BY GARY MCGHEE

It was May 1997. Blair had recently entered No.10. A new dawn had broken (had it not?) and an even more important dawn had broken for me. Only this one was set to truly transform my life. I met my Baby Bear. We stared at each other across the bar of Compton’s in Old Compton Street, Soho, a smoke-filled, drunk-addled sleaze-pit as was. It was lust at first sight. This was an old-skool gay bar then, the chat-up and pick-up joint du jour, nearly all gay men, tanking up and up for it. It had character and atmosphere to spare and, and a Pride Flag, a relatively recent innovation, hung proudly outside. It was inherently inclusive, meaningful, and easy to understand. That was the point. Nuff said.

So, fast forward to 2022 and 26 years into my relationship with BB, this flag has now been replaced. A ‘Trans Flag’ now hangs there, a lovely combination of pale blue, dusty pink and white. A symbol of support for Trans people. Laudable and worthy of respect. Only a bigot would object to its existence or seek to decry its validity. But there’s a huge problem with it being hung outside a bar that caters ostensibly to Gay Men. Sleazy Gay men. Butch Gay men. Men that want to meet and shag other sleazy and butch Gay Men. In the past I spent too many hours of my life in this bar and can vouch for the fact that it wasn’t a place that catered for, or was frequented by, Trans people or their admirers. The men who went there weren’t interested in that. Most gay men are not interested sexually in men transitioning to be women, or, much more commonly, men who present themselves and cosplay as women, or, for that matter, women who present themselves as Men and call themselves Gay. There are exceptions of course, but that is rare. Gay men are mainly interested in other men, actual men, not facsimiles thereof.

So, it is not only highly inappropriate to hang a Trans flag outside Compton’s, but also offensive. It is an example of a trend that has ushered in a growing resentment amongst gay men that we are being taken over. Our spaces are being colonised based on a post-modern queer theory ideology that seeks to undermine the position of the homosexual and the bisexual, men, and women. We are all now expected to unite under a ‘Queer’ umbrella, that includes a proliferation of acronyms that cover a whole gamut of identities that have very little, if anything to do with us. We are expected to swallow the idea that Sex and Gender should be conflated when they are very different.

Homosexuality is about same-sex attraction, biological reality underpins it. It’s about sex, and men exclusively loving other men. Gender is about roles and socialisation, presentation, and identity in the abstract. Gay men do not ‘identify’ as gay men, we ARE gay men. The difference is critical. We fought for the right to assert that, and it is important because it is a fundamental aspect of our being, not a lifestyle choice, or a category we choose. Also, there is no level playing field between gay and straight relationships. That is a myth. 90% or so of the population is straight and the world is geared up for that culturally and politically. Straights don’t ‘identify’ as being straight and there is no expectation that they should. They aren’t labelled ‘genital fetishists’ for not wanting to have sex with members of the same sex, as lesbians and gay men are by Queer radicals for not wanting to have sex with members of the opposite sex. This is all deeply regressive, not progressive and represents an attack on homosexuals. Therefore, we must be vigilant about protecting our spaces and our rights. Our freedoms are not, and probably never will be, a given.

In the context of the imposition of post-modern Queer theory those are under threat. For anyone who doubts that or thinks I’m exaggerating let me provide you with key factors and developments. 

The so-called ‘Progress’ flag is now being used to replace the Pride flag. It is meant to represent an amalgamation of multiple Trans, Queer, Race, Disability and Gender identities, amongst other, more nebulous ‘identities’, and is clearly designed to usurp and supersede it. The super-imposing of a chevron design of this over the Pride flag is clear in this intention. It is now being increasingly flown over government buildings and in corporate advertising and is seen as the next stage in the march of ‘progress’. The fact that it is hideous and looks like a dog’s dinner is not just ridiculous, it is also intentional. It is meant to confuse, to obfuscate, to muddy the waters of sexual politics. It represents the colonisation of lesbian and gay politics.

There is now a concerted effort amongst advocates of Queer Theory to rewrite not only Gay and Lesbian history but also the history of women. It is not for me as a man to expound on the latter, although I would say that men who call themselves ‘feminists’, gay or straight, are part of a misogynistic colonisation process. Gay history and gay liberation, borne out of post-enlightenment Liberalism, like the Civil Rights Race and Women’s movements, is being reframed as something that was started by and bestowed upon us by the post-modern Trans agenda. This is beyond offensive and entirely false. But it serves the purpose of side-lining homosexuality, reframing it as just another ‘identity’, no more significant than, say ‘spirit animal’ or ‘furries’ or ‘pansexual’ or any other number of ill-defined kinks and fetish categories. The point is to subsume us.

To Trans and Queer the Gay away.

Part of that history was an attempt to reclaim the word ‘Queer’ in the 90’s. It was part of the development of a new, broader, applied post-modernism, which sought to embrace and recognise in this context those who had ‘fluid’ gender identities, and were experimenting with the way they presented themselves beyond the supposed strictures of being male or female.

It is akin to black people reclaiming ‘nigga’ and women reclaiming ‘slut’ and, like them, it has spiralled out of control. When any heterosexual Tom, Dick or Harriet Styles can now claim to be ‘gender fluid’ and get lauded and celebrated for calling themselves ‘Queer’ we know the game is up. We also know it’s up when they are deemed to have the right to hang out in gay bars and take over our spaces. To question this is to be labelled ‘transphobic’, or worse, ‘far-right’ and usher in a stream of homophobic slurs and insults. The response to an article I wrote criticising gay men who buy into all this was met with a slew of nasty homophobic comments about me. Irony, much? Queer theorists are not allies; they are interlopers, trying to take over. The fact that invariably the presentation of queer conforms to the most stereotyped, misogynistic, and homophobic representations of being a woman or being a gay man is apposite. We’ve spent decades trying to break down these pernicious slurs and representations, only to have them reimposed under the rubric of ‘Queer’.

The whole Queer agenda has got out of hand as radicals who call themselves ‘progressive’ but are anything but, push the envelope way too far and are creating an inevitable backlash. Organisations like The LGB Alliance, which advocate dropping the ‘TQ’ given the takeover of the Alphabet Mafia agenda, and the US group Gays Against Groomers who advocate against the sexualisation of children are examples of a much-needed pushback. The Queer agenda is feeding into homophobic far right and religious opportunists who always sought to attack the real progress that’s been made in LGB Rights and dovetail with the politics being promulgated by Queer radicals via pernicious slurs about gay men and children. Increasingly male abusers are associating with Trans identities to gain access to vulnerable women and children. The institutional capture of gender ideology whereby officials buy into a policy of men being able to ‘identify’ as a woman just because they claim to be, has exposed the vulnerable directly to abusers. It is undermining safety in women’s prisons, women’s sports, women-only spaces, gay male-only spaces, women-only toilets, amongst other things. Gay men (apart from the captured) did not sign up to this and have no truck with it. There is increasing talk that at this point it’s probably better to completely wash one’s hands of the entire legacy “gay” community, organisations like Stonewall etc, and assume one must start from scratch, finding non-self-hating homosexuals and organising in gay, male-only spaces.

Moreover, this politics is seeing a growing exodus of gay couples out of metropolitan areas who are sick of this politics, which has taken over in these areas. We resent being lumped in with a toxic and regressive ideology, which seeks to undermine the trend of gay men integrating into wider society on our terms, freed from the old stereotypes and assumptions about us. The Queer agenda serves only to reinforce these and it’s time to ditch it.

^{NB I recommend reading ‘CYNICAL THEORIES – How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender and Identity – and Why This Harms Everybody.’  by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.}

Gary McGhee is a semi-retired screenwriter, loving the outdoor life with his partner in the Norfolk countryside. Gary was ‘red-pilled’ before it became fashionable, and believes in liberty, freedom, modernism, and defying herd-mentalities.