The Gay Blade

Some of you will be aware of this story that has been doing the rounds this week. Two men, lovers, in Malawi, have been sentenced to 14 years in prison for getting engaged, for publically acknowledging their love for each other and for being public about the fact they are men who love men. Malawi is an old British colony, like us, and like us they were governed under British laws, and it is under these laws that these men have ben prosecuted. One of the weird things about so many ex-colonies, and old cultures that have rushed to embrace the modern western way of life is how puritanical sexual ideas have taken such strong root in them. When Catholic missionaries got to China in the 16th C they were appalled at how people regarded men having male lovers as not even worth commenting on. China after the revolution became sexually more puritan than the Seventh Day Adventists. We know that in Africa all sorts of different forms of sexuality were seen in the many different cultures there: Tod...

Which label fits you best? Which one do you use for yourself ? Or do you hate them all? I think a number of us have had these words spat out at us as terms of hatred at times, and that's always nasty. I generally tend to call myself gay, but will also use poof or fag at times, just for the hell of it. In lectures at Uni where it's appropriate I sometimes call myself a big old homo: Because let's face it, I am. But the full word "homosexual" (only invented in 1867, heterosexual came 10 years later) now is seen as clinical and less appealing to many. It sounds like an illness to many, so it seems less popular as a personal term. There's an old political idea that by taking over the words our enemies use to attack us and using them ourselves we rob the words of their power as weapons - the growth of Black Pride in the USA in the 60s & 70s (in contrast to the older, more respectable "Negro" or "Coloured") is an example of this, and so is t...