The Last Frontier (Jeremy)

There are a few phrases in the English language which are culturally accepted as being lies from the moment they pass our lips and were never actually intended to ever be anything else. These are wide and varied in life, from “This’ll only hurt a little bit” to “It’s not you, it’s most definetely me”, to my personal favourite, “Don’t worry, the course material is all on the web”. Thus everyone yesterday knew, that when Soph, Kim and I said that we’d just take five minutes out from the next class to chat and enjoy Soph’s birthday, that we were naturally lying through our teeth. (And on that note, Happy Birthday to Johanna as well).

Perhaps the present we gave her had something to do with that. We arranged to all meet together down by my locker in the basement (it’s the locker on the top level secured by a paperclip, in case you’re wondering where that smell is coming from) where I ran over, a few minutes late, to hand her a large box which naturally wished her a Very Merry Christmas, a legacy of the Bean household’s perennial lack of wrapping paper. She made all the right “You didn’t have to do that” noises, and then very abruptly took them back as she ripped back a small part of the paper. “OhmiGod”, she said breathlessly, sounding like a junkie who’d just been given a syringe kit for Christmas. “You DIDN’T!”.

Amazing what a simple box of a dozen Krispy Kremes will do, really.

Anyway, that’s not what I’m logging on to have a rant about today (despite the delicious taste of sugar and dough still resonating in the tastebuds of my mind). Instead, today is about something both completely different and, to my mind, somewhat sobering. It’s about something which I find truly upsetting in a society that used to pride itself on being open, progressive and tolerant.

I jumped on the later bus today, not starting lectures until a positively leisurely 10.00am. The sun beat down on the cold, wintery morning that was a legacy of the cloudless night beforehand as the bus wound its way up Warrandyte Rd, slowly warming up as it went. At Warrandyte High, a class of about thirty or so middle-school students, roughly thirteen or fourteen years old, descended on the bus like a pack of seagulls accompanied by their two teachers. Naturally, they were young, precocious, loud, fun-filled and completely immature. I didn’t really mind at all. I was like that once, too. For all I know, I still could be.

Two young boys – one thirteen, one fourteen – were sat together in the seat behind me and were discussing some particular afterparty as though alcohol was the giver of all known natural life. One had the slightly tinny, husky voice of a teenager and the other one was barely to hit puberty. It was normal teenage-guy-talk stuff, you know the like. Who did what at the afterparty, this girl got really drunk and so did this one, I had schnaps and it was great ‘cos it’s like, oh you don’t know? It’s like, about 100% alcohol, wow that’s cool, and oh I can’t wait. Then one of them expressed an opinion that the other one didn’t actually agree with, and so he decided to cut him down with the worst shutdown he could think of. That’s so f**king gay.

That’s so f**king gay. The words emanated through my mind again and again, jamming at the particular spit that the orator had put on the word gay. Moreover, I thought back again to my own days as not just a thirteen-year-old boy but even as that thirteen-year-old boy and I knew that such phrasing was by no means new. Shut up, you fag. Don’t be such a homo. You’re really gay. And a multitude of other equally unpleasant expressions that will not waste precious pixels here.

The world has come a long way since the turn of last century in terms of egality, yet it still has such a long way to go. In terms of feminism, times have have moved on, thank God, from the unholy era when Emily Davison had to throw herself in front of a horse before women legally obtained the vote. We have seen a littany of public works, ranging from Greer’s The Female Eunuch to even, I feel, books like Pride and Prejudice putting public pressure on people to not only seem but also try to be equal. The battle is far from won on so many fronts, even in the Western world, but at least it has moved on from its despicable beginnings.

If the beginnings and the battle for women’s rights has been despicable, then the battle for equal racial rights has been truly egregious and even today one does not have to poke one’s nose too far into the newspaper to detect the underlying note of suspicion that, sadly, according to some, accompanies many of foreign descent who enter this country. We may well have only given Australian Aboriginals the vote in 1963, whilst America’s record on rights for its poor black population is appalling, but at least now it seems that the tide of indignation and anger has finally overtaken the tide of racism which fuelled it. God help the next person to drop the “n” word in any sort of public arena, and rightly so; though we are nowhere near done, at least the public has begun to police itself on its racism over the last thirty-five years. I have no doubt that had the young boy behind me dropped a racist reference instead of a homosexual one then his friend would have severely reprimanded him.

That’s so f**king gay.

Sometimes we have very little idea of the destructive nature of the things that we actually say. I know quite a few – not a lot, openly – gay people in my life and something inside of me shrivels when I hear people saying anything so foul and prejudicial about them, for I know that they do not deserve it. One of my most trusted friends (who is currently in China at the minute) is gay and is one of the nicest, and actively friendliest people I have met; he is truly someone who knows the value of friendship and humanity and cherishes it deeply. Or, for example, our French teacher for Semester Two; she makes no attempt to hide the fact that she is a lesbian and quite frankly no-one cares, and above all she is a fantastic teacher with a wicked sense of humour and biting rhetoric. These people – and others who I won’t name in public, for they are not, to my knowledge, open with their sexuality – are a credit to themselves and far above the society which has, in my view, failed them.

You’re so f**king gay.

So perhaps it’s time to cross that last hurdle, our own Maginot line, that last frontier. In reality, it was that time, a long time ago. I know that I potentially make myself a target in writing this article, but I am, as a straight man with a girlfriend, proud of what I have written. If we are truly to be an accepting society, we must stop merely accepting those who we wish to accept, and tolerating our imbedded culture as something unchangeable. It is time to breach that last frontier.

Best of luck for the holidays… I mean, non-attendance period;

jez

ps – I tried to find one of my favourite photos over the internet for this article – I have it in a book but I couldn’t find it on the net. Perhaps someone else knows the photo I mean? It’s a photo of an elderly woman in a gay rights march in New York, 1979, who is wearing a smile as wide as the moon and is holding up an enormous sign worth many hours of effort saying, “My Gay Son is the Greatest!”. It’s one of the most uplifting things I have ever seen – does anyone else know the photo I am talking about?