘Be careful what you wish for’ springs to mind this week. A couple of weeks ago I read my opposite-page counterpart Mitzi’s column in SX magazine on how fast life has become nowadays and how we’re so busy ‘doing’ that we have little time to ‘be’ and enjoy the simple things. ‘How true’, I muttered to myself, thinking that it would be nice to have a week off work before embarking full-throttle with the new girlie mag I’m editing. I envisaged a cosy cottage, perhaps with a log fire, in the mountains or by the coast, tucked away in a relaxing retreat with my girlfriend and a couple of books. Well, I got my week off – but not in the manner I would have hoped for.

Last weekend, after throwing up at least ten times and clutching my stomach in pain, I was taken to the emergency room at a local hospital. A day later a doctor finally diagnosed appendicitis, whereupon my appendix was removed that evening. I spent the following few days pumped full of a concoction of drugs (the only fun one being morphine) and having what seemed like pints of blood removed each day for what could only be an impending vampire convention about to hit town, of which my nurse was the organiser. The third night I was transferred from a single room to a four-bed dorm with three others – a woman of 70-ish, a man of similar age and a 95-year-old Scottish woman who’d fallen over and fractured something – all of whom were delirious and spent the night talking in their sleep. Apart from the small pleasure of feeling positively foetal among such geriatric company, being on the ward felt like I was a bit player in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and I wanted out. I can’t fault the doctors or nursing staff who were all lovely and took good care of me – except for not giving me Pethidine as a pre-med before my operation.

Back in London, 1994 when I had a nose job (who says lesbians aren’t vain?), I enjoyed the euphoric high of this delightful legal substance, which was designed to ‘relax’ the patient before they are put under anaesthetic. To my delight I found that Pethidine does more than relax – it send you completely off your trolley, makes you cackle with glee and you couldn’t give a dog’s bollocks what the surgeon does with his or her knife. A little shot of that would have gone down nicely last weekend instead of the panic attack I experienced when an oxygen mask was placed over my face and I was told to ‘keep your eyes open’. But apparently Pethidine is no longer politically correct. ‘We get a lot of junkies come in and ask for it,’ the anaesthetic doctor told me. ‘It’s very addictive.’ Hmmph. A week later and I’m back at work suffering a bit of ‘brain fog’ but definitely on the mend. Motto of story: If you want something – be very specific.

Loving life

2007-06-27T20:23:00.000-07:00

Last week’s Best of Show prize at the BGF Bake Off went to Miss 3-D for his creative interpretation of Paris Hilton in prison: bent over doggie-style on the bed, taking up one of her holes a strap-on sported by a black lesbian. Of course, prison life for the pampered princess isn’t likely to be that exciting. Crap food and a cold cell are about as scintillating as it gets. Despite what the camp TV show, Prisoner, portrays, prison’s no fun for anyone, but 45 days for driving under the influence of alcohol is hardly comparable with five years on death row followed by another 12 years in the general population for a crime you didn’t commit.

This is what Sonia (Sunny) Jacobs endured in Florida, USA. In 1976, 19-year-old Sunny and her husband, Jesse Tafero, were sentenced to death for the murder of two police officers. Sunny spent five years in isolation on death row, before an appeal successfully quashed her death sentence but held up her conviction with a life imprisonment sentence. During the next 12 years, Jesse was killed in the electric chair in a botched execution that sparked national controversy – it took three jolts of electricity to kill him as the headset conducting the current to his body caught fire. Sunny was not allowed to attend the funeral. Also during this time, her parents died in a plane crash on the way home from visiting her and her two children ended up in care. In 1992, Sunny and Jesse (posthumously) were exonerated.

We can only imagine how we might react in similar circumstances – personally I think I’d be one bitter, angry middle-aged woman full of hate and despair at having lost nearly 20 years of my life for something I didn’t even do. But Sunny’s completely the opposite. A couple of weeks ago, she visited Australia to promote her autobiography, Stolen Time. Amnesty International, in conjunction with the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, arranged for her to speak at a seminar protesting the death penalty. I’m glad I braved the torrential rain on that freezing cold, windy night because to hear her speak was incredibly inspiring. Rather than being consumed with hate and anger, she is filled with love – for life, her children and her new partner, John. During her time inside, she used meditation and a positive attitude to survive. It’s hard to believe you could still have a sense of humour after such an ordeal as hers, but at the seminar, she explained her current limp by joking about how after surviving a death sentence she had to something dramatic, so she got hit by a car. She’s Sunny by name and sunny by nature; a shining example of the strength of the human spirit and of compassion. The next time Ms Hilton whines about being deprived of her creature comforts for a couple of months, someone should give her a copy of Sunny’s book to read.

Stolen Time by Sunny Jacobs is published by Random House.

Drug warning

2007-06-20T23:51:00.000-07:00

Last week Roche announced that it has recalled its HIV drug, Viracept, due to the fact it may be contaminated. According to information on the drug manufacturer’s website, an active substance in the drug may contain an impurity called methane sulfonic acid ethyl ester. Last week ACON President Adrian Lovney issued a statement urging anyone taking the drug to visit their GP (SX 333).

All well and good, but here comes the bit that makes a complete and utter nonsense of so-called ‘drug testing’. “Roche has advised ACON that the effects of the contaminant in humans has not been studied,” Lovney said. “However, studies in animals show that the class of chemical called alcylmesilates – which includes methane sulfonic acid – may have the potential to be carcinogenic if administered in very large quantities.”

Not studied in humans. I repeat, NOT studied in humans. Instead, non-humans with totally different body systems to us (including chimps, which at a molecular level are very different) are subjected to cruel and inhumane torture to conclude that if we imprison them in cages and inject them with large doses of poisonous substances, they’ll probably get cancer. Wow, really? Never would have guessed. Extrapolating such ‘information’ to humans is not only scientifically inaccurate, it’s downright dangerous.

It’s why the thalidomide disaster happened – women gave birth to deformed babies, which wasn’t predicted in animal tests. It’s why drugs like Vioxx are taken off the market, after they’ve been deemed ‘safe’ due to ‘animal experiments’. On the flipside, if lemon juice is administered to a rat, it will kill it. Should we all rush to stop consuming lemon juice? And the release of penicillin was delayed when its discoverer, Alexander Fleming, put it to one side because it didn’t work in rabbits. Only when Fleming had a sick human patient and nothing else to try did he administer penicillin – with excellent results. (See www.curedisease.com for more info and examples.)

To put things into perspective, despite the supposed stringency of animal tests on drugs deemed safe for human consumption and released onto the market, two million Americans become seriously ill and approximately 100,000 people die every year because of reactions to medicines they were prescribed. This figure exceeds the number of deaths from all illegal drugs combined, at an annual cost to the public of more than US$136 billion in healthcare expenses.

Don’t be fooled by drug companies’ reassurances about the safety of their products – remember, as long as they rely on outdated, pseudo-science like animal experiments, consumers are ultimately the first human ‘guinea pigs’. I’m not against prescription drugs per se – of course some of them help people considerably and save lives, including HIV drugs – but this is despite, not because of, horrendous, painful experiments on animals. Roche’s understanding of how its contaminated products might affect humans is allegedly “evolving”. Maybe they, along with other drug manufacturers, can evolve to the point where they embrace 21st century technology that enables testing on human cells. Just a thought…

Together forever

2007-06-13T19:02:00.000-07:00

Two lesbians – life partners who’d been together “forever” – were found dead at the Villa Marin residential retirement complex in California, the Marin Independent Journal (MIJ) reported recently. It appeared that Pauline Putnam, 89, and her partner, Barbara Francisco, 80, had initiated a double suicide. The person who sent me the link to this story wrote in the subject line of the email, ‘This is incredibly sad’. But is it?

According to the MIJ, fellow resident Helen Andrewsen, 86, said the couple, who’d lived at the complex for ten years, were “quiet, independent people, and it was just their choice”. Villa Marin’s Chief Executive, Tom Bucci added: “The two women were life partners. They lived their whole life together. It’s always been a very important part of them to control their destiny.” Neither women had any family he was aware of, and neither was suffering from any illness, Bucci noted.

So, here we have two old women who’d been a couple for a very long time, lived what appears to have been a happy life, shared a room, were treated well by other residents in their final years, had no family, hadn’t degenerated into serious illness, who decided to off themselves at a particular time, together. Personally I don’t find that sad; I think it’s rather beautiful. Yes, they could have lived to 100, but sooner or later, one of them would have died, leaving the other behind, feeling lonely and devastated. Instead of waiting for disease to creep into their ancient bodies and slowly (or not so slowly) take over, causing constant pain and immobility, they took a decision to exit this world, happy and together. All power to them.

Anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship with a loved one will at some stage ponder these things: Which one will die first? How? Will it be a long, drawn-out process from illness, or sudden, unexpected death? Will that kiss you gave him or her that morning as you leave for work be your last? Many of us won’t have a choice in how or when we or our partners die, but I’d like to think my girlfriend Tracie and I will get to the stage that Barbara and Pauline did – only we’ll be a pair of totally batty old bags in the vein of Bette Davis’s Baby Jane Hudson who will terrify anyone living in close proximity to us. We’ll still be dying each other’s hair at 90 (providing we still have some and if not, it’ll be wigs all round), wearing a thoroughly ridiculous amount of drag-queen make-up and dancing round the sitting-room to ‘Sisters Are Doing it for Themselves’ (in other words, nothing will have changed except our age and number of wrinkles). One day, we’ll decide it’s time to move on to the next world – for our physical bodies to expire and our souls to fly into the spiritual ether before being reincarnated into the nubile bodies of two young, beautiful supermodels – together. Here’s hoping.

La Loren

2007-06-06T19:54:00.001-07:00

There are times when it’s hammered home to me just how unlike the average journalist I am. I think it’s something to do with one of my principles in life: that social convention is there to be flied in the face of. So estranged do I feel from fellow journos sometimes that I might as well be among aliens. Nowhere was this more evident than the press conference last week for Sophia Loren, who’d flown into town as a guest of the Italian Australian Film Festival.

Having been declined a one-on-one interview with La Loren due to her “tight schedule”, I arrived at the Shangri-La Hotel (so love the name!) in the city early to secure a front-row seat in the Grand Ballroom to ensure a perfect view of the 72-year-old Italian screen goddess. Paparazzi were plentiful, along with a plethora of broadcast and print journalists looking for a quote from Sophia – including me. The first few questions weren’t exactly riveting: ‘Who was your favourite leading man?’ ‘Did you ever consider becoming a singer as you have a lovely voice?’ ‘What would you have done if you hadn’t become a movie star’? Snooooooooooze. Time to liven things up, I thought. Regular readers of this magazine will know that I have a huge thing for older, glamorous women. But – I like them to be feisty, outspoken and opinionated, too. Vacuousness is just not for me. So, with this in mind, I threw my hand up, took the roving microphone, announced myself as “Katrina Fox, journalist with SX, a weekly magazine for the gay community”, and asked my question.

“Do you support gay marriage?” Silence. Then uncomfortable murmurings from the audience. Eventually, Sophia repeats the question: “Do I support gay marriage?” Pause. Cue a frown, handwaving and flicking of hair, then: “You know, I don’t think this is the right place to talk about these kinds of things. Let’s talk about movies, let’s talk about other things … there’s so many things involved in [gay marriage].” No kidding! So many things – like a group of people not having the same human rights as others. Yep, waaaay too complicated, Sophia. Sorry to have bothered you and thought that you might have appreciated a thought-provoking question instead of the shallow, bog-standard ones you’ve had to answer over and over for the past 50 years. Silly me.

Sophia’s response, while not unexpected, was a tad disappointing, but what really got me was the round of applause from the rest of the journalists in the room at Sophia’s reply. One guy at the back even piped up, “Stupid question”. Yeah, well, didn’t hear you come up with a better one, mate, so up yours! Unfortunately I wasn’t asked to leave. That honour went to a journo from ABC’s The Chaser who asked Sophia ten zany questions in a row, ending with ‘Do you fart?’ before being escorted out by security. Hmmm. Maybe I have allies in the industry, after all.

Segregation

2007-05-30T21:31:00.000-07:00

So, a gay men’s pub in Melbourne, the Peel Hotel, has won the right to refuse entry to straight men and women, and lesbians. Should we be glad about this?

Well, first off I can appreciate that a queer pub overrun by straights can be really irritating. Being cruised by straight boys with wandering hands isn’t much fun – for lesbians, anyway. Neither is getting filthy looks from bimbos in the women’s loos for physical displays of affection with your girlfriend. (I mean, haven’t they seen a strap-on before?). Women booking a gay venue for hen nights and using the gay patrons as entertainment isn’t on either.

But is refusing entry to someone on the basis of their sexuality and gender identity really the answer? I don’t think so. For one, how on earth can it be policed effectively? Even in days of old, when the words ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’ were en vogue, it was a dodgy sort of policy. Now, with the modern ‘queer’ label, and the trend for people “not to define” their sexuality but who are on the lookout for same-sex dalliances, it becomes really messy to implement. What of the butch, Muscle Mary ‘straight-looking/straight acting’ queen who wants to get into the Peel Hotel for a bit of man-on-man rumpty-tumpty? What exactly is he going to have to do to ‘prove’ he’s gay? Suck off the doorman or the manager? Bend over for a good rogering from his boyfriend?

Interestingly, the Peel Hotel has included lesbians in the groups of undesirables it does not wish to darken its doors, apparently because they “insult and deride, and are even physically violent towards the gay male patrons”. Now, I will say here that drunk lesbians are a pain in the backside. I’ve had more than my fair share of sozzled dykes getting lairy, and in a particularly wasted moment, I myself threatened to burn down the apartment of a woman I was obsessed with unless she slept me with – it was a LONG time ago, and she’s been my girlfriend for the past 14 years (note to young lesbians: don’t try this, as neurotic lesbianism is no longer fashionable and you’re likely to have an AVO taken out against you). But not all dykes are aggressive drunks out to frighten the delicate gay men.

Neither are all straight people. So, here’s a thought: instead of refusing entry to someone because of their sexuality or gender identity, refuse it because of someone’s behaviour. If someone’s being naff, loud, obnoxious or looks like trouble, whether they’re male, female, straight, lesbian, bi, queer or other, don’t let them in, or if they are inside already, chuck them out. Because if other queer places follow the Peel Hotel’s lead, expect to see select members of the GLBT community setting up the Australian Sexuality Verification Commission who will issue Gold membership cards for the ‘real’ gays among us. The rest will sue. It won’t be pretty.

Armed and ready

2007-05-23T21:08:00.000-07:00

Whatever is the world coming to? Almost every week, SX runs a story on countries where freedom of expression is virtually non-existent – such as last week’s piece on 80 gay men being arrested in Iran, because homosexuality is illegal; or all the furore surrounding Moscow Gay Pride. We may tut and shake our heads, and thank the goddess we live in a democratic country, where we have a right to speak our minds and, if need be, take to the streets for peaceful protest. Then we read the newspapers and the horrible realisation dawns on us that actually we no longer have that right.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that “demonstrators and anyone under suspicion” can be arrested and held without bail under unprecedented police powers being brought in for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Sydney in September, which will see the arrival of George Bush and other international dignitaries. NSW Police Minister, David Campbell, reportedly said that if protesters tried to breach police lines erected around the exclusion zone which will be erected in the city, they would be locked up for the duration of the APEC meeting. Special legislation is already in place which gives the police commissioner the right to allow foreign security personnel to carry firearms, and the SAS may well be out on the streets in force. So, the plan is to keep anti-Bush, anti-war demonstrators well away from these world leaders to avoid any embarrassment to them, and if anyone dares to get close to them to express their views, they could be shot. Nice.

It gets worse. Dissident filmmaker, Michael Moore, had to sneak his latest film, Sicko, out of the US, for its debut screening in Cannes this week, and is currently under investigation by the US government for trying to help some 9/11 rescue workers by taking them to Cuba. And over in India, female civil servants are up in arms about a new rule that requires them to reveal details of their menstrual cycle. Female officers must write down their “detailed menstrual history and history of LMP [last menstrual period] including date of last confinement [maternity leave],” on an appraisal form due to come into force in March, 2008, BBC News reported. Talk about nosy!

I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if they were going to use such information for positive purposes – like providing unlimited camomile tea and free hot water bottles. Or making gifts out of tampons, courtesy of the delightful array of suggestions by the creative folks over at www.tamponcrafts.com on how to turn your tampons into something pretty or functional – from Christmas decorations, tampon earrings, a tampon toupee for dad and a colourful bouquet of tampon flowers, to a ‘blowgun’. The blurb on this device, also known as a ‘tampon shooter’, is as follows: “Safe for indoor or outdoor use, this air-powered gun fires tampon ‘bullets’ up to 20 feet.” Sod the SAS – I’m taking one of these to the APEC demo.

2007-05-16T17:37:00.000-07:00

If aliens came to earth who couldn’t speak our language and we wanted to explain ‘gay’ to them, one phenomenon could sum it up in a nutshell: The Eurovision Song Contest. I’ve been watching this on British TV since I was a kid. In fact, you could say that Eurovision turned me gay at the age of eight and set up a lifetime’s fetish for older women in blue eyeshadow and glitzy outfits, when Abba took out the top spot in 1974 for ‘Waterloo’. Eurovision is so big in the UK that parties are held, and since public tele-voting was introduced in 1998, you get to really feel a part of the whole fantabulous event. I’m pleased to report that me, my girlfriend Tracie, and a bunch of queens at our friend Bernie’s place in Brighton personally ensured Dana International’s victory nine years ago, by using the landline and our mobiles over and over to cast our votes for the Israeli trans woman.

So it was that I sat happily glued to the TV on Saturday night for the Eurovision semi-finals, and then again for three hours on Sunday night for the final. As well as indulging my inner dancing queen, the Eurovision spectacular also offered a chance for some anthropological study. The following are some observations:

Firstly, people who live in cold countries are depressed and weird. Finland’s entry, sung by a goth chick, included the lyrics, ‘Leave me alone, I feel like dying’; and they have ‘computer assembly festivals’. I kid you not. Second, feminism is alive and well at Eurovision – in addition to youthful pop bimbettes, women in their thirties and forties are encouraged to don mini-skirts and follow their dreams. Third, wind machine manufacturers make a packet out of Eurovision. Fourth, relying on just a singer or song will not win you the competition nowadays – backing dancers are essential. Nowhere was this more evident than this year’s winner, Maria Serifovic from Serbia, a rather tortured butch lass in a suit who sang about prayer and lost love in ‘Molitva’.

Maria was diplomatically described by commentator Terry Wogan as a “homely-looking girl”, while one gay blogger wrote, “She might be a lesbian.” Um … hullo? The phrase, ‘if it walks like duck, talks like a duck…’ springs to mind. If Maria’s not a dyke, she’s got to be the only one who doesn’t know it, bless her. Serbia’s director of performance sensibly decided to offset Maria’s ‘homely’ look with a bunch of high-femme gals with 1970s hair flicks that rivalled Charlie’s Angels, who danced around and touched Maria as if they were starring in a softcore lesbian porn film. The result was gorgeous. Equally stunning was the runner-up from Ukraine – a drag queen in a screaming silver outfit à la tin man from The Wizard of Oz, singing a high-energy euro-pop rave number. If that doesn’t ram home the concept of gay with the aliens, nothing will.

Mind, Body, Spirit

2007-05-10T01:07:00.000-07:00

I think I'm reasonably open-minded. I believe there are things that science can't necessarily explain, I favour some complementary health practices that sit outside allopathic medicine and I'm all for people healing their bodies and minds and expanding their spiritual awareness. But ... there were some real 'out there' services on offer at this year's Mind, Body, Spirit Festival, which took place at the weekend.

Take 'transference healing', for example, which is, according to the brochure, "a seventh dimensional frequency healing and ascension process" that works with the "lightbody" and is channelled by Alexis Cartwright, who was "divinely guided by the Spiritual Hierarchy to channel and establish the Transference Healing Process onto the planet". Right.

Or, if you've got $450 going spare, don't be surprised if you're encouraged to invest in some 'neurotech training'. This involves the purchase of a gadget called the Psychonaut, which uses specially modulated flickering light embedded in a set of glasses, which apparently "tunes the brain and body". Funny that, because high-end laser lights and a nice E at a rave club does exactly that for me. And of course there's the crystal healing brigade, who were out in force. Now, I do actually like crystals - in fact, looking at them all pretty and sparkling is quite healing in itself, so I can see their potential. But when I'm handed a leaflet on liquid crystal healing that states that each stone has a "deva" - the "single beings responsible for the creation process of the physical crystal ... they are Angels and are awaiting your call" - I feel a teensy bit weirded-out, you know?

No Mind, Body, Spirit Festival would be complete without the God Squad, who are usually good for a laugh - and free books. The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, and World Crisis Foretold were among the light reading offered by Eden Healthfoods. To give them their due, they were promoting vegetarianism, so I guess that puts a whole new spin on Eve's munching of the apple.

Stalls offering aura scans and chakra photos were abundant. As I walked by one, I heard the exhibitor ask, "Is she a journalist?" I turned around and said, "Yes, she is." He called me over and told me I had the "aura" of a journalist. Clever? Not really. Somehow I think the fact I was walking around with a notepad and pen might have given a few clues. Or that dark cloud of evil that shrouds me sometimes.

After a couple of hours I was a bit over it all. Until I spotted a stall called 'Nana May's Magic Hands'. If it were Sexpo, it could have been the perfect end to a lesbian's day. But alas, Nana May wasn't using her hands on anyone - in fact, she wasn't even there. But I did consent to a free scrub treatment by an attractive young woman and left the building with smelly fingers, which was a pleasant reminder of a one-night stand I had with a massage therapist in 1991. See, told you I was open-minded.

Gender Schmender

2007-04-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

So, another young man vents his rage against the world with guns and kills 30 people. The press coverage of the shoot-out at Virginia Tech University in the US last week unsurprisingly focused on trying to allot blame. The Daily Telegraph, with its usual dearth of integrity, offered up a story which began "This is the face of the girl who may have sparked the worst school shooting in US." Yeah, like it was really 18-year-old Emily Hilscher's fault that the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, may have been infatuated with her and unable to process his overwhelming emotions in a constructive manner. Just like it's always the fault of the mother, wife, girlfriend, sister or any random female whenever men turn violent, eh?

Obsessed as they appear to be with physical appearance (especially faces), the Tele also ran a front page story whose headlines screamed 'Face of Evil'. But was Cho, a 23-year-old guy really 'evil'? Or was he, himself, a victim of a society that has spiralled so far downwards into a pit of self-destruction in which consumerism, money and outward appearances are revered while compassion and any sense of deep communication is deemed taboo or unworthy? His alleged diatribe against "Christianity and rich kids" is pertinent. But rather than examining the societal factors that may have led to this tragic course of events, we look for skeletons in Cho's cupboard to try to explain his actions and comfort ourselves in the knowledge that he was just a "nutter", or as Lynne Eccleston, a forensic psychologist at Melbourne University, put it in The Sydney Morning Herald suffering from a "schitzotypal personality disorder", which is apparently a person "characterised by social isolation, 'bizarre' behaviour, paranoias and unusual thinking and speech." Hmm, sounds like me and most of the people I enjoy hanging out with.

Still, it's enough to make me want to embrace the all-female Utopia that lesbian separatist feminists (known nowadays as Autonomous Lesbian Feminists or ALFs for short, the irony of the acronym being a male name not withstanding) are no doubt clapping their hands with glee over as it's finally set to be a possibility. Last week SX reported that researchers in the UK have found a way to create babies from bone marrow, which could mean that two women can have a daughter of their own without any input from a man. I predict that this is the start of the lesbian revolution. Men will be phased out in these Sapphic communities that will form across the globe; underground cells will draw up manifestos outlining the takedown of the patriarchy; militant dykes clad in combat gear and stilettos (who said saving the world can't be glamorous) will roam the streets, hyped on feminist anthems like 'I'm Every Woman' or 'Sisters Are Doing it For Themselves', and surrender themselves to their hormonal impulses, unleashing centuries of repressed rage toward men in suits. At this point, disgruntled college students will be the least of the government's worries. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Sex with kids

2007-04-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

The current ire of feminists and some GLBT people towards a paedophilia website is reminiscent of the vitriol lambasted at the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which advocated the abolition of age-of-consent laws during the 1980s and 1990s, believing that gay liberation for minors implied the permission to engage in sexual relationships.

Discussions are heated in groups on MySpace, and online petitions are circulating furiously to close down Puella.com, a website which purports to show the world the ‘human face of paedophilia’. Puella.com is the brainchild of Lindsay Ashford, a male with a sexual attraction to pre-pubescent girls as young as six. As distasteful as this may sound, he claims not to have acted on his impulses nor broken the laws of any countries he has resided in. Furthermore, the site claims to offer a safe place for paedophiles (those attracted to children), as opposed to child molesters (those who act on their impulses), along with advice on how to live with this particular orientation while not breaking any laws. The site itself has been investigated by the FBI and deemed (albeit unwillingly) legal.

When people think of paedophilia it is, more often than not, man-boy or man-girl and even woman-boy attractions, but you don’t hear too much about woman-girl stuff. So, I was quite fascinated to read on Puella.com the story of one of its female columnists, known as ‘Cat’, who has had a sexual relationship with her own (lesbian) mother since the age of eight, and continues it as an adult today. “Basically I realised I was attracted to my mom, and gradually began to express that attraction until it led up to kissing and touching,” she says. “I understood why I wanted my mom to touch me a certain way – it felt amazing and loving and relaxing, and it satisfied my attraction to her.” Cat, incidentally, was conceived by artificial insemination courtesy of her mum’s best friend, a gay man, who, along with his partner, knows about and is cool with the long-term Sapphic relationship between mother and daughter.

What to make of that, eh? Being a curious puss, I tried to get an interview with Cat a few months ago when I first happened upon the site, to ask her some pressing questions, but got no response. Maybe she’s not real, or she’s reluctant to reveal her true identity to anyone outside her immediate family in case mum ends up behind bars. But as a queer community, what do we do with the ‘Cats’ who come along and throw society’s assumptions into disarray? On the one hand, we can say, ‘Way to go, onya girlfriend!’ or we can insist the relationship between Cat and her mother is wrong and that Cat has been abused. Her response to that is: “The same society that said I shouldn’t want to nibble on my mom also said that some of the finest people I knew were evil because they were gay.”

Complicated bunch, aren’t we?

Celebrity liaisons

2007-04-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

Oh here they come again. More straight female celebrities jumping on the lesbian bandwagon. First up is Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie who, according to The Sydney Morning Herald has “confessed” that she had a “series of lesbian relationships” when she was younger, in a bid to rebel against her parents and strict Catholic upbringing. What’s notable is that she feels it’s ok to “reveal” this titbit now, because it was all just a phase she was going through when she was 18. And of course, it doesn’t hurt that she’s playing a lesbian in Quentin Tarantino’s new horror film, Grindhouse. Can anyone else hear the wheels of those PR machines turning?

Next up is Jane Pratt, former editor of fashion magazine Jane, who has now “finally” admitted to a “steamy sexual encounter” with actress/producer, Drew Barrymore. AfterEllen.com reports that, years ago, Pratt alluded on shock jock Howard Stern’s TV show to having had a lesbian liaison with a famous Hollywood actress, but declined to say who it was. Now she’s spilling the beans because … you’ll never guess … her brand new show has just made its debut on Sirius Satellite Radio. Pratt allegedly told listeners she’d “had sex” with Drew, and now wants to return as a guest on Stern’s show to “tell him the truth” about their Sapphic romp. Whether we are supposed to believe the timing of her revelation is sheer coincidence and nothing whatsoever to do with ratings is unclear, and Ms Barrymore is currently remaining tight-lipped on the subject.

How the tide has turned. As SBS’s recently-screened documentary Gay Hollywood: The Last Taboo illustrated, claiming to have had queer liaisons in the past would have spelled the kiss of death for the careers of straight, bisexual or gay celebrities. Barbara Stanwyck was so far in the closet she was practically in Narnia, even though her press agent apparently later said she had “no doubt” that Babs was “intimate” with fellow screen siren, Joan Crawford. Now there’s an image thoroughly more enticing than a less-than-memorable pop singer’s same-sex teenage dalliances. Jodie Foster’s probably done the best job of keeping her gob shut about her sexual preferences. That hasn’t stopped the press speculating about it over the years though, and Out magazine has even gone so far as to put her on the cover of its May issue with the tagline ‘The Glass Closet: Why the stars won’t come out and play’.

Perhaps the real lesbians are staying in the closet so as not to be lumped in with boring faux Sapphics (Madonna, Britney anyone?). And if you’re wondering how to distinguish between the two, I refer you to the story on Reuters of Daphne Wright, a deaf, black lesbian in the US state of South Dakota who is accused of murdering and dismembering with a chainsaw a straight woman she thought was spending too much time with her girlfriend. The benchmark has been set. Message to Fergie, Jane et al – you’re not even close.

Time to read

2007-03-28T15:56:00.000-07:00

I got an email recently informing me that Gay’s the Word is thinking of closing down. Gay’s the Word is Britain’s equivalent to The Bookshop, Darlinghurst: a Mecca of GLBTIQ literature. I felt sad because I remember walking past it seven or eight times before plucking up the courage to go in during my coming-out days – unlike The Bookshop’s subtle signage, Gay’s the Word’s title says it all, and just to make absolutely sure there are no misunderstandings, it proclaims underneath ‘Gay and Lesbian Bookshop’.

Happily I got over myself, went inside and came out with a ‘Femme on the Streets, Butch in the Sheets’ t-shirt (which isn’t strictly true but I liked how it sounded) and the requisite lesbian jewellery. From then on, I spent many an afternoon browsing the shelves here and in Silver Moon Women’s Bookshop, which closed down a few years ago after two decades of providing dykes and feminists with a rich collection of reading material. Silver Moon suffered from soaring rents, while Gay’s the Word says it is “struggling financially”, mainly due to mainstream bookstores stocking GLBTIQ books and their availability from online booksellers.

So, nostalgia aside, do we still need our community bookshops? Some people, including queer celebrity authors Sarah Waters and Edmund White, think so. Waters told The Times newspaper she could “never have produced fiction of my own if Gay’s the Word hadn’t been there first, supplying other gay writers’ work”, while White said the bookshop is a “cultural centre” that must remain open. Jeanette Winterson, on the other hand, told the same newspaper that “Gay’s the Word was a brilliant shop but the very fact that it is thinking of closing may mean that its work is done”.

I can see both sides, but perhaps the question, though, should be, ‘Do we still need books?’ Those literary-lovers among you, who, like me, may enjoy immersing yourself in non-fiction that expands your mind with new ideas, or losing yourself in a novel, will no doubt scream ‘Of course we do!’ But when I hear constantly from young gay men (I’m sure there are lesbians out there too as well as young people in general) the phrase ‘I don’t read’, I wonder if the written word is on its way out. Text messages bastardising spelling and grammar do little to preserve the beauty of language, and reality TV shows like Big Brother have taken the place of the classics on the school curriculum (post-modernism has so much to answer for).

One company in the US, however, has capitalised on society’s obsession with fame and ironically brought it back to the written word. Book By You offers people the chance to star in their own personalised novel – romance, western, pirate, vampire. You co-author the book by supplying the names, features and places and can even have your own photo on the jacket. Of course, the set plots to date are all geared towards straights, which means there’s a gap in the marketplace for a queer version. Maybe they can stock them in Gay’s the Word.

Stereotypes

2007-03-21T14:27:00.001-07:00

Judi Dench's portrayal of Barbara in the film Notes on a Scandal is sending lesbians everywhere into a tizz. It tells the story of a sexually repressed old spinster dyke (Barbara) who is determined to create a 'special friendship' with Sheba, a young, beautiful and straight co-worker (Cate Blanchett) at the school where they both teach. When Barbara finds out that Sheba is having an affair with one of her students, a 15-year-old boy, she manipulates the situation to her advantage.

While acknowledging the excellent performances by Dench and Blanchett, as well as high production values, most dykes have issues with the fact that, as LOTL reviewer Belinda Hazelton put it: "Once again we have a mainstream film featuring a (very closeted) lesbian character who is psychotic, bitter and friendless." Well, I'm going to go against the pack and say that I loved Notes on a Scandal.

Stereotypes are not all bad. I know I've moaned about growing up with The Killing of Sister George (in which Beryl Reid portrays a sad, ugly old dyke desperate to retain her sado-masochistic relationship with a young, pretty Susannah York but ends up alone), as my only model for lesbianism, but the film is 40 years old. When I watched it in the 1980s, there was still a dearth of lesbian role models, but since then, there's been a plethora of films portraying dykes in a positive light. From attractive high-school cheerleaders to ordinary girls-next-door to lesbian couples doing the baby thing, we have been featured in all our diverse glory in both independent and mainstream films as well as TV shows. This year's Oscars were a veritable showcase of lesbian icons: Ellen Degeneres posed with her girlfriend Portia de Rossi and hosted the ceremony, and Melissa Etheridge thanked her wife when she collected her award. Rosie O'Donnell is a host on a major US talk show and Showtime has commissioned four series to date of dyke soap opera, The L Word. Women-loving-women have never been so popular.

So, is the occasional portrayal of a lesbian as an obsessive old battleaxe who conspires to seduce a young heterosexual woman away from her husband and two young children by whatever means necessary and who writes down her devious ploys and outlandish fantasies in a diary really so bad? I don't think so. Call me twisted if you want, but I like Barbara. I get her. I see elements of myself in her. Anyone who has felt the tumultuous emotions of desire for a straight woman and jealousy of her male partner must surely understand why Barbara sends a wreath to the fiancé of a former teacher she's captivated with – I mean, what else would you do?

Personally I think Barbara should be celebrated and put on a pedestal with the likes of self-improvement guru, Anthony Robbins. Write down your goals, then devise a strategy for reaching them, he preaches … which is exactly what Barbara does. And she loves cats. Notes to lesbians: Go see this film. Watch and learn.