Colour Me Pink

A straight-as-a-plumbers-rule Ozzie commentator comes out in favour of gay marriage.

Sam de Brito, whom I've mentioned before (1, 2) writes in his blog post:

We're a nation whose unofficial national anthem, I Still Call Australia Home, was written and sung by a gay man - Peter Allen - and that sports a city - Sydney - second only to San Francisco as a global gay mecca.

As of last week we have a gay man, the Greens' Bob Brown, holding the balance of power in our Senate, our federal Minister for Finance Penny Wong is a proud lesbian, some of our most famous musicians are gay - Sam Sparro, Missy Higgins, Paul Mac - and I reckon our gay Olympians have won more medals than straights (but let's not go there).

Surely homosexuals are as part of the fabric of this country as meat pies and Holden cars? Or so I thought - but then along came my neighbour to remind me otherwise.

In the US, for example, 2010 was the first time an outright majority of people (52 per cent) told Gallup pollsters they believed gay and lesbian relations were "morally acceptable".

This has resulted in the funny-if-it-wasn't-so-sad spectacle of people who object to gay rights casting themselves as victims, an oppressed minority forced to watch the horror of fashionably dressed men holding hands at the supermarket.

Personally, I'm astonished that my country, which once prided itself on thumbing its nose at the conservative majority, now feels it's acceptable to alienate its citizens just because of who they shag.

Good on you Sam!  And thank you.

[Cartoon by Leunig, a straight left-leaning Victorian cartoonist]

Fathercraft

One of the dysfunctional things our version of male culture does is to make it seem that fathers must be ogres. "Just wait till your father gets home!" -- and the child dreads the homecoming of his dad, and the dad dreads the punishing he's pushed into.

Yet my experience of fathers -- mine, and being a dad myself -- is quite different. I know how much my father loved me and my sisters, and how much he loved his grandchildren. I love my children so much it's impossible to describe. And I loved them from day one, in fact, in the case of my daughter, from when I heard her heartbeat through the stethoscope long before she was born. Tenderness and insensate love and affection are what I think of when I think of fatherhood. It's ironic -- is it not? -- that we use the verb "mother" in a quite different sense to the verb "father". Fathering a child means you just pressed the button. Mothering it means so much more. And that's all wrong. "Fatherly" gets it right, though, so all is not lost.

Sam de Brito's latest blog post is about the myth of the stern, unloving, harsh Victorian and Edwardian father. Some of the comments are interesting, about how many fathers in the mid-twentieth century were harsh and brutal. It seems clear that the dictates of the culture of maleness have made it hard for many men to be tender towards their children. It's seen as a sign of weakness, a flaw. Real men do not have warm, tender feelings. Not even towards their children. But what a horrible space to live in, if you are the father or the child!

I remember when I came back from a year's stay in England to visit my parents and I hugged my dad. I'd realised now that I was a father what a good father he'd been, and how much I loved him. And he was totally embarrassed: an old-school man, he'd been brought up that it was unseemly to show your emotions. I never hugged him again, and I wonder now whether he wished I did.

(The photo comes from here)

Homoeroticism

A fascinating post from a straight bloke who seems to understand men in all their varieties, from rough western suburbs gabbas to smooth and poncey champagne quaffers. Sam de Brito is an interesting man, prepared to be different. In one post he dressed as a transvestite just to see what it was like. Only someone very sure of his sexuality could do that and write about it afterwards.

A quote from his blog post:

Our male mates are our "intimates" and, to allow someone to get this close to us, there needs to be some level of erotic attraction and that, my friends, is homoeroticism.

Professor Lynn Jamieson, the head of the school of sociology at the University of Edinburgh has defined intimacy as "close association, privileged knowledge, deep knowing and some form of love" and this surely describes the best of male friendships.

Homoeroticism has been acknowledged to be an integral part of male friendship for thousands of years and is reflected in the art of Ancient Greece, the Renaissance, all the way through to last century when the gloves really came off.