The death of gay culture

[fudger]

The scene is already dead in smaller towns, ok London and Brighton will always have something going on but that does not help people comming out in places like slough, maidenhead and highwycome (all places that have lost the local gay scene due to lack of demand).

[SPLuna]

And there always other reason why people don't just be who they are example the middle east/and certain African countries where being gay is punishable by lashing and at times death. I am certain that, that is good reason not to be who you are, I always say to myself when i watch documentaries on the middle east and coming out and those who strive to bring gay right to that region takes greater strength in my opinion than anything else

[andy_123]

I see your point. It wouldn't die though, just take a new shape, what that will be is a mystery.

That's the problem though, when a culture takes on a new shape the meaning behind its traditions are lost. Instead of being a closed society the gay community will evolve and traditions like drag queens will be rendred senseless or even debased to the point where it just becomes about dressing up to look as extreme as possible. So though on the outside everything might seem the same, on the inside all the meanings lost.

[andy_123]

I think we all have a little revolutionary in Us, I mean sometimes being on the margin is somehow more satisfying than being normal. The question is do we ever want to be normal?

Exactly, thats the sort of point I was trying to get accross

[fjp999]

We thought it was quite romantic in a tragic sort of way and decided that if we ever got to the point where homosexuality was completely accepted (which could only be a good thing) and people where allowed to kiss their partners in the middle of the street, then this secretive element of gay culture would be entirley lost forever.
Does this have to be the case? Will increased acceptance lead to the death of gay culture?

[COLOR="Purple"]Not exactly sure of the point here... but everyone else does

Doesnt culture kinda evolve... especially modern cultures?

I doubt a gay man in the early 1900s would recognize his gay culture in any of this...

Glad I enjoyed my gay culture as some are not so fortunate and will never know what they missed [/COLOR]

[mooninleo]

I live in san francisco, and the vibe here is that gay culture has grown into its existence here, that its now just part of the entire city.

personally... i feel like i never see gay people holding hands, except for in the one gay neighborhood.. but u do see more gay people everywhere. as you meet more people, i think theres a bigger network of interesting gay people.

the gay bars tho are pretty crazy and full of really far out there people. :/

[Aaycle]

mooninleo, what an awesome, awesome picture!! Gay culture in The Bahamas is tantamount to a chained caged filled with feral, starved, and pining monkeys. It is as primitive as time, but unfortunately, non-existent. So to hear of a place that is growing into gay (San Francisco) sophistication, is sublime. There is a gay village in Montreal, that I visited when I schooled there. It was... nice!

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Yeah I felt the same way when the laws changed and homosexuality was no longer treated with electro-shock therapy and even became acceptable to the AMA.

I also shed a tear when Gay culture suffered the tragic loss of the Sodomy Laws, or at least the enforcement of those laws. In the USA.

Recall the stonewall riots? Were you even alive back then?

Anyway, gay culture in the USA was really repressed, to the point where after many arrests and raids the gay community lashed back out at it all.

Gay culture died.... The gay culture of the 1960's.

Technically we gays do not have a 'culture'.

Yes we have history, and we have symbols that are shared globally, but we do not have a 'culture'.

Sneaking around in a dark bar 'hiding' from the straight world is NOT a culture. It is a horrible crime committed against us, an affront to human sensibilities, an echo of earlier persecutions which frankly we should all want to become history as soon as possible not only for the western world but for the whole world.

The older you get then the clearer it becomes that there no such thing as a 'gay culture'. Gay lifestyle, yes. Gay history, yes... but Gay culture - no. It is impossible.

Why? Because unlike all of the other 'cultures' in the world, we are a people composed of diversity. Being 'gay' is not just the thing of a specific race or nation or family line, it is a global, international, multi-cultural community that is trying way too hard to identify itself as 'other' when it should actually be celebrating that diversity.

The secret is that when it comes to melting pots, The LGBT community is the ONLY true melting pot that actually does consist of samplings from the diversity of humanity in equal portion.

[Wintereis]

Well, we often think of gay culture as consisting of nightclubs, specific ways of speaking, specific music (often pop), and a disregard of normative sexual mores in dominant culture. The gay pride parades and the drag shows are relatively new developments when it comes to "gay culture" or the culture surrounding homo eroticism, for a lack of better terminology. What we tend to forget is that there is a very long history of such subcultural milieus. What tends to happen historically is that the times when a homosexual subculture becomes prominent, it leads to a boon of texts relating to the subculture, In times when the subculture is forced underground, the texts become arcane, passed down quietly from one individual to the next. And, when the subculture reemerges, those same texts are used as a foundation. In literature, listing of famous "homosexual" names has often been used in the past as a sort of nudge and wink to those in the know. This same sort of culture through allusion is common in art as well. For instance, St. Sebastian has long been seen as an icon of homo eroticism. He was known to be a "favorite" of the Roman emperor and the rather phallic nature of his martyrdom has been repeatedly used within the subculture since his death. Here is Il Sodoma's (Spanish artist known as The Sodomite) "St. Sebastian": St Sebastian Painting by Giovanni Antonio Bazzi called Sodoma | Oil Painting

In one of Pier et Gilles 20th century renditions of St. Sebastian, the traditional image of the saint's marterdom, coupled with the usual eroticism of the figure is given a modern twist, where in the more contemporary icon of the sailor is added to couple modern homoeroticism with ancient homoeroticism:

Google Image Result for http://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/st-sebastian-of-the-sea-1994.jpg


As another example, take the depictions of the rape of Ganymede:

Pierre et Gille:
Google Image Result for http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/24/24_images/024pierre_head.jpg

Peter Paul Rubens:

The Abduction of Ganymede by Peter Paul Rubens


Ancient Mosaic In Sousse:

Google Image Result for http://www.sy-thetis.org/Thetis2001/S_Tunisia/SouseGan.jpg


You can find many more instances of such icons of homoeroticism. What it tells us is that the culture, in some form or another has existed, occasional as part of the mainstream but more often marginally, for millennia.

[fredv3b]

Bowyn,

I agree there is not (nor could there be) a single worldwide gay culture. However I think it is quite clear that in many places there is a gay subculture.