Victim Of The Week: Look At This Arse!

Conversations about street harassment and consent often focus exclusively on the experiences of women – and most of its victims do identify that way – but it’s also a broader issue. Many gay men silently cope with harassment and consent within male-dominated social spaces designated for LGBT people, spaces most heterosexual people never enter. Spaces created for people like me.

The most toxic forms of masculinity pervade gayborhood mainstays such as nightclubs, bars and even the occasional cruise down the sidewalk. Yet these uncomfortable, if not traumatizing, experiences get swept under the rug – or worse, internalized as something that “just happens” and shouldn’t be taken seriously... 

Guardian online.

Derrick Clifton's story is so harrowing I must give a TRIGGER WARNING, so brace yourself, here goes...

A few summers ago, I walked home as I normally would from a gym in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, which has a high concentration of LGBT residents and business owners. With headphones in, I enjoyed a breezy afternoon stroll down Broadway Street, the wind drying my sweaty brow, soaked shirt and gym shorts. Approaching the last few blocks of my journey home, I heard loud jeers and laughs from three men walking behind me.

“Man, look at that ass,” one man said to the others, as if I wasn’t present and listening to his remarks. “Wonder if he’ll let me get a bite of that.” ...

Yup, that's right, poor Derrick was walking through a 'gayborhood' (sic) and someone said he had a nice bum - basically.

This, I am sure you'll agree, is a clear demonstration of 'how the misogyny and patriarchy imbued in rape culture targets gay and gender non-conforming men'.

Yes, he actually uses 'rape culture' here!

He must have felt like Jodie Foster in The Accused and Panic Room both at the same time! ('So I quickly shuffled to my buzzer gate, slammed it behind me, and unlocked my building’s double doors in haste, rushing inside for a buffer between myself and the men on the outside.').

One is reminded of the stellar work done by Patrick Strudwick in exposing this GAY RAPE CULTURE; Smugtwit - Britain's bent bedwetter in chief - once argued persuasively that a man touching your bum in a gay club is 'sexual assault'.

So remember to take a consent form next time you're going out dancing.

James Dawson in Attitude recently asked; How Common Is Rape On The Gay Scene?

This is then rephrased as; 'Have you ever had sex - or been coerced into sex - that you didn't really want?'

Really!!?

If we can have 'micro-aggressions', I guess these must be 'micro-rapes'.

Guardian Cif seems to love these 'woe is me' exercises in victimhood; Fagburn particularly enjoyed Zach Stafford's Do my short-shorts make you feel weird about your masculinity? Good, I'm glad.

Fight the power, Zachary!

In September the Guardian published something of a classic of the genre, Why I was sweat-shamed as I waited for my coffee at Starbucks by Amy Roe.  

Yes, she actually says 'SWEAT-shamed'!

It was so widely ridiculed you'd think The Guardian might now be wary of running these 'boo hoo squish squish' articles where silly middle class people imagine they're being oppressed.  

Or am I just crap-shaming??? 

James Dawson: Not Being A Boy

“I’d like to think in 2015 being trans is so mainstream now that it won’t be an issue, but sadly there will be people who will think it’s weird, and there is the worry that there will be a tabloid backlash around a ‘trans children’s writer’... Mainly I’m just excited.”

YA author, that nice James Dawson, comes out as transitioning on BuzzFeed.

Here's his coming out statement.

PS James Dawson comes out as transgender - and urges people not to demonise Germaine Greer - Dawson said it was 'a shame' and 'disheartening' that the 'icon of feminism' held that view, The Independent. 

Good to see James speaking out against the infantile 'Ban everyone we disgree with!' crusade.

The Guardian: You Can't Beat The Classics

Fagburn's lost count of how many times The Guardian's run this awful crappy cliched photo this year.

Two hidden gayers but behind a rainbow flag!

Not sure what signals that sends out to a questioning 13 year-old.

'You may belong to the only social group so shameful the media still likes to mask you'?

Nice piece by James Dawson, though - he's here all week. x

James Dawson: This Writer Is Gay

The reason I am constantly harping on about sexuality is in the hope that some of those young people who are in hiding, can see and hear me – a vaguely successful and very happy gay man being successful and happy. My role model, Russell T Davies, was visible for me back in 1998 with Queer As Folk, so I'm happy to take a turn. I hope people will read This Book Is Gay with pride, because while we are as normal as the day is long, the rest of the world doesn't always see us that way.

James Dawson, YA (Young Adult, granddad) author.

In July, James was voted Queen of Teen books by readers, the first male author to win.

He is launching and talking about This Book Is Gay - a book about being gay for teh young gays - at Gay's The Word bookshop in London this evening. 

If you go, please give him my love. x

James Dawson: On LGBT Visibilty In Children's Books

As it's The Guardian children's books site's LGBT week I was asked to write something as both a member of the LGBT community and as an author whose novels feature LGBT characters. I dearly wish I was a merman, but alas I am just a gay man. The things I've just written may seem absurd when featuring mermaids, but this was very much my reality growing up in a small town in the north.

I was unaware gay people even existed and, when puberty hit, found myself more than a little lost. I so dearly wish there had been just one book with a character who was a bit like me – just a normal teenage guy who happened to be gay. I would have especially loved one whose sexuality did not define him.

Teenage readers now are comparatively lucky in that they do have role models in books by not only myself, but also much more famous authors like David Levithan, Patrick Ness and Cassandra Clare.

I'm my books, I choose to write human characters and start with the similarities before looking at the differences. We all love, hate, kiss and fight in the same way. We're all driven by the same variety of hungers. We all laugh, we all cry.

I just know that had there been a diverse range of people like me in books when I was growing up, I wouldn't have felt abnormal for all those years, which I see now, overwhelmingly, I am not. In 2014, it's my hope that all young LGBT people can see themselves in fiction and recognise there is a place for them in the world.

The gorgeous and talented James Dawson in the Guardian online.

For other articles in the Children's Books LGBT week see here.

And have a butchers at James's blog.

James Dawson: Queen Of Teen

The Telegraph allowed itself a manly giggle over the news that James Dawson has been shortlisted for the Queen of Teen Award for his debut novel, Hollow Pike.
'Queen Of Teen... Could Be A Man'
"The next Queen of Teen could be a King. James Dawson, a former journalist turned author, has become the first man to be shortlisted for the fiction prize voted for by teenagers...
"If Dawson wins he will, of course, have to wear the victor's 'Queen of Teen tiara'. Well, it is an age of equality".
Tee hee-hee.
Telegraph readers will doubtless love to hear that the lovely Mr Dawson says he'd love nothing more than this. 
"Let me explain why I’m so keen to be the queen," James writes on his website. "Number one, there is a crown involved. AN ACTUAL CROWN.
"More importantly though, when I was a little boy, I used to love wrapping myself up in my mum’s gold duvet and pretending to be a character called ‘Princess Susan’ (what? I was like five!). I made my sister be my servant, Sally (sorry, Joanne). However, I was always getting told off for this because ‘it’s not what little boys do’. This sense of ‘doing things wrong’ continued well into my twenties. I thought there were certain things boys shouldn’t do or say just because they are boys.
"This is obviously HORSESHIT. No-one, male or female, should ever feel limited on the basis of gender. I like to think, that if I could get anywhere near that crown it’d send out a beacon-like message to all the teenage readers that GENDER MEANS NOTHING. Everyone needs to feel like a queen now and then."
Yes, young Mr Dawson is a big old queen - for more see his website again.
It's something that's clearly informed Hollow Pike; a book about high school and witchcraft and witch-hunts, both old and new - where Heathers meets The Crucible in the Yorkshire Dales.
Heck, he even hangs a whole chapter around Lady Gaga.
Obviously, I'm a gay journalist so I'm saying all this without actually having read the book (yet), but it does sound ever so good. 
The Queen of Teen Award is voted for by, you, the public.
So vote James - a queen for Queen.

PS Obviously it would be daft to vote for him just because he's gay - it's more that I see him as future boyfriend material and am trying to get in his good books.