The Gay Blade

I went to a book launch at The Women's Bookshop the night before we moved back to Level 3 lockdown here in Auckland. It was packed, a great night, a celebration. And deservedly so.  The books is "Crossing the Lines" by Brent Coutts, and it's excellent in so many ways. Just look at that cover!We've been doing this stuff way before Ru Paul. Crossing the Lines is a book that adds hugely to our understanding of the world of gay men in New Zealand, and it does this by giving us a rich historical context and background to a world few know much about or have thought of. If you think "gay history" seems a bit forbidding, don't be put off. This is fascinating, and more than that, it is in places deeply tender and moving. He is telling real stories of real gay men who might seem distant in time but whose lives I believe are familiar in so many way to our own. He shows us what it was like to be gay, more accurately to be homosexual, the term they used, in New Z...

Why Ban Poppers?  Amyl. Poppers. Rush. Jungle Juice. Leather Cleaner. "Room Deodorizer" (That one always puzzled me in my teens when I'd see that description in gay magazines - why did gay men need to deodorise their rooms so much?). They've been part of gay men's life from before I was around, and I've been around a while. From dance floors to bedrooms, we've had a lot of fun with them, one of the most innocent of all recreational drugs. The rumour is that they used to pump them through the air-con at Alfies in the 80s, but I don't know if that is true. We certainly used to take them out dancing, and of course for sex after dancing. Some dancefloors stank of them. Getting your arm jostled as you had the bottle up to your nostril and getting a dose up your nose was a hazard. I worked on Craccum a bit when I was at University, and I remember another volunteer was a chem student and brought a marmite jar full of his own pure product made in the universit...

The term "homosexual" really seems to have fallen out favour these days, and I think that's a pity. I've noticed it for quite a while, but it really came home when I saw someone comment on a post on Facebook that attacks a right-wing politician's views on us, asking "Who uses that word to describe us anymore?" I admit it's not my go-to term, but I think the word deserves a bit more love. "Homosexual" as a term to describe same-sex attraction and activity was invented in 1869, by Karl-Maria Kertbeny , an Austrian novelist.  He coined the word at least ten years before anyone came up with the word heterosexual.  Kertbeny was protesting a proposed anti-sodomy law. Imagine how brave you'd have to be to even raise that topic back then.  It was a revolutionary term at the time.  It was the first time in Western culture (and many others) there was a term to describe us that wasn't linked with judgemental and derogatory religious and social...