Bret Easton Ellis
Photo: Iris Schneider for The Washington Post
According to the American novelist Bret Easton Ellis, the liberal insistence on sanctifying homosexuality is a kind of inverted homophobia, which results, ironically, in a new form of victimisation that transforms complex human beings into little more than fairy tale characters (Gay Magical Elves). The heteronormative majority cheer every time another man or woman in the public eye dares to come out and appear before them as some kind of saintly figure whose primary purpose is to remind them of their own virtues as a people: Look at us! So tolerant, so loving, so inclusive!
This desire to embrace and celebrate every queer individual on the LGBT spectrum, is not only patronising in and of itself, but it denies the individuality of the person concerned; they become merely a stereotype and symbol. And, in the process, they become neutered and neutralised. Because the deal is, if they want to be loved and accepted within wider society, then they must make themselves lovable and acceptable by becoming like the sweet and sexually nonthreatening persons seen on TV (bitchy clowns and queeny best friends). "God help the gay man", writes Ellis, "who comes out and doesn't want to represent, who doesn't want to teach, who doesn’t feel like part of the homogenized gay culture and rejects it."
Ultimately, to be liberated, is not to feel pride in your identity (be it sexual, racial, or religious); it means, rather, having the freedom to be flawed (and often full of self-loathing) just like everybody else. In other words, it means having the right not to smile and have to be so (HIV) positive all the time. Not all queer individuals wish to promote healthy mainstream values; they don't all want to be married and raise a family; don't all support left wing causes or aspire to be politically correct. According to Ellis, however, a lot of gay men today "feel they can’t be provocatively raunchy or politically incorrect in the mainstream media because it doesn’t represent The Cause".
He continues:
"This is where we're at now, I guess. Within the clenched world of the gay PC police there has been a tightening of the reins. It's as if in this historic moment for gay men we somehow still need to be babied and coddled and used as shining examples of humanity and objects of fascination - the gay baby panda - and this is a new kind of gay victimization. The fact that it is often being extolled by other gays in the Name of the Good Cause is doubly stifling."
Saying this predictably resulted in a lot of criticism for Ellis - not least from others in the gay community. But, to his credit, the author of American Psycho ultimately chooses to affirm himself as a writer who believes in free speech, rather than as part of a community whose members must conform with the prevailing orthodoxy in order to display their solidarity. The fact that some wish to promote a fantasy of queer life that doesn’t really exist, is not something Ellis is prepared to comply with. He may write fiction for a living, but he prefers gay reality no matter how painful and fucked-up that reality is:
"We are not all well-adjusted Good Gays. We’re not all happily queer - meaning the queer part doesn't make us happy or unhappy - just that some of us are cranky, depressed wrecks. We're complicated. We're angry. We can be as rude about our sexuality as our straight counterparts. Some of us feel the need to express our 'gay' selves any way we want to, even if that doesn't conform to 'gay positive' stereotypes. (A lot of us think these so-called 'gay positive' stereotypes are, in fact, 'gay nightmares.') Some of us reject the notion of how Gay Life is defined and don’t want to be a part of it, and so we create our own."
Ellis continues in a passage with which I'm very sympathetic:
"Where's the not-famous, slobby, somewhat lazy gay dude who is fine with being gay but just doesn't care about being PC or being an example of 'moral uplift,' who just wants to get on with his life, the guy who wants to be himself without becoming a label? A gay man who doesn't equate gay with dignity? The gay man who feels he doesn’t have to march in the parade while smiling? The inclusion and promotion of this common gay man by the Gatekeepers of Politically Correct Gayness would be something shattering. It would be a massive move toward eliminating The Gay Man as Magical Elf."
Notes
Bret Easton Ellis, 'In the Reign of the Gay Magical Elves', Out, (13 May 2013): click here to read online.
I assume that Ellis still stands by this essay, as he repeats the views expressed here in his new book White (Picador, 2019).
