Orlando: Tragedy

The mayor of Orlando described the shooting deaths of 50 people in a gay nightclub yesterday as something that “we never imagined and is unimaginable”. It was the worst mass shooting in American history but the mayor was wrong. It was all too imaginable.

From the first shots, barely distinguishable from the pounding music, to the panicked phone calls and the images of the dead and wounded, the process that these atrocities set in motion is horrifyingly familiar. The grieving will take decades, by which time successive massacres will have eclipsed the public’s memories of this one.

Twice as many innocents died in the Pulse nightclub early on Sunday as at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut four years ago. That was the last time the White House and its allies were moved to try to galvanise support for reform of US gun laws. Whether they will try again now remains to be seen, but the Pulse shooting challenges the United States in more ways than by dint of sheer body count. It brings together America’s anguished, heart-on-sleeve debates on gun rights, gay rights, civil rights and terrorism, all at one suburban crime scene.

This mass murder poses a test, first of all, for law enforcement. Local politicians and the FBI suggested that Omar Mateen, identified by police as the dead gunman, may have been a “lone-wolf” terrorist acting with the encouragement of Islamist extremists. If so it would not be surprising.

Since the murder of 14 people by Islamists in California last December, Isis leaders have urged other followers abroad to attack civilian targets when military ones are too heavily protected. Yet this was a gay club on gay pride weekend. The suspect’s father said that his son had recently been angered by the sight of two men kissing in Miami. Discerning the precise motive will do little to console the bereaved, but it might help police to protect the public and politicians to protect the traditions of tolerance that most Americans hold dear.

Times editorial.  

Brace yourself for a tidal wave of sentimental vomit on this.

Edit: We have a winner! This boo hoo squish squish solipsistic guff from Laurie Penny is one of the most barftastic things you'll read.

PS Tuesday's Guardian editorial; Homophobia after Orlando: to fix it, we must first face it.

Laurie Penny: Poor Little Rich Girl

When I was at school in Brighton, nobody spoke about feminism or gay rights, even though just beyond the playground walls was Kemptown, arguably one of the gayest square miles of the British Isles, stuffed with special-interest sex shops and scattered with drag queens glittering up the pavements as we waited for the school bus in our stupid posh-kid uniforms.*

Back then I didn’t have words like “genderqueer” or “non-binary” to describe my spiky tangle of teenage feelings; I only knew that I didn’t feel quite like a boy or a girl, and that I longed to wear a blazer and trousers like the boys, to cut my hair and call myself a different name. When I turned up in a suit and tie at a function to show off the scholarship kids to the governing board, I was told off by my teachers...

The Guardian.

Silly moo.

*I lived near Brighton College for many years and can not ever recall seeing 'drag queens glittering up the pavements'.

Stephen Fry: What She Said

Oh bottoms!
It seems Stephen Fry has said something stupid.
Which means it's open season on Stephen.
The "National Treasure" has become an overnight pariah.
Welcome to Hate Week.
Columnists have been queueing up to say something stupid about Stephen back.
Yesterday Stephen Fry tweeted; "So some fucking paper misquotes a humorous interview I gave, which itself misquoted me and now I'm the Antichrist. I give up... Bye bye."
He seems to have meant it - today his Twitter account is "no longer in service".
A big queeny hissy fit?
Or another nervous breakdown and a moonlit flit to France, or worse?
Paul Flynn, the (very good) journalist who interviewed Fry for Attitude, says Fry was not misquoted.
Going back and looking at the interview in Attitude makes things none the clearer.
Fry is talking about gay teenage gay crushes, and crashes right into the stuff about womens' sexuality, but so sharply it looks like there are a few lines missing.
"I get an enormous amount of mail from young gay people who are in love with people in their school. 'How do I tell them? If I do tell them, will they beat me up? I think they maybe know?' It's so touching and sweet but also one must never underestimate the overmastering power of the emotion they feel. It consumes them. Those things are not to be sniffed or laughed at. They do consume you. I think most straight men feel they disgust women. They find it difficult to believe that women are as interested in sex as they are. For good reason. If women liked sex as much as men there would be straight cruising areas..."
You know the rest.
But how on Jupiter did Stephen Fry get there from there - a spectacular leap of the imagination about the nature of desire?
Whatever, please note, he was making an almost banal point; men - straight or gay - are more interested in sex than women, they're more sexually driven.
Is there any debate about this as a generality?
Stephen Fry does have some odd views about sex - and for many years was celibate as he seemed rather disgusted by it himself.
Or by himself.
But can we keep to what he actually said in the Attitude interview, please?
He did not say; "Women don't really like sex" - as it was put in the headline to The Observer article that began this perfect shitstorm.
Its author, Polly Vernon, editorialised a prophecy; "the remarks... are likely to be roundly dismissed by those who have embraced the idea of women's ability to have unemotional, uncommitted sex as an empowered lifestyle choice."
And then she found two writers to do just that.
Susie Orbach told Vernon; "Why would he believe that women could be so disgusted by men?"
He didn't - Fry said; "I think most straight men feel they disgust women."
Fagburn presumes he meant not because men are inherently disgusting, but because men have very dirty minds.
The Telegraph today quoted Germaine Greer; "Stephen Fry is clearly under a delusion that he is an authority on female sexuality. Well, if he thinks that women are not interested in genital encounters with total strangers then he is absolutely right. But to conclude that we are therefore uninterested in sex is madness."
This was a constant riff, with a distinct whiff of homophobia in the way Fry's sexuality was constantly referred to; "What does he know - he's gay?"
"Stephen Fry offering up his views on female sexuality is a bit like Wayne Rooney spouting forth on Aristotle..." (Bryony Gordon).
Though straight commentators felt free to pronounce forth about gay sex - or "homosexual intercourse" (Laurie Penny, The Guardian)
We were told it is "bad, filthy, grubby, disgusting and dislocated from the emotions." (Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent)
But Stephen Fry didn't say women were "uninterested" in sex, just not as interested as men.
By Chinese whispers, this was even twisted into 'Stephen Fry: Women Hate Sex'.
This is why it all really blew up, Fry was painted as colluding in the denial of all female sexuality, and of female sexual pleasure; viz Germaine Greer's now famous phrase "The Female Eunuch".
Or worse, that he hated women; a collective slur on gay men every bit as offensive as the above.
In The Independent, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown declared; 'Fry's misogynistic view is of women as evil temptresses'.
But by what warped logic is what he said misogynistic?
And how can you accuse him of thinking women are "temptresses" if you say he said they don't like sex?
And moreover how the fuck can you justify claiming he thinks women are "evil" - an incredibly low blow.
Alibah-Brown set about demolishing a "national treasure" - her words - with (anti?) gay abandon.
She even fell back on a variation of that old bigot's standby; "Some of my best friends are..."
"Most of my good gay friends truly like femininity. But I have known some phobic ones too..."
But what has he said that was "phobic"?
Slightly silly, yes - but he probably meant it to be.
Offensive? Clearly it was, if only to those who wanted to be offended.
But there simply was no misogyny in what he actually said.