OOh Matron! Deborah Orr Gets Her Knickers In A Twist

Deborah Orr has got her knickers in a twist. She seems to be upset on two fronts: one that her now beloved art form (for she is a zealous convert) Opera, is maligned as bourgeois, expensive, middle class posh. Two she is annoyed that sometimes Opera (and other arts activities) get rudely interrupted by MEN! the dirty dogs! engaging in public sex! OOh Matron.

In The Observer today she says:

‘A while back, I wrote a piece about attending a free opera event in Stoke Newington cemetery one Saturday afternoon. As the modest audience watched and listened, a couple of flushed-looking men came stumbling out of the undergrowth, stood in front of everyone else and started taking pictures with their phones. “Only in England, eh?” one of them cackled loudly, then headed back off to the bushes. I questioned, in print, whether people putting on charitable events, really did deserve the derision of young men who clearly preferred to requisition public space for 24-hour stranger-shagging. Peter Tatchell, also in print, suggested that this was a homophobic view, adding with a sarcastic sneer that he was sorry my opera had been interrupted. Because opera is antisocial and decadent self-indulgence, while cruising for uncomplicated sex in broad daylight is culture’.

And that piece from a while back, in the Independent, contained this classic:

‘I’m afraid we all felt somewhat chagrined to be considered eccentric objects of bemused pity by people who spent their Saturday afternoons monopolising graveyards so that they could have sex in them. Green space is a precious commodity in London, and it’s annoying that there are so many places where one can’t go.’

There is so much to say about this NIMBY middle class anti sex snobbery that I don’t really know where to begin.

I think the main thing I object to in Orr’s articles is how inaccurate and probably disingenuous she is being.

Those heathens amongst us who don’t like opera but take an interest in more earthly pleasures, all know that public sex is very much on the wane in our culture. Homos do not ‘monopolise’ graveyards these days so much as wine bars and boutiques. And, as Mark Simpson has told us a number of times, heterosexual people are engaging in acts previously considered the domain of homosexual men: from anal sex to dogging to performing in musical theatre.

So Deborah has conjured up an imaginary figure – the pervert man (who happens to like other men) roaming Hampstead Heath and spoiling her middle class ‘culture’. I actually once produced a play in the very cemetery she mentions, and we were also interrupted by the men cruising in the bushes. Some of them would stop to watch us rehearse and ask about our play. I was delighted at how our drama mingled so seamlessly with its environment. I was also inspired to later write some cemetery cruising scenes in my novella, Scribbling On Foucault’s Walls. That’s the thing Debs. Some artists like real people, we see them as the lifeblood of our art.

But this is not just a middle class Laydee complaining about the degenerate habits of men. Paul Burston, a gay man, has written  against what’s left of gay men’s public sex behaviours:

‘A few years ago, there was an outcry from OutRage when Camden council decided to cut down the trees in Russell Square to discourage gay men from having sex there. Unlike some remote corner of Hampstead Heath, Russell Square is in the middle of a residential area. People living in the square weren’t too keen on the idea of gay men having sex on their doorstep.

Personally, I can’t say I blame them. Never mind the dirty condoms and packets of lube regularly found littering the square. I wouldn’t want to see straight people having sex on my doorstep, so why should local residents be expected to put up with gay men having sex in their local square?

It used to be argued that having sex in parks and public toilets was a symptom of gay men’s oppression. Now it’s simply a symptom of our self indulgence. Of course there are some people who are determined to cling onto their ‘outsider’ status, rather like those pre-Liberation types who go all misty-eyed as they tell you how much more exciting it was back in the old days, when you could be banged up for having sex with a guardsman in St James Park. These are often the same people who regard gay marriage as ‘undignified’ and spend their weekends on their knees in public lavatories being ‘radical’.

But the fact remains that gay men have rights now, and with rights come social responsibilities’.

I disagree with Paul’s stance. I also find it annoying when gay men who have previously celebrated their risque, promiscuous past such as Burston and Patrick Strudwick, then go on to ‘grow up’ and lecture their brothers about decency and being respectable.

However, in conversation with Mark Simpson, I have acknowledged a sticking point. The campaigns for gay marriage and ‘equal rights’ do come, not necessarily with ‘responsibilities’, but maybe with ‘restrictions’:

‘Why SHOULD  gay men live outside the law of sex? If they don’t want to be stigmatised and victimised for their sexuality, maybe they need to put up with some of the restrictions put on the rest of us. OR if they don’t want to, then maybe they should speak out with and for those of us who also do not like the current moral order.’

Gays, like feminists, often want to have their cake and eat it. They want all the so called privileges of heterosexuals, but they also want to keep their special identity, as different, sexy, ‘radical’ (and of coursed oppressed)  sexual beings. I am sorry but that doesn’t wash with me. And even the gay men who I respect and admire, who reject this respectability take over, could possibly stand up and challenge it better, and more often.

But Deborah Orr has done me a favour really. Her little ladylike diatribe has reminded me of a previous age, one that I was much more comfortable in, full of Carry On Films and cottaging, and life. I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates …

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NB: Though influenced by his work, and previous conversations with him, this piece is not endorsed by Mark Simpson. It is all my own opinions. QRG