What a year! What can I say?
Gay marriage!
Tom Daley has fallen in love with, er, pause and frown, a man.
Michael Douglas channels an amazing Liberace.
Gay life looks peachy (bar that James Arthur moment – Lucy Spraggan to the rescue)
All, of course, eclipsed by the moment when a certain Ms Cyrus twitched and twerked her way to the top of the charts. Storm in a B’cup if you ask me. Well considering that two days before the MTV awards a real storm of unprecedented proportions ravaged the Philippines leaving thousands dead or homeless. But we in the first world know where our priorities lie. Miley, MTV! Sexist, exploitative, racist, crap! Erm, no one is dead! Obsessing over pop cultural non-moments. Oh no, Beyonce got her hair caught in a fan! Justin Bieber spat on a fan! Gaga’s on X Factor wearing Primark body shapers singing Euro pop… sorry art pop! Stop the world, I need to Tweet, Instagram, something… do a selfie, why the hell not? It’s only Nelson Mandela’s memorial.
The years come and go and the froth that fills our internet ravaged lives builds like sewage on a beach and we gorge on it like pigs in swill. Smearing it on other’s walls so we can all be part of the mind-numbing techno revolution. I feel so connected right now. Put down the phone, dear, you look desperate, and uplighting is not pretty. Hands up I posted a picture of a hippo farting. It made me laugh. Yaaasss GaGa. You are a hippocrite. Hands up! I am guilty.
“If we do nothing and turn away and continue filling our faces with puerile shit, then we have failed”
But then a moment halfway through the year swept away the internet’s mediocre crap. Word comes out of Russia that democratically elected dictator in chief Putin has brought in laws outlawing the promotion of non- conventional sexual relationships to minors. Excuse me if my wording is inaccurate but basically ‘anti-gay’ laws are coming to the largest country, still somewhat superpower nation, and things are only going to get nastier for our queer LGBT brothers and sisters. Images of young gay men and women being duped by terror groups, torturing them and posting their video nasties on YouTube. For a moment the interweb lit up like a Christmas tree for all the wrong, but all the right reasons. A nation’s gay community is in distress, a momentary call to arms.
With the winter Olympics looming in Sochi in 2014, luckily the Russian situation is going to remain in the limelight for a good couple of months and hopefully the social media fires will rage again. But what the changes bought to light for me were how many more international ‘anti-gay’ laws are actively being enforced across the globe that get no spotlight. How many more of our LGBT family are being exectuted, torured, imprisoned in countries where the situation is much, much worse than that of Russia? We are obsessed with being connected to the rest of the world. We feast on anything we are fed as long as it sparkles and titillates and is over in 30 seconds.
“We CAN be the global pink revolution. It’s at your fingertips”
Let’s all make a New Years resolution…
Next time you are on the train, bus, having dinner with your nearest and dearest and find yourself absorbed in the superficial inter-webbed worlds, maybe take a moment to relight the fire of debate and discourse. Let someone know what’s actually happening around the world and if you don’t know, find out. We are connected and we can choose how we use these connections. We can choose to help those who do not live in our tolerant society where we celebrate the ‘coming out’ of a young sports star or raise a glass to our new marriage laws. For a moment we took to the streets. For a moment we thought that maybe we could instigate change. On our own we can’t, but if we make enough noise and garner enough support and connect to enough people… come on… how many friends do we have on Facebook now? Between us, millions. Perhaps we can start building pressure on our own Government to take action and give strength to the front line LGBT soldiers.
A campaign is coming. It has to. India has fallen to bigotry. Where next? I do not know right now what word, phrase or viral will unite us, but it has to come because if we do nothing and turn away and continue filling our faces with puerile shit, then we have failed. We CAN be the global pink revolution. It’s at your fingertips.
Woo’s XXXmas Carols
East London’s naughtiest fairy encourages you to guzzle a bucket load of Christmas cheer as only he knows how. Warming you up with a sing-a-long traditional Christmas Carol jamboree, he then adds a bit of spice and premieres some very naughty versions of some well-loved classics. Mulled wine in abundance, decorations galore and a tree. But which fairy will be sitting on top of it by the end of the night?
Woo’s going to give you that warm fuzzy feeling all over; and then make you feel all Christmassy! What more could you want. He might even have a bit of a disco afterwards. And it’s only a fiver!
Ding Dong Merrily I’m High… Ta da!
• Rose Lipman Building (43 De Beauvoir Road) (Haggerston tube) on Thursday 19th December, from 7.30pm. £5
