The Violence of Compulsory Heterosexuality

Hearing about the death of Stanley Waipouri has made me pretty upset. It seems quite likely now that he died at the hands of straight-but-not-so-straight men who sought to re-establish their heterosexuality through the ultimate act of killing a sexual deviant. At his funeral a friend recalled that he "had a thing for straight men", which could get him into trouble.

This is the most extreme form of compulsory heterosexuality that, I assure you, is particularly widespread in New Zealand. It ranges from the psychological oppression of the moralists, those that would attack you verbally, social isolation growing up and in school, the media, etc., to the more physical oppression of bullying, being beaten, shoved and tripped up in school hallways, chased down urban streets at night, and in the worst cases killed.

I remember how the only guy at my high school to come out, in 4th form, was abused and beaten and quickly forced to drop out. This was a lesson for me. I learnt not only to behave as if I were straight for fear of this abuse, but I also learnt, just like every straight boy at that school, to police other people's sexuality for instances of anything remotely deviant.

The story of Jeff Whittington, especially, was the first and most terrifying instance of violence against gays I remember, and taught me the risk of being gay in a straight society. He was murdered only a couple of km from where I am right now, in fact, on the 8th May 1999. Jeff, who apparently looked a bit too gay, was picked up by two guys at a local petrol station under the pretext of giving him a ride home. Instead, they drove him to a secluded area and proceeded to punch him and kick him in the head, stomping on his head at least once. They later went home and bragged that they had "fucked up a faggot and left him for dead" and that "the faggot was bleeding out of places I have never seen before". Jeff later died in hospital from brain swelling and perforations to his bowel. His attackers thought he was 20 (and thus it was OK?) but when they later learned he was only 14 years old they turned themselves in.

This is one of the more extreme cases, but I can think of at least five murders since that have been motivated by sexuality and literally hundreds of instances of unreported low-level violence that happens everyday. This is the violence of compulsory heterosexuality.

Homo-hatred Alive and Well in NZ: Gay Man Murdered

Little reported in the media, this murder in Palmerston North last week was in fact of a gay man, and rumour is that it is yet another instance of the most extreme form of homo-hatred that is all too common in New Zealand (I refuse to use the word homophobia — it is NOT about fear).

I'll report more if I find out.

Heterosexism and Wellington Anarchists

I'm currently trying to write an article on male homosexuality and resistance, and it's not going very well. But in the meantime I thought I'd write on an instance on heteronormativity within the anarchist scene here in Wellington that really quite pissed me, and made me realise my isolation in the scene when it comes to queer male issues.

The A-Men is a group for anarchist men to discuss issues of masculinity, feminism, and their relation to women. It's a good idea and I'm glad its happening. They recently held a consent workshop to discuss issues of sex, consent and rape. A few days before one of the guys part of this group decided to let me know that it'd be quite heterosexist... it was nice of him to consider me but in reality it was a mere afterthought. You know, "I spose we better let the token gay boy know this might not be very useful to him". The rest of the group had given absolutely no thought to the fact that the workshop was going to be entirely about boy-girl sexual relations with no space for boy-boy relations.

In the end I didn't go: I really didn't want to have to struggle to be heard amongst those guys, especially since it would probably have been quite disruptive to something which is after all a really necessary move on their parts. But a couple gay anarchists did go. They quickly learnt that it was solely about boy-girl relations, with no consideration for any other sort of relationship. The workshop organisers insisted that it is the boy's responsibility to ask for consent, and when it was asked how boy-boy consent should work they apparently shrugged it off as not worth considering.

They had no idea of the issues in boy-boy relations, which obviously include consent, but more importantly probably to those within the anarchist community would be issues of rape. In many urban gay scenes, rape is prolific and often laughed off. We're assumed to be so hungry for sex, with such demanding sexual appetites, that surely we must welcome rape as just another opportunity to get off. A workshop covering homosexual relations would surely then also have to deal with defence against rape, but the organisers had absolutely no clue this was even an issue.

I wouldn't have minded if this was advertised as a workshop on heterosexual consent for men, but it wasn't. It was assumed it was heterosexual by default, with only having to make a partial disclaimer to me in person. Homosexual relations were ignored, sidelined and totally not understood.