kagablog

by Gerald Kraak

For friendship, such an unrequited longing

(Text engraved into the marble of the Gay Monument in Amsterdam, from a poem by Jacob Israel de Haan)

This article is a contribution to a slim, but emerging body of work in gay South African historiography – the hidden, largely unacknowledged role played by gay men and lesbians in opposition politics and in the anti-apartheid and liberation movements.

Mark Gevisser, in particular, has sought to chronicle the lives of such people, initially as co-editor of the seminal Defiant Desire in which there are partial biographies of political activists, such as Zackie Achmat, Ivan Thoms and Derrick Fine, later in his film documentary The man who drove Mandela. The documentary is a biography of Cecil Williams, a member of the proscribed Communist Party and a contemporary of Mandela and others, later indicted in the Rivonia Treason Trial of 1963. Gevisser’s posthumous outing of Williams and his account of the way he straddled the spheres of anti-apartheid politics and the homosexual underworld of 1950s Johannesburg, is a history rich in contradiction. Like Williams many gay men and lesbians hid their, homosexuality not only from the authorities, but also from their comrades, for fear of marginalisation or oppression, even while committed to the liberation of others.

The experience of progressive gay men and lesbians in South Africa is not unique in this respect. The link between the agendas of the progressive political movements in the US and Europe and gay liberation over the last decade and a half belies a longer, more enduring tradition in the left. Notwithstanding some brief epochs where groups and governments, such as the early Bolsheviks, tolerated a degree of emancipation, historically the left has proved as homophobic as the right. So for example in the socialist countries of the Soviet bloc, homosexuals were persecuted, even as centre-right governments in the West decriminalised same-sex behaviour.

Awe

History, is an interpretive discipline and inevitably subjective when it involves autobiography, as this interpolation into the work of Gevisser and others, does. Like Gevisser, I am still struck with awe at the quantum leap from the antediluvian criminalisation of homosexuality under apartheid, to the full citizenship of gays and lesbians under the government of the African National Congress (ANC). The awe derives from an apparent lack of connection, the absence of a historically-explicable discourse linking the past to the present, so that the change has the quality of miracle. Returning to South Africa in 1993 after 13 years in exile I was struck not only by the contrast between the repression of homosexuality of the country I had left in 1979 and the pre-election debate on the indivisibility of human rights, but also by contradiction between my sometimes, negative experiences as a gay man in the ranks of the exiled liberation movement and the ANC’s latter-day support for an emancipatory agenda.

There’s a gap, that seeks explanation. Gevisser has tried to provide one

The primary reason why the notion of gay equality passed so smoothly into the constitution is most likely that the ANC elite has a utopian social progressive ideology, influenced largely by the social–democratic movements in the countries that supported it during its struggle: Sweden, Holland, Britain, Canada, Australia. In exile in these countries key South African leaders came to understand and accept – and in the case of women, benefit from – the sexual liberation movement. Foremost among these were Frene Ginwala, now Speaker of Parliament, Albie Sachs, now a judge on the Constitutional Court; Kader Asmal, now minister of education and Thabo Mbeki himself, South Africa’s second democratically-elected President (2000:118)

This exposition of the ANC’s encounter with homosexuality needs further interrogation. While Gevisser’s tribute to some of the more libertarian and open-minded members of the movement may be valid, he discounts two other strong ideological traditions which competed with social democracy in the ANC – those of Africanism and Stalinism, both hostile to the variants of gender politics framed by Western feminism and the proponents of gay liberation.

As a closeted political activist inside South Africa and later, as a member of the ANC in exile, there was more of a resonance and a continuum of experience in these latter traditions, than in the ANC’s late embrace of social democracy and full citizenship of gays and lesbians.

After my own, late, coming out it was something of a revelation to discover how many of my fellow activists in the late 1970s and early 1980s, were gay and had led lives of partial subterfuge keeping their sexual identities secret in their political lives. It has even led me to speculate that assuming the resolutely political identities required by the style of anti-apartheid politics amounted to a sublimation of sexual identity and the deferral of coming out, that was a subtle form of internalised homophobia. Or even that the subterfuge of the political underground allowed for a parallel secret sexual life, otherwise difficult to express.

Mystic crystal revelation: The student movement and the counter-culture

I was active in the left-wing National Union of South African Students from 1975, taking up the post of National Media Officer in 1978. Many of my predecessors in the Union’s executive were gay. Yet this was never disclosed. Ironically the NUSAS of the mid-1970s aped the counter-cultural revisionism of its European contemporaries – the era of “free love”, expressed in a flowering of (heterosexual) promiscuity, long hair, flowing batiked clothing, rock festivals, cannabis use, nascent feminism and other challenges to social mores, on the campuses. The cultural wing of NUSAS was even dubbed Aquarius – after the signature tune of the musical Hair.

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation
Aquarius! Aquarius!

(Rado J and Radni G.1969)

Thankfully these cheesy sentiments were mitigated by a more realistic and hard-nosed leftism in the ranks of NUSAS, but neither allowed for the homosexuality celebrated in another track from Hair

Sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, pederasty.
Father, why do these words sound so nasty?
Masturbation can be fun
Join the holy orgy
Kama Sutra Everyone!!

(Rado J and Radni G. 1969)

Homosexuality was so deeply buried in the movement that the notorious Schlebusch Commission established in 1973 to investigate the threat posed by NUSAS to the state – the Prime Minster at the time had called it a “cancer in society” to be rooted out - failed to discover or note that the NUSAS President and three of its executive members were gay men or lesbians.

The Commission highlighted - and condemned - the promiscuity of its heterosexual office bearers and the fact that they lived in communes!! These and other such moral digressions were sensationalised by the media at the time and were used as partial justification for the Calvinist government’s subsequent restrictions on NUSAS .

Neville Curtis the President was banned, later went into exile and played a prominent role in the Australian Anti-Apartheid Movement. Shiela Lapinsky, a member of the executive, also served with a banning order after the Schlebusch Commission issued its report, re-emerged as a United Democratic Front (UDF) activist in the 1980s. Another executive committee member went into exile and helped found the South African war resisters movement. Yet others, whose political involvement began with NUSAS, helped establish the nascent trade union movement or became involved in the ANC underground.

Home

In the 1980s NUSAS abandoned the excesses of the counter culture and embraced the more sober conventions of anti-apartheid politics of the day, seeking alliances with the emergent trade union movement and black students and scholars. Yet the implicit homophobia persisted.

James Barrett a student at the University of the Witwatersrand was a founding member of the Wits Alternative Service Group, that challenged compulsory military conscription and questioned the role of the South African Defence Force(SADF) in the repression of anti-apartheid opposition.

There were about eight of us. I was the only gay man. It was quite a schizophrenic experience. I had this sense of needing to split my gay identity from my work against racism. Politically, at a gut passionate level it felt right to be involved, but the meetings, dominated by straight socially-conservative couples, were uncomfortable. (Interview with author: July 2001)

Barret’s experience mirrored those of a contemporary, Rupert Smith (a pseudonym) studying at Natal University, later a founder member of the Committee on South African War Resistance based in London.

I think my sexuality has always held me back in some ways, because of a general fear that being “out there” politically, making things happen, all opens you up to scrutiny of who you are and what you do in your spare time. (Interview with author, May 2001)

I have given this absence of a discourse about sexuality in the student movement a great deal of thought, confounded by its progressivism on every other front while failing to mirror its western contemporaries, which allowed space for the emergence of gay liberation. This lacuna bears further exploration. It could not have been the Africanist denial of homosexuality expressed more strongly in the late 1980’s by spokespeople of the liberation movements – the student movement’s links with these were tenuous and clandestine until well into the second half of the decade.

Perhaps the homophobia had two sources – the student movement’s developing embrace of Western Marxism, which in its more derivative aspects derided homosexuality as “bourgeois deviance”, inimical to a robust working class culture of hardy men supported by dutiful women.

Or perhaps it lay in that most debilitating aspect of “being gay” - the internalised homophobia of gay and lesbian student activists themselves. Their terror of discovery delayed the student movement’s coming to terms with homosexuality, in contrast, say, to the way that separatist feminists challenged the sexism of the male leadership in 1978 and forced the movement to adopt more progressive policies on gender.

And there was crucially too, the absence of a meeting point between the open expression of gay identity - in the early 1980s confined almost entirely to the white, gay male club scene - and anti-apartheid politics. James Barrett incisively captures the schizophrenia of gay anti-apartheid activists in this period.

I really struggled. I endured homophobic jokes and remarks in my political work and then went to gay clubs in Hillbrow where there was the most grotesque racism. I had a one- night stand with someone, in fact my one sexual encounter in two odd years. We finished having sex and this guy talked about what a terrible time he was having at work. He said that he was treated worse than the “kaffir girls”. It was just dismal. You had a sense that the few black men that were allowed in the clubs were only there because they were with much older white men. (Interview with author, July 2001)

Barrett’s experience reflects that of many gay and lesbian activists of the time – the sense of a life half-lived, of sublimated identity, the truncation of a discourse on the relationship between class, race and sexual oppression, that was implicit, but never realised in the notion of struggle.

The white gay community was racist. There was very little sense of a black gay community. So for white gay political activists the spheres of political and gay identities just did not come together, as they might have in a Western country. (Interview with author, July 2001).

Exile

I left South Africa in 1979 to avoid military conscription and lived in Europe for 13 years. So did Rupert Smith and James Barrett – after his flat was raided by police and other members of the Alternative Service Group were detained. Some were later charged with membership of the banned ANC and treason.

Exile proved no different. Exile politics in the United Kingdom of the 1980s was shaped by the London structures of the ANC and by the solidarity campaigns of the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM). In both there was again, a curious silence on the issue of homosexuality, the more marked because in British society there had been an upsurge in progressive mobilisation against the policies of the Conservative Party government of Magaret Thatcher. These included further restrictions on gay men and lesbians.

Path-breaking alliances were being struck between the conventional, socially conservative formations of the Left, such as the trade unions and gay and lesbians organisations. According to James Barrett:

Lesbians and gays were supportive of the miners strike – there was extraordinary coalition politics; gay and lesbian groups raised funds for the miners. The 1983 Gay Pride March was led by a colliery band belting out Tom Robinson’s anthem Glad to be gay. (Interview with author, July 2001)

Although the ANC and AA structures were closely allied to the Labour Party and other left-wing groups, which were at least nominally libertarian, the exile community seemed hermetically sealed against outside influences. Why was this? Was it a typical exile response, a fear of integration, the loosening of the bonds with home, a cultural regrouping around essential identities? Or did the homophobia have roots elsewhere?

We found little evidence of the exposure of “the ANC elite to a utopian social progressive ideology, influenced largely by the social–democratic movements in the countries that supported it during its struggle”, cited by Gevisser.

Rather we encountered a certain defensiveness; that in adopting or opening up to issues other than the racism of apartheid, the movement would be deflected, led astray. The notion of oppressed groups other than blacks, expressing themselves, or organising separately somehow constituted a betrayal of the imperative of national liberation.

The stronger influences here were the ANC’s - always latent - Africanism and the extreme social conservatism of Stalinism that its alliance with the South African Communist Party brought to the movement. As I have written elsewhere

[The ANC] rejected feminism as a western unAfrican concept…….feminist debate may not have been openly suppressed, but it was sublimated to the intrinsic logic of the strategy for liberation: the first struggle was for liberation of the nation; the second for the liberation of the working class, and at best third down the line might come the struggle for the liberation of women (Kraak(b),1998: 7)

The more conservative women’s sections of the liberation movement [even] held that it was the primary task of women to provide support to the front ranks of the struggle – the men – and to care for their children…. (Kraak (a), 1998:viii) …

In the pubs of London

In the many discussion with “comrades” in the ANC’s leadership and membership structures, in the pubs of London, inhibitions loosened by pints of beer, the responses were always the same, when the issue of homosexuality was raised.

Most often the subject elicited revulsion, ridicule or discomfort. More intellectually or ideologically-considered responses held that homosexuality was decadent, a bourgeois deviation of Western capitalism that would disappear under socialism. Or that while homosexuality might well occur in the white community it was alien to African culture. Where homosexual practices existed in African communities it was by contamination, or as a consequence of apartheid institutions such as the migrant hostels which broke up families and confined men in urban barracks. An explicit project of the anti-apartheid struggle was to restore the sanctity of family life.

For others still homosexuals posed a risk to the movement – they could be blackmailed or compromised by the regime and for this reason could not be trusted as comrades.

In the absence of more rigorous research what I am recounting can only be anecdotal and risks stereotyping. But there is other more compelling substantiation that these views were prevalent among the membership. The assertion of the unAfricaness of homosexuality, or of homosexuality as contamination, struck other chords. Activists from inside South Africa, passing through London at the time recounted that at least some of the victims of the notorious necklacing phenomenon of the 1980s, were homosexuals, rejected by their communities.

Gevisser in his compelling account of the inclusion of the equality clause in the constitution cites a debate on whether the ANC government ought to recognise gay partnerships that took place in the Cabinet in 1998 which confirms the homophobia abroad in the ANC even in the late 1980’s He cites Sbu Ndebele, currently the leader of the ANC in Kwa Zulu/Natal and

a former political prisoner with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, [who] declared that it was outrageous for the ANC to support homosexual activity. He reminded his comrades that anybody caught doing this on “The Island” was automatically expelled from the party.” (2000: 120)

This squares with the experiences of Indres Pillay (a pseudonym), sentenced to imprisonment on Robben Island for activities in Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK), the ANC’s armed wing, in the late 1980s. One of the prisoners’ hard-won concessions was that that authorities allowed them to watch videos on weekends. After screenings of 9 ½ weeks (in which there is a brief lesbian scene) and Kiss of the Spiderwoman (an account of the relationship between straight political prisoner sharing a cell with a transvestite in an unnamed Latin American dictatorship) the leadership group on the island issued an edict that videos with gay scenes not be shown. Prisoners also had to agree to a code of conduct that disallowed anti-social behaviour. Pillay learnt to his cost that this included homosexuality. He was later ostracised by his fellow prisoners. (Luirink, 2000:38 – 9)

Jack’s story

Gevisser also cites Dumisane Makhaye an ex-MK combatant, present at the same Cabinet meeting who is reputed to have said that MK cadres discovered to be homosexuals were shot. (2000:120)

There is nothing to suggest that such executions took place, but it resonates with a chilling encounter I had with a comrade in the late 1980s – let’s call him “Jack”.

Jack joined MK and was part of a group that smuggled arms into the country and had begun to plan acts of sabotage against military targets when they were betrayed and arrested. Jack recounted later that in the course of an operation, the group needed a car for a reconnoitring operation, that they might later abandon. Jack had a certain rugged, blonde attractiveness and the group hit upon the idea that he could pick someone up in a gay bar, go home with him, kill him and take his car. For reasons I can’t recall the operation was aborted – but the homophobia and the hostility to homosexuals as dispensable solely on account of their sexual orientation that the group’s strategy displayed was deeply alienating and accelerated my own coming-out to my political peers.

The anti-apartheid movement, an organisation of predominantly British people and rooted in the politics of the British left, seemed no more open. A prominent member of the movement recounts that

A march had been organised by the AAM to mark the Soweto uprising. I had taken part and was acutely disappointed with the turn out bearing in mind the nature of the occasion being commemorated. On the same day Gay Pride had organised a huge demonstration. It was obvious that the two events had competed for support. I was subsequently in the AAM office and stressed the importance of establishing links with the gay community. Though one person in that office agreed with me, others agreed with the ANC VIP who was there, who insisted that being gay was not a natural thing. That in any case it didn’t occur in South Africa. Somebody else suggested it was a result of the public school system in the UK. It was also pointed out that women would be the sufferers if this gayness were accepted (Interview with author, June 2001)

A poverty of debate, a dissection of identities

That was the poverty of the debate, on the issue of homosexuality in the discourse of national liberation

This placed those of us who were white, gay and anti-apartheid activists in the uncomfortable position of living a sometimes conflicting dissection of identities, racial ( in relation to our black comrades), sexual (in relation to our straight contemporaries) and political (in relation to the overwhelmingly politically-conservative communities from which we had come).

This was perhaps most vividly expressed in the internal politics of the Committee on South African War Resistance (COSAWR) – an organisation of exiled conscientious objectors, draft dodgers and military deserters, established to undermine the SADF, by encouraging internal resistance to the draft and international isolation of the apartheid regime.

The ANC and COSAWR developed a close political relationship, the ANC included the work of COSAWR in its broader strategy to undermine the South African military. Some of the COSAWR leadership participated in the ANC’s clandestine structures exploring ways of infiltrating the military and police, broadening the campaign against conscription and undermining the morale of the white community.

An army of lovers?

At least a third of the executive membership of COSAWR were gay, as was a much larger proportion of the broader war resister community - perhaps because in addition to our moral and political objections to military service many of use feared participating in, as avowedly homophobic an institution as, the military.

For many of us who had come into exile in this way, our primary social, political and sexual relationships were with fellow war resisters. And yet even within the confines of the organisation our common homosexuality was never an explicit part of the discourse, even where our brief might have dictated otherwise – in particular the treatment of gay men in the military.

Rupert Smith, a founder member of COSAWR said that being gay in the organisation

It was possible but it wasn’t welcomed. I’ve always been pretty discrete/straight acting/fucking boring and closeted, so I wasn’t a threat cos I toed the party line. But a friend of mine who was much more out was definitely seen as being a bit…..what’s the right word? Just not quite the right image really. COSAWR was never overtly homophobic, but the liberation struggle was never really about sexual politics, not even feminist politics! Basically pretty heteronormative. (Interview with author, May 2001)

James Barrett struggled with exile:

I felt screwed up, messed up, not finding a niche to think about my gay identity. I found the general spirit in the war resister community destructive – many of the South African refugees were very depressed, living in bad conditions, really struggling with their loss of comfort. I gradually drifted away. I got involved in the London Gay Workshop, a group of gay men who got together to discuss political issues. It had a broad left-wing agenda and was trying to reach out and establish coalitions with other groups and draw gay men into political activity. This was formative for me and drew me away from anti-apartheid work and into the field of HIV/AIDS.

Ultimately I was put off the closetedness of some of the leading members of COSAWR who saw being gay as a shameful thing that might be used against COSAWR – you know, fags who were to wussy to do military service. (Interview with author, July 2001)

Terry Shott, also a founder member of COSAWR echoes Barrett’s response, but chose a different course of action. As a student in London in the mid-1970s, Shott was drawn into Okhela, a clandestine group loosely associated with the ANC, that sought to infiltrate South Africa, recruit additional members and carry out sabotage, but was quickly rounded up, making it impossible for Shott to return to South Africa.

An “out” gay man, Shott found the homophobia of the ANC and the AAM alienating and chose instead to become involved in groups which welcomed gay members – initially the Southern African Liberation Support Committee and later the Namibia Support Committee. He also helped establish the End Loans to South Africa Campaign

I chose to work in these groups. I sought out groups that I thought would be sympathetic to my sexual orientation and a broader politics that embraced gay rights, women’s rights and so on. In the ANC and the Anti-Apartheid Movement these issues were seen as a distraction. (Interview with author, May 2002)

Shot confirms, that as in NUSAS, an insidious form of internalised homophobia prevailed – not only that our homosexuality would alienate us from our comrades in the movement, leading to our marginalisation,

but that it would somehow confirm the propaganda of the regime, that in fleeing military service we were cowards, not real men. (Shott, interviewed by author, May 2002)

Always the link with home

In the mid- to late- 1980s there was something of a cultural and politic shift. These were dictated from inside South Africa where the rise of the UDF, which although closely allied to the ANC was not characterised by the same ideological rigidity of its exiled counterpart, and allowed a broader debate.

But it was the courage and actions of Simon Nkoli that broke open the silence around homosexuality in the liberation movement. Simon Nkoli, an African gay man was a UDF activist on the East Rand near Johannesburg. He was arrested and put on trial for treason, part of a dragnet that included some the UDF’s most prominent leaders. With extraordinary personal courage, Nkoli came out to his colleagues in prison, at first inspiring opprobrium and later through sheer persistence, respect.

One of them the trailists Patrick Lekota, now the ANC National chairman and South Africa’s defence minister, speaking at Nkoli’s funeral in 2000 said that

all of us acknowledged that [Simon’s coming out] was an important learning experience …. His presence made it possible for more information to be discussed, and it broadened our vision, helping us to see that society was composed of so many people whose orientations were not the same, and that one must be able to live with it. And so when it came to writing the constitutions how could we say that men and women like Simon who had put their shoulders to the wheel to end apartheid, how could we say that they should now be discriminated against? (Gevisser, 2000:119)

Nkoli’s actions not only challenged the notion that homosexuality was unAfrican, but demonstrated the presence of gay men and lesbians in the anti-apartheid movement. Nkoli’s arrest and trial came at a point where the scale of the uprising against apartheid and its brutal repression by the security forces had captured world-wide attention and sparked a revival of anti-apartheid solidarity in the west. Gay groups in the US and Europe took up Nkoli’s cause demanding his release and brought the issue of gay and lesbian identity into the foreground of anti-apartheid politics.

Nkoli emboldened gays and lesbians in other formations of the anti-apartheid and liberation movements, including a group of gay men in COSAWR, who launched a campaign in solidarity with imprisoned conscientious objector Ivan Thoms. Thoms was a prominent member of the End Conscription Campaign and of the Western Cape branch of the UDF. A medical doctor who tended to the victims of police brutality and shootings in the squatter camps and townships of Cape Town, he spoke with particular authority about the consequences of the state of emergency. Clandestine elements of the security forces tried to discredit him by pointing to his homosexuality in pamphlets and posters circulated in Cape Town.

Thoms, who had until then remained silent on his homosexuality in his public life, became increasingly open, pointing to the similarity of experience of oppression shared by homosexuals and black people. Thom’s coming out was a signal for the gay membership of COSAWR. When Thoms was jailed for refusing to obey his military call-up, COSAWR organised a campaign of solidarity with him, specifically profiling Thoms as a gay activist targeted at and winning support from gay groups in the UK

The Dutch connection

There were other shifts.

Bart Luirink and other openly-gay executive members of the Dutch anti-apartheid movement, were disconcerted by the absence of a discourse on homosexuality in the liberation movement and with some of their colleagues began to raise the issue with the senior leadership ANC. Some of executive members of the Dutch movement were uneasy about this stance. The Dutch movement, had very close, ties with the ANC, was one its mainstays of support in Western Europe and could not be easily discounted.

This invisible debate, a samidzat discourse, that went on behind closed doors, between senior leaders of the ANC and gays in implicitly trusted anti-apartheid movements was brought to a head in 1987, when the gay London weekly Capital Gay interviewed senior representatives of the ANC in London on the movement’s position of gays and lesbians.

The publication was responding - in part - to the assurances which had been given to a delegation of students who had sought contact with the ANC’s headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia. This was part of the dialogue that was opening up between internal groups and the exiled movement that presaged full-blown negotiations three years later. The ANC stated that while the ANC had no policy on gay and lesbians, it was “open minded on the issue “

ANC policy grows as it confronts social questions that need to be addressed. A democratic state should restructure and accommodate issues related to oppression…. “ (Capital Gay, 18 Sept 1987)

But Solly Smith the ANC’s representative in London responded to Capital Gay’s question thus

We cannot be diverted from our struggle by these issues. We believe in the majority being equal. These people (lesbians and gays) are in the minority. The majority must rule (Capital Gay, 18 September 1987).

An executive member of the ANC, Ruth Mompati, went on to say

I cannot even begin to understand why people want gay and lesbian rights. The gays have no problems. They have nice houses and plenty to eat. I don’t see them suffering. No one is persecuting them. We haven’t heard about this problem in South Africa until recently. It seems to be fashionable in the West….. They are not doing the liberation struggle a favour by organising separately and campaigning for their rights. The (Gay) issue is being brought up to take attention away from the main struggle against apartheid…. They are red herrings. We don’t have a policy on gays and lesbians. We don’t have a policy on flower sellers either (Capital Gay, September 1987)

Mompati’s views betray the much wider thinking in the ANC at the time - that all gays were white. This says a great deal about the visibility of black gays in the liberation movement, a subject to which I will return.

What if 1990 hadn’t happened?

How far this process of discussion and opening up on the issue of sexuality in the ANC would have gone had the events of the late 1980s and early 1990s not transpired, is open to question. But the focus of debate on the future of gays and lesbians shifted to the halls of the constitutional negotiations at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park where a group of gay UDF activists pressed for the inclusion of the clause on sexual orientation in the constitution. The rest is part of a remarkable and unprecedented story which others have covered in detail.

What then to make of the role of gay men and lesbians in the liberation movement and the contradictory experience of commitment to an apparently emancipatory project that took no note of their oppression. In this their most critical endeavour, the one that is likely to have shaped them, they led half- lives.

Of course most cadres in the movement also did, sacrificing their youth, sacrificing the possibility of sustained relationships and many also their lives. Women in particular endured the suffocating patriarchy of the ANC’s exiled structures, and have been vindicated by the explosion of an indigenous feminism in post-apartheid SA. We have all gone on to claim full citizenship of a democratic country.

But for gays and lesbians specifically it might so easily have been different. Where it not for the “miracle”, for the actions of a few brave individuals who had the foresight to seize the historical moment of the negotiations, South African gay men and lesbians might endure the oppression of those in Zimbabwe, Namibia and Uganda, where Africanism has held sway.

At the same time this has of necessity been a white history, a story about some white gay political activists. Emerging historiography has now established that the notion that homosexuality is un African is a fallacy, called into question not only by the flowering of black gay and lesbian organisation, but by the rich emergent histories of gay life in black communities. Yet we can count on the fingers of one hand the out black gay political activists in the history of the struggle. This very lack of the visibility of gay and lesbians cadres in the movement, points surely to the persistence of homophobia in the political community, which colours the memory of the struggle. What was the experience of black gays and lesbians in the formations of the liberation movement and its armed formations, in the trade unions and the affiliates of the UDF? We need to know to be able to reclaim our pasts.

This brief history of some gay men and lesbians who worked in anti-apartheid structures and in the liberation movements tries to do that. It seeks to add to the complexity of our experience. It tries to pose critical questions about how we arrived in this safe haven, so that our history is not appropriated into some bland notion of rainbow nation in which the needs of all have been accommodated and the real difficulties, pain and alienation of reaching this point are air-brushed into the rosy-hued background.

In as much as truth and reconciliation are motifs of the post-apartheid society, we need to look back and proselytise the union of the political and personal, so that the politics of the future embraces all those who seek a role. The indivisibility of the human rights of all is a standard that should never again questioned, compromised or contoured to fit ideology.

References:

Gevisser, M. 2000: Mandela’s stepchildren: homosexual identity in post-apartheid South Africa. In Drucker,P (ed): Different rainbows. London: Gay Men’s Press

Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical lyrics by James Rado & Gerome Ragni music by Galt MacDermot

Luirink, B. 2000: Moffies. Gay Life in Southern Africa. Johannesburg:David Phillip

Kraak,G. 1998: Class, race, nationalism and the politics of identity: a perspective from the South. In Development Update, Vol 2, No 2, 1998

Kraak G and Simpson G. 1998: The illusions of sanctuary and the weight of the past: notes on violence and gender in South Africa. In Development Update, Vol 2, No 2, 1998

this is not an order
this is not a poem
this is not a mantra
this is not a list of recriminations
this is not a 12 step program
this is not anything
this is not me
this is not you
so no stress now baby
i’m busy anyway
the truth is
if you’re going to live a lie
you have to do it very convincingly
and you don’t have to worry about my loyalty
i’m always loyal to me
and you don’t have to worry about timing
i’ll know when it’s time to make the first mistakes
and if you’re afraid that i’ll debase you
don’t forget a little debasement goes a long way
and i know that your mouth is a temple
so open it wider
and i know that your eyes are portals to your soul
so close them
this is what i’m gonna do
i’m going to uncontrol you
til your five senses ungovern you
i’m going to unfasten your seatbelt
and watch while you float through the windscreen
i’m going to help pull you untogether
going to watch while you put off your face
so don’t be anybody
don’t be somebody
don’t be a person
don’t be a woman
don’t be a girl
don’t be you
don’t be anything
don’t be free
don’t be me
don’t be

I saw her
in a shopping mall
in a christmas shopping mall
in a dark christmas shopping mall

naked in a shopping mall
naked in a christmas shopping mall
naked in a dark christmas shopping mall

luminescent
silent
alone

Psalter and Hours of Bonne of Luxembourg
A life-size arme Christi, the side wound of Christ, or “the entrance to Christ’s heart”

It was ten years after the Lady Chatterley trial until ‘cunt’ hit the headlines again, when “the most offensive word you can use on British TV” (James Doorne, 2007) was uttered for the first time on live television in 1970. David Frost was interviewing the Yippies during ITV’s The Frost Programme, and introduced Jerry Rubin as “a reasonable man”. Felix Dennis shouted back, jokingly, “He’s not a reasonable man, he’s the most unreasonable cunt I’ve ever known in my life!”. There ensued an atmosphere of general pandemonium; Dennis admitted to behaving “bloody abominably” (Richard Cowles and Colin Campbell, 2002) and Rosie Boycott later accused him of “wreak[ing] havoc on live television [and] effectively [bringing] the show to a standstill” (Andy Baybutt, 2002).

The very nature of live broadcasting makes unexpected events a distinct possibility. If a programme is broadcast live, mistakes cannot be rectified in the editing room, and advantage can be taken of the situation because a live broadcast allows unfiltered access to the airwaves.

The first scripted use of ‘cunt’ on television - the first time its use was premeditated by a broadcaster, in contrast to the unforeseen use by the Yippies - was in the ITV drama No Mama No:

“What did he say?”
“He said your Dr Cawston is a cunt” (1979).

Verity Lambert persuaded the Independent Broadcasting Authority that the use of ‘cunt’ was dramatically valid: “I had a lot of correspondence with the IBA about that word. I think it was a real insult, and she needed to say that particular word. And, in the end, to be fair to them, they accepted that as an explanation” (Kerry Richardson, 1994). By contrast, American television was a ‘cunt’-free zone until as late as 1994, when chat-show host Phil Donahue used the word “in relating and condemning an employer’s insult to a female employee” (Jesse Scheidlower, 1995).

Such is the word’s scarcity on television that several programmes have been erroneously credited with being the first to broadcast it. Auberon Waugh cites No Mama No as “perhaps the first use on television of the most controversial word of all” (Kerry Richardson, 1994), though, as noted previously, ‘cunt’ was scripted into this 1979 drama nine years after it was uttered live on The Frost Programme.

Years later, John Walsh confidently declared that ‘cunt’ was used on live TV for the first time as late as 2002: “It is, or was, the last linguistic taboo, the final insult, the unsayable word. […] But now history has been made. For probably the first time, someone has said the “c-word” live on British television”. Walsh was referring to This Morning, the live daytime ITV programme during which Caprice, discussing her role in The Vagina Monologues, mentioned the section “called Reclaiming Cunt” (Siubhan Richmond, 2002). This was certainly groundbreaking, as the word was spoken on morning television, though it was clearly not the first time the word had ever been broadcast live.

A similar mistake was made by Matthew Beard and Victoria Coren, both of whom mistakenly claimed that the 2003 drama Witchcraze marked the BBC’s first broadcast of the dreaded word. In C-Word Allowed To Make Debut On BBC Television, Beard wrote that “A drama-documentary on witches on BBC2 is to risk the wrath of viewers by featuring the “C-word” - previously considered so unutterable that it has never been passed by BBC television censors” (2003). Coren agreed that “[in Witchcraze] BBC airwaves played host for the very first time to what I believe the more delicate members of society refer to as ‘the c-word’” (2003). The Sun also gleefully announced that Witchcraze would “break one of TV’s last taboos” (C-Word Shock, 2003).

The Channel 4 drama Mosley was yet another programme incorrectly cited as the first to contain the word ‘cunt’. In its final episode, a prison guard shouted “You cunt!” (Robert Knights, 1998) at the eponymous character. This, predictably, caused revulsion from the Mail On Sunday, which reported that Channel 4 “will break the last taboo over bad language on television […] with the deliberate use of the only word in the English language considered more offensive than the F-word” (Michael Burke, 1998). The newspaper did not print ‘cunt’ itself, though it solemnly proclaimed the word to be “an anatomical reference [which is] deeply offensive to women in particular”.

The Mail declared that ‘cunt’ “has not been scripted into a mainstream television drama before”, though this is incorrect on two counts. Firstly, Mosley is not a mainstream drama, as Channel 4 is not a mainstream channel; secondly, ‘cunt’ had appeared previously, in the mainstream ITV drama No Mama No. Regarding Mosley, Laurence Marks explained that the decision to include ‘cunt’ was not an easy one to make: “it is intensely powerful […] we debated long and hard about using the word. There were many on the production team who thought we should not. The word is the most reviled single utterance in the English language […] We know this word will jar but it was used for dramatic effect” (Michael Burke, 1998). (The word appeared in another prison drama, Ghosts… Of The Civil Dead, when it was forcibly tattooed onto a prisoner’s forehead.)

Tabloid journalists leaping to conclusions is one thing, though Irvine Welsh should really know better. Welsh confidently declared in 2003 that ‘cunt’ was first broadcast in a programme he had written eight years previously: “the word cunt was first aired on TV in my drama The Granton Star Cause in 1996″. This drama, broadcast by Channel 4, contains perhaps more c-words than any other programme, though it was, of course, far from the first instance of the word being broadcast.

The premiere appearance of ‘cunt’ in the press is a matter of equally contentious debate. When, in 1988, Mike Gatting publicly criticised a cricket umpire with the phrase “fucking, cheating cunt”, The Independent was the only newspaper to publish his comments unexpurgated. Bill Bryson has since claimed that this marked “the first time that cunt had appeared in a British newspaper” (1990), as has Ian Jack: “”Cunt” as well as “fucking” was included, perhaps the word’s first appearance in a British newspaper” (2002).

In fact, ‘cunt’ had appeared in The Times the year before, in an article by Bernard Levin. Levin criticised the common newspaper practice of asterisking swearwords, commenting sarcastically that “If the words are printed with only their initial letters, followed by asterisks […] they are at once and entirely robbed of their dreadful power” (1987). He then went on to quote unasterisked lines from the poem V:

“Aspirations, cunt! Folk on t’fucking dole
‘ave got about as much scope to aspire
above the shit they’re dumped in, cunt, as coal
aspires to be chucked on t’fucking fire. […]
Yer’ve given yerself toffee, cunt. Who needs
yer fucking poufy words. Ah write mi own” (Tony Harrison, 1985).

Levin’s article marks the one and only occasion that The Times has printed ‘cunt’ uncensored. David Glencross, writing in The Observer, was nonplussed by the article: “When an extract [from V was] printed in The Times, embedded in an article by Bernard Levin, the social fabric of the nation survive[d]” (1987), though Levin’s fellow Times columnist Ronald Butt castigated him for “[choosing] to reproduce a verse of unmitigated obscenity […] in what was clearly a gratuitous taboo-breaking exercise” (1987).

V was also published unexpurgated in The Independent shortly after The Times’s extracts, with a warning regarding its “SEXUALLY EXPLICIT LANGUAGE” (Blake Morrison, 1987). These extracts in The Times and The Independent came months before Mike Gatting’s cricket outburst, though they were overshadowed by the controversy surrounding V’s recital on television.

However, the very first usage of ‘cunt’ in a newspaper occurred as long ago as the 1970s, more than a decade before The Times and The Independent were brave enough to print it. The word appears in a 1974 interview with Marianne Faithfull, published in The Guardian. The writer, Janet Watts, introduces Faithfull as a woman who is not afraid to speak her mind: “She used not to read what people wrote, because she got to believe it: now, she’s easy about it, relaxing into words I think she thinks I can’t print”. Watts then quotes Faithfull’s reactions to negative reviews: “If they think I’m a whoo-er [sic.], they’re entitled to say it: just as I’m entitled to think they’re a cunt for saying it”.

keep reading this article here

Censorship

In some contexts, ‘cunt’ remained a socially acceptable word until very recently: “in rural areas [of England in the 1960s] the word was still being used as an ordinary everyday term, at least when applied to a cow’s vulva” (James McDonald, 1988). However, besides this location- and usage-specific example, ‘cunt’ has been the primary English language taboo for over five centuries. I have attempted to ascertain approximately when the word first became taboo, and have also documented the history of its media censorship.

The censorship of ‘cunt’ is a cyclical process: initially, the word was socially acceptable, then it became taboo, and more recently it can be found with increasing regularity in both print and broadcast media. This gradual mainstream acceptance represents an erosion of the word’s taboo status.

‘Cunt’ was used medically by Lanfranc, who, in the early fifteenth century, wrote: “In wymmen [the] neck of [the] bladdre is schort, [and] is maad fast to the cunte” (14–). Two hundred years later, however, the ‘cunt’ taboo was firmly in place: Minsheu rendered it “Cu [and] c” (’Cu etc.’, 1617) and John Fletcher resorted to “They write sunt with a C, which is abominable” (1622). It is not possible to unequivocally identify the date from which ‘cunt’ first became taboo, though Mark Morton (2003) provides a rough guide: “Up until the fourteenth century or so, cunt appears not to have been a taboo word. […] By the fifteenth century, however, the word cunt seems to have shifted toward the taboo. […] Near the end of the seventeenth century, the word cunt was firmly ensconced in obscenity”.

Southwark’s ‘Gropecuntelane’ dates from 1230, indicating that, at that time, the word may have been bawdy but was not obscene. Similarly, the earliest example of a ‘cunt’ surname is that of Godwin Clawecunte from 1066, and the latest is Bele Wydecunthe’s from 1328. Lanfranc, writing one hundred years later, does not disguise the word, though Geoffrey Chaucer does.

Chaucer, in his Canterbury Tales, employs the deliberately faux-archaic spelling ‘queynte’ (variants: ‘queynt’, ‘qwaynt’, ‘quaynte’, ‘queinte’, ‘coynte’, and ‘coint’; modern spelling: ‘queint’) as a substitute for ‘cunt’. Eric Partridge suggests that, to form ‘queynte’, “Chaucer may have combined Old French coing with Middle English cunte or he may have been influenced by the Old French cointe” (1931), and Mark Morton suggests a link to ‘quaint’, though the simplest explanation is that Chaucer added the ‘nte’ mediaeval suffix of ‘cunt’ to the feminine ‘qu’ prefix. William Shakespeare’s “acquaint” in his Sonnet XX (1609[a]) is a disguised reference to both ‘quaint’ and ‘cunt’. Andrew Marvell uses similar literary camouflage in To His Coy Mistress, with a reference to “quaint honour” (1653):

“Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: the worms shall try
That long preserved virginity:
And your quaint honour turn to dust;
And into ashes all my lust”.

Three hundred and fifty years later, an If… cartoon by Steve Bell also disguised ‘cunt’, this time by rendering it as the faux-French “QUEURNT” (2003). Perhaps this comic example adds a new dimension to Chaucer’s ‘queynte’, which can be seen as a similarly exoticised rendering of ‘cunt’.

The Canterbury Tales, which are full of more minor swearwords such as ’shit’ and ‘piss’ though not the tabooed ‘cunt’ (except in disguised form), were written at the very end of the fourteenth century, thus it seems that ‘cunt’ was an acceptable term throughout the Middle Ages, becoming taboo during the late fourteenth century. Peter Fryer contends that “it has been avoided in written and polite spoken English since the fifteenth century” (1963). There was almost certainly a period of transition, during which the word’s status gradually changed from acceptability to taboo, just as, five hundred years later, it is in transition again, from taboo to acceptability.

Swearing And Cunt Censorship

The earliest recorded linguistic taboos are Middle English blasphemies such as ‘’slids’ (’God’s eyelids’) and ‘’sfoot’ (’God’s foot’). It is interesting that these early curses were related to parts of God’s body - the eyelids and feet - as contemporary swearing has become secularised though bodily taboos have remained: from eyelids and feet we have moved to erogenous zones such as ‘cunt’, ‘cock’, ‘tits’, and ‘arse’.

Whilst the church exercised considerable power over society in the Middle Ages, its authority diminished following the Reformation of the sixteenth century. With this revolutionary iconoclasm came a reduction in the potency of religious profanity, thus, for example, the insulting term ‘devil’ was significantly weakened: “the first use of devil as ‘merely a term of reprobation’, sometimes playfully applied, [occurred] after the main ructions of the Reformation” (Geoffrey Hughes, 1991).

The transition from religious to secular swearing, reflecting the concurrent transition in society, changed the boundaries of linguistic taboo. Religious curses (’damn’) were replaced by taboos relating to bodily functions such as sexual intercourse (’fuck’) and excretion (’shit’). In the twentieth century, these in turn were joined by new taboos relating to ‘politically incorrect’ language, including homophobic (’queer’), sexist (’bitch’), and racist (’nigger’) abuse.

In Swearing, his history of profanity, Geoffrey Hughes notes that “genital, copulatory, excretory and incestuous swearing” has now largely replaced religious oaths: “[the] great and obvious force behind most medieval swearing was Christianity […] the grisly invocation of Christ’s body, blood and nails in the agony of the Crucifixion seems as grotesque and bizarre to us now as modern […] swearing would have seemed to medievals” (1991).

Jesse Schiedlower traces the history of swearing from religion to sex and beyond: “Throughout the centuries, different topics have been considered incendiary at different times. Several hundred years ago, for example, religious profanity was the most unforgivable type of expression. In more recent times, words for body parts and sexually explicit vocabulary have been the most shocking […] Now, racial or ethnic epithets are the scourge” (1995).

In The Curse Of The C-Word (2001), Mark Irwin calls ‘cunt’ “THE ULTIMATE INSULT” and “the most obscene non-racial English curse” (2001[a]), though he also suggests that racist insults such as ‘nigger’ may eventually replace ‘cunt’ as the ultimate taboo: “Even in the 1970s, [’nigger’ appeared in] TV sitcoms and in print - even in children’s books - while the words fuck and cunt were never seen […] The move from religious to sexually orientated [swear]words took place 300 or so years ago in English [and a] hundred years from now, words such as cunt and fuck may be viewed as quaint oddities” (2001[b]). In The Aristocrats, a fictional vaudville act is named “the Nigger Cunts” (Paul Provenza, 2004) precisely because ‘nigger’ and ‘cunt’ are, at the time of writing, the two most offensive English words.

After the Reformation, literary censorship was performed by the Privy Council and theatrical censorship was the portfolio of the Master of the King’s Revels. Mindful of these restraints, William Shakespeare’s references to ‘cunt’ are all in disguised forms. Thus, in Measure For Measure, we find ‘counsellors’ used as a pun on ‘cunt-sellers’: “Good counsellors lack no clients” (1603[b]). Similarly, in Henry V, Katharine confuses the English terms ‘foot’ and ‘coun’ (’gown’) with the phonetically similar French ‘foutre’ (’fuck’) and ‘con’ (’cunt’), calling them “mauvais, coruptible, gros, et impudique, et non pour les dames d’honneur d’user. Je ne voudrais prononcer ces mots devant les seigneurs de France, pour tout le monde” (1599).

In her analysis of Shakespeare’s sexual puns, Pauline Kiernan (2006) has identified references to ‘cunt’ in the most innocent-sounding phrases: she translates Shakespeare’s “tallow-face” (from Romeo And Juliet, 1597[b]) as “greasy-cunt”, and his “vocativo […] Genitivo” (from The Merry Wives Of Windsor, 1602[b]) becomes “vocative-Cunt […] Genitiv-Cunt”.

In Twelfth Night, Malvolio virtually spells out the word: “By my life, this is my lady’s hand! these be her very C’s, her U’s, and her T’s” (1601[b]). Sir Andrew Aguecheek understands the cheeky allusion: “Her C’s, her U’s, and her T’s: why that-”, though he is swiftly interrupted by Malvolio before he can state the obvious. ‘C’, ‘U’, and ‘T’, of course, spells ‘CUT’; the missing ‘n’ is contained in the ‘and’ of “and her T’s”, with ‘and’ “no doubt be[ing] pronounced ‘en’” (Peter Fryer, 1963) to heighten the similarity. Shakespeare’s “carved” in The Taming Of The Shrew (1596) is an indirect reference to ‘cunt’, as the definition of ‘carved’ is ‘cut’.

Four hundred years after Shakespeare, ‘cut’ and ‘cunt’ were still being confused. David Lodge punned on ‘Silk Cut’ with his phrase “Silk Cunt” (1988). John Spellar delivered a speech in the House of Commons, as reported by Simon Hoggart: “[Spellar tried to say] “We recognise that these cuts in the defence medical services had gone too far,” but he inserted an unwanted letter “n” in the word “cuts”. It still made perfect sense” (2000).

‘Cut’ was itself a recognised euphemism for ‘cunt’ in Shakespeare’s time, and there are three reasons for this: firstly, its almost identical spelling; secondly, its meaning as ‘water channel’, alluding to the vagina and its fluids; finally, its meaning as ‘wound’, which alludes to the vagina as a gash. None of these reasons persuaded Dover Wilson, however, as he steadfastly maintained that Shakespeare’s ‘CUT’ was merely “a typographical error for C-U-E” (Eric Partridge, 1947). A further ‘cut’/'cunt’ pun was provided by Thomas Middleton, whose A Fair Quarrel includes a reference to “callicut” (1617).

this article continues here

knock knock
open your door
I am cold

please
spread your legs
for me to enter

a refugee
from somewhere
long past

‘Cunt’ may be the most offensive word in the English language, though there have been many attempts to reappropriate it. This ideology, which was originally termed cunt-power, sought to invert the word’s injurious potential: to prevent men using it as a misogynist insult, women assertively employed it themselves. The feminist Cunt-Art movement incorporated the word into paintings and performances, and several female writers have campaigned for its transvaluation. In my evaluation of the ideology of cunt-power, I discuss the extent of its practicality, popularity, and longevity.

this article continues here

The Etymology Of Cunt

The etymology of ‘cunt’ is actually considerably more complex than is generally supposed. The word’s etymology is highly contentious, as Alex Games explains: “Language scholars have been speculating for years about the etymological origins of the ‘c-word’” (2006). A consensus has not yet been reached, as Ruth Wajnryb admits in A Cunt Of A Word (a chapter in Language Most Foul): “Etymologists are unlikely to come to an agreement about the origins of CUNT any time soon” (2004), and Mark Morton is even more despairing: “no-one really knows the ulterior origin of cunt” (2003). Greek Macedonian terms for ‘woman’ - ‘guda’, ‘gune’, and ‘gyne’ - have been suggested as the word’s sources, as have the Anglo-Saxon ‘cynd’ and the Latin ‘cutis’ (’skin’), though these theories are not widely supported.

The Origins Of Cunt

Perhaps the clearest method of structuring the complex etymology of ‘cunt’ is to approach it letter by letter, and this is the approach I have taken here. I have examined the Indo-European, Latin, Greek, Celtic, and Dutch linguistic influences on ‘cunt’, and also discussed the wide variety of the word’s contemporary manifestations.

The prefix ‘cu’ is an expression of “quintessential femineity” (Eric Partridge, 1961), confirming ‘cunt’ as a truly feminine term. The synonymy between ‘cu’ and femininity was in place even before the development of written language: “in the unwritten prehistoric Indo-European […] languages ‘cu’ or ‘koo’ was a word base expressing ‘feminine’, ‘fecund’ and associated notions” (Tony Thorne, 1990). The proto-Indo-European ‘cu’ is also cognate with other feminine/vaginal terms, such as the Hebrew ‘cus’; the Arabic ‘cush’, ‘kush’, and ‘khunt’; the Nostratic ‘kuni’ (’woman’); the Irish ‘cuint’ (’cunt’). Mark Morton suggests that the Indo-European ’skeu’ (’to conceal’) is also related.

Thus, ‘cu’ and ‘koo’, both pronounced ‘coo’, were ancient monosyllabic sounds implying femininity. ‘Coo’ and ‘cou’ are modern slang terms for vagina, based on these ancient sounds. Other vaginal slang words, such as ‘cooch’, ‘coot’, ‘cooter’, ‘cooz’, ‘cooze’, ‘coozie’, ‘coozy’, ‘cookie’, ‘choochy’, ‘chocha’, ‘cootch’, and ‘coochie snorcher’ are extensions of them. ‘Coochie snorcher’, as in The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could from The Vagina Monologues, is a childish euphemism for ‘cunt’ that has generated the following (often elaborate) variants:

* ‘hooch’
* ‘hoochie’
* ‘hoochy’
* ‘hootchy’
* ‘hoochy-coochy’
* ‘hootchy-kootchy’
* ‘hootchie-kootchie’
* ‘hootchie-cootchie’
* ‘hootchy-cootchy’
* ‘hoochie-coocher’
* ‘hoochie-coochie’
* ‘ootchimagootchi’
* ‘ouchimagooga’

The phrase also inspired the song titles Itchycoo Park (The Small Faces, 1967), Rock And Roll Hoochie Koo (Rick Derringer, 1974), and (I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man (Muddy Waters, 1954). Hoochie Coochie Men was also the name of Long John Baldry’s backing band during the 1960s. Also, heterosexual pornographic films are known as ‘cooch reels’.

keep reading this fascintating article here

when he penetrated her
quite sexually
she said
wow

wow
wow
wow wow
wow wow wow!

she did not say
meow
only a cat says that

brian brings his girlfriend home
his mom asks her
so what do you do for a living
i’m an amateur web cam girl
i haven’t been doing it for long
i’m still kind of getting the hang of it
brian’s dad enquires
what is an amateur web cam girl?
i play with my asshole a lot
mainly just fingers but sometimes
with fruit or dildoes
brian grins and adds
that’s how we met
his mom beams at the couple and adds
i think it’s so important that young people have something in common
relationships stand so much more chance of lasting
when both parties share interests
brian’s dad looks quizzical
what fruit?

One evening in Paris in 1879, The Stomach Club, a society of American writers and artists, gathered to drink well, to eat a good dinner and hear an address by Mark Twain. He was among friends and, according to the custom of the club, he delivered a humorous talk on a subject hardly ever mentioned in public in that day and age. After the meeting, he preserved the manuscript among his papers. It was finally printed in a pamphlet limited to 50 copies 64 years later.

My gifted predecessor has warned you against the “social evil–adultery.” In his able paper he exhausted that subject; he left absolutely nothing more to be said on it. But I will continue his good work in the cause of morality by cautioning you against that species of recreation called self-abuse to which I perceive you are much addicted. All great writers on health and morals, both ancient and modern, have struggled with this stately subject; this shows its dignity and importance. Some of these writers have taken one side, some the other.

Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, “Give me masturbation or give me death.” Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, “To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion.” In another place this experienced observer has said, “There are times when I prefer it to sodomy.”

Robinson Crusoe says, “I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art.” Queen Elizabeth said, “It is the bulwark of virginity.” Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, “A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush.” The immortal Franklin has said, “Masturbation is the best policy.”

Michelangelo and all of the other old masters–”old masters,” I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction–have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, “Self- negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse.” Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time–”None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.”

Such are the utterances of the most illustrious of the masters of this renowned science, and apologists for it. The name of those who decry it and oppose it is legion; they have made strong arguments and uttered bitter speeches against it–but there is not room to repeat them here in much detail. Brigham Young, an expert of incontestable authority, said, “As compared with the other thing, it is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Solomon said, “There is nothing to recommend it but its cheapness.” Galen said, “It is shameful to degrade to such bestial uses that grand limb, that formidable member, which we votaries of Science dub the Major Maxillary–when they dub it at all–which is seldom, It would be better to amputate the os frontis than to put it to such use.”

The great statistician Smith, in his report to Parliament, says, “In my opinion, more children have been wasted in this way than any other.” It cannot be denied that the high antiquity of this art entitles it to our respect; but at the same time, I think its harmfulness demands our condemnation. Mr. Darwin was grieved to feel obliged to give up his theory that the monkey was the connecting link between man and the lower animals. I think he was too hasty. The monkey is the only animal, except man, that practices this science; hence, he is our brother; there is a bond of sympathy and relationship between us. Give this ingenuous animal an audience of the proper kind and he will straightway put aside his other affairs and take a whet; and you will see by his contortions and his ecstatic expression that he takes an intelligent and human interest in his performance.

The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: a disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke and tell indelicate stories–and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures. The results of the habit are: loss of memory, loss of virility, loss of cheerfulness and loss of progeny.

Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only private–though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh.

My illustrious predecessor has taught you that all forms of the “social evil” are bad. I would teach you that some of these forms are more to be avoided than others. So, in concluding, I say, “If you must gamble your lives sexually, don’t play a lone hand too much.” When you feel a revolutionary uprising in your system, get your Vendome Column down some other way–don’t jerk it down.

aka Alvin Goldstein
Founder of Screw magazine.

Try as you might, you will not find a speech, paragraph, or article declaring Al Goldstein a “nice guy”. It’s just not the way the man is wired. Every description of him makes it quite clear he is foul, profane, brutally cruel to his staff and friends, and constantly floating in what could charitably be called a cloud of noxiousness. But at least he’s consistent.

Once offered $10,000 to anyone who could locate an actual snuff film (snuff created for sexual purposes.) Nobody has ever claimed this reward.

Got a blowjob from Linda Lovelace during an interview promoting Deep Throat, but got pissed off at her after she quit porn and released an autobiography which included unflattering stories about Goldstein.

Claims to have been arrested 19 times.

Curtis Sliwa on Al: “He doesn’t have a humanitarian bone in his body.”

Timeline
10 Jan 1936 Al Goldstein born, New York City.
1952 Al Goldstein’s uncle arranges for a prostitute to deflower the 16 year old Goldstein.
Nov 1968 Al Goldstein launches Screw magazine, with $150 funding.
Apr 1969 Screw magazines runs a pictorial of two men engaged in sexual intercourse.
1973 Publishes nudes of Jackie-O in issue #206. Sells 530,000 copies.
Oct 1974 Playboy magazine runs an interview with pornographer Al Goldstein, in which he declares: “We [at Screw magazine] lead the league in tastelessness. Our photographs are filthier and our stories are more disgusting. We make no effort to be artistic. Our photos are so explicit that the readers can see the come running from the girl’s mouth. Our stock in trade is raw, flailing sex.”
1977 Federal obscenity trial.
1983 Al Goldstein arrested at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with his Vagina-Cross.
Jun 1983 John Holmes to Al Goldstein at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: “You’re gaining weight, Goldstein. You should be on the same diet I’m on, the cocaine diet.”
1997 Al Goldstein tells Davka magazine he is an atheist.
1998 Al Goldstein disinvites David Letterman from Screw’s 30th anniversary party, “for having blackballed me from appearing on your crummy show.”
Apr 1998 Al Goldstein installs a “fuck you finger” stone statue prominently in his backyard in Pompano Beach. It had been formerly used as a prop on the Spin City sitcom.
2001 On a recent legal case: “She [assistant Jennifer Lozinsky] was an elitist Jew who felt that her cunt did not smell from fish and yet as soon as she walked in my office, I heard the tune “The Shrimp Boats Are Coming.” She was a typical elitist cunt who thought that her shit didn’t stink. She disapproved of me and I had her assistant indicted.”
Jan 2003 Al Goldstein is pulled off a plane in Fort Lauderdale, Florida after security screener Kelly Nobles reports that the pornographer made lewd comments to her. Nobles claims that Goldstein asked whether she were a true blonde, and then suggested they have sex and that she keep her uniform on. Goldstein denies everything, and the officers are forced to let him go.
6 Aug 2003 In an interview, Al Goldstein confides: “We’re having money problems. The men’s field sucks. Sales are off 70%… After 34 years of being outrageous, we’re fighting for survival… The Village Voice took away all my hooker ads.”
22 Oct 2003 Al Goldstein apologizes in court for harrassing former employee Jennifer Lozinski. Begging for mercy, Goldstein tells the judge: “I’m homeless. I’m selling my house. I’m going to be in a homeless shelter… I’m nearly 68 years old. This is not right. I served nine days at Rikers and seven days in a nut house.”

this article originally appeared on rotten.com