by Iain Dale
Call me a crazy old physiognomist, but my theory is that you can always spot a lesbian by her big thrusting chin. Celebrity Eskimo Sandi Toksvig, Ellen DeGeneres, Jodie Foster, Clare Balding, Vita Sackville-West, God love them: there’s a touch of Desperate Dan in the jaw-bone area, no doubt the better to go bobbing for apples.
Once I picked my less-than-chiselled chin off the floor, I read on. There was more…
I myself can recall heaps of furious married dragon-women in Wales, who wore wrinkle-resistant Crimplene trousers and sublimated their feelings working with horses or running Girl Guide camps.
Obviously, Mr Lewis is familiar dealing with stereotypes. He continued:
If actresses, they played tweedy old maids or sour housekeepers, like Agnes Moorehead. Or perhaps they became dog breeders or managed a garden centre. Maybe they became nuns. If you were Noele Gordon, you ran the gamut.
He concludes with this stonker of a question: ‘Did Dusty really have an affair in Mustique with Princess Margaret? If I am sceptical it is only because Hanoverians have small chins.’ No, really.
Katy then reminded me that my company was due to be publishing Mr Lewis’s next book. I replied: ‘Fuck me gently. Are we really publishing him?’ It turned out that contracts had not yet been signed, so I decided to tell Mr Lewis to find someone else to publish his book as I didn’t, and don’t, want to be associated with someone who can write such utter homophobic garbage.
So, I’ve burned bridges with one of The Spectator and the Mail on Sunday’s leading book reviewers. Hey ho. Sometimes commercial considerations have to take a back seat.
Had I not done this, I couldn’t have looked myself in the mirror – let alone Katy and several other members of staff who had expressed similar outrage.
Roger Lewis is a highly respected, well-connected and prolific book reviewer. Indeed, he’s reviewed a great many of our books in the past. The decision that I made and the action that was taken could conceivably come back and bite us. But the company’s not called Biteback for nothing.
We naturally informed Lewis that we were pulling his book. His reaction? ‘I can’t stand political correctness and the denial of freedom of speech that it can (and does) impose. I think Iain Dale sounds an idiot, with no sense of humour. It was a brilliantly written piece, and funny.’ Even if he does say so himself.
I don’t like political correctness either, and I know something funny when I see it. This wasn’t funny, or even remotely amusing. What I do not understand is why The Spectator saw fit to publish it in the first place.
Homophobia needs to be called out whenever and wherever it raises its ugly head, even at some commercial or public relations cost. If we just ignore such things, what kind of people are we?
Writing in that style about Jewish people or ethnic minorities would not be considered acceptable, so how can it be acceptable to write in that manner about lesbians?
By the way, Katy Scholes has a lovely chin. And she thrusts it very well. So she tells me.
Prostitution – should it be legalised?
An episode of the final series of the superb Danish politico-drama Borgen concerned itself with the vexed subject of legalising prostitution. Like the legalisation of drugs, it’s a subject politicians shy away from debating in real life.
Most people labour under the illusion that prostitution is illegal in this country. It isn’t. Not quite. Exchanging money for sexual services is legal. However, soliciting in a public place, kerb-crawling, pimping and owning or managing a brothel remain outside the law. Paying for sex with anyone who has been forced into it is also illegal and you can be prosecuted even if you weren’t aware of it. It is also illegal to buy sex from anyone under eighteen, even though the age of consent is sixteen. So now you know.
Sex laws are always tricky to draft and usually tend to lag about twenty years behind the way society has progressed in its thinking or tolerance. Society still looks down on those who sell sex, and even more so on those who buy it, but perhaps not as much as in previous ages. One explanation for this gradual acceptance of prostitution is that many women think nothing of paying men for sex nowadays, something that would have been unthinkable even twenty years ago. Also, gay prostitution is much more commonplace than it once was, and is seen by many in the gay community as much more acceptable, ‘normal’ and less shameful than it is by society more generally. The internet has a lot to answer for. Sites like Gaydar, Grindr and a multitude of others are quite happy to allow male escorts to play their wares.
I remember when I lived in Germany in 1980, I was driving past a building on the outskirts of town and asked my friend what it was. ‘Das ist ein Haesschen Bar,’ he said, and winked in a knowing way.
‘A bunny bar?’ I thought to myself. ‘They eat baby rabbits there?’
Well, I was eighteen and very naïve. Bear in mind that this was a rather conservative-minded town of 25,000 people in the middle of nowhere and it had its own licensed brothel.
These brothels are licensed by the local Bundesland; they are very far from being seedy and the women who work there do so entirely voluntarily. They work in a secure, clean and healthy environment and submit themselves to regular health checks. Their customers are closely monitored. That doesn’t mean other forms of prostitution don’t take place in Germany – they clearly do. But the Germans have a far less puritanical approach to the sex industry than we do in this country, and they are none the worse for it. The thought of such an establishment just outside Tunbridge Wells is a delicious thought, but, frankly, it isn’t going to happen any time soon. More’s the pity.
Over the last ten years, the nature of prostitution in this country has changed, with a growing number of the women involved in it being trafficked into this country for the specific purpose of pimping them out for sex. On top of that, the need for drugs has encouraged more and more women (and young boys) into prostitution as the only way of feeding their habit. Often, pimps force their women to take drugs as a means of controlling them.
So, we now have two very different types of prostitutes – those who are being controlled by others, and those who do it entirely voluntarily. I suppose it has always been so, but the proportions have changed dramatically in recent years.
The last government tried to address the problem by introducing a law saying that men who knowingly pay for sex with a trafficked girl will be charged with rape. In addition, men who have sex with a woman controlled by a pimp will be fined £1,000. I think they did it for the right reasons, but it seems to me that a law that relies on the word ‘knowingly’ is incredibly difficult to enforce.
A female Labour MP once told me she has always argued for the legalisation of prostitution as she thinks it would effectively make the trafficking of girls redundant.
It seems, on the surface, that there are far fewer issues surrounding exploitation in the world of gay prostitution, but let’s not run away with the idea that there aren’t any problems. Research suggests that a large number of gay escorts use their income to fund a drug habit, which makes it less of a lifestyle choice, more of a means to an end. It may not be traffickers or pimps who are exploiting gay escorts, but drug suppliers certainly are.
It is surely time we tried to have an adult debate about the legalisation and lawful regulation of prostitution. It has always seemed ironic to me that the very women who shout loudest on the abortion issue – that it is a woman’s right to do with her body what she likes – are the very same women who would prevent a woman from selling her body for sex if that is what she chooses. They would ban prostitution altogether. If it were actually possible, they might have a point.
Sex is a commodity and always has been, since time immemorial. If we accept that prostitution has always existed and always will, does it not make sense for it to be legalised and properly regulated – to the benefit of both the purveyor of sex and consumer of it?
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity
OK, I admit it: I am as vain as the next man. And,
let’s face it, nowadays men are probably just as vain as women, and, in many cases, even more so. Whether it’s about our hair, skin, beard trim or the way our pubes look – we care. Not just care, but care obsessively, in many cases. And, if the gay stereotype means anything, gay men care just that little bit more than their straight friends. We like to look our best. It’s not about looking good to pick up our next shag; we just like to be admired. Having said that, at the age of fifty-two, it becomes slightly more difficult – unless one is trying to attract the type of man who likes to whisper ‘Daddy’ into your ear.
Trouble is, I can’t actually remember the last time I had a ‘good hair’ day, largely because I haven’t really got enough of it any longer to notice. It’s either fallen out or been shaved down to a number two (that’s a clipper number before your mind goes down a more scatological route), and what’s left has gone a rather bracing shade of silver. Believe it or not, I used to have a very full head of brown, slightly curly locks. If I could change one part of the ageing process, it would be to have a glorious head of hair again. When it started going grey in my late thirties, I experimented with dyeing it, but, frankly, it looked ridiculous so I let nature take its course.
But, an email I received recently gave me a slight pause for thought.
It came from a leading hair transplant clinic and, believe it or not, they were offering me a free hair transplant (worth up to £25k, no less) if I would agree to endorse their services in adverts and in columns like this. I did go so far as to check out this wasn’t the equivalent of a Nigerian ‘you’ve been left £5 million in a will’ scam, but they were very reputable and some quite well-known people had indeed been treated by them. But my reply was fairly swift and to the point: ‘Thanks, but not for me.’ Perhaps I am not quite as vain as I (or you) thought, after all. The trouble is I know my own reaction when I see people who try desperately to cover up their hair loss or have transplants. Some are more successful than others, but the ones who aren’t successful look ridiculous. I’m not going to name names, but we all know who we’re talking about. In essence, I’d rather be ridiculed for a natural baldy look, than a hair transplant that didn’t go quite to plan.
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. Which is why many men over the age of thirty have invested in a nose- and ear-hair clipper. Yuck, I can hear the twinks among you saying. Well, don’t worry, mates – it’ll come to you all soon enough too. Get to the age of thirty, or forty if you’re lucky, and random hairs start springing out all over the place. Then they multiply. All over the place. This is massively unfair. After all, women have to wait until the menopause to experience anything similar.
Personal grooming for men is now big business in the UK. Whether it’s skin cream, moisturising lotions or grooming kits, more and more of us view these things as part of our daily ablutions. And whether we’re gay or straight, we’re not afraid to tell other people about our grooming habits. Even twenty years ago, if a man admitted to using moisturiser, everyone would automatically think it was an incredibly camp thing to do. No longer.
But we still haven’t reached a time when men wearing even light make-up is considered socially acceptable. Whenever I go on TV, they cake it on. Sky News even has a blow-torch instrument, which I gather is nicknamed the ‘blow job’. I know I look far better when I am ‘powdered up’ and, frankly, I’d keep it on all day if it were up to me. But, in 2014, that’s still one step too far!
Gays and the gogglebox
Think about the gay characters you see in TV and movie dramas and then think about how many of them accurately reflect your life or the characters of your gay friends. Not many, are there?
On the positive side, there are many more gay characters in soaps and other TV shows, but they do tend to be of a ‘type’. The three main gay TV chat show hosts are all as camp as a row of tents: Alan Carr, Graham Norton and Paul O’Grady. Nothing wrong with that, but it plays into a completely over-the-top gay stereotype.
Even EastEnders, the show that broke new ground in the late 1980s by screening the first gay soap kiss, fell for the gay stereotype ‘muscle Mary’ character Christian.
In Coronation Street, Sean Tully plays an uber-camp barman whose ex-boyfriend Marcus – a not overly camp male nurse (played by Charlie Condou) – has now suddenly started a relationship with the lovely Maria, as if this is quite normal for someone who, up until that point, had been a gay man with a predilection for cock that had never been in doubt. I know soaps exaggerate for effect, but I have never come across a gay man in his thirties who suddenly developed a penchant for lady gardens. Talking of which, the soap should be praised for its portrayal of Sophie Webster’s coming-of-age as a lesbian. They’ve done it without resorting to any trace of a stereotype and even some full-on girl-on-girl snogs have failed to attract the attention of the Daily Mail.
But the ‘normal’ gayers in the broadcast media are few and far between. Maybe it’s just the shows I tend to watch, but spotting a ‘normal’ gay man or woman on TV seems as rare as a memorable speech by Nick Clegg.
Waterloo Road, the edgy school drama, is an honourable exception. Over the course of ten series they have run a string of gay-related storylines, each populated with totally believable characters. In the recent series they even handled the controversial subject of a fourteen-year-old girl who wanted to be a boy and was sensitively mentored by her lesbian teacher Nikki Boston, played by the excellent Heather Peace. Not too many years ago, the BBC would have been hounded by the Daily Mail for this storyline. No longer. When Peace joined the show three series ago, my heart sank. An ex-army officer with a dodgy lesbian stereotypical dress sense seemed to be what we were in for. But she made the character her own (God, I sound like Louis Walsh) and more importantly made it believable. Similarly, the coming-out story of Josh Stevenson, played by William Rush, was a textbook example of how to impart a social message without going over the top. The reactions of Josh’s father, his teenage contemporaries and his teachers will have mirrored those of real-life parents, kids and teachers all over the country.
Other TV dramas could learn a lot from the producers of Waterloo Road.
One of the few places on TV and radio where you find completely ordinary gay people is in the world of news and current affairs. By saying ordinary, they are actually, generally, fairly extraordinary people, but the thing they have in common is that most people wouldn’t even know they are gay. Some of them have been open about their sexuality, though others don’t see the need to be. And that’s fine.
But when you think of the likes of Jane Hill, Clare Balding, Evan Davis, Eddie Mair, James Max, Stephen Dixon or Paddy O’Connell, you don’t automatically think ‘gay’. OK, in Paddy’s case I’ll make an exception, but only when he’s presenting the Eurovision semis on BBC Three.
But you get my drift. And, the thing is, they are people who’ve made it in their chosen area for their competence. Their sexuality has played no role in what they have achieved either in a negative or positive way. And isn’t that just the way it should be? Equality will only be achieved in this country when our sexuality becomes almost an irrelevance.
Just as I cringe whenever I hear the phrase ‘the gay actor’ or ‘the gay Labour candidate’, I inwardly smile whenever I see an article about a gay person of note that doesn’t even mention their sexuality because it’s just not relevant to the piece. I well remember my irritation when, many years ago, I was described in The Observer, by their left-of-centre political editor, as ‘Iain Dale, the gay Conservative candidate’. It wasn’t that I was ashamed. Far from it. But I was a political candidate who happened to be gay, not the other way around. They didn’t do it again.
Shall we get married?
Six years ago, my partner and I got married. Well, that’s how we viewed it at the time. My partner never refers to our ‘civil partnership’. He always talks about ‘our wedding’. So, when equal marriage was introduced, we sort of scratched our heads and wondered what the point of it all was for us. Th
e whole concept of an ‘upgrade’ seemed so cold, full of logic but with no romance. And, in many ways, it still does.
John and I have been together for nineteen years. The year 2015 marks our twentieth anniversary together. In some ways we’re total opposites, but we have a relationship that works for us. We both have our idiosyncrasies, our little foibles and our differences, but in all that time we have never had a major row or ever (as far as I know) been on the verge of splitting up. After so long, life without each other is almost unimaginable.
So, if we already consider ourselves ‘married’, what on earth is the point of ‘upgrading’? As far as I can see, in terms of the law, getting ‘properly married’ would give each of us the same rights over each other’s pension that a straight couple would have. And, er, that’s about it. Or is it?
Not quite.
Marriages are solemnised by a prescribed form of words. Civil partnerships just involve signing a legal form with no words having to be spoken, although they can be if the two people wish. We did.
For some reason, marriages are recorded on paper while civil partnerships are recorded electronically. Don’t ask me why that is. It just is.
Don’t laugh, but you could annul a marriage if, at the time of the wedding, the other party had a venereal disease. You can’t annul a civil partnership for the same reason. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when civil servants discussed that one!
If you’re in a straight marriage, you can get divorced on the grounds of adultery. Both in a civil partnership or a gay marriage, you can’t cite adultery as grounds for divorce because the poor civil servants couldn’t decide on a definition of adultery in gay circles. Well, I ask you. Did they need someone to draw a diagram?
I’d love to explain how people who are married get enhanced pension arrangements that people who are in CPs don’t get, but, frankly, pensions both bore and confuse me. So just trust me on this one. If you’re in a CP and one of you has a rather stonking pension entitlement, for God’s sake go for an ‘upgrade’ – or you (and your beloved) may live to regret it!
