Category: Blog posts

Originally published in ABC The Drum, 3 January 2012

The Labor Government set itself up for failure when it promised a surplus this financial year. Instead of bowing to Opposition pressure, the ALP must lead in the economic debate, writes Simon Copland.

The Government’s announcement that it was dumping its promise for a surplus this financial year signifies one of the most frustrating elements of this latest term of ALP Government.

While the decision was lauded by economists and reflects the general views of the public, it is likely to end up hurting the Government heavily, in what can only be described as a self-inflicted wound.

The way I see it, good governments really have two main jobs. The first is to develop and manage policy and programs to tackle the major issues of the day. Second however, and this is often ignored, the government needs to be an ideological leader.

To be successful in government, political parties need to be able to take the population on a policy journey with them. It is only in doing so that a government can get support for the work it is doing, in turn creating long-term change.

Here is the crux of what went wrong when it came to the surplus, and what is going wrong with much of the ALP’s term in government.

It’s been pretty clear for a while that very few in the ALP, and particularly few in the broader left, saw the need for a surplus in this financial year. The decision to go to the last election with a deadline for a surplus was entirely political. It was based almost solely on pressure from the Coalition about the Government’s ability to manage a budget, and fear of attacks on its economic credibility.

In making such a decision therefore the Government failed to provide leadership in the economic debate. In going to the last election, they had two choices: they could stand up and argue why we didn’t need a surplus or why we needed to be flexible on a surplus, or it could succumb to Coalition pressure to set a deadline for its implementation. In succumbing to pressure, the ALP bought solely into the Coalition’s framing of the debate – a conservative ideological framing that was never going to work for the ALP.

The Government therefore set itself up for failure. It either delivered a surplus that its members didn’t want, and that would (and has) require cuts to programs that it held dear. Or alternatively, and this is the situation we are now facing, it could drop the surplus, follow good policy, but be derided as a party who break promises for political gain.

And you can see this narrative already playing out. Despite the cheers from economists, and the polling that showed the vast majority of people don’t care that much about the surplus, the decision is already hurting the ALP. The day following the surplus being dropped, the Daily Telegraph ran a front page story ‘Gillard breaks third promise as $1 billion surplus axed’. Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey took a similar tact, tweeting at one point:

“I see PM has broken her holidays to go to a folk festival. Shame the PM didn’t front up to apologise for breaking 400 promises for a surplus.”

And if you think that this is a one-off mistake by a government worried about economic management, then you only need to look at the other two ‘broken promises’ the Daily Telegraph pointed out to see how this weakness is really within the blood of the ALP.

First, there was the ‘there will be no carbon tax under a Government I lead’. Amongst all the discussion about that line, one question has never really been answered, ‘why did the Prime Minister ever say that?’

Given the force in which the Government has defended the carbon price it is clearly something they (now) believe in. It was always the sort of policy you could see an ALP government being willing to support. The pain they are feeling therefore is one that is largely around an early refusal to fight for what was potentially a strong policy. The line was a political statement based on fear of attacks from the right.

The same can be said about asylum seekers. Whilst this may have changed somewhat in the last year, it is clear most in the ALP find mandatory offshore detention repulsive. Ever since Tampa however, the ALP has been trapped in a debate that has been framed on Coalition terms. Faced with fear of community backlash, and an attack campaign from the Coalition, the ALP has refused to take the debate on, leaving us with a policy that is far to the right of anything Howard ever gave us and is doing the ALP no good.

While we can have a go at how politicians and the media are unable or unwilling to adapt to changes in circumstances (a needed criticism), the surplus debacle is the epitome of what has been frustrating about this latest term of government. Good government isn’t just a technocratic dream to ‘develop policy to solve problems’. Governments also need take leadership on the major issues facing the day, providing an ideological basis for decisions they make.

With a constant threat of being attacked however, this is something the ALP has constantly refused to do, leaving them looking like liars, who constantly backfill on policies for political gain.

Dear anyone who made a sexist, homophobic, racist, transphobic, or any other discriminatory comment last year.

2012 was a big year for you all wasn’t it? We had some biggies last year; a horse being named sportswoman of the year, homosexuality being called worse for people’s health than smoking, being told that women were ‘destroying the joint’. It was a big year for bigoted statements.

I have to say I understand. It’s an easy thing to do. I can even imagine how it happened. Maybe you were chatting with some mates about your next piece and with a few beers in you naming a horse the ‘sportswoman of the year’ seemed like a great joke. Maybe you were making some comments about a political enemy behind closed doors that you thought no one would ever hear. Hey, you may just identify as a bigot and believe this stuff (if that’s the case, then this article probably isn’t for you). Now, I’m not saying that this is an excuse. You probably should have got how awful your comments were before you put words to paper. All I’m saying though is that I understand how it happened.

And of course therefore, I see how you could never have predicted the sort of reaction you received. You know, and everyone else should know, that you’re not a sexist, or homophobic, or a racist. You’re not a bigot. And, despite the way I may react to what you say, I probably believe you (although I definitely know some of you – looking at you Jim Wallace – probably do identify as a bigot in some way. Again this article is not for you). For you, it was a just a joke, or maybe some just some charged up language. Can’t we all just bloody well lighten up?

Yet, in looking back on 2012, and a pretty big year of discrimination, I think it’s maybe about time you, and I, started to think about what we’re saying. Because in many ways I don’t think it was your comments that caused the real stir, but in reality your reaction had the greater impact.

As writers, people who make public comment, and even just as members of our community, I think it’s our responsibility to be constantly thinking about the impact our words have on others. As a writer myself, I try to be constantly aware of the potential impact my writing could have. In fact I obsess over it, and am constantly amazed at the reactions it does have. I’m pretty sure all public commentators work like this to some level.

Yet, there is a difference between you and me. Maybe it’s because I’m gay. I’m one of those minorities that we all love to laugh at and have therefore expressed annoyance, even outrage at someone else’s joke, and then been told to lighten up.

But maybe through that experience I’ve learnt something important about being a writer, a commentator, and just a human being. Because, in being surprised at how people react to our comments, I think it’s important we start to actively think about what we are saying. Part of the responsibility of being someone in the public space, is to be constantly, and actively, thinking about the impact of our work. We have to be thinking about it all the time – both how our jokes will give some people a laugh, but also how it may hurt some others.

And if we don’t think of ourselves as bigots, what that means is actively standing in people’s shoes and thinking about their life experiences with every word you write or every word you say. Yeah, I understand how you don’t get how people have reacted to you – that sort of reaction is just probably not within your world view. But as a person, it is your responsibility to think about that – to think about your readers – and most importantly to question whether what you are doing is hurting others.

And unfortunately, that’s not what I’ve seen from many of you. For example Phil Rothfield (who names a horse the sportswoman of the year), as the reaction to your piece spread, I saw you tell a pretty prominent comedian and feminist, Wendy Harper, to ‘pull her head in’. Alan Jones, your press conference after the ‘dying of shame’ comments may have been one of the worst I’ve ever seen. The amount of times I’ve seen politicians, commentators and comedians arch their back up about some comments just makes me ill. And I can understand why – you probably feel defensive about it – it’s about your reputation.

In doing so however, you’ve failed a basic test as a human being and a commentator. When you get a reaction like this, you have to listen, think, and reflect. You have to put yourself in other people’s shoes, and then even if you still don’t agree with them you may start to get a sense of where they’re coming from.

Everybody makes mistakes – we all at times make jokes or comments that are insensitive to others. Everybody insults somebody at some point of time or another. But the true test of a decent person, and importantly, a decent commentator, is your ability to reflect on why you may have insulted someone, and even think about how you could stop yourself from doing it again. If you can’t even do this, then you probably shouldn’t be saying anything at all.

Yesterday, Christy Wampole wrote a piece in the New York Times titled How to Live Without Irony. In a long piece, Wampole takes a look at the tale of the hipster, providing a cultural critique of our new cultural phenomenon.

Wampole’s argument is hard to describe in one go, but here goes. Her argument is that the cultural phenomenon of hipsterism is based around irony, or living an ironic life. In doing so hipsterism represents a cultural void in Generation X – an attempt to relive the success of the baby boomers in order to fix the cultural weakness of the current generation. Furthermore, Wampole argues that hipsterism also represents an emptyness in young generations, a cultural phenomenon that represents our lack of passion for the real things in life and our need to replace this passion with irony about everything that we surround ourselves with. This leads to a disengagement within young people – a disengagement with the good things in life, and a disengagement with the political processes in life.

Let me start by saying that I don’t identify myself as a hipster. With that in mind, I think Wampole has some really interesting points about the cultural realities of today and the potential long-term impacts they will have on our society. However, I get tired every time I read articles about my ‘youth’ and more importantly, criticising our complete ‘lack of culture’. Even more annoyingly, I get constantly frustrated with those who are ready to criticise youth culture without taking a proper look at the reasons behind the growth of these cultural phenomena.

Let’s have a look at each issue one-by-one. First, Wampole seems to take the position that hipsterism represents something of an attempt to fill a cultural void that exists within young people. As she says:

How did this happen? It stems in part from the belief that this generation has little to offer in terms of culture, that everything has already been done, or that serious commitment to any belief will eventually be subsumed by an opposing belief, rendering the first laughable at best and contemptible at worst.

In other words, hipsterism is just a response to the lack of culture that exists in the modern day. She expands on this in the way she describes hipster culture:

Manifesting a nostalgia for times he never lived himself, this contemporary urban harlequin appropriates outmoded fashions (the mustache, the tiny shorts), mechanisms (fixed-gear bicycles, portable record players) and hobbies (home brewing, playing trombone). He harvests awkwardness and self-consciousness. Before he makes any choice, he has proceeded through several stages of self-scrutiny.

Irony is the most self-defensive mode, as it allows a person to dodge responsibility for his or her choices, aesthetic and otherwise. To live ironically is to hide in public. It is flagrantly indirect, a form of subterfuge, which means etymologically to “secretly flee” (subter + fuge). Somehow, directness has become unbearable to us.

Whilst I think there is some value to Wampole’s arguments about hipster culture, I think to deny that it has any value at all is nonsense. The reality is that whilst hipsterism may have been born from an idea of irony, it has expanded well beyond that in the modern age. Hipsters have created their own cultural form; one that mixes values of the old world and new world. This cultural form is a reaction to the world we have grown up in; one in which many have seen a selfish form of passion (often focused around individual gain) in many of the older generations – the sort of passion that Wampole so reveres. And whether you like hipsterism or not, it is undeniable that it has it’s own cultural value, one that tries to bring in what many consider to be the good parts of previous generations into a new world order.

And it is ironic (funnily enough) that Wampole wants to use this mixture of old and new to criticise hipster lifestyles. As someone who is so keen to return to the non-ironic values of the past, she is stuck in a past where hipsters lived solely on irony and refusing to see the value the culture provides today – one that has gone well beyond irony. She wants to revere in the past, but then criticise the way this culture builds into the past at the same time.

But let’s build on Wampole’s argument and look at some of the criticisms she has of hipsterism. Wampole’s largest argument against the ironic lifestyle is that it is a lifestyle that lacks meaning, one in which we have disconnected ourselves from reality and importantly from community. As she states:

While we have gained some skill sets (multitasking, technological savvy), other skills have suffered: the art of conversation, the art of looking at people, the art of being seen, the art of being present. Our conduct is no longer governed by subtlety, finesse, grace and attention, all qualities more esteemed in earlier decades. Inwardness and narcissism now hold sway.

In other words, the hipster can frivolously invest in sham social capital without ever paying back one sincere dime. He doesn’t own anything he possesses.

In many ways I have to say I agree with Wampole in her criticism. There is, in many ways, a lack of meaning, and importantly a lack of community than runs through much of our modern culture. But where Wampole falls down is finding reasons behind this malaise. Reading this in the context of so many other articles on youth culture you can easily read into it a sense than young people are simply just lacking culture, they don’t have the same temperament that the baby boomers in particular (noting that Wampole isn’t a baby boomer) had to develop their fine culture and political engagement.

Yet what this refuses to realise is that this is the very culture that the older generations created that lead to the world in which we live, and the cultures in which young people pursue. In particular, it was the older generations who developed the individualistic society focused largely on consumerism that lead to the development of the ironic society that Wampole so chastises. It is the older generations who took away meaning from our society and replaced it with consumerable goods and then expected younger people to find passion and excitement within it. When you look at it this way, you cannot help but think of course people may become disconnected.

And that is where arguments like Wampole’s become so potentially dangerous. As part of her piece, and as an extension on the argument, Wampole also stated that young people have become completely disengaged with the world – a passionless group who can only live an ironic life. Whilst she didn’t specifically target political engagement, the subtext there was clear – we have created a generation of people who just don’t care about the future of our world.

Of course, as an initial reaction these sorts of sentiments are an insult to every young person who is engaged politically and otherwise within our society. But at a higher level, it completely ignores the role that older generations have played in disengaging younger generations. It’s not just about the systematic talking down to young people, pushing young people aside or creating structures that make political engagement difficult. It’s much more than that. The last decades have seen generations create such an individualist world that it actively and systematically pushes many people out of the political process. A world which focuses so heavily on the individual that civic and community engagement is seen as secondary.

The result of this is that yes, many young people are disengaged. But that has nothing to do with an inherent nature of our age – it is all to do with being brought up in a society in which individual consumerism is rated more highly than our communities – the very society that baby boomers developed.

It may be nice and easy to blame young people for all our ills and complain about their lack of engagement. But to systematically ignore the role that older generations have had in creating such a malaise is not only lazy, but it completely lacks any analysis on how we can make the world a better place.

Today I am going to post the first of what I hope will be a major part of my blog; reviews (this will be a great way to force me to read/watch more). And what a better way to start than with some quick philosophy; Jean Baudrillard’s ‘Why hasn’t everything already disappeared?’

In one of his final texts before his death in 2007, in this piece, Baudrillard tackles the question of disappearance. For those who don’t know him, Baudrillard was a French post-modernist/post-structuralist philosopher. I hadn’t read much of his work before this text, but having read it now, I am definitely going to go and look for more.

First, to start off with the basics of reading this Baudrillard text. Unlike many philosophers (who I tend to try and read as much as possible), there is some ease in reading this text. In many ways, this piece feels like a short novel in the way it’s written, which makes it an ease to read. The text is only 70 pages long, and is mixed with images (which I am still trying to decipher) and is quick and easy to read. In fact, it is so enjoyable, that I read it twice. But you also have to be careful in reading this – it sometimes is a little too easy, meaning you can skip over the actual ideas. I gained so much more from this from the second reading than the first.

As I said, in this piece, Baudrillard deals with the issue of disappearance, or more importantly, why haven’t we all already disappeared?

What on Earth does that mean? He explains:

It’s a question of disappearance, not exhaustion, extinction or extermination. The exhaustion of resources, the extinction of species – these are physical processes or natural phenomena. And that’s the whole difference. The human species is doubtless the only one to have invented a specific mode of disappearance that has nothing to do with Nature’s law. Perhaps even an art of disappearance.

To understand disappearance, Baudrillard first poses that we need to look at reality. Through understanding how we define what is real, we can understand how things disappear. However, it is also in the way that we understand reality that we create disappearance.

If we look closely, we see that the real world begins, in the modern age, with the decision to transform the world, and to do so by means of science, analytical knowledge and the implementation of technology–that is to say that it begins, in Hannah Arendt’s words, with the invention of an Archimedian point outside the world…by which the natural world is definitively alienated.

Baudrillard argues that in understanding reality in this form, understanding it from the point in which we transform the world, we have begun its process of disappearance. Through creating a reality that is connected to the virtual and the scientific, we have created a world in which we, as ‘natural beings’ have created our own disappearance.

It is here we see that the mode of disappearance of the human…is precisely the product of an internal logic, of a built in obsolescence, of the human race’s fulfillment of its most grandiose project, the Promethean project of mastering the universe, of acquiring exhaustive knowledge. We see, too, that it is this which precipitates it towards its disappearance much more quickly than animal species, by the acceleration it imparts to an evolution that no longer has anything natural about it.

In other words, humans have created their own disappearance by creating our own technological world – one that is beyond humans. We have seen our own demise, as it may be described, in creating a species that is technical, scientific, virtual…

And even once we’ve moved towards this scientific world, we continue to create more disappearance. Just look at one of the major foci of the Baudrillard’s piece – the image. Baudrillard argues that the digitalisation of the image has created the disappearance of the photograph, and in turn the disappearance of the object. With us now able to digitally construct images, we have ended the ‘singular presence’ of the object. Think about it this way: digitisation has meant we can create any object we want in the virtual world, meaning that the presence of the real object has disappeared.

Put together that sounds like a terrible fate – a species that has disappeared. But in reality, Baudrillard points out, disappearance is something we fantasise about – it is something within our bones.

Have we not always had the deep-seated phantasy of a world that would go on without us? The poetic temptation to see the world in our absence, free of any human, all-too-human will? The intense pleasure of poetic language lies in seeing language operating on its own, in its materiality and literality, without transiting through meaning – this is what fascinates us.

Baudrillard explains something similar when talking about the image.

Behind every image something has disappeared. And that is the source of its fascination…

And that is where the potential tragedy, but the deep meaning for thought, comes of Baudrillard’s work. If we have already disappeared, has the very fascination in disappearance – the thing that keeps us going – disappeared with us? If there is no longer mystery behind the image – if it is just a digital reconstruction – has the fascination behind photography disappeared, hence eliminating the art itself? Alternatively, if we have mastered our universe, and obtained all knowledge and truth, have we gotten rid of the reason for being – that fascination about what we do now know, and that which has disappeared?

In a piece on Wednesday, the online editor of The Monthly, Nick Feik, declared that the Green movement has been an abject failure. Drawing comparisons with the civil rights movement, Feik argued that recent reports of growing greenhouse gas emissions showed that the environment movement has fundamentally failed to achieve its goal of solving climate change. As he says:

“IF THE civil rights movement were as unsuccessful as the environmental movement has been, Rosa Parks’ granddaughter would still be sitting in the back of a segregated bus.

She might be secure in the knowledge that a global consensus had formed against racial discrimination, but she would still be sitting there.”

It’s interesting the Feik decides to use the parallels of the civil rights movement to frame his argument. In doing so he has shown very little understanding of the history of the civil rights movement, nor the reality of the successes of the 30 years of the Green movement.

To understand modern social movements, there is one key thing to know; change takes time. Whenever you are facing an opposition who has the status quo on their side, making change is always going to be difficult.

Let’s have a look at the civil rights movement for example. If you were to read Feik’s piece you would probably come under the impression that the movement simply began when Rosa Parks sat at the front of the bus one day. What this ignores though is the long history of struggle; one that lasted hundreds, if not thousands of years. It was this history of struggle that lead to the moment where Rosa Parks sat on that bus, and the many other similar moments that formed the modern civil rights movement.

With that context in mind, when you look at the environment movement, you can actually see a pretty impressive history of achievement.

Let’s have a look at climate change in Australia for example. In this country alone, environmentalists have achieved a legislatively mandated renewable energy target, a carbon tax on the country’s largest polluters, and billions of dollars in investment into renewable energy. We have seen a population that now takes the environment seriously, and climate change is firmly on the national agenda. The Green movement has also seen the rise of the Green Party, who have now become, and for the time being look cemented to be, the third largest force in Australian politics. Environmental action is now also a major consideration for both major parties. And to think that all of this has happened only within the last 30 years really points to an amazing turn around.

Look around the world and you will see example after example just like this. Put it all together, and one thing becomes clear; the world would be in a much more perilous situation if it wasn’t for the global environment movement.

This record is particularly impressive because of the complex situation climate change presents, and the opposition the movement has faced. Addressing climate change involves dramatically rethinking our economic and energy system. And in doing so it has meant coming up against some of the biggest economic powers in our world – fossil fuel companies that have had no desire to change their practices.

And this is where Feik’s criticism really falls down. In reading his post you could easily come away thinking that if only the environment movement had changed their tactics everything would be fine by now. The reality is however that action on climate change was always going to challenge the power of the fossil fuel companies. Because of this, no matter what tactics the movement employed, change was always going to face stiff opposition. This is the inherent nature of a movement that is challenging power structures.

Now, could we have done a better job taking up the fight up to these companies? Could we be in a better position? Yes, of course we could. There is a lot that environment movement can do better and I don’t think I know of one environmentalist who is happy with our current situation.

But to blame the environment movement for where we stand not only ignores the achievements that have occurred, but also deflects the blame from those who deserve it; the fossil fuel companies who are the real enemies of climate action.

A pretty common factor in politics today is a growing pessimism about the future, with many pointing to uncertain economic and environmental factors as the reasons behind this. A new article from one of my favourite modern cultural theorists however points more directly at the role of Western culture as the route cause of our growing pessimism.

In his piece Whatever Happened to Western Civilisation Richard Eckersley looks back at a piece he wrote 20 years ago called The Western Cultural Crisis to see what’s happened to Western culture over the past 20 years.

In the piece, Eckersley says that despite some increases in happiness, the last twenty years has seen a growth in pessimism in Western society. He states:

In contrast to people’s high levels of personal happiness and life satisfaction, many studies over the past few decades have revealed their anger and anxiety about the changes in Western societies. The concerns include excessive greed and selfishness, consumerism, too much competition and too little compassion, the loss of community, growing pressure on families, and drugs, crime and violence. There is a common perception that, with individual freedom and material abundance, people don’t seem to know “where to stop,” or now have “too much of a good thing.”

Eckersley argues that these cultural realities in Western culture led to an unrelenting pressure on individuals to perform, and to be selfish:

These cultural shifts toward excessive materialism and individualism are not just a matter of greater vanity, selfishness, and greed (although many people express concerns about these traits), or simply the manufactured desire to “have more stuff.” They lead to an unrelenting pressure to focus on what we make of our lives, to fashion identity and meaning increasingly from personal attributes, achievements, possessions and lifestyles, and less from shared cultural traditions and beliefs.

The drive of selfishness and greed, Eckersley argues, isolates individuals, putting everyone in competition with each other. As he explains:

This emphasis (on the individual) is a recipe for disappointment, depression and anxiety. It distracts people from what is most important to well-being: the quality of their relationships with each other and the world, which, ideally, contribute to a deep and enduring sense of intrinsic worth and existential security.

What Ecksersley’s article therefore is creating a an argument against the growing individualism of Western capitalist society. What’s interesting about this though is that it takes a cultural approach to Western capitalism, rather than using the usual economic (i.e. the exploitation of works, growing inequality) or environmental (i.e. growing materialism, environmental destruction) arguments. This creates an overarching argument that says that whether you are at the top or the bottom of the economic scale, Western Capitalism has a negative impact on your life.

These ideas are not necessarily revolutionary, but they provide an interesting analysis of our current society, but also on how we work to solve the problems we face. Eckersley argues that the only way we can change our society – make the world more equal, increase happiness, protect the environment etc. is to change our culture. As he says:

I believe that we need to change Western culture: the stories, symbols, and metaphors by which we define ourselves, our lives, and our goals – and so our politics.

What’s interesting about this is that this often doesn’t happen in modern social movements – many use an approach of running campaigns that fit within modern culture, rather than trying to change it.

Eckersley takes a look at modern science for example. Science, which many use as a change agent in our society, is also heavily based on the individualist, rational ideas that Eckersley argues is building into our cultural crisis. Science often ignore the cultural elements of our society that many people find so important to their lives – the things they genuinely connect to (i.e. religion).  Ecksersley said he hoped that this was changing, but it has gotten worse:

I saw hope in a growing compatibility, a reconciliation, between scientific and spiritual views of the world. Instead, we’ve seen a backlash by scientists and others against the rise of religious fundamentalism, some of it as “fundamentalist” as the religion they denounce. It is “a dialogue of the deaf,” says Swiss philosopher Alain de Botton.

To me, what this is, is a call to understand, accept and work with the cultural realities of our world. To change the world we can’t disconnect people from their culture and their desire for community. In creating change movements based around individual action focused on rational science we are potentially deepening the void between the values that we seek and desire and the people are trying to reach.

Dealing with culture and values is essential to solving many of our problems. Eckerlsey provides a convincing argument for the growing cultural crisis in the Western world and some food for thought on how cultural changes will play a role in solving modern problems.

Last week (or maybe the week before) this video was being tweeted with quite a flutter.

Gay men will marry your girlfriends

It’s probably worth having a watch of the video if you want to read on. After I finally got around to watching it, all I could think was what’s all the fuss and excitement about? It’s either a little offensive, or if not, just bad. In having debates with friends on Twitter, I’ve started to take a stronger stance – I think things like this are actively destructive.

When I was young and was starting to realise I was gay, there were two major public faces for homosexuality; Will and Grace and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (I used to watch Queer as Folk as well, but that was much more niche). Will and Grace and Queer Eye were in many ways big steps for the representation of the gay community (noting that I’m using the word gay here as there were no lead LBTI characters in either show). Moving from a place where gay men had very little to no representation at all, these shows really brought gay men into mainstream media culture.

Despite this progress however, they also presented a very limited representation of gay men; that of the stereotypical ‘fabulous’ camp gay man. Stereotypes about gay men being effeminate have been around for a lot longer than before Will and Grace and Queer Eye. But these shows, and much of the other representation of gay men around the time, brought these stereotypes well into a mainstream culture, and importantly actively built them up. They used the stereotypes not in a derogative manner, but in a positive way.

To add some extra context into this, this representation coincided with a bit of a ‘mainstreaming’ of the GLBTIQ movement. Whilst queer activists had been campaigning for centuries, you can really see a ‘break out’ of the movement around this time into the mainstream cultural conscience.

Will and Grace and Queer Eye therefore represented the way the straight community decided to represent gay people (noting that even though these shows had gay actors, they were created and set in a straight dominated industry) at the time that the queer movement was breaking into the ‘mainstream’.

In doing so, what was being presented was the ‘fabulous gay man’, who in general didn’t actually have sex (hence meaning we don’t have to think about that disgusting but sex) and is able to please women emotionally, therefore providing a service that straight men clearly couldn’t provide. These men aren’t really serious either – they’re funny, fabulous, a little one-dimensional and therefore is ‘un-threatening’.

Now, whilst this limited representation would normally just annoy me, it probably wouldn’t lead me to writing something like this if it wasn’t for the impact it had on the queer community, and movement. With the mainstreaming of this view of gay men, many in the mainstream of the queer community ended up hopping on board, with pretty bad consequences.

This is a really subtle change, but one that if you think about it has become all consuming. The key to this is the idea is that of these stereotypical men being ‘non-threatening’. At the time, instead of thinking ‘it’s great that we’re getting more representation, but let’s see if we can broaden it’, many went (not literally) ‘look at what the straight community love about us – let’s play into it to build our movement’ (for more discussion on this, check out this FUSE article I wrote a couple of years ago). We’ve bought into the stereotypes the straight community place onto us – allowing our oppressors to define who we are, and the reasons why we should have ‘equal rights’.

Now, I’m not saying that there is something wrong with people who fit this stereotype, or the stereotype itself. But, this particular representation of gay men is now so widespread it leaves out the whole diversity of our community; men, women, intersex and trans*. And there is something wrong if those who don’t fit this stereotype aren’t visible. Young queer people should grow up with a diversity of role models. Heterosexuals who are exposed to our campaigns should see the fullness of our lives. Gay men deserve freedom from discrimination and homophobia, no matter how well we fit the ‘fabulous’ ideal.

And because this broad representation isn’t occurring, many are now feeling pressure to fit within the mold that the straight community has defined for us. I can tell you from personal experience that many in the community now feel an expectation to live up to these sorts of stereotypes, with things like gym culture taking control of much of the gay community. Those who aren’t ‘fabulous’ get left out of being represented. For example, I have been told many times that you wouldn’t expect me to be gay because I ‘don’t act like it’. And this isn’t an expectation that is created by some conservative group, but one we create ourselves.

Even more importantly, the way we have built up the fabulous gay man has actively excluded many other in the queer community, in particular women. A large part of this is because the traditional stereotype of a lesbian woman is one who is butch – apparently not the ‘friendly face’ we want to show to the rest of the community. In doing so we have let homophobic society dictate how we represent our community, hiding some people while pushing others into the spotlight in a distorting way.

So, in the end, my annoyance about this video isn’t necessarily due to being offended with its content. Rather, it is real concern about where our movement is heading, and importantly, how the straight community (note that ‘College Humor’ is not queer-press) continues to represent the queer community.

In the late nineties and early naughties, when I was coming out, this sort of representation was in many ways the best we could ask for. 10 – 15 years later however, I was hoping we would have progressed. Whilst this video may be funny, it’s a symbol of how far we have to go.

One of the great things about working at the ANU is that I get access to a whole range of research that I probably wouldn’t see otherwise. Today, this really interesting piece appeared in my inbox. It’s closely related to something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while and also gives me an opportunity to link to my work’s website, which I’m sure must mean I’m doing my job well.

Poor job as bad for mental health as no job.

For those of you who don’t want to read the actual story, the summary is quite simple. Researchers have found that people who have ‘bad working conditions’ have just as bad mental health issues as those people who have no job at all. This research, which was conducted in England, backs up previous research done in Australia earlier this year that said pretty much the same thing.

This is an issue I want to write a longer post on in the future, so I will keep it short for the moment.

For me this reflects really interestingly on the ‘jobs debate’ we’ve seen over the past few years. I have noticed that, probably since the GFC, much of our debate about the economy and workplace relations, has been focused solely on ‘jobs’ (of course this has always been a dominant issue, but it seems to have really crowded out everything else recently). It’s about the Government fostering an economy that adds jobs, and people having access to these jobs, at the cost of all else (the environment, workplace rights etc.).

Interestingly, we’ve seen that many on the left have played a major role in this process. We can see unions in Australia for example, who are now focusing much of their work on ‘jobs for their members’ above all else. In the United States, Democrats having been running for years on ‘jobs’, and it played a large part in the 2012 campaign (remember Barack Obama’s ‘jobs bill’). If you go back through much of the commentary for the past two years, you will see lots of Democratic criticism of the GOP having not introduced one ‘jobs bill’.

Now, I’m not saying that meaningful employment is not important for people’s well-being. But within all of this debate, we seem have lost that key word, ‘meaningful’. The jobs debate seems to have pushed aside the quality of life part of the debate. As this research shows, at least in the mental health arena, such a ‘jobs push’ may not actually have a real positive impact. People may have jobs, but that doesn’t mean a positive impact on their well-being.

Anyway, food for thought. Am going to do some more research on this one and try and write something up that is a bit more comprehensive, particularly looking at what the left’s engagement in this area means. Watch this space.

The President of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, made waves on Wednesday night when he claimed that smoking was a better health choice than homosexuality. Wallace said:

“I think we’re going to owe smokers a big apology when the homosexual community’s own statistics for its health – which it presents when it wants more money for health – are that it has higher rates of drug-taking, of suicide, it has the life of a male reduced by up to 20 years.”

Wallace’s comments have rightfully caused condemnation from around the country, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard pulling out a planned keynote address at the ACL Conference later in the year. Beyond the initial outrage however, Wallace’s comments also shine a light on a major issue we face but often don’t talk about; the role of queerphobia in the health of the LGBTIQ community.

Let’s be blunt to start off with. Despite the fact that Wallace’s claims that homosexuality was worse for you than smoking have been called out to be false, he was right about one thing: members of the LGBTIQ community overall have worse health outcomes in some important areas compared to our straight counterparts. Statistics show that GLBTIQ community members generally have higher depression and suicide rates, have larger drug and alcohol abuse problems and gay men continue to be highly represented in HIV/AIDs infections, with these numbers rising as more gay men are having unsafe sex.

Where Wallace goes off the rails though is the causes of these problems. These health problems have nothing to do with the ‘innate nature’ of LGBTIQ people, but are in fact largely caused by the hate-filled world that Wallace promotes. They are a direct consequence of the queerphobia that Wallace, and people like him, spout every day.

Let’s have a look at the raw issues Wallace brings out; starting with depression and suicide. A research scoping paper commissioned by the national depression initiative, Beyond Blue, in December 2008 found that same-sex attracted people, in particular women, are the most susceptible group to depression and suicide in our community. According to the study, in any twelve month period, approximately 42% of queer people suffer from some form of mental illness (this includes affective disorders, anxiety and substance abuse), compared to fewer than 20% of heterosexual-identifying people.

When we have a look at the evidence, we can see that these rates have nothing to do with ‘our lifestyle’ though but rather to do with the homophobic world we are stuck living in. As Andrew Cook in Crikey reported yesterday:

In fact, it is likely that dubious media interventions like Wallace’s may in fact perpetuate many of the health problems he is himself referring to. A recent study from the University of Queensland, The Psychology of Same-S-x Marriage Opposition, showed that individuals exposed to media articles bagging same-s-x marriage were more likely to report feeling negative and depressed and more likely to feel distressed, upset, guilty, scared, afraid, ashamed and nervous. They were more likely to report loneliness, more likely to report they felt weak and powerless — and less likely to report feeling happy or positive.

A recent Psychologists for Marriage Equality submission to the Senate inquiry into the gay marriage bill cited a 2007 study showing the phenomenon of “minority stress” means “social prejudice, discrimination, and violence against lesbians, gay men, and bis-xuals play a significant role in the mental health outcomes” of these groups.

Research around Aboriginal Australians find similar problems. After the Aboriginal Memes scandal earlier in the year, Tim Senior reported in Crikey that racism has direct negative impacts on people’s health. In quoting research from Dr Angela Duery, Senior noted that of those who experience racist verbal abuse 50% are more likely to report their health being fair or poor. Those who believe their employers were racist were 40% more likely to report their health being fair or poor. In other words, racism, or perceptions of racism, have a direct impact on people’s health. Direct links can easily be seen between this racism research and the homophobia many in the LGBTIQ community face.

When we look at alcohol and drug use we can see similar patterns. Research shows a number of reasons for the elevated use of drug and alcohol abuse in the LGBTIQ community, most of which are related to the stress of living in a homophobic world. For example, Eliason and Hughes (cited by the Queensland Association for Healthy Communities) found these reasons that LGBTIQ people take drugs:

• Stress associated with belonging to an often despised minority
• Stress associated with managing a minority identity, such as needing to hide identity to keep job or experiencing harassment/discrimination
• The stress associated with coming out to family, friends and work colleagues
• Confusion around sexual orientation or gender identity
• The role of gay bars as a major (and sometime only) social outlet, leading to finding friends and partners in bar settings, thus increasing the likelihood of adopting a “heavy drinking”/using peer group
• Greater likelihood of loss of family and community support
• Non-acceptance of self or internalised homophobia: leading to low self esteem, depression, anxiety and feelings of guilt and paranoia.

To put it simply, being LGBTIQ is stressful, particularly when you’re young. And this stress leads to a range of outlets, with drug and alcohol abuse being one of the major ones. When you add in increasing levels of depression, which is closing linked with alcohol and drug abuse, you create a toxic combination.

Finally, if you look at STIs we can see that prevalence of unsafe sex practices in the gay community leading to high levels of STI infections has a lot to do with homophobia. Research conducted in 2009 found a direct link between ‘internalised homophobia’ and unsafe sex practices. As reported in AidsMap:

“Firstly, they (the researchers) found that men who were not “out” as gay or bisexual had lower levels of HIV disclosure to their secondary sexual partners, which in turn was associated with unprotected anal sex with men of unknown HIV status.

Secondly, a relationship was also demonstrated between lack of sexual comfort – comfort with one’s sexuality and body image – and poor condom efficacy, which in turn led to an increased risk of unprotected anal sex with men of a different or unknown HIV status.”

This research goes on to state that internalised homophobia could also be important to “understanding gay men’s higher rates of body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, eating-disordered behaviors, and insecure body image compared to their straight male counterparts.”

In another study, Halkitis and Parsons found a direct correlation between men who participate in ‘barebacking’ (intentionally having sex without a condom) and ideals of masculinity and sexual prowess. This connects with research done by Sanchez et. al. that showed that many gay men feel pressured to be ‘masculine’ as a reaction to the abuse that ‘gender atypical boys’ receive. As they said:

“In other words, some gay men may feel pressured to behave “super-masculine” or to “butch it up” in order to be accepted.”

(note that the research also showed that if these men don’t feel like they are meeting this masculine ideal that they often report high-levels of distress and depression).

When you look at all of these statistics, you can really see the real impact of Wallace’s words. In defending his comments, Wallace stated:

“Instead of more free speech-suppressing vitriol and demonisation from the gay activists, there needs to be an open and honest debate before Parliament changes the definition of marriage.”

What’s clear however is that whilst Wallace is raging about ‘free speech-suppressing vitriol and demonisation from the gay activists’ it is this open debate that he wants that is causing the death of so many LGBTIQ people. Queerphobia and abuse, the exact kind Wallace engages in, is directly linked with depression, suicide, drug and alcohol abuse and unsafe sexual practices. This hate-speech has consequences, and for many those consequences are deadly.

That doesn’t mean that we have to stop Wallace from being able to say what he wants. But if we want to stop the sorts of death this queerphobia is causing we need to take away his microphone. Julia Gillard cancelling her speech at the ACL is a good start (although she never should have accepted it in the first place). But we also need to keep standing up to hate speech, whether it is gay slurs in our workplace or people like Wallace in our media.  We need to stop treating hate-speech as if it something that people are allowed to spew without any consequences.

Free speech doesn’t mean the right to be heard. It also doesn’t mean the right to not be challenged when you do say things.

Queerphobia is killing people. Therefore, it is our responsibility to take away the microphones, and then directly challenge those who continue to spout it. The right of the GLBTIQ community to live healthy lives in a homophobic-free world depends on it.

I have a confession to make: I am racist.

Let me explain. Recently on the way home I pulled up on my bike at an intersection and an Aboriginal woman pulled up next to me and we started to talk. I know of this woman from around my workplace, but have never spoken to her. I see her around quite regularly on my campus. The conversation was fine. We just discussed the evening traffic. Despite this however, for some odd reason I had a strange feeling of slight uncomfortableness during the whole thing. Not enough to make me feel scared, or to not want to engage with her, but enough for me to notice that it was there.

In fact if I think about it honestly, I can definitely say that in many instances I slightly treat people of other races differently. I sometimes, without realising, think that I should walk on the other side of the street as young black people. I sometimes treat Asian people as if they are always quiet and difficult to engage with. Or I see Aboriginal people through the light of poverty. They’re only minor things, but even though I absolutely hate it, they’re sometimes there.

Now, it’s not that I think myself as a full-blown racist. I definitely don’t think that. I would genuinely think, and hope, that the people around me wouldn’t consider me as racist either.

Despite this however, I know there are many little racist parts of me. And I’m pretty sure that if we all think about it, we probably all these tendencies in one way or another. In some way or another everyone has a bit of racism built into them from when we were young. Racism is still heavily built in to almost every part of our society.

And that’s the thing that we often don’t talk about when it comes to racism. We’re happy to talk about how we think Andrew Bolt is a racist, or how Australia’s asylum seeker policy is racist, or attack Aboriginal Memes for being racist, but we treat those instances as if they are outliers. Racism is now a thing of extremists who are no longer in the mainstream of our community.

The problem is that this ignores the fact that racism is actually everywhere. We no longer have separated busses, and Aboriginal people can vote, but racism is still all around us. And most of us are part of it in some way or another. Systematic racism is about a lot more than the institutions that still have overt racist tendencies that hold people out. It is about the stereotypes that exist in our society and the simple reality that we all know that people within our community, including ourselves, treat those of different races differently. Systematic racism exists both within our institutions, and, maybe to a lesser extent, within our minds.

Now, I’m not saying that we’re all disgusting racist bigots. In fact, I know that the vast majority of people in Australia, and around the world, don’t consider themselves, and aren’t actively racist. Despite this however racism is still embedded in our society. It is systematic and we are therefore all part of it in some way or another. And whether it is treating particular people with a little bit more suspicion, or labelling stereotypes onto others just because of the colour of their skin, this racism has an impact.

But in refusing to acknowledge it, we are also refusing to deal with it. In discussing at length the racism of Aboriginal Memes, whilst at the same time laughing at a slightly racist joke, we are treating racism as if it is something we are not part of despite the fact that we are, subconsciously engaging in it.

It is hard to come out and say ‘I have racist tendencies’. But it’s about time we started to talk about racism as it actually is; an everyday thing. It is something that I, and most probably you are part of in some way.

The first part of fixing a problem, is acknowledging it. Racism is still systematic in our society. That doesn’t mean we are all awful people, who have to feel bad about ourselves. What it does mean however, is that we need to start thinking about our role in the systematic nature of racism. It’s the only way we’ll be able to move to a completely post-racist world.